2. Delphine
Dread didn’t beginto describe the feeling that gripped the hearts of all gathered in the wake of Deimos’ departure. We stood in silence, chests heaving with heavy breaths, for only a moment after the last of his shadows had slunk away behind him. That moment, only measured by the space between two breaths, seemed to last forever. If I could have remained there in that space forever, I would’ve welcomed it gladly. All of us would’ve, because what came after… what came after was going to destroy us.
There, entombed together with Armene’s ancestors, I couldn’t help but wonder if it might be better if we simply joined them now. Now or later, it seemed more likely with every passing moment that the one fae gift that I’d not be enjoying would be their immortality.
I’d not considered it before, but in that space between two breaths, I knew every fae that remained in that empty chasm of the throne room faced that same reality. Not just for ourselves, but for the fae whose immortal lives now weighed in the balance of whatever it was we chose next.
Because, as much as my heart broke for what Nyx had so foolishly offered, he’d gifted me more than my brother’s life. He’d gifted me a true choice. He’d gifted all of faerie that.
I hated him still, for what he’d done to my brother. He was the reason we were here in the first place, the reason Mordrigal marched on our doors and Deimos held us in his thrall. All that was true, of course, but Nyx had gifted me something else, too. He may have taken my brother’s mortal life, but now he’d gifted him an immortal one in exchange.
All it had taken was sacrificing his own in the process.
The rest of us, all of faerie, owed him a debt for that sacrifice.
That near-eternal moment, however long, did eventually end. When it did, Caldamir still stood over Nyx, shouting at him in a cadence that made him almost completely incomprehensible. Armene had rushed to his side, trying desperately to get the Mountain Prince to lower his voice before he drew an unwelcome crowd. The rest of us stood still, two guards hovering at a distance, their heads turning to one another as if to try and read each other’s expressions, unsure of what to do with the scene that continued to play out before them.
I could only hope they were loyal.
The last thing we needed were more curious eyes and ears, desperate to discover what had caused these princes of faerie to dissolve into utter chaos. It was too much to hope that news of Deimos’ visit would go completely unnoticed, but I could at least hold out a little bit of hope that no one would guess what his visit meant.
Not, at least, until we’d decided what to do about it.
This might be my decision to make, but I doubted very much that the fae of Armene’s court or any other would be glad to let that decision fall solely on me. If we weren’t careful now, we could be destroyed from within before we even had a chance to fight our true enemies.
There was only one fae among the trio of princes before me that remained still. Nyx remained in Caldamir’s shadow, sitting back on his knees with his head tilted back so that his face turned up towards the vaulted ceilings overhead. His eyes were closed, his face so serene that it made a visceral anger rise up in me.
“How dare you?”
It wasn’t until long after the words hissed from between my lips that I even realized I was the one to say them.
My voice was nothing compared to those of the princes struggling before me, anger and frustration amplifying them until they echoed through the vaulted ceilings overhead. Still, quiet as it was, it somehow managed to freeze them in their tracks. Caldamir’s hand was still firmly wrapped, fisted even, in Nyx’s collar when he turned, alongside Armene, to look at me. Nyx took longer.
His eyes blinked open, slowly, taking in the enchanted ceiling of stars as if they were the ones that had called out to him. The bright green of his irises glittered in the light of the fires lit along the pillared hall for a long moment before he finally turned his face to me, that fierce shade of his eyes even brighter as they met mine.
When I asked the question again, it was barely above a whisper.
“How dare you?”
But the anger inside it—inside me—that was the same. From the way Nyx fought to hide the flinch the words elicited from him, that anger finally cut through that infuriatingly calm fa?ade that now only slightly slipped from his face.
“I thought…I thought you’d be happy to have your brother back.”
The slight line of confusion that creased his forehead only served to make the fury rise inside me further. It grew sharper as my mind did, too, my eyes narrowing into slits as I crossed from the base of the throne to stand before the Woodland Prince.
Caldamir held Nyx fast, prepared to stop his prisoner if he should choose to do anything but continue to languish, both defeated and in victory, at our feet.
“Of course, I want my brother back,” I snapped back at him. “But you heard Deimos. He was already prepared to bargain with his soul.”
Nyx blinked up at me then, his eyes wide and far too innocent for the fae solely responsible for placing the whole of faerie—and the human realm—in their current position. That innocence was almost enough to shake me.
Almost.
Tall as he was, I towered over Nyx in his given state. “What gave you the right to speak on my behalf?” I asked. “On anyone’s? Even your own? You’re a prisoner, Nyx. You swore yourself to silence. How am I supposed to trust anything you do when you can’t even keep a promise as simple as that?”
My words, steeped in vitriol as they were, seemingly didn’t faze Nyx. The longer he looked up at me with his head tilted back like that, his eyes boring into mine as they did, unflinching, unwavering, and still somehow bearing that same wide-eyed na?veté, the higher my temper flared.
But then he opened his mouth again, and rather than defend himself with empty words, what he said made the moment freeze once more.
“I just wanted the chance to see you smile one last time.”
His lips parted for a second as his eyes flickered to my own. He held his gaze there for a long moment, red curls tumbling over his shoulders, not a tangle among them the way only Nyx’s preternatural beauty could manage. The green of his eyes took on a glassy sparkle as they raised to mine again, sharpening as our gazes met.
“Just once more,” he said, “and it will all be worth it.”
That finally did it. Those words, that look on his face. It shook me.
Because I believed him.
Nyx was a simple creature. Here, amongst the trickery and deceit of the fae, it was too easy to forget that. His innocence was not a facade. His na?veté had nothing to do with the childlike look of wonder so often plastered to his face.
