43. The Prince
43
THE PRINCE
N o dreams plagued him. No pleading wails of Daurae Asche to haunt him. No screaming cries begging for rescue. No veiled queens demanding Saffron find her.
Nothing stirred Saffron for what could have been a century. But even if hundreds of years had dripped by while Saffron rested—never once did Cylvan leave his side, where Saffron slept in the prince’s own bed. On those black sheets he knew as well as his own; in that room the with the constant scents of a myriad of sweet and sharp perfumes, where Saffron could hear the distant ocean with the ceiling-high windows propped open. Allowing the late-summer air to waft inside.
Occasionally, sharp-tipped nails would gently brush a piece of hair from his eyes, and Saffron would twitch. He would mumble just enough to prove life, and Cylvan would sigh softly in a way Saffron could perfectly imagine a weary smile accompanying it. Cylvan would gently kiss Saffron’s forehead, each time whispering ‘I love you,’ and ‘ rest more if you need.’ And Saffron did. Every time, as badly as Saffron wished to finally wake, he continually sank back down again as if sedated by Cylvan’s mere presence. The song of a handsome leanan sídhe, singing to lull Saffron’s thoughts back into a buzzing tranquility, where he lost his grip on the threads of wakefulness and returned under the surface.
Occasionally, otherwise, Saffron could discern when someone else entered the room. Either bringing something to eat, or to deliver a message, or to check if Saffron had woken, yet.
“It has been confirmed that a veil event caused the avalanche in Vjallrod. It’s still unclear how many lives were lost. Fjornar’s monastery remains buried beneath the snow; the kings have extended offers to the visiting oracles to remain in Avren for the time being.”
“I will send them my regards.” Cylvan answered.
“You’ve received another letter from Anysta mac Delbaith. Would you like me to put it away with the others?”
“Yes, with the others.” Cylvan told them.
“The Danae of Alvénya sent a bird, expressing their relief that Daurae Asche was brought home safely.”
“I will respond to them soon.” Cylvan said.
“More flowers and gifts have been delivered.”
“You can take them to the daurae’s hospital bed ? —”
“Oh—they aren’t for the daurae, but for…”
“Saffron?” Cylvan hummed, near but far from where Saffron bobbed in his heavy slumber like a pinecone in a pond. Calling out to him. Prompting him to emerge, perhaps that time for good. Beckoning him to return to the land of the living, the earnestness of it hooking Saffron under the chin and lifting him upward. From his comfortable, dark pool of sleep, wishing to know the mouth that urged him so ardently.
Releasing a long exhale through his nose, Cylvan inhaled slightly in response. A warm hand once again tucked hair from Saffron’s eyes, before gently cupping his cheek. A breathy, musical laugh escaped and danced through Saffron’s ears, drawing him nearer. He found his limbs, his muscles, his skin, sighing again wearily and shifting to press a little closer into Cylvan’s body, who reclined on the pillows alongside him. Fingers combed his hair once more, before trailing over his eyebrow, down the length of his nose, tracing over his bottom lip.
“Come back to me, púca. I cannot stand to be without my treasure much longer.”
“You didn’t give me a choice,” Saffron mumbled through the haze. Without thinking, without any real intention, but it summoned Cylvan to slide his hand to the nape of Saffron’s neck, then over his back to pull him closer. Until Saffron was pieced perfectly into the shape of Cylvan’s body, face tucked sweetly into the crook of Cylvan’s shoulder. Allowing Saffron to breathe him in, the sweet oils of his hair, his skin, the fabric of his light tunic.
“That’s not what I meant,” he whispered, pressing his face flush to the side of Cylvan’s neck before touching his lips to bare skin. Cylvan still held him close, dragging his hand up and down Saffron’s back.
“I know what you meant,” he answered just as softly. “I deserve for you to mean it, however, with how monstrously I treated you.”
Saffron reveled in that closeness once finally awake enough to appreciate it, that quiet intimacy he’d almost convinced himself he’d lost forever. It nearly brought him to tears, swallowing the emotion back and finding his arms to wrap around Cylvan in return. Cylvan responded by holding Saffron closer, squeezing him, as if relieved Saffron had embraced him back at all. Worried, perhaps, that Saffron might have pulled away instead.
“I missed you,” he said, sighing, before finally forcing his eyes to open. His lashes brushed the side of Cylvan’s neck with how firmly, tenderly Cylvan held him in place.
