65. Caspian
Caspian
Great bonfires of yellow and orange crackle, lighting up the dark skies of the Autumn Realm. I watch from the tree line. Will there ever be a time when I don’t observe everything from the sidelines, when I can finally be a part of life?
But like many things, such as figuring out who I am without my father’s voice in my head, it’ll take time.
For now, I’ll honor Farron’s brother from afar, listen to the cheerful music, the celebration in his name. I’ll mourn him and the Autumn soldiers that fell to the Prince of Thorns.
Through it all, I feel a spark of hope. Farron and I are both free from the Green Flame in our own ways. And we’ll use that freedom to help the Vale, to end my mother’s tyranny for good.
But today, we celebrate Billagin in his home, to remember a life lost too young. The funeral crowd looks like a treasure hoard, all dressed in gold.
I feel her approach more than hear it. She did always have a way of moving unseen.
“Watching from afar as well?” I tilt my head to look up at Anya. She wears a simple gold dress with a hood.
She sits down next to me on a smooth rock. “I don’t believe the Vale is ready for my return.”
The world isn’t ready or you aren’t?
“Besides, Cas,” she sighs as if reading my mind, “I’m tired.”
I understand. Really, I do. As Sira’s prisoner, her magic was siphoned for the last few decades. She spent all that time in the dark, never knowing the fate of her husband or her eldest daughter and having to watch Sira manipulate her youngest.
No, the queen has every right to feel bone-deep weariness, and yet…
“I don’t think we have the luxury of being tired,” I say. “Not yet.”
She gives me a sidelong glance. “Unfortunately, you’re right.”
I run my hands over the moonstone locket that still dangles from my chest. “Do you want this back? You made it for George, didn’t you?”
“Oh, I didn’t know who it was for when we first forged it,” Anya says. “I didn’t think there was a mate out there for me. But fate never works how you imagine. My daughter gave this to you, so keep it. I thought you looked quite striking in that armor.”
I roll my eyes and let the locket fall back to my chest. “Come on. You were half-dead. You didn’t see anything.”
She pokes me in the cheek, somehow finding a smile. “Are you calling me weak, princeling? I’ll have you know, this magic almost brought an entire being from another world here.”
“Far too powerful for your own good,” I chuckle. Because damn, if I don’t know the feeling. Lightly, I touch the golden bracelet at my wrist. “And this gift…the briars. I’ll return it if you want. A lot of terrible things have been wrought with this magic.”
She closes her hand over mine and the bracelet. “A lot of good as well. You’re keeping Castletree alive and standing. It’ll be a while yet before my magic returns to what it once was and you can release your briars.”
“Even in the depths of the Green Flame’s power, I never let Castletree fall,” I say. “Maybe the Prince of Thorns longed to rule there, or perhaps there was always a part of me fighting to keep it standing.”
“Well, it was quite smart of me to gift that to you. Without your magic, without your thorns keeping Castletree alive, all the magic in the Vale would be lost and…” Anya looks back to the festivities. “So would my heart.”
I follow her gaze toward the celebration where George sits next to Dominic. George coaxes a smile out of the young fae, then throws an arm around him. What are they speaking of? Happy moments of his brother, or maybe just a silly joke?
“I always knew George would be a good father,” Anya says.
Rosalina has mentioned how he wasn’t always there for her. But when he was present, he was filled with love.
More love than my own father or mother ever gave me.
“How did you know?” I ask.
“Well,” she says and gives me a smirk, “I saw how he was with you.”
I gaze into the faraway flames until my vision turns blurry.
I can’t remember the exact moment, but it was over a century ago when I packed all my worldly possessions in a bag—a cloak and a few of my favorite books—and stole off into the night.
It had probably been after one of my mother’s speeches about how one day I’d rule the Vale.
Or maybe it was after the first time she brought me to meet my father.
Regardless, I’d studied maps of the Below for weeks until I was confident I could find a path to the surface.
The tunnels were so twisted that I was half-starving and delirious by the time I felt a wind on my face.
Of course, the path I’d found had led to the coldest, most barren part of the Vale.
My journey would have ended right there, my body turned to a statue of ice, had I not run into another boy, not much older than me.
He had sapphire eyes and white hair as wild as the blustering storm. He gave me a cake of oats and dried berries bound with honey. He showed me a secret path, a way into the human realm.
And when I left, I realized there was now one thing in the Enchanted Vale I’d miss.
Of course, having never been out of the Below, I had no idea my body would start turning to rot in only a few months. Or how hard it was to be a child among humans. But what was there to care about? I had left behind the evil destiny my mother so desperately craved for me.
I also didn’t realize how bound I still was to the Vale, how I was but a moth to the flame of our world’s magic. That’s what the queen was—a bursting signal fire whose energy drew me to Egypt. And that’s how I crossed paths with the anthropologist Anya and the archaeologist George.
I often wonder…without my adventure in the human realm, if I’d never gotten lost in the desert storm and known the love of two explorers, would I be different? Would Sira’s claws have hooked me deeper if I hadn’t had the chance to see what real love looked like?
Sighing, I dig in my cloak. “Let me give this back to you at least. It was a gift for you.”
Anya holds out her palm. In it, I drop a small wooden camel. “Cleo,” she says, running a hand over the figure.
“Thank you,” I say, tilting my gaze from the flames to the stars. “She led me out of the storm one last time. And now I know how to shape my magic.”