5. Chapter 5
5
Casimiro
I n the cover of night, my shadow form wasn’t visible to her, so I turned, my wings silently holding me aloft, and watched the mortal as she hurried to her bed and collapsed facedown. For a moment she lay so still, I wondered if she’d fallen asleep. So much for her claims of not wanting to sleep on her final day in the mortal world.
Then she slammed a fist into the blankets, and a muffled scream reached my ears.
A flicker of dread filled my chest. She might be angry now, but she too would break. She too would die. Mortals loved to talk of their heart, their driving beliefs, and their passions, but in the face of death, they all cracked.
My father made sure they did. No, not him anymore. While he was away, breaking mortals was my responsibility.
As I flew away from her house, my eyes traced the forest, penetrating the darkness better than a cat’s, but I couldn’t focus on the hunched duendes, the tall dryads, or the tiny pixies scurrying about. My mind filled with the image of the curly- haired woman’s eyes as she’d pressed an iron blade into my stomach.
Her little stunt had proved that the many years of building up a resistance to the magic-stifling metal had paid off. And now she knew it. Anger flared in my chest as I angled toward the place where Felipe waited. She could not discover anything else about me that might give her an edge in what was about to take place. Father had been clear: no mortal can prevail in the games.
They all must die.
And given what I’d seen of her so far, I fully believed this mortal, when given the chance to choose her fate, would elect to enter the games. The proud ones always chose the games.
But I couldn’t let myself be concerned with her for the next several hours.
Felipe yawned dramatically as I landed silently on the forest floor, shifting back into my physical form. “Ready, princess?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes and tossed my hand out toward the empty space between two large pines. A crack appeared in the very air as my magic split the worlds and opened up a fissure in the shape of a rectangular door, blacker than the night, a door to Nightsong.
“I needed to make sure she wouldn’t run. She seemed the type to try it,” I replied, flexing and curling my fingers as a dull ache throbbed in my bones.
Felipe nodded and stood up from his seat on the coffin. “That she did. If she chooses to entertain, she’ll be a favorite, I’m certain.”
My mouth curled into a sneer. “She’ll burn out like all the rest. I give her two trials and she’ll crack.”
The mortal still chained to the coffin looked between us, confused.
“Let’s go,” Felipe said, tugging the man to his feet.
“Did you give him the choice?”
Felipe nodded and jostled the man. “We’ve got us an entertainer.”
Only then did I notice the man was crying quietly, and I whirled away from the sight of his foul tears. I couldn’t stand the sight of tears streaking a human’s face, as if they had no ability to control themselves, no capacity to staunch their emotions and get on with their short lives.
And now he’d chosen a path that would end his life much sooner. Likely before the sun ever rose.
A brief notion pricked at me—this man likely had a family he was leaving behind. We’d taken him from a gambling hall, so I hadn’t seen his dwelling or any family who might be waiting for his return.
These people will live and die before a fae child ever casts his first spell, Father had frequently reminded me when I was young enough to still question him, young enough that most of his ire was directed toward Velazques, the brother I’d barely known, older even than Augustín. After Velazques died, all my questions had stopped.
I shook away the memories and stormed forward, grabbing one end of the coffin by its embedded handle. Felipe bent to collect the second handle. The chained mortal moved with us, his reddened eyes fixed on me, as if he could plead with nothing but his repulsive tears.
Even if he was leaving a family behind, he was the one who’d made the deal with my father. Anyone desperate enough for that had to pay the price. Leaving him here, the bargain unfulfilled, would be a death sentence as much as bringing him with us.
We walked awkwardly toward the doorway I’d opened, the coffin and the bound man between us. Felipe angled so he could back through the door first and tossed a smirk at the human.
“Ready to enter the Shadow Court?”
The man shook his head.
“No one ever is,” Felipe replied with a broad smile.
We passed through the cleft between worlds, and darkness swallowed us.
The surge in my magic as we returned home felt like a plunge into a cool, refreshing lake. I breathed deeply as my feet touched the smooth rock surface of the hall buried deep underground. Two stairwells branched off from the wide hall, leading up on each side, and a dark passage ahead led toward the human servants’ quarters. The hall was empty, save for the fae guard waiting here to collect the mortals I was supposed to bring with me.