“I missed you,” Cylvan answered. His arms around Saffron flexed slightly, before his head dropped and he pressed his forehead into Saffron’s shoulder. “Gods—there are not words for how deeply I regret leaving you the way that I did—and curse me for ever thinking you would stay there in Beantighe Village as I did. Lugh and Danu and ériu have all conspired to make sure I felt every agonizing moment I spent alone without you in this place.”
“Even ériu?” Saffron whispered with a little smile. Cylvan grimaced, barely tilting his head in order to meet Saffron’s eyes. They were rich and deeply colored in the blue light of early morning through the open windows. Saffron’s heart fluttered, and he couldn’t resist another smile.
“Especially she,” Cylvan whispered. “Wracking me with guilt, suffocating me with nightmares of a long-plucking harp every night I could bear to drink myself to sleep at all. No amount of alcohol or artificial fruits or tobacco or oracle-brewed teas made any difference, as if your goddess conspired with the veil to ensure nothing could sedate me. Even when I outwitted them—she came to me in scolding voices that followed wherever I went.”
“ériu is not known for sending legions of scolding voices.”
“Perhaps only because no one has ever infuriated her as rightfully as I have.” He tucked a piece of hair from Saffron’s forehead, eyes trailing over every inch of his face as if it had been years, rather than only a handful of days they were apart. “I don’t know what you must think of me, and how I acted,” he went on softly. “But—despite how impossible it might be to believe, especially all the times it broke through my lips for you to hear—it was never you who I despised so much. It was…”
He pressed his lips together, before closing his eyes and furrowing his brows. As if ériu still plucked the strings of her harp to ring in his ears, with every reminder of the things he’d said and done.
“That night, after the dé Bricríu dinner—Anysta invited me to share a private dessert with her. It was either that or join Renard in his smoking room for another eternity while the man rambled on about himself and his sons—so you can understand why her company was preferable. Or so I thought—as she proceeded to threaten me. A thing that wouldn’t have unsettled me so much—until she mentioned you. But not you, my glamoured high fey Alvényan flower— you, my treasure. The you I have been able to selfishly keep all for myself until now. You, the beantighe who I made a geis with; who disrupted my engagement party with Taran, and cast him away; you, the human witch turned rowan-blooded. The first in centuries. She—knew everything , Saffron, and I… I simply…”
His voice cracked, growing hoarse. He took Saffron’s hand, kissing the back of his knuckles with furrowed brows and a clenched jaw. Like it took everything in him not to unravel all over again.
“She threatened to reveal you to all of Alfidel, before we would ever have a chance stop her. Before I could make you my public fiancé, which would have split the share of the scandal’s burden on both of us. But it isn’t the scandal that frightened me so much, it was—the understanding, the instant, gutting realization that someone so influential within my own court knew exactly how to take you from me. When I’ve already lost so much, and you are all I have left—to be faced with the threat of losing you as well, I—I became something I didn’t recognize. I only wished to come home. To return to Avren. Where I could hide you from her, from them . But you…”
Cylvan finally opened his eyes, red from how hard he’d squeezed them closed. Searching Saffron’s face again, a mix of admiration and incredulity. Like he couldn’t believe Saffron was real; like he couldn’t believe he’d ever thought he could subdue someone as wild as a rowan witch.
“But you—weren’t afraid. You weren’t afraid of any of it, of anything at all. You weren’t afraid of falling through a veil tear; you weren’t afraid of what lies they spread about you in papers; you weren’t afraid to talk back to the most terrifying sídhe of all of us. You hunted the man who tore open the Midsummer Games, despite knowing what he could do. You attended a fete at the mac Delbaith family estate, then demonstrated your ownership of Anysta’s own fucking brother against her . Gods! And all while I hid. I was a coward, and I thought I could force you to be a coward with me—but I should have known, I should have known, as the Prince of Alfidel who has never once managed to assert any sort of authority over you—you were not going to hide from the world with me.
“You, who’ve survived worse things than any threats a privileged, pompous high fey like me could ever suffer. Gossip articles, scandals, blackmail— ériu made sure I felt the rake of every second that ticked by while I cowered in my glistening palace, as you fought tooth and nail for what had been taken from us. To bring my sibling home to me. To bury Ryder Kyteler beneath a mountain of snow. To have allied with the veil, that we may easily step into the human world, hand-in-hand, as simply as walking into class, while even the Fjornaran oracles failed to find a single crack.
