Chapter 29
The cold wind whips at my hair, tugging it around my face. I pull a ribbon from my pocket, fastening it back and trying not to think about the steep drop to my left.
“Do we really need to do this all the way up here?” I call to Maidar over the whistling air.
“Distance, Eleanor!” he calls back. “We will overcome it.”
I throw a look at Ruskin, but he seems unfazed by the fact that we’re standing on top of one of Unseelie’s tallest mountains. We left early this morning to trek up here on foot, with Maidar explaining the point of the exercise on the way.
“You did well with the cup reading the other day. That’s the area we should focus on.”
Now I wonder what object he’s going to use and exactly how far away it will be. I scan the other peaks around us, worried he might have already planted something on them.
“So, what am I reading?” I ask.
Maidar stamps his foot down onto the rock.
“This.”
I stare at him and at Ruskin again, to check I’m not losing my mind. A smile plays on Ruskin’s lips, and I guess he’s used to this kind of thing from his old tutor.
“The mountain? But that’s not metal.”
“Augium ore. These mountains are full of big seams of the stuff. It’s where the augium I sold you was mined from. That’s what you’ll be reading.”
“But that has to be miles underground,” I protest again. “I can’t get more than a hundred feet down when I’m trying to read the iron in the Seelie Court.”
“Aye, but there’s probably dark magics holding you back there—keeping you from interfering with the iron. But these mountains have been here since the beginning of Faerie—since before the courts. The founding stone of the Seelie Court was hewn from these very peaks. They emanate power; they don’t stifle it.”
“Besides,” says Ruskin, perching himself elegantly on the edge of an outcrop, “if you can manage this, then the iron will be a piece of cake.”
I try to take encouragement from their words, but it feels like they’re asking too much of me. Still, what do I have to lose by trying?
“All right, I’ll give it a go.”
“Remember the layers, Eleanor, that’s what will take you deeper. Search out the cells.”
“And when you feel like you can’t possibly go any further, keep going,” says Ruskin.
That sounds like utterly useless advice to me, but arguing would only hurt my focus right now. I crouch down onto my haunches, laying a hand against the cold rock.
“Okay,” I say, shaking back my hair and closing my eyes.
It’s odd at first, because the top of the mountains is all stone. There’s nothing for my magic to grab onto in the vast stretch of metal-less space.
Then I hit the first seam. It’s like a lifeline that my power latches onto, wrapping itself around the rich well of augium. We’re close enough to the surface that the memories are easily reached. I sense being opened up to the light, tunnels slowly constructed, dug out beside the seam, and then hundreds of quick, hard-working hands, chipping away at the ore, pulling it loose.
“There’s been mining on this mountain,” I say, although Maidar already told me as much. “They started on the west side and tunneled east, but stopped short of one of the biggest seams.”
“That’s right. There’s not been as much demand for augium in recent years. They closed the mine down,” confirms Maidar. “What else? Go deeper, girl, like with the cup.”
I scrunch up my forehead, concentrating. I try to recall what it was like with the cup, forgetting its shape and form to focus instead on the tiny details of its surface. I study the glittering crystals of augium, tracing their ridges and dips in my mind’s eye. More memories come to me, more brutal than the previous set.
“A battle rages on overhead. The augium can feel the vibrations. The stone is porous, and the metal can taste the traces of spilled blood,” I say, my heart aching with the pain of it, even if it is just echoes of suffering long past.
“That’s surely not the Great Divide?” I hear Ruskin say. “I didn’t think any battles were fought this far into Unseelie territory.”
“They weren’t,” says Maidar excitedly. “She’s remembering something much older than that. The Battle of Xavien, I imagine. The history books put that at three thousand years ago. Keep going,” he urges. “You’ve got more in you still.”
I take a big gulp of air, feeling slightly weak in the legs from the effort, but I look closer again at the augium, until even the tiniest pockmark feels as deep as a valley.
“The world is young,” I say, pulling in the first thread of memories from millennia ago. “The earth is moving. The augium is just finding its place as the mountain shifts around it and?—”
I stop. Something dark and formless lurks beneath these memories—something beyond time, beyond this place. It sits, almost too vast to comprehend, at the edge of my awareness. I’ve gone too far. I try to draw back from it, but I’m too late. The memories come rushing in—thousand and thousands of years of them, too fast to understand, too many to stop. They pile on top of me, my mind aching with the strain of them and the weight grows so much that I fall to my knees. I think I make some noise of distress, then I hear Maidar’s voice from far away.
“Push back, Eleanor, control the flow.”
But I can’t even think straight. The memories that aren’t my own fill my mind—more history than any human brain can possibly hold. I clutch my head, unable to stop them pouring in.
“It hurts. It hurts,” I groan.
The next thing I know, there’s a pair of hands on me, warm and familiar. They anchor me, offering me an inch of distance between my mind and the information overwhelming it. The hands enclose my forearms, pulling me into a tight embrace. A voice, soft but firm, murmurs in my ears, sounding closer with every word.
“Listen to me, Ella. Listen to my voice. You can do this. You are safe, you are in control.”
“I can’t,” I manage to croak. “I can’t stop them.”
“You opened yourself up to them, now protect your mind. Focus on me, build the wall back up. I’ll count you through it.”
I try to imagine a wall—slabs of stone stacked on top of each other, a dam against the flood.
“One,” he says, and I create a row of slabs in my mind, forcing the flow of memories to slow a fraction.
“Two,” he says, and I add another layer. The stream of memories slackens a little more.
On he keeps counting, guiding me through it, until the wall is high enough that the torrent slows to a trickle.
My magic relaxes, the memories brought to heel at last, and I break my connection, withdrawing from the augium that had me in a chokehold minutes before.
When I open my eyes I grab hold of Ruskin’s arms for comfort, taking a few shaky breaths.
“For a minute there, I thought…” I shake my head. “I went too deep. I wasn’t ready.”
“You fought off something unexpected and won,” Ruskin says. “That seems pretty ready to me.”
Ruskin helps me slowly to my feet.
“And you communed with mountains, my girl,” says Maidar, whose gravelly voice actually manages to sound pleased. “You overcame the distance.”
I look out over the peaks, the vastness of them making me shudder.
“But I nearly failed—so badly I don’t know what might’ve happened. How can that be progress?”
“‘Nearly’ is the operative word,” Maidar grunts. “If nothing else, your magic has stretched itself to new limits. You’ll find yourself capable of a marathon rather than just a sprint now.”
I nod, realizing they’re right. The fear of the moment still lingers in my muscles, but I found my way out of it—with some help. As Maidar starts making his way down the trail again, mumbling to himself about writing up some fresh notes, I stroke my fingers across the back of Ruskin’s hand.
“Thank you for helping me,” I say.
He fixes me with a look that sends my skin tingling.
“Always, Ella.”
We follow Maidar down the mountainside, deciding I deserve a break after the morning’s lesson. Thankfully, the descent is easier than the way up, and I even start to enjoy the view rather than seeing it as a reminder of my failure. The entirety of Unseelie is laid out below us—you can see almost all the way to the borderlands from here.
Maidar shifts to one side as a group of fae arrive in the other direction along the mountain pass. But instead of just moving by us, they stop. I step sideways to get a better look at what’s going on and my muscles tighten, my body waking up to the danger in front of us. I recognize the fae. It’s the long-haired Kasgill and his friends—the woman with antlers and the redhead whose shoulder I managed to stab when we met on the road.
Kasgill smiles at us.
“I was so hoping we’d meet again.”
But this encounter is no accident. I can’t imagine how they knew where we’d be, but I can see they’ve come prepared. The antlered woman and redhead both carry heavy wooden clubs—a sensible choice if you’re coming to fight someone you know can manipulate metal. Kasgill seems less concerned about me. He’s carrying a sword, and I wonder if he sees me at all, his hate-filled eyes fixed on Ruskin.
No one moves for a moment. Each side waiting for the other to make a move.
“You won’t get far with this plan,” Maidar grunts, eyeing the trio warily. “This here is Lisinder’s kin. Attack them and you’re done in this court.”
“I think you underestimate exactly how much Seelie scum is hated in this place, old man,” Kasgill says, holding up a strange glass sphere. I squint at it, trying to make out whatever’s swirling inside. It obviously means something to Maidar, because his eyes widen.
“A moon orb? How did you?—”
The antlered fae cracks Maidar across the face with her club, sending him stumbling into the side of the mountain. I draw my sword, outraged.
“Oh, you definitely shouldn’t have done that,” I say.
She smiles at me and raises her club to strike Maidar once again.
I charge at her, prompting her redheaded friend to step forward and swipe at me. Kasgill sprints past us all, making a beeline for Ruskin. The redhead takes a swinging start to bring his club around towards my chest, but the run up helps me see it coming and, even exhausted from my mountain experiment, I manage to dredge up enough magic to hold my sword steady, meeting the club with a solid parry so that it winds up impaling itself of my blade. I take the opportunity to yank it from his hands, tossing it over the low wall that marks the edge of the mountain. I think with satisfaction about it smashing into smithereens upon impact.
Maidar is doing his best to defend himself against the antlered woman, but she is younger and faster, dodging his attempt to ram her with his curling horns. She responds by smacking him again and again with the club.
A shattering sound catches my attention before I can take her on next, and I glance over my shoulder to see Ruskin and Kasgill, swords held defensively across from one another. The sphere Kasgill was carrying—a moon orb, Maidar called it—lies broken at Ruskin’s feet. Purple fog rises up out of it, hovering in front of Ruskin before being whipped away on the wind. Kasgill looks disconcertingly pleased with himself, and that sends a spike of fear through me.
Ruskin stiffens, every muscle tightening, then he crashes his sword so hard against Kasgill’s blade that both weapons go flying. Kasgill looks stunned, and for a moment, and my first thought is that whatever the sphere was meant to do simply hasn’t worked.
Then Ruskin leaps forwards and rips Kasgill’s throat out.
It’s so quick and brutal that I can’t grasp at first exactly how it happened, but I realize that Ruskin must’ve pinned Kasgill with one hand, claws digging into his chest, and slashed his talons across Kasgill’s throat with the other. Blood slowly pools beneath Kasgill’s neck, his expression frozen in surprise.
The antlered fae screams, seeing her friend go down, and Ruskin’s head jerks towards the noise. He sniffs the air, and when I see his face, I think my own heart stops beating for a moment.
The person looking back at us isn’t Ruskin.
His pupils are all but gone, the tiniest slits of black in too-bright eyes. His lips are pulled back into a growl and his claws shine with blood, his sword lying discarded behind him. I wonder in that moment if he even remembers how to use it, because this creature is one of pure instinct and bloodlust. Whatever was in that purple fog has driven all reason from him. Ruskin isn’t a fae anymore, but a beast.
He throws himself towards the antlered woman. She raises her club, hitting him in the chest, but it seems to do nothing. He simply roars in fury, before batting her away from him with such force that she’s thrown against the wall that edges the path. Her head hits the stone with a sickening crack and her eyes fall closed before her body drops to the ground, dead. The redheaded fae sets off running, trying to put as much distance between him and Ruskin as possible. But whatever the spell has changed in Ruskin makes him fast too. He chases the redhead down like a predator toying with its prey, before getting close enough to drag two sets of claw marks straight down the back of the fleeing man. The redhead staggers, then falls forward onto his face.
Ruskin stands over him for a moment, seemingly admiring his work, before he turns to look back at us. There isn’t a hint of recognition in his eyes.
“Maidar,” I say, my voice low, so as not to provoke Ruskin. “What is this? What did that orb do?”
“The moon orb,” Maidar rasps, struggling after his beating, “is meant to unleash the power of the moon on your Unseelie blood. It’s an old and banned piece of magic. Unseelie warriors used to inhale them before battle. That idiot must’ve not known how potent it can be.”
“And how do you stop its effects?” I ask, still not taking my eyes off Ruskin. He’s watching us with the same kind of look the manticore had, right before it tried to maul me.
“You can’t,” Maidar says gravely. “You have to wait for it to wear off.”
Ruskin charges at us, sprinting up the slope with a growl.
“Maidar, run,” I say. The old fae stares at me.
“What about?—”
“Run!” I scream as Ruskin closes the gap between us—ten, then five yards.
The old Unseelie obeys me this time, scrambling up the slope as fast as his bruises and broken bones will allow him.
I don’t have enough magic left to fight Ruskin, and even then I don’t think I’d be any kind of match against such primal fury. I only have one thing left in my arsenal.
I step forward and hold up my hand.
“That’s enough, Solskir.”
Ruskin stops four feet from me, pulled up short by my use of his true name. I try to hold my hand steady, but it won’t stop trembling. Ruskin growls again, looking confused, but still angry.
“Solskir,I said stop.”
The growl fades.
“Put away your claws. You’re not going to hurt anyone else.” My voice does a poor job of sounding commanding, but Ruskin obeys.
“Good,” I say, softening my tone. “Now come back to me. Solskir.Ruskin. Remember who you are.”
I risk taking another step forward, tentatively raising my arm until my hand is touching his cheek. Slowly, so slowly that I become aware of my own heartbeat in my ears, I lean up. Ruskin lets me, his lids hooding over his dark eyes as I press my lips to his.
At first, I don’t think he knows what to do with the kiss, but I persist, gently pressing, reassuring him that he can let me in. I dart my tongue out, lightly tracing it across his lips, and he releases something between a sigh and growl—yearning and unease battling each other. I hope that if I can just make him feel safe, this wild side of him will stop fighting for dominance.
“This isn’t you,” I murmur, sliding my arms cautiously around him, all the while wondering if I’m dancing with my own death.
