Twenty Nine
The first knock came shortly after I had started crying.
I didn’t answer it, wanting to be alone in my misery.
Adrian kept returning to the door that separated my room from his while I wept for what felt like hours.
When my tears had finally dried, I rose from the bed and put the crown on the vanity.
Though it took some effort, I was able to get myself out of my wedding gown and shower.
My hair damp and my face puffy, I paced the bedroom in my nightgown, exhausted yet too wound up to sleep.
A faint knock stopped me in my tracks. On soft feet, I walked toward the hallway that connected my chambers to Adrian’s.
Another tentative knock sounded as I stepped closer to the door.
“Emelin,” came his broken voice from the other side. “Let me in.”
I only shook my head before I turned away and walked back into the bedroom.
My gaze slid over my surroundings. Where could Thea have put my diary?
The most logical place would be the writing desk, but it wasn’t there.
I quickly checked the vanity drawers and the bookshelf.
When my search had rendered no results, I moved on to the bedside tables.
To my surprise, I found not one, but two journals stashed away in the drawer of the table to the left of the bed.
One of the journals was my diary. The other one was the leather-bound journal Lady May had used to bring down the wards.
I retrieved it together with the note that lay atop it.
“Emelin,” impeccable cursive greeted me when I unfolded the parchment.
“Even though I have already shared the true history of our kingdoms with you and your family, I realize you might still have questions. This diary will help to answer some of them. The journal is spelled to allow only you to read it. There are some parts that will not be revealed even to you as I am not willing to discuss them. It is of utmost importance that you keep the diary safe. Lady May.”
I folded the note and put it back in the drawer, leaving the journal on top of the table. After I had settled into the bed with a mountain of pillows behind my back, I reached for the Sorceress’s diary, curious to see what I would find within its pages.
As the note mentioned, Lady May had already told my family the truth about our kingdom’s past when my father had insisted upon it two weeks ago, shortly after Emeraldia had avoided the imminent attack from Aubrielle.
“I know that Emelin has sworn allegiance to the Fae realm, but we would be fools to honor it before we learn the truth about what truly happened a century ago,” my father had said back then. “What forced our king to raise the barrier and sever ties with Aubrielle?”
The Sorceress had complied, unveiling the mystery of our past, but she was right—I still had questions. Without further delay, I opened the journal and began reading.
This record is the only true account of what transpired before the War of Two Worlds. Recounting the story of our downfall does not come easily to me as I played a vital role in the events that led to it, but I must write it down to preserve the truth that I had erased from everyone’s mind.
Before the Kingdom of Aubrielle, there were four provinces on the continent of plenty, each one ruled by a High Lord, who was bound to their land. The provinces coexisted peacefully for centuries until the High Lord Oberon began craving more power.
When he came to me searching for a way to expand his influence, I wasn’t shocked by his hunger for more.
Born in the Northern Province, I grew up under Lord Fenmyar's rule. Because my mother was a gifted sorceress and the lord’s adviser, I spent most of my childhood on the lord’s estate, playing with my best friend—his daughter Alta.
Since Oberon’s father and Lord Fenmyar were close, Oberon also spent much of his childhood on the lord’s estate.
Even as a child, he was always very ambitious, testing the boundaries and thinking that he should be above the rules.
When he grew up and inherited the title from his father, he became a High Lord who wanted all or nothing.
By the time he came to me, I had become the most powerful sorceress in the realm after my mother had passed away.
After much searching, I found a way to help Oberon to achieve his goal.
A spell was required—one from the Eclipse Isles that would bind him to all four provinces.
He would draw the ancient magic—Silberium—from the land, which would grant him power far greater than what any other lord could muster.
The binding spell would grant unimaginable power, but it would come at an unspeakable cost.
The next few sentences were blurry, and I rubbed my eyes before returning my gaze to the page. The words were still unreadable. I must have come across one of the parts that Lady May didn’t want to disclose. Skipping the blurry passage, I resumed reading when I found more legible sentences.
Though the price the binding spell demanded would be inconceivable to most, Oberon was willing to pay it.
Lord Fenmyar knew what Oberon was planning and promised his support.
In exchange, Oberon vowed to marry Alta if he should be successful in becoming the most powerful creature in all the Fae realm.
What happened next have haunted me for centuries. I fear the guilt I feel will follow me into the grave. A few ink splotches marred that part of the page as if the writer had lost control of the dip pen.
The spell worked. With all four provinces then bound to him, Oberon became the most powerful lord and proclaimed himself the High King.
Wishing to keep me close for my sorcery powers, he made me his adviser and provided accommodations for me at Castle Argent.
He married Alta as he had promised, and for years, we didn’t realize that there were drawbacks to the binding spell.
As time went on, Oberon’s power only grew until it became too much.
He came to me begging for relief, claiming that Silberium was tearing him apart from within.
The ancient magic was crawling under his skin, the silver patterns that had appeared on his body an alarming sign that something was terribly wrong.
Desperate to save him, I wasn’t able to find any other solution than to have him release the excess magic back into the land.
He did, and that helped to alleviate his suffering, but only for a short time.
A vicious cycle began, as Oberon was forced to transfer Silberium into the land on the regular basis.
We soon learned that doing so was having a detrimental effect on the kingdom.
It started with the temperature rising a few degrees year after year, and a dry patch of land here or there.
The decay was gradual but unmissable, and soon, it was impossible to ignore.
Still, Oberon had no choice. To save his own life, he had to release the ancient magic, slowly killing Aubrielle in the process.
To this day, I have not found an answer to why returning Silberium to its source has deleterious effects.
The reason could be that when I performed the binding spell, the very tapestry of our world was altered.
The laws of nature were broken, and when you break something so fundamental, the jagged pieces never quite fit together again.
The binding spell itself might have had a fail-safe, condemning the one who would dare to commit such atrocious acts to feed their hunger for power.
A king of a dying realm, Oberon tried to find another way.
Since the other half of the continent was uninhabited, he attempted to release the excess magic there, but failed.
We as a nation were heading toward our inevitable demise until a possible path to salvation presented itself.
A new kingdom formed on the border with Aubrielie—a mortal domain with no magic.
They were a peaceful people, their Queen Rosalie a wise and benevolent leader.
She initiated a trading agreement between Aubrielle and Emeraldia.
The two kingdoms began exchanging food and supplies, but that only prolonged the deterioration of the Fae lands, while I kept pouring over ancient texts, looking for a permanent solution.
A few years later, I found one. As the spell that was driving us to ruin came from the Eclipse Isles, another spell—the one that could save us—originated there as well.
“You need a conduit,” I declared in Oberon’s study on the night I discovered the spell. “An empty vessel. Someone with no magic. You will transfer Silberium to them, and then they will release it into the land.”
“Someone with no magic? A mortal?” Judging by the feverish gleam in his eyes, he had already devised a plan.
Oberon called an urgent meeting with Queen Rosalie and pleaded with her to become his conduit.
She asked for a few days to think it over, but we hoped that she would agree.
Emeraldia was a struggling kingdom, the part of the continent where they had settled unwelcoming and harsh.
As we expected, the human queen returned a few days later, and I performed the spell to make her receptive to Oberon’s magic.
Then came the moment of truth. Had I found a way to save us all?
Oberon reached for Rosalie’s hands. Their gazes locked.
It was only the three of us in the room, and nobody seemed to be breathing.
It took a few tries until they figured out their flow, but then the most beautiful thing happened.
Rosalie was able to siphon Silberium from Oberon.
As an immense weight lifted off my chest, I took what seemed like my first breath in a very long time. We have found a way to save our land.