“When I say you are my treasure, Saffron, whom I wish to spend every one of my long days appreciating, falling madly in love with more and more, for eternity—I mean it, with my entire, ancient being. Even when the wrath of my soul breaks free, lashing over you—you are the reason I fear what I cannot control so much more than a fey who had nothing to lose. But you, who persist even in the face of losing it all—my wrath will grovel at your feet every day it wishes to flare, from this day forward. If I ever come to speak to you that way, ever again—let my heart come to a cold, dead stop. Because if I lose you by means of something I can control, my own self—I deserve to choke on dirt beneath the mounds for as long as I would have been allowed to cherish you, otherwise.”
Saffron could only gaze at him in adoration, in a melting overwhelm by his raven’s words, speaking as if pleading for Saffron to stay . As if he believed Saffron would still leave the moment he had his strength back, and that was his final chance to explain. To change his mind.
Without pulling his eyes away, Saffron carefully sat up. Cylvan pulled out of the way to make room for him—but Saffron slid a hand behind his ear and drew him back. Kissing him despite the dryness of his lips, the taste of stale iron-blood in his mouth from all that had spilled over his tongue. And Cylvan kissed him back, also despite it all. He kissed Saffron with all the delicacy of pressing his lips to someone made of snow, afraid they might crumble away if he was too rough.
“I’m sorry it took me so long to come back,” Saffron whispered, and Cylvan’s hand gently pressed against the nape of his neck firmed suddenly. “Anysta told me what happened at the dé Bricríu estate—but even before then, I never blamed you. I only wanted to protect you, too—even if it made you hate me.”
“No,” Cylvan said, pressing their foreheads together and shaking his head. “No, you don’t dare utter those words to me—not with what you’ve done for me. Not with—what you’ve brought back to me, Saffron. To all of us. But even if you hadn’t, even if you’d returned to me empty-handed despite it all—never, in my entire being, would I ever find anything but devotion to you.”
Saffron kissed him again. Taking those words, and the bright light they bloomed with in his heart; wishing it was so easy to take the relief and elation and send it back to his darkest moments alone.
“Asche made it home,” he reiterated with a happy sigh through his nose. “Thank ériu.”
Cylvan’s hand on the back of his neck trembled as he nodded. “They did, only a handful of hours after you crashed over Lugh’s altar. On my mother’s back. A dragon—my mother, the dragon.”
“Oh, yes—!” Saffron perked up again, making Cylvan pull away slightly in surprise. “Gentle Naoill is a dragon! You weren’t lying all along, when you always said?—!”
“I was descended from them,” Cylvan finished with a strained laugh. “Gods, but I never thought my mother could take the form of one! Let alone that they’d come crashing down from the sky like a thunderstorm, with my little sibling on their back!”
Saffron kissed him again, grinning between their mouths as Cylvan finally laughed with more heart. Overwhelmed again with the rich joy in Cylvan’s voice; having feared he’d never hear it again. All while Cylvan held Saffron’s face and kissed him back—before forcing himself to pull away again.
“I hoped you might let me grovel a little longer—” he attempted, but Saffron just grabbed and kissed him again, and again, and again.
“You can grovel later,” he said. “I want you to grovel until your knees bleed, to win my forgiveness—but do it later. Right now, I just want to have you again. My raven, Cylvan—just let me have you right now, for a moment longer. While we can still pretend.”
Cylvan kissed him back; Saffron sank into the pillows with Cylvan on top of him, between his legs as Saffron held him, pinning their mouths against one another, chests pressed flush together and allowing Saffron to feel every inch of his prince on top of him. Sensing his pounding heart beneath his hands, tasting his breath and his skin, tangling fingers in his hair and pulling on his horns. Yanking off the silver cap that still donned the broken one, throwing it across the room before demanding Cylvan back again without any explanation. Just refamiliarizing himself with Cylvan all over again—feeling far too much like a stranger even after only a few days. Not knowing how else to survive the crashing emotions inside of him, except to press skin-to-skin with the daemon, the Night Prince, for whom he would forgive and do anything.
Saffron didn’t realize exactly how hungry he was until he sat at the table in the palace kitchens, shoveling warm potato and meat stew into his mouth. He did so circled by his friends around the cramped little servants’ table, all of them insisting on joining him rather than waiting another hour for him to get something to eat first. Cylvan was none too happy to be smashed by Copper on his opposite side, constantly elbowing the fox-fey in the ribs as Copper just pelted Saffron with questions while Saffron ate.
