Chapter Twelve #2
The fish, which is distinctly not a fish, has moved to stand on two feet. They’re difficult to look at straight on, like my mind doesn’t know how to process
something so far from human. They’ve got the general shape of a person—two arms, two legs, a head—but they’re wearing an outfit
like armor constructed of fish scales, including a pointy hat made of a fin.
Their eyes are overlarge for their small face, silvery-blue all the way through, no whites at all, and wet like they’ve been crying. The rest of the face is greenish white, like the waterlogged belly of a dead fish.
I scan quickly for Bram’s royal seal but see nothing. I don’t think this is the creature I’m meant to slay.
“I’m just going.” I turn on my heel to leave. If four months in Bram’s court have taught me anything, it’s to regard everything
from the Otherworld with caution and suspicion.
There’s a tug on the hem of my dress and I turn to see the creature looking up at me. They stick a long, webbed finger in
their mouth and close their eyes.
“Umm,” I hesitate.
“Thank you for the tears.” The creature’s voice is the same pitch as the babbling water.
I hesitate. “Oh . . . you’re welcome.”
“What can I do for you?” Their teeth are long and pointed, like a fish’s.
“Nothing, thank you.” I step to go, but they cling to my hem.
“No, please!” They sound distressed now. “You gave me something, now I give you something.”
“Why?”
“It is the way of things!” the creature exclaims. With one of their long hands, they pull off their hat, revealing two sharp
little horns.
“What are you?” I can’t help but ask, even though I’m afraid the question may be impolite.
If it is, the creature doesn’t seem to mind. Their small mouth curls up into a grin. “I am Duddon. Sprite of this spring.”
“Nice to meet you,” I say.
Duddon bows. “It’s been a long time since I met a human. Your tears were delicious.”
“Consider them a gift,” I reply, though in my experience faeries don’t have a great grasp of sarcasm. “I’m sorry, I really
must be going.”
“Not a gift! It won’t do! Where are you going?”
I gesture to my sword. “There is a creature I must slay.”
Duddon nods enthusiastically. “The Questing Beast?”
“Um—I’m not sure. Something with King Bram’s seal on its haunches.”
Duddon does a full-body shudder at Bram’s name. “Oh, yes. The creature you’re looking for lies in the meadow beyond. I will
show you the way. I saw the guards catch it and brand it this morning. It wailed so loudly all the forest folk heard. There
were tears then, too, but not as tasty as yours.”
“I’m sure I can find it myself,” but even as I say it, Duddon bounds back to the water’s edge and pulls out a smooth river
rock nearly as big as they are.
Duddon traces the surface with the pointed tip of a green finger, leaving chalk-white markings on the stone.
“Follow the stream down, but you must be sure to avoid the brambles at the center of the forest,” Duddon mutters as they sketch
over the stone. “It is where the merchants harvest their fruit for the night markets and they are very foul indeed.” Duddon’s
mouth turns into a pout. “They play awful games and kick us around like balls. We sprites stay away from them if we can.”
“Thank you for the advice,” I say earnestly.
Duddon preens a little, then hands me the rock, upon which they have drawn a crude but legible map.
I consider it for a moment. “How do I know this is not a trick?”
“A trick?” Duddon responds, horrified. “You gave me your tears. I gave you a map. It is a fair bargain.”
As far as faerie logic goes, it’s solid enough. “Then I thank you.”
Duddon nods, their fin hat back on and bobbing wildly. “Please come back and see me again, my lady. Whenever you need to cry,
I am here.” With that, Duddon curtsies and swan dives back into the river, disappearing beneath the surface of the water.
The stone is cool and heavy in my hand as I follow its crude marking down the riverbank, eventually entering a wide, lush
meadow where a path snakes lazily through the tall grass.
I cut through a ring of trees and then through a clearing of standing stones. I see bone-white cliffs in the distance, a sign
that I am getting close to the large X marked on Duddon’s map.
A high-pitched scream pierces the meadow.
I take off running, kicking off my useless slippers as I go, grateful I’m no longer wearing a corset. “Lydia, I’m coming!”
Brambles and rocks and who knows what else slice my feet as I sprint across the clearing, cutting left into another circle
of trees.
Standing in the middle, dappled light pouring over her, is my sister. She looks like a warrior from heaven with her blond
curls tumbling over her shoulders, her sword held aloft above her head.
She lowers it as soon as she sees me and lets out a breath of relief. “You shouldn’t be here,” she says.
“Because you want to win?” I reply sarcastically.
She doesn’t respond. I follow her gaze to the edge of the tree line, where something moves in the shadows.
I think of my friends locked away in the dungeons, and I lunge, sword in hand.
Lydia tries to sidestep me, but I’m faster and reach the creature before she does.
It’s nothing but a pale blur as it moves through the thick ferns, but I raise my sword, ready to strike.
All of a sudden, there’s that scream again. It’s not coming from Lydia, I realize, but from the creature before me.
It sounds like a child weeping, high-pitched and unbearable.
I swing but my sword misses, striking the ground with a spray of dirt.
The creature stumbles out into the soft grass, fully visible now, and I fall to my knees, dizzy at the sight of it.
It’s a snow-white unicorn, its coat perfect and unblemished save for Bram’s royal seal, newly branded and sticky with blood,
on one side of its back legs.
Its horn is pale gold, its eyes a large, luminous brown, jarringly similar to the eye color Lydia and I share. But that’s
not the reason I fell.
It’s just a baby. No bigger than one of Bram’s hunting dogs, it’s still got the chubbiness of childhood in its face, and it’s
unsteady on its spindly legs.
Lydia pushes past me.
“It’s just a baby!” I cry out. My sword clatters to the ground, and I reach out in an attempt to stop her even as she raises
her sword. “Please!”
I stumble to my feet and get a grip around the hilt of her sword, my hands on top of hers.
“Ivy, stop!” she screams. “Let me do this.”
“We cannot!” I scream back. How marred will our souls be if we kill something as beautiful and innocent as this?
The unicorn has fallen now and is braying in an awful tone that reaches straight to the core of me.
I throw my full body weight to the ground, slamming my back hard against the dirt and dislodging Lydia’s grip on her sword,
which tumbles to the ground with a clang. Its blade falls so close to my head, it shears off a few locks of my hair as it hits the ground.
I push myself up and toss her sword and mine into the stream. They both sink under the dark water, disappearing.
Lydia’s face is cold. She doesn’t even look at me.
“C’mon. Let’s just tell him we didn’t find it. He can’t keep us out here forever,” I whisper, but Lydia doesn’t respond.
I pick up my feet to run at her again, but a tree root writhes like a snake and reaches out to trip me.
I fall hard enough to knock the wind from my lungs.
In four long strides, Lydia is in front of the unicorn. I’m too far to stop her now.
She throws herself onto its back, and without hesitation, she snaps the golden horn off its head and stabs it into its soft
neck.
The unicorn screams a death knell that will haunt me until the day I die. It hollows out something within me, and I have never
wanted to be dead more than I want to be dead in this moment. I don’t know if it’s the unicorn’s magic affecting me or if
the simple act of watching my sister do something so horrible has undone me.
The unicorn gasps and keens as it drowns in its own blood, its little pink mouth opening and closing again and again uselessly.
Its tiny body shudders, and maybe I’m projecting, but it’s as if I can sense in it an emotion that all species understand;
it wants its mother.
The unicorn dies alone in a field, its own horn the cause of the killing blow.
I keep hoping it will disappear in a shower of sparks or dust, like the swan I once killed in a hedge maze.
I’m desperate for some evidence that this is another magical faerie trick, but the unicorn lies limp and solid. Just another dead animal.
I retch, but there is nothing in my stomach but river water.
Lydia stands, panting and covered in silvery blood. Then she bends, scoops up the unicorn’s limp body, and slings it over
her shoulder.
“Did you really want to win that badly?” I sob. “Nothing could have been worth that.”
She pushes past me wordlessly and begins the long walk back to Bram and Emmett.
She’s ten paces ahead of me the entire journey through the forest. As I watch her silhouette bob through trees and step over
stones and felled logs, I can’t help but wonder if my sister is a person I know anymore.
It once felt as if our very souls were intertwined, as if we were two halves of a whole. I couldn’t conceive of a time when
it would feel like I do not know her, but in this moment, she is a stranger to me.
The Lydia I knew in London, who rescued abandoned kittens from the carriage house and fed them by hand until they were strong
enough to open their eyes, never could have done what this Lydia just did.
I’m still crying by the time we reach the edge of the trees. Bram, Emmett, Rhion, and a few other members of the faerie aristocracy
are having a party. A band plays a cheery tune as they lounge on overstuffed pillows on the ground, a buffet laid out on a
low table in front of them.
Lydia dumps the baby unicorn unceremoniously at Bram’s feet. “Here,” she says flatly.
Bram claps his hands with glee. “Well done, you!”
Emmett’s handsome face goes pale as he looks between us—at Lydia’s gown now stained and sticking to her body with silver blood
and my eyes rimmed with red.
Without saying a word to anyone, I climb miserably back into the transport carriage, sit down on the hard wooden bench, close
my eyes, and tip my head against the wall.
“Come, Ivy. We’re having a party!” Bram exclaims.
“I’d like to go home now.” I wish I knew what I meant by the word home. Our town house in Belgrave Square, my childhood country estate in Oakham, Kensington Palace, and One Royal Crescent all
feel as if they belonged to a different person.
For the first time, it hits me that I might never see England again.
I sit for a few hours, my mind far away from my body while Bram and his courtiers finish their merriment. I don’t look outside
to see if Lydia is on his arm. I don’t know if I could stand it. The worst part is, I do not judge her for doing what it takes
to survive. I am just afraid of the person it has made her.