Nyx had made this choice unselfishly. Foolishly, yes. Recklessly, yes. But still unselfish above all.
And he had given me a choice. He’d given all of faerie a choice—by taking away his own.
I knelt before the Woodland Prince.
“Caldamir was right,” I whispered. “You are a fool, Nyx.”
Try as I might to stop myself, I felt that small hint of a smile start to tug at the outer corners of my mouth. Too much weight bore down on me for it to become anything more, but that little bit, it seemed, was enough.
“See,” Nyx whispered, “already worth it.”
Caldamir let go of Nyx at last, a sound like disgust clawing up the back of his throat as he finally stumbled away from his prisoner. Armene, meanwhile, stepped up, unfazed.
“As pretty as all this talk of smiles may be,” he said, “I think we’ve more important matters to discuss.”
Before a breath had passed, he’d turned to the two guards still waiting, unsure and anxious, to one side of the throne room.
“Breathe not a word of this,” he said, the command in his voice as deadly as any threat. “The very tides of fate depend on it. Your lives, the future of this realm and all the rest, depend on the decisions we make now in these few moments.”
That sobered me again.
Any hint of a smile dissipated with that small blossom of heat Nyx’s wayward promises had planted in me.
Armene was right, of course.
But before I had a chance to even begin to truly weigh the decision before me, to even start to unfold the intricacies of the deal Deimos offered, Armene’s voice was once more filling that echoing void between us.
His eyes had taken on a far-off look, his head focused forward on some fixed point somewhere near the base of one of the columns that stood so imposingly in long lines on either side. He saw something only he could see, a future, a past, a present that with each tangled thought he spoke aloud, became more impossible to follow.
“There is no clear path forward,” Armene began, “Mordrigal is one thing to be reckoned with, we’ve faced him once before and won, but Deimos is another matter. Deimos brings into this impending war a formidableuncertainty. No one knows the true breadth of his power, if only because he’s never chosen to wield it. Death in war is certain, unavoidable. But war with death itself?”
Armene stopped only long enough to sharpen his stare.
“Deimos is Delphine’s counter. We cannot use Delphine’s power without it being wielded back at us twofold. Though he is her equal by right of blood, he is her superior still.”
“Careful now …” Caldamir growled.
Armene ignored him, his focus unchanging. Caldamir might have been the Prince of the Mountain Court, head of the high king Mordrigal’s guard, but Armene was a warrior through and through, too. He’d been molded by war all his life, not only on the battlefield, but in the sanctity of his own halls. And he, unlike Caldamir, was not a mere enchanted bracelet away from falling prey to the high king’s possessive glamour.
If it weren’t for the fact that it was Armene who won the last war, I had no doubt that Caldamir would have already come to blows with him, based solely on the darkness that had come to cloud his vision.
“Time is on Deimos’ side here, not ours,” Armene continued. “A strategy to counter a counter, that’s one not easy to draw up in a single night.”
His words quickened, his lips moving so fast it was almost as if they weren’t moving at all.
“We need time. We need spies. We need to gather intelligence, to learn what Deimos truly wants from all this. He has no need for more power. He has no need for anything. Never before has he stooped to cross the threshold into this realm, nor extended his hand to wield power—let alone try to gain more of it. It’s beneath him. So then, why? Why?”
His lips parted once more, prepared to go on, to answer his own question with more questions, when he was interrupted by the last fae I expected to have the answer.
It was Nyx who spoke.
“I might have an idea,” he said, his voice hesitant. The soft expression I’d come to expect on his face had sharpened slightly, a look that didn’t quite suit him. It almost looked pained, as if the muscles weren’t used to tightening in thought. “It’s only a theory, but … what if Deimos isn’t after anything in the fae realm? What if he’s after something else?”
Both Armene and Caldamir stared at Nyx for a long moment, as if neither of them could process right away that he had spoken—let alone bear the weight of the words that he spoke.
“What do you mean?” Armene asked at last. “What else would Deimos be after? The only power that lies in the human realm is that which seals our access to the glamour. Deimos’ power would have remained protected so long as he remained in his realm. By coming here, he’s risked it all. If neither Delphine nor Mordrigal sit on that throne in the end, he’d have to be the one to take it. One high king must sit there. And if there’s one thing that I’m certain of, Deimos, high king of the Afterworld, has no interest in mortals. Their fate, in that case, would be bleak, indeed.”
“It’s not the mortals he’s interested in,” Nyx said. “Or, at least, I don’t think so.”
The intensity in his expression wavered a moment. I saw the determination in his eyes as he wrapped his mind around the thought that had prompted him to speak in the first place, saw the way he wrestled with what it was he was trying to say.
“During my time in the human realm …” he started, his voice faltering for a second as his eyes cut over to me, guilt shining from a deep place within. He had to clear his throat before trying again. When he continued, I noticed how he couldn’t look directly at me, his focus fixed instead on the two fae princes that had once been like brothers to him. “During my time there, I heard rumors.”
Every fae in the room waited with bated breath for Nyx to continue, but the pause that followed was more than pregnant. It had barely stretched out for a beat too long before it was too much for Caldamir to handle. The outer corner of the Mountain Prince’s mouth stretched into an impatient grimace as he leaned in towards Nyx’s form, who still knelt on the floor before him.
“And?” he growled. “Come now, Nyx, spit it out before you lose focus and start thinking about the next tree you’re going to fuck instead.”
For a second, the words seemed to have the direct opposite of their intended effect. I saw the way Nyx’s careful concentration was lost for a second, the glazed look in his eyes widening them with a horrible recognition. I felt for him then, as the reason for that look dawned on me—my mