Chapter 28
“ H ow do you know that?” Ruskin asks, his voice heavy. He believes me, he just doesn’t understand.
I look at them all, feeling like an idiot for not thinking of it before. “I protected the stone with my magic, knowing no fae magic could undo it. But she’s not going to use magic. Thanks to Albrecht, she has access to men who can use science— my science. When you combine sodium, the mineral boothite and nitrus flowers, it makes an acid.”
“Acid?” Destan asks.
I shake my head, remembering that the fae don’t have words like this. It’s exactly why it didn’t occur to me that Evanthe would find this kind of workaround to my protections on the stone.
“It’s a liquid that dissolves,” I explain. “Something that can burn through even very strong substances. But you need the right type. Nitric acid will burn through metal, like the kind I used to protect the stone, but it won’t damage the founding stone itself.”
Ruskin’s face darkens. “How long would it take to make this acid?”
“If they have the ingredients? Not long at all. They’d just have to get the quantities right.”
“But your mother would still need you to make the founding stone crown her High Queen, wouldn’t she?” Destan mutters to Ruskin. “I thought that’s why she went after you in the first place.”
“She needed Ruskin because the stone rejected her without her being named heir. But it was only just managing to resist her even then,” I say. “With the extra power of Interra behind her…”
Ruskin finishes my sentence. “She might not need me to pass its trials anymore. She’s probably strong enough to overcome them alone.”
I glance over at Gawain, who looks lost and weary, as if he’s tired of being out of his depth, and wants to stop fighting the undercurrent.
“Is that all, Your Highness?” General Sunshard asks, and I realize she’s addressing Gawain. He seems to jump at the warrior speaking to him. “Is there anything else we should know about the alliance between your father and the fae queen? Why he needs so much cold iron, for instance?”
Just like her daughter, General Sunshard clearly has her mind on all possible threats. That amount of weaponry is certainly something to worry about, and yet I’d almost forgotten all about it in the wake of the founding stone news.
“Cold iron?” Prince Gawain asks. “You mean that armor they’ve been making?”
He sits down on his bed, looking hopeless. “I don’t know. My father doesn’t share much with me. He says I’m no heir of his, unfit to rule.”
“And yet you were able to distinguish friend from foe,” says Lord Sunshard kindly. “Something your father is unable to do. And it just might cost him his kingdom, as well as his life.”
The young prince seems stricken. “He said there’s a battle coming, but this isn’t Styrland’s fight, is it? And yet he’ll send our soldiers to die. How can I stop it? My father won’t listen to me, no matter what I say.”
“You’ve helped us a great deal,” Ruskin says. “If we can stop my mother, then your kingdom should be safe.”
The prince looks unconvinced, and my heart goes out to him. He’s right to worry for his people, but it’s the woman pulling the strings who we have to focus on right now.
“We should hurry,” I murmur to Ruskin. “We might not have much time before they uncover the stone.”
We leave Prince Gawain, but as we exit the castle I find myself wondering about the boy, asking how even the glimmer of honor I saw in him today has survived Albrecht all these years. I hope he can hold on to it through the trials ahead.
General Sunshard suggests we try the common gate, and Ruskin portals us to the Kilda. This time I prepare my father before he experiences Ruskin’s magic, but it worries me how he seems so numb to it all, even when Ruskin touches his filthy clothes and cleans them in the blink of an eye. He’s been distant ever since Mom died, but this is a new level.
“He probably just needs time, Ella,” Ruskin murmurs to me as we walk between the golden-leafed trees. “He has seen a lot that separates him from the man he was. The journey back may take a while.”
I hope he’s right, glancing over my shoulder to where my father is trailing behind. I’d think it strange that I have space in my mind to worry about him and the founding stone at the same time, but to me, they both feel as important. Losing the battle for either is something I’m not willing to consider.
There’s a cracking of twigs somewhere between the trees, and quicker than I can turn, the Sunshards have their weapons raised.
“Could it just be some humans?” Destan asks.
“No humans come into the Kilda,” I say, my skin prickling.
There’s movement among the trees, and then a head pops out between two trunks.
“They mustn’t hurt Tesha. Tesha is her friend.”
The owner of the high, reedy voice steps swiftly out into the open. Wispy white hair crowns her pale, blueish face, and her large, dark pupils stare out at us.
“Whose friend?” asks Destan, bewildered.
“Mine,” I say, indicating the Sunshards to lower their weapons as I step towards the changeling who helped me before, revealing my true name. “How are you, Tesha?” I ask, wondering what’s drawn the reclusive creature away from her home.
“Tesha is fine.” The changeling scratches her long fingers across her bare arms. “But Tesha has seen trouble for her up ahead.”
Ruskin steps up behind me.
“Does she mean you?” he asks. He’s picked up her eccentric speech patterns quicker than I did, and I nod.
“What kind of trouble? Are you here to warn us?”
Tesha seems distracted, her head tilting to one side as her eyes land on the Sunshards. She strides right up to them, looking them up and down intently. General Sunshard goes stiff, immediately on the defensive, but Tesha continues to circle them, looking at them with disconcerting intensity.
“What are they?” Tesha asks Lord Sunshard.
“I beg your pardon?” he asks, sounding affronted.
“She’s…er…asking what you are,” I explain, embarrassed.
“High Fae,” says General Sunshard, then turns to her husband, lowering her voice. “Look at her eyes—she’s a changeling.”
Lord Sunshard’s face shifts to one of understanding. “I see,” he says more kindly. “Yes, we are High Fae, Seelie, to be exact.”
Tesha nods, seeming satisfied with that answer.
“Tesha, did you say there was trouble?” I prompt, trying to get us back on track.
“Seelie High Fae,” Tesha says. “By the gate. Not like them.” She points to the Sunshards. “Like them.” She points to Ruskin and Destan.
“They’re waiting for us?” I ask.
“They talked about her,” she says, looking at me. “About Eleanor Thorn. They don’t like her.”
“Evanthe’s followers,” Ruskin says. “They must be hoping we’d go back that way.”
“Thank you, Tesha. You’ve helped us a lot,” I say, before turning to the others.
“Do you know where there’s another gate in Styrland?” I ask Ruskin.
Before he can answer, Tesha speaks again.
“She will help Tesha now.”
I bite my lip, the memory of our first meeting coming back to me. “You mean our deal.”
“Yes. She must help Tesha. Tesha and her agreed.”
I glance at the others. We don’t have time for this now. Whatever demand Tesha wants to make of me, bigger things are at stake. And yet she’s right. We agreed.
“I will honor my debt, Tesha, but I may not be able to fulfill it right now. Will you tell me what you want?”
Tesha looks at the others, then steps closer to me. So close, in fact, that our hairlines touch as she tilts her head forward to speak. I stare into her black pupils.
“Tesha wants to be a member of the Seelie Court.”
It takes me a beat to absorb it.
“You do? Why?” I ask. I don’t think Tesha is even technically a subject of Ruskin’s, given she’s never lived in the Seelie Kingdom. But despite her strange features, I can read the look of yearning in Tesha’s face.
“Tesha’s mother is dead. But Tesha wants to go home, to her mother’s home.”
“Your mother was High Fae? A member of the court? But I thought?—”
I glance at the Sunshards, Tesha’s intense interest in them clicking. Tesha’s appearance isn’t High Fae in nature. The texture of her hair and skin made me think that her fae parent—her mother—had to be Low Fae. But if her mother was High Fae, then it means that, like the Sunshards, Tesha’s appearance is the result of more distant Low Fae ancestry.
“Is that why you’re here? Because your mother was High Fae?” I guess.
The changeling picks at her fingers, looking away from me. “Tesha’s mother was not like Tesha. She was beautiful. She did not mind Tesha’s father, but she did mind Tesha.” The changeling tugs at her hair for emphasis, which rustles like the dry leaves it resembles.
So her mother dumped her in the human realm not because she was half-human, but because she looked Low Fae. It’s difficult to believe how prejudiced the fae can be about their own kind. But then, Albrecht is proof that you can hate your own child even if they look like you.
“Tesha, why do you think I can grant you this?” I ask, needing to know the answer, even though we’re pressed for time.
“Tesha knows her true name is special,” she says, looking at Ruskin.
Somehow—perhaps because she performed the true name ritual—she knows Ruskin and I are naminai . I have no idea if being the king’s soulmate means I have the right to add members to the Seelie Court, but I won’t have the power to do anything unless we stop Evanthe.
“I will try my best to make it happen,” I say to Tesha. “But right now, we have to go. I’m sorry, but otherwise there probably won’t be a Seelie Court to make you a member of.”
“Tesha knows,” she says, nodding in understanding, and I sigh in relief.
“Thank you, again,” I say. She backs up, gives the Sunshards one last stare, and then slips back between the trees.
“We’ll go by the gate on the Unseelie border,” Ruskin says almost immediately. “Evanthe won’t have guards posted on the Faerie side, and I doubt she even knows where it comes out in Styrland.”
But Ruskin does, I realize, because he used it to get us horses right after he came back from Interra. We portal there, stepping out of a lake onto a part of Styrland I’ve never been to before, right on the border with Grandom. The Faerie gate is buried in a small woods near a farm. The Sunshards insist on checking for traps before we advance beneath the cover of the trees, so Ruskin, Destan, and I have a few minutes to wait. Destan wanders off, and as I watch two healthy colts running around in the field, I suddenly remember Ruskin’s ominous promise that he’d made a fair deal for our horses after Interra.
Despite our hurry, I can’t help but ask.
“Is that the farm you took our horses from?”
He glances over at it. “Yes.”
“What did you exchange for them?” I ask.
“Their mares were old, but they’d both just had foals. I made sure they’d grow fast and be strong, so the farm wouldn’t be without.”
That seems “fair enough,” just like Ruskin said, but I also know fae magic always comes with a catch. It takes life to make a life, Ruskin once told me, and the health and quick growth of the horses had to come from somewhere.
“How did you do it? Where did you get the life force from?” I ask.
He smirks, a dangerous glint entering his eyes. “Apparently, their neighbors had stolen some of their sheep a month before. Let’s just say those sheep weren’t of use to the thieves for long.”
Totally innocent, then. I’m not surprised to hear it, really. I’ve seen time and time again that Ruskin doesn’t like to cause harm if it can be avoided. But still, it’s nice to have another piece of confirmation of who he is now.
General Sunshard emerges from the woods, nodding to us, and we follow her beneath the trees. Up ahead there’s an impressive pile of gnarled branches and twigs, stacked into a kind of pyramid, as if ready for a bonfire. But it’s twice the height of a man, and overgrown with so much moss it looks like it’s been there for centuries. The structure is crowned by two interlocking antlers. I suspect the humans who live around here know to stay well away from this thing, even if they don’t truly know why. Like the common gate to Seelie, when we get close enough it reforms before our eyes. It’s not as ornate as the one in the Kilda, but the knotted archway that blinks into existence is certainly imposing, the antlers forming the very apex of the arch.
We step through it, and the damp, quiet forest in Styrland disappears, to be replaced by the plains of Unseelie. Ruskin turns to us.
“I seem to remember there’s a stream nearby?—”
He goes rigid, every muscle tensing, and all of sudden I’m aware of our bond—and the pain currently ripping through it.
Ruskin falls to his knees, a deep roar of agony escaping him.
“Ruskin!” I throw myself down beside him, my hands on his arm. I tentatively reach across the bond, focusing on the sensation of something being torn away from Ruskin. It’s like a thousand tiny cuts to his being, cleaving, separating him from a fundamental part of himself.
“It’s going,” he grunts through gritted teeth. “She’s taking it from me.”
My heart drops into my stomach as I realize what I’m witnessing: Ruskin’s High King power—his connection to the Seelie realm and its magic—being wrenched away from him.
I hold my breath through the next few moments of agony, wondering what I can do, and then Ruskin’s muscles loosen, and he nearly falls forward, barely catching himself. He’s panting, his hair damp against his brow, and when he looks up at me, his eyes are full of despair.
“She’s taken me off the stone,” he gasps. “My mother is High Queen again.”