They’d all heard the events from Asche’s point of view already, but Saffron had other, more exciting, more infuriating details to share. Not only about Ryder and the identity he’d been hiding from them all that time—but what he’d really intended on doing with Proserpina’s memory tapestry should he have found it. Saffron quickly followed that sequence of information with chattering all about how he’d hopped in and out of the veil using the pixie ring, how he’d clutched at Ryder and halted his veil event in the middle of it tearing apart, and most importantly—how Saffron had witnessed the man’s most vulnerable secret just before the veil whisked him away. His true name, glowing in an arid stele on his chest.
“You can see people’s true names?” Copper asked.
“They’re on the sternum?” Maeve asked right after, eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Arid spells, too?”
Saffron nodded. “It’s sort of like how I gave Taran a new name that controls him. Oracles do the same to all you high fey as babies, so you can only be compelled by people who know that name. It’s technically a name given to your opulence, rather than your body, but—same concept. It’s why ashen folk can be compelled as freely as humans, because they don’t have any opulence to stitch a true name to, to protect them.”
“Taran’s family ring used to be charmed with an anti-enchantment spell,” Cylvan added, clearly eager to appear like a united front with the rowan witch at his side. “Even while we attended Morrígan. Which, I might add, is also a form of arid magic.”
“Why don’t you let Saffron finish before you blabber nonsense, huh, Cylvan?” Copper asked, but Saffron, with his mouth full, shook his head.
“He’s right,” he said, nearly choking on the lump of meat between his teeth. “Patron rings have arid circles on them. Hard to see unless you know what you’re looking for, but it’s true. Here.” He popped off his engagement ring, handing it over to Cylvan so the prince could do the honor of pointing out where the arid marks were hidden amongst the overlapping leaves of the band. He smiled so smugly the entire time.
As the prince and Copper quickly found something else to argue about, Saffron’s attention was caught through the narrow kitchen window overlooking a piece of the back gardens. Three strangers clad in all black passed by, clearly caught in a focused conversation with how stiffly they moved and turned to one another. Saffron let the initial rush of panic drain from his heart before he spoke, not wanting to show how alarmed the reminders made him.
“Those are the oracles from Fjornar, aren’t they?” he asked once his mouth was empty of food. Cylvan glanced for himself, before nodding.
“It looks like a few of them, yes. I believe there are a total of twenty currently residing in the palace, since their monastery is currently under a mountain of snow. Amongst other reasons…” he trailed off through his teeth, sipping bitterly at his coffee.
Saffron grimaced. Not only was Fjornar buried—but so was the veneer he’d hoped to eventually return to, in order to pass back to the human world. To Ire-land, to begin a proper search for his friends. At least—he’d learned far more effective ways, in his time traveling across Alfidel.
“Lingering for your court of expectations…?“ He asked with the same venom, shoveling another spoonful of stew into his mouth. “Here I hoped bringing Asche back would get people to drop that idea. I wonder if those oracles know their little fawn is the one who swallowed half the king’s keep and buried their shit under twenty feet of snow…”
“I’m sure they’re aware,” Cylvan muttered. “Perhaps they’ll save us the trouble and do away with Ryder themselves.”
“Are we sure he’s not also under all that snow?” Maeve asked.
“It would be quite a poetic way for him to go,” Sionnach noted flatly, stirring sugar into their cup. The motion soon slowed, as the lighthearted conversation fizzled again. As if everyone already knew the answer to that question—or, at least, what was most likely.
“Do you think he’ll come back again?” Sionnach asked next, quieter that time. The table remained quiet, the only sounds around them being the banging of pots and pans and chatter amongst beantighes preparing lunch for the rest of the palace.
“Yes,” Saffron was finally the one to answer. “He will.”
Everyone shifted where they sat—but no one tried to argue. There was no point; they all knew it as well as he did. Saffron stared down at his stew, chewing on the inside of his cheek, before exhaling hard through his nose.
“His true name is ‘ Eoghan .’”
Everyone’s heads snapped back to look at him. A chill draped over the table, but no one reacted. Saffron just inhaled another breath.