But at last, he awakens under my touch, his arms sliding around me. He presses into the kiss, opening up to me, and our mouths find their old rhythm of give and take. Just like that, we feel right again, two pieces fitting together in harmony, and I can sense the shift in him as his body relaxes around me, like a taut bowstring that’s finally been released.
I gently draw back and see his pupils swell, returning to their normal size. It seems like now he can really see me.
“Ella,” he says. His throat is croaky from growling. He looks around himself, bewildered, his eyes widening as they take in the dead bodies.
“They enchanted you,” I explain. “You didn’t know what you were doing. It was just some old Unseelie magic, meant to?—”
“Bring out the true beast within,” Ruskin says. He steps back from me, looking horrified, and for the first time in days he removes his Unseelie features, trading the horns, sharp teeth, and cat eyes for the face of a Seelie High Fae. “Yes, I remember now,” he says, his voice tainted with bitterness. “Maidar explained moon orbs to me as a child. I should have known.”
My heartbeat finally slows, and I take a ragged breath, trying to process what just happened. There, standing among his bloody victims, I experience a surge of guilt—because as Ruskin changes his features, I actually feel relieved. When the moon orb took control of him, he was just like that monster from my nightmares—the hateful creature standing over a pile of slain bodies. Even if I knew I had to act, do what I could to bring him back, the sight of him gripped my body with the same fear that has me waking up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat.
I was terrified of him. Of Ruskin, the person who’s supposed to be my one true partner in this world. And I know it’s irrational, yet the memory of that feeling too easily feeds off my existing unease.
Then I remember that kiss, the way he responded to me whispering his name, how every touch between us reminds me of the undeniable connection we share. It’s as if my body is always calling to his, looking to be returned to its rightful place by his side. Is that part of him—the one that draws me closer, and makes me feel utterly cherished and safe—enough to chase away the other, more dangerous part? If I’m truly honest with myself, I still don’t know.
“Moon orb or not, you’ve placed me in a difficult position, Nephew.”
Lisinder receives us in his private chambers again, but he’s far from welcoming. His anger is even sharper than the wary hostility he showed us when we first arrived at court. He paces the room like a restless animal, eyebrows knitted in a permanent frown.
“I assure you, Uncle, causing you trouble with your court is one of the last things I wanted.”
“And yet here we are,” Lisinder shoots back. “Do you know how many Unseelie I have baying for your head?”
I shift uncomfortably in my seat, and the king notices.
“They won’t get it from me,” he says roughly. “But I can understand their anger. A foreign prince murdering our own? It rather stinks of the Riverwings again.”
“It’s not murder if he was tricked into it,” I argue, rather bravely, I think, considering Lisinder’s outrage. “They brought this on themselves.”
“Yes, Cragfoot vouches for you on that score. But don’t think everyone is as easily convinced as I am. As it is, I think your time here has run its course,” he says bluntly.
Ruskin inclines his head. “I agree.”
Maidar might have taken the time to confirm our story, but he’s in no fit state to keep training me. With our sudden unpopularity added into that mix, it seems we really have no reason to stay. It’s more uncomfortable than I expected, having Lisinder’s opinion of us lowered. His frustrated gaze carries an unpleasant weight as he stands before us.
“I suggest you leave now, this evening. The factions against you won’t waste time trying to challenge you again, and I’d rather avoid having to officially pardon you. Kin or not, it won’t sit well with them,” he says grimly.
I glance at Ruskin, wondering what’s going through his mind. A few nights ago he was starting to feel at home with this man and his family, but now his uncle is asking us to leave like thieves in the night. If I were Ruskin, I might feel angry or even ashamed, but there’s no telling what is going through his mind. He has his mask on, his stoic face giving nothing away as Lisinder waits for an answer.
“We will leave tonight, Uncle, as you wish.”
“It’s for the best,” the king adds, though it has a hollow ring to it.
As we step out of his chambers, I feel a stab of anger at the injustice of it all.
“You don’t think it’s worth staying, to try to clear your name?” I ask.
“Why?” says Ruskin, his voice flat as he turns away from me. “These aren’t my people, and I have nothing to prove to them.”
It hurts to hear him say it, because even if it’s not technically a lie, I know it’s not how he truly feels. Nevertheless, when I think of the ferocity of the attack, how Ruskin was so unhinged and bloodthirsty, I wonder if this is the best place for him anyway. Perhaps I was wrong about him needing to find balance. Perhaps all we were meant to get out of this trip was a stronger version of my magic. All I know is that when we leave the Unseelie Court, I can’t help but think we leave unfinished business too.