Without a word, the guard, Farrin, raced forward to collect the chained man. The briefest of frowns crossed Farrin’s face as he eyed the coffin, but he said nothing. I strode toward the stairwell leading up to the right.
“See you at sundown,” Felipe called up to me.
With a nod, I jogged up one flight of steps, then another, and exited the palace into the starlit night, relishing the snap of cold air against my face. Descending into Avencia’s summer, even at night, was like taking a swim in a molten lake. I relished the cold.
I strolled up a flat path cut into the mountainside and climbed one more flight of steps that deposited me onto a small balcony that overlooked the deep valley below. The lake below reflected the pale light of the moon, which was already almost hidden behind the opposing mountain peak. Wind howled through the crevices and crags, singing to me the music of the shadows. Lights glowed along the paths crisscrossing the mountainside, making the darkness glisten like a wood full of fireflies.
The sconce behind me flickered to life, its white flames burning without a sound, as I removed the bloodstained shirt and tossed it at the wall behind me. The frigid air danced over my skin for a moment before a clean shirt materialized in my hand. As I pulled the fabric down over my head, the muted sound of hurried footsteps brought a smile to my face.
“Fae move without sound,” I teased as I whirled around, just in time to accept a smash in the stomach meant to resemble a hug.
“You brought home a dead guy!” my sister said as she peeled herself off me, shaking out long dark hair that paled as it fell over her small shoulders until it was the color of spun honey. Tonight, Alba had one long chunk of hair tied up in what looked like a donut at the top of her head.
I eyed the strange pale circle of hair resting atop her head only to discover it had twigs and feathers sticking out of it as well. I frowned to keep from laughing. “Did you build a bird’s nest in your hair?”
Alba planted her hands on her hips. “A dragon nest, actually. My mother is from the Star Court, which means I should have at least a little spring magic in me. And dragons are kind of like birds.”
I snorted, reaching out to muss her hair. She ducked away, hands up.
“Kind of like birds? Except huge and with a particular aversion to our magic?”
She straightened and crossed her arms. “There are many breeds of dragons. Some of them are quite small.”
“And they live in the jungle. Not here. And they’d hate us just as much as the big ones.”
She huffed. “Well, perhaps they only hate us because we steal their young.”
The smile tugging at my lips fell away. Stealing was what my court did best. We stole dragon eggs. We stole humans. We stole power from the other courts. It had made us many enemies.
She glared up at me. “A dragon will find me. It will see that I’m no enemy.”
Alba hadn’t yet seen what we did to the dragons that outgrew our cages and our magic. The creatures hated us for more reasons than a few stolen eggs. “One girl won’t change the hatred seared into their natures, Alba.”
Her crossed arms fell away, but her lips pursed in annoyance.
“Besides,” I said, “do you really want dragon dung in your hair?”
The frown on her face loosened and she made a disgusted face. It was all I could do not to wrap her in a hug and procure a dragon-shaped shadow to sit in her hair all night. But a creature made from darkness wasn’t what she wanted, and it would only make her sad. So, instead, I tried to ignore the nest on her head—and the things the other fae were likely saying about it—and thought of what she’d first said.
“There was nothing I could do about the dead man. He’d been dead for two days. If Father felt the effects of the broken bargain, he felt them two days ago.”
Her eyes went wide as realization dawned on her pretty face. She had the pallor of the Star Court. The freckles dusting her skin from head to toe resembled the court’s beloved stars. Her clothing, like her hair, always attempted to wed the customs of the two courts that flowed in her veins—the result of one of Father’s trips to the Star Court. Tonight she wore a black dress with pale blue sequins huddled at the waist. A mix of darkness and starlight.
“I thought you had three mortals to collect tonight?” she said, tilting her head so that the nest would have dumped out any eggs, had there been any.
“I did. But the hour of birth hadn’t passed yet for the third, and she knew enough to understand that she technically had until that hour."
Alba clapped. “Oh, a mortal who knows about us?”
My look cut off her little celebration. “I doubt she knows much. And, Alba, no meddling with these new arrivals. You know they’ll die soon enough as it is. Their lives are a vapor.”
Her face fell. “That may be, but birds don’t live long either, and we still love their songs.”
“Planning to make the mortals sing for you?”
She smirked. “Perhaps. If blades can sing.”
“You can’t gut them, Alba. You know the rules.”
My sister planted her hands on her slender hips. “I’m not going to kill anyone, Cas. Unlike you. ” Her words stung, but I brushed off the feeling. As acting sovereign, I didn’t have the luxury of remorse. “Father instructed me to keep practicing with my blades, and you’re too busy now,” she continued. “I need a dueling partner, and how fun would it be to pick a mortal ? They’d be so terrified.”
“You just compared them to songbirds.”
Alba lifted her hands in frustration. “My point,” she seethed, “was simply that their short lifespans aren’t the reason we despise them.”
I rolled my eyes. “So, find one to duel with, if you wish. But do not interfere with the games.”
“I won’t.”
I turned away, rubbing my chin. “The mortal I met tonight could handle a blade,” I said, rubbing a hand over the place where the iron had pierced my flesh. If Alba knew that woman had stabbed me, she’d never let me live it down.
“Excellent. I want to practice with someone who knows how to fight.”
“A mortal against a fae is not a fight.”
She snorted. “That’s why it’ll be so much fun!”
“Don’t get too excited. She has to survive her first trial.”
Alba clapped, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of the upcoming trial or the fact that there might be a mortal she could duel with.
When my sister’s footsteps moved away, I spun back around.
At only eighty-one, Alba was still a novice at magic, born of a union created during one of our father’s travels to the Star Court in an attempt to forge peace between us. She’d been here only two decades, not long enough to have known Velazques or Augustín. Not long enough to know the pain I knew. Not long enough to hate our father the way I did.
As she scampered up the stairwell that led up to her quarters, I muttered, “Never stop dreaming, Alba.”
I half considered flying a little more tonight, feeling the need to let the wind carry me, but there were more pressing matters. So, with a last glance at the night, I turned and entered my bedroom through a heavy wooden door set into the mountainside.
Bypassing the bed I rarely used, I marched straight to my study, where books and vials all called to my attention.
I had time, I reminded myself. A quick, deep inhale helped me settle my thoughts, and I moved to the rows of vials. My fingers traced the edge of a shelf stocked with everything from remedies to stomach ailments to balms for burned skin. I found a dusty vial labeled Brittlebloom Extract and tipped it forward. The shelf loosened from the wall, and I pulled, not far enough to open the room behind the shelf, built centuries ago by a brother I’d never known, but enough to access the hidden panel that looked only like the back of the shelf. I pried open the tiny slot that housed a single book.
When the compartment was again hidden away behind my shelf, I sat and thumbed to the last page I’d read.
Entry 612: I should add to my last note that lithewart leaves are the important part, not the buds, as I expected . When crushed and added, they offer a bolstering effect to the goosenettle, which I believe is an essential ingredient for the way it dulls the pain.
I glanced at my shelves, finding the tin of dried lithewart and the oil of goosenettle, both plants that had been discovered in the neighboring realm, Verindal, a thousand years ago.
The handwriting on the page, browned with age, was elegant and slanted in the old style, the letters shaped with precision and grace, even in the language no one else could read but those who owned this journal. I traced the lines with a finger, absently wondering who or what had interrupted Enzo when he penned this entry some seven hundred years ago.
A flicker at the corner of my mind told me someone had passed the boundary spell outside my room.
I stood and quickly hid the journal back in its slot behind the shelf and took a seat at my desk, grabbing the book nearest me and feigning interest.
A knock sounded.
“Court business, Your Highness.” It was one of the fae in charge of setting up the mortal games. I’d brought home one man and he would have to perform for the fae court at dawn.
“Coming,” I called, abandoning my books. With a sigh, I grabbed my suit jacket from the back of my chair and jammed my arms in the sleeves. Then I quickly snatched the black stone crown from my desk, tossed my hair back, and settled the crown on top of my head. It might as well have been a chain, binding me to the will of the Shadow Court.