Servant of Earth

Chapter 21

21

Another formal dinner was held the next week. Knowing what had happened at the last one, I felt tense as I took my place among the stoic line of servants behind the candidates’ table. Aidan glanced my way from several spots down, dipping his chin in acknowledgment. I smiled back, wishing we were somewhere the two of us could talk freely.

This meal was as decadent as the first. Overflowing baskets of fruit gave way to braised lamb, apple-stuffed roast duck, and creamy pies full of cheese, potatoes, and leeks. Every dish was adorned with flowers in celebration of spring. The wine was thankfully a light, translucent red, not the bloody liquid we’d drunk during the executions, and this time the servants weren’t offered any of it. Pixies from Earth House darted in sinuous patterns above, periodically flinging rose petals over the assembly.

By the time dessert had concluded and no one had been butchered, I began to breathe more easily. Perhaps we had been granted a reprieve from barbarity for one night.

It was time for dancing, but the king remained seated on the dais with the house heads and Kallen, and no one dared move without his leave. Finally, Osric stood and clapped his hands. Normally he would have given a speech at this point, and I saw confused glances as Fae nobles rose from their chairs.

“Sit back down,” he commanded.

The faeries sat, and a soft noise went through the room—sighs and breathed whispers, speculation no one was willing to speak aloud.

The sound cut off abruptly.

In the sudden silence, I heard the click of slow footsteps. Dread swelled in my gut, and it took all my willpower not to turn and look at whatever horrible surprise was approaching.

Pol passed me, holding a small bundle in his arms. The goat’s face was as sad as I’d ever seen it, and tears glinted behind his golden spectacles. He laid his burden at the foot of the dais and backed away with bowed head.

A tiny cry split the air.

Horror crawled down my spine. A baby. There was a baby in that bundle. A small arm extended from the pile of blankets, waving a tiny fist.

“No,” Drustan said, beginning to rise, but Osric motioned for silence. Drustan subsided, his face lined with rage.

Kallen, too, looked furious. His fists were clenched so tightly the knuckles looked like they would burst through his skin.

“A grave crime has been committed,” King Osric said as he approached the baby. “The bloodlines of Mistei are pure. It has been this way for millennia, and you are all aware of the consequences of breaking this law. Why, then, does this sort of thing”—he flicked his fingers at the bundle—“keep happening?”

Don’t kill it , I pleaded silently. I wouldn’t be able to stay stoic through something that monstrous. I would surely leap at the king and try to claw his eyes out and then be executed in return.

He picked up the infant, leaving the blanket behind on the dais. He held the squirming baby beneath its armpits, displaying it to the room, and I could see that it was a boy with a wild tuft of black hair.

A keening cry rose from one of the Light House tables, and then a flash of white raced down the aisle: a lady in a diamond-studded gown who looked as if her entire world had been torn apart. She ran for the dais, but the king’s guards were faster. They knocked her to her knees and stood over her with drawn swords.

“Please.” Tears ran down her face as she begged. “Please, your majesty, have mercy.”

The king regarded her without emotion. “Do you deny this child is born of two houses?”

“Yes, I deny it. It’s a mistake. There’s been a mistake.”

“Thirty lashes for the lie. On top of the punishment you will soon receive for this crime.”

“Please, it isn’t true!”

“Thirty more for another lie.”

She collapsed in a sobbing heap, head buried in her hands and shoulders shaking. When she looked up again, it was to the far side of the room where Void House’s nobles sat in dark, solemn lines. “Please.” She reached a hand in that direction. “Stand with me. Stand with us .”

No one moved.

She must be reaching for the father of her child, who had lain with her but was too much of a coward to stand by her side. Hector and Kallen both stared at their court, and Kallen looked ready to do murder. Because a member of his house had been indiscreet?

No, I decided as I studied him further. Ruthless and cunning as he might be, that was the face of someone who burned with rage on behalf of the child and mother. It seemed some of the monsters of King Osric’s court were more complex than I had realized.

“This child is an abomination,” the king said. “It was born of Light and Void. It violates one of our most sacred rules, that each branch of magic must be kept pure.” The baby wriggled in his hands and began to cry.

The lady whimpered. “It was an accident. I promise, it was an accident. Let him stay with me, my king. Please. I’ll keep him far away from court. Or banish me, imprison me, do what you will—just let him live.”

Her voice broke on the last word, and my heart broke with it. She knelt alone before the king, pleading for the life of her child, and it seemed neither her lover nor her house would take her side. All this time I had seen the members of Light House as villains. I hadn’t thought of them as people with hearts that beat the same as mine, who loved and lost and wanted desperately to do what was right for their own, no matter who ruled them.

“Here.” The king held out the baby. “Take your child from my arms.”

Was he forgiving her? Showing mercy for the first time?

One look at Drustan’s and Kallen’s faces confirmed what I already knew. King Osric never showed mercy.

She walked hesitantly towards him. When the baby was nestled firmly in her arms, she broke down and wept, holding him close.

The king smiled and snapped his fingers.

Underfae with iridescent wings and purple skin appeared around the mother. One of them ripped the child from her arms and launched into the air, soaring over the crowd until he was lost to sight.

The lady screamed. And screamed. And screamed.

I couldn’t stop the tears rolling down my cheeks. I sobbed, aware that I wasn’t the only one crying. Aware, too, of Drustan and Kallen both looking at me with vastly different expressions. Drustan’s was soft and full of grief, but Kallen’s was tormented—the face of someone haunted and damned by the things he’d allowed to happen.

That was what King Osric did to us. He made us witness his atrocities, and because he held so much power, we said nothing. We became complicit.

The remaining Underfae hadn’t moved from their positions around the lady, who had collapsed to the floor and was sobbing uncontrollably.

“Sixty lashes for her lies,” the king commanded. “And then sixty more for her crime.” Osric smiled as the Underfae muscled the faerie up, ripped the top half of her dress open, and forced her to bend over and brace her arms on the dais. “Rub herbs in it so the wounds scar. Let her always have a reminder of what she has lost.”

One of the Underfae uncoiled a leather flogger tipped with metal barbs. He drew back his arm and struck.

I flinched as she screamed. Blood sprayed from her back, staining the remains of her white dress. He hit her again and again, inscribing cruel crimson lines into her skin. With each blow, her natural Fae shimmer dimmed, replaced by raw, ragged wounds.

I was going to vomit. In desperation, I focused on Drustan instead. He, too, twitched with every blow, but he never looked away from the beating. Few faces in the watching crowd showed the sick glee I had expected, either. Some wept silently, most looked numb, but they witnessed every lash.

Lara was gripping the edge of the table so hard it looked like it hurt. Her face was frozen as she stared at the carnage, but then her eyes darted to mine, and I saw grief and horror reflected in them. A silent communication sped on the air between us, a shared cry neither of us could let loose, and then she returned her attention to the screaming faerie, watching unblinkingly as blood splattered in ruby arcs.

I forced my gaze back, too, although the gore threatened to turn my stomach inside out. This faerie had been brave enough to stand up for her child. If she had to take this punishment, at least I could be brave enough to witness it.

There were many kinds of strength, I thought as the crowd watched the flesh stripped from the lady’s back. The strength to oppose a king, the strength to love in the face of convention…and the strength to look at the truth, witness its horrors, and refuse to flinch.

When it was done, she lay in an unconscious, bloody heap before the dais.

“A toast!” The king raised his glass and downed the liquid, not seeming to notice that hardly anyone toasted with him.

I ushered Lara back to Earth House after the banquet. We moved quickly and silently through the stone halls, in mutual agreement without needing to say a word. As soon as we reached the Earth tunnel, its glossy wet walls dark with night, a shuddering, half-keening noise left Lara. Her shoulders curved in as she pressed a shaking hand to her belly.

My own throat was tight, and I couldn’t seem to breathe properly. Now that we weren’t in public where anyone might see us, the horror I’d been holding inside was rattling through me. I placed my hand against the water, feeling the cold of it curl over my fingers, imagining what it would feel like closing over my head and slithering into my lungs.

“How could he do that?” Lara asked, voice raw.

I shook my head, unable to speak just yet.

My feet didn’t want to carry me the rest of the way to the house. I longed for the soil beneath my toes and the smell of green things, but Earth House had its own pressures. Princess Oriana might already be there, ready to lecture Lara about hiding her feelings better, maybe even ready to dismiss the night’s events as the price of politics or a necessary lesson. The thought was sickening. If Lara made me think of a bright garden sometimes and Selwyn a bubbling spring, Oriana was ice—cold and hard, with an inner core that seemingly nothing could touch.

“It was…” I trailed off, unable to find a word adequate enough. “Unspeakably cruel.”

“A baby,” Lara said. She gripped her skirts, looking down, and I realized there was a dark stain on the satin from being near the spray of blood. “They took away her baby .”

A bitter taste filled my mouth, but I swallowed it down. “Did you know what would happen? When you saw him brought in?”

She hesitated. “I…I don’t know. Children of two houses have always been forbidden, everyone knows that, but I was never invited to any of the dinners until the trial season began. It was…” There was an even longer pause. “It was worse than I could have imagined.”

“Will the mother live?” I asked quietly. There had been so much blood, more than it seemed possible for one body to contain.

“Yes,” Lara said. “But will she want to?”

My eyes blurred at that. “How does anyone have children in Mistei?”

“I don’t know.” A tear traced down Lara’s cheek, and she wiped it away. “I thought I wanted to someday, but now…”

Footsteps sounded behind us, the soft whisper of slippers over stone. I turned to see Princess Oriana approaching. Her head was held high, her face serene. There was blood spray on the front of her pale blue gown, too, the jagged lines like overlapping branches.

I nudged Lara’s hand, and Lara immediately straightened her posture and wiped the last moisture from her cheeks before turning to face her mother.

“Why are you standing here?” Oriana asked Lara.

“I needed a moment.”

Oriana’s mouth twisted with disapproval. “Anyone in the house could find you here.”

My jaw clenched, and I looked down so she wouldn’t see my fury.

“We only stopped for a minute.” Lara bit her lip, and I could see her struggling against the words that wanted to come out. Oriana watched silently—maybe sensing that Lara had more to say. “It was just a baby,” she finally blurted out.

Oriana scoffed and looked towards the curve of water. “It’s never just a baby,” she said. “I thought you understood that by now.”

“That was someone’s child,” Lara said, rushing on heedlessly. “The mother—”

“Knew the price of disobedience. And the cost of loving anything.” With that, Oriana brushed past us. “I expect to see you back in the house in five minutes, Lara.”

I watched her retreating back, wondering when my heart had learned so many different ways to hate.

Lara returned to the house, but she told me I didn’t need to go with her if I didn’t want to. Her gown had clasps on the side to loosen it; she could undress without me. So I returned to the public hallways, needing to burn off the furious energy that raced through my veins and made my stomach churn every time I stopped moving.

My feet took me to Fire House.

I didn’t know entirely why. I considered the question as I rested in an alcove and stared at the wall of flame from a safe distance. Perhaps it was because Drustan had shown grief tonight. Perhaps because he had kissed me. Perhaps because he was a friend who did not need my services—he welcomed my aid but hardly needed it—and sought to speak with me anyway.

I sank to the floor and sat there for hours, watching the dancing flame. Periodically faeries came and went, the curtain of fire parting around them, but few spared a glance for me. The mood was somber, and soon no one passed through the fire at all. It was an early night for everyone as the Fae sought refuge in their house territories, the only places the king could not touch.

If I had my own house, I would never come out. I would keep my people safe in there. It would be small compared to Mistei, but surely it would be better than living in constant fear.

I drifted asleep in that alcove, and when I awoke, Drustan stood over me. He drew me to my feet, and I followed him silently to the room where we had kissed. He closed the door, and again an orange glow painted it, locking us in. He strode to the desk, leaning against it with his back to me. The muscles on his arms were stark beneath his sleeveless tunic and flames flickered above his fingers, casting a hot shimmer in the air.

I took a few hesitant steps towards him. “Are you all right?”

“No.”

I sank onto one of the only pieces of furniture in the room, a red-and-yellow striped couch. “What will happen to the baby?”

He made a rough noise. “It’s a changeling now. It will be sent to the human world, exchanged for an infant, and left to grow old and die alone.”

Changelings were real? They were a myth in the human realm. Supposedly those Fae babies masquerading as human children grew up strange, magical, and malevolent, a joke played on humans to remind us faeries still existed. No one I knew had ever encountered one.

“Why?”

Drustan still didn’t face me. His fingers drummed on the desk. “A long time ago,” he said, “for that’s how these stories always start, the Fae of Mistei were weaker, but each individual had the powers of all six houses in varying amounts. No one can verify this, of course. No one is alive who remembers it, and there are Fae who have lived a very, very long time. It’s part of our lore, though, so perhaps there’s some truth to it.

“The Fae realized that if they took lovers with magical abilities similar to theirs, they could enhance the powers that were strongest in their family lines. They began breeding for strength. Eventually we reached the result you see today: six houses, now five, each specializing in one branch of magic: Earth, Fire, Light, Void, Illusion, and Blood. Our identities became defined by our powers. Our houses separated and stopped sharing information.”

He shook his head, looking down at the fire licking over his hands. “The problem with such a coldhearted breeding plan is that it does not account for love. And once a society is as divided as the Fae are, there’s no place for a child with the magic of two houses. The children of two worlds, as they were once called, were ostracized, turned into servants, or kept within house walls. They became changelings at the beginning of King Osric’s rule.”

I wondered how many children had suffered just because they’d been born into a world that valued power over love. “Why only then?”

“Because Osric is a tyrant,” he snapped, the flames at his fingers shooting higher, “and it’s to his advantage to keep us separate and ensure we don’t form alliances. A child of Light and Void…Can you imagine if a bond started forming between those houses? They’ve been enemies ever since Osric first took the throne with Light’s support. One child might not make a difference, but if interbreeding were to continue…”

“The houses might start making alliances.”

He nodded. “King Osric rules by might, and his strength has been bolstered by Light’s unwavering support. Were that to falter, or were the other houses to strike a deal, the king might find himself with another rebellion on his hands.”

So much pain. So many lives lost and futures stolen. “Why send the babies to the human world, though?”

“Osric probably thought it was a crueler punishment than killing them. That child will die either way—separated from the Fae, he cannot undertake the trials and gain immortality. This way the parents know their child is being raised in poverty by filthy humans. The boy will live a short, miserable life and die alone.”

“Filthy humans,” I echoed, stung by the words.

Drustan turned to look at me at last. His face was carved in grave, tired lines. “That is how Osric thinks.”

I sighed, releasing my anger towards him. “So human babies are brought here in exchange.” That explained the servants who had no memories of life in the sun. “And the Fae cut out their tongues and put them to work as soon as they are able, and no one cares about their lives or deaths.”

“Kenna…” He reached for me, but I turned away, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes.

“How can he rip children from their parents?” Despite my best efforts, tears leaked out from beneath my hands, dripping down my cheeks. “Not just faerie parents, but human ones as well. Those children were loved.”

My words were vehement, and I recognized dimly that part of my despair stemmed from the fact that my father hadn’t loved me in that way—had left rather than carry that burden of love. It was a selfish reason to grieve, but my emotions had tangled with the past and the present so thoroughly I could barely separate the threads. I had never belonged in Tumbledown, but I didn’t belong here, either, and the humans imprisoned below didn’t belong here, and the faeries who spent their entire lives in the human world, feeling alienated and never knowing why, didn’t belong there…

Strong hands gripped my shoulders and turned me around. “Thank you,” Drustan said vehemently. He kissed away the tears on one cheek, his lips hot against my damp skin. “Thank you for your anger.”

“Why?” I dashed the remaining tears from my cheeks. “Why do you care so much?”

“I’m not a monster.”

“You know what I mean.”

After a heavy pause, he stepped away from me. “I had a friend.” The words were halting. “My closest friend, a lady from Fire House named Mildritha. We grew up together, and truthfully, I always wanted her to be more than just a friend. But after centuries of saying she preferred her independence, she fell in love with someone else. She fell in love with the young heir to Earth House.”

The realization hit me like a lightning bolt. “Leo.” Lara’s missing brother.

Drustan nodded. “He was quite a sight, with that golden hair and the confidence of ten warriors. Mildritha fell in love with him and he with her. Eventually, it became clear she was carrying a child.”

My throat felt thick. “The king found out.”

“He did. Before Mildritha gave birth, she was whipped in front of everyone.” Pain twisted Drustan’s face. “No protest would sway the king. And Leo…He was good. He stood with her, was punished by her side. Knowing what would happen after she gave birth, he was desperate to get her and the baby away.” His throat bobbed. “He died trying to find a way through Osric’s wards at the bottom of the hill.”

A noise left me, a soft oh of shared grief.

“After the birth, Mildritha’s child was taken from her,” Drustan said. “Not even a week later, she killed herself.”

More tears slipped down my cheeks as the story reached its tragic, inevitable end. Tears for Drustan and the loss of his friend. For the faerie child abandoned to grow up alone and the human child forced into servitude. For Mildritha and Leo’s doomed love, and for Lara and the brother she’d lost. I wrapped Drustan in my arms and hugged him tightly. After a hesitant moment, as if he were unused to being comforted, he embraced me back.

“Have you ever tried to find the baby?” I asked, the words muffled against his shoulder.

“The king will never allow me beyond the wards. The only faeries allowed through are his minions, or sometimes visitors from other courts. I’ve thought about seeking aid from one of them, but it’s too risky.”

“Other courts?” I looked up at him in surprise. “They come here?”

He dipped down, pressing a soft kiss to my lips. The salt of my tears mixed with his smoky, spicy flavor. “Yes. Some will visit for Beltane and the Fire trial.”

My throat ached. “Are the other courts better than this one?”

“Each court is unique. Some are crueler, if you can imagine that.”

I couldn’t. “But some are kinder?”

“Yes.” He kissed my temple. “Some are kinder.”

I stroked his face, and he turned into the caress to nuzzle my palm. “Maybe someday this one will be kinder, too.”