“His true name is Eoghan,” Saffron reiterated with a breath. “Use it, the next time you see him. Don’t hesitate. He’s only going to grow more unpredictable, I think, the more often we get in his way. We have to start acting like every time we cross paths with him will be the last, for either us or him. And—I don’t need him anymore. There’s no point in letting him live, either, assuming he really did make it out from under the snow…”
Cylvan’s hand found Saffron’s leg under the table, offering a reassuring squeeze. Saffron regretted dulling the lighthearted mood, but—he didn’t know how else to say it. He didn’t want to lose anyone else. He didn’t want to ever give Ryder the chance to try, without all of his friends having the same advantage he did.
Whatever came next—Ryder Kyteler’s true name sat primed and ready on Saffron’s tongue. Ready for whenever he showed himself again, where Saffron would be ready to use more than just a knife to finally do away with him. For good.
Saffron spent the rest of the afternoon in the royal infirmary with Asche, who was in good health apart from some bruises and scratches, a little malnutrition, and difficulty resting like they needed to—but even as they begged Saffron to break them out, as they were going mad with boredom, Saffron pretended not to hear it. He just pointed at the beadwork in progress on their lap and asked about it.
Asche’s miraculous deliverance through the veil had been announced and spread far and wide across Alfidel, resulting in feasts and dancing in the streets, an ungodly number of gifts being delivered to their hospital bed, and even more purported to altars of Lugh around the country. Thanking the sun god for the return of their golden child.
None of that was surprising in itself—what shocked Saffron most, was how widely it was shared that he had been the one to rescue them. Lord Saffron mag Shamhradhaín, the Flower of Alvénya, had somehow saved the daurae from an unknown fate at the hands of the human rebels. And while the palace never revealed any details as to how exactly Saffron had managed it—that wasn’t even his biggest concern.
“There is nothing under Danu’s grace we could do to keep the people from reacting how they choose to the news their next king will be a human witch,” Tross had calmly explained when Saffron went to him after learning he’d been the one who decided what the palace shared. “But the goodwill earned through your deeds will, at the very least, soften the blow when it inevitable comes. Not to mention…” he winked. “Your good grace will reflect kindly on Cylvan as well, once you’re announced as his fiancé.”
Saffron turned those words over endlessly while sitting in the hospital with Asche, as the daurae taught him how to crochet-bead. He thought of them whenever he passed the throne room, the ballroom, the back gardens, clusters of Fjornaran oracles in the hallway, as the palace was prepared for Prince Cylvan’s Court of Expectations. Where he would, almost without a doubt, be declared Alfidel’s next Night King. Declared far ahead of his time. The first to ever receive their court while the previous kings still ruled.
And all Saffron wished to know what—what then? When the people knew, what then? Would they feel better? Would they use it to justify their fear? Their hatred? Did they truly wish to know—or did they only wish for someone to blame and abuse for everything and anything they wished, for centuries to come?
Or would it be simpler, but more vile than that, like Anysta mac Delbaith had teased—that as soon as Cylvan was declared the coming Night King, powerful sídhe like her or Renard dé Bricríu would step forward to offer a better replacement for king? Her first choice was gone, possibly buried beneath a mountain of snow—but Saffron had not forgotten what Taran had told him prior. What Cylvan had feared, prior. That Asche was always meant to be the replacement, to be used by those who wished to gain power in Alfidel. Asche, who was so young, who was praised and loved from the beginning, who those same people thought they could so easily manipulate to usurp the throne from their very own brother.
Saffron didn’t know what would come next—but he knew exactly where he would be throughout all of it. Walking beside Cylvan, his prince, his raven, even in the most suffocating darkness that might come.
“I want you to announce our engagement at your Court of Expectations. No matter how it goes,” Saffron told him that night, lying face-to-face in Cylvan’s bed with only the sparse light of a single candle to illuminate them. “Before Anysta can do anything first. Before Ryder can try and separate us again.” He cupped the side of Cylvan’s face, overwhelmed with every feeling imaginable. Apprehension, fear, confusion, vulnerability—but above all, one thing shouted louder. He wanted to be with Cylvan through it all. No matter what came their way. Saffron would promise all his days to that fey prince on the pillow across from him. And he wanted everyone to know it. He wanted every single fey in Alfidel to see and know, without question, Cylvan dé Tuatha dé Danann would always have at least one person who cared for him.
Cylvan took Saffron’s hand, pressing a kiss into his palm, then closing his eyes and breathing him in.
“No matter what comes,” he said, lips brushing Saffron’s skin. “I will always have you. You will never be without me. Day or Night.”
“Day or Night,” Saffron repeated with a smile, before leaning in to kiss him. Another geis between their lips, another in a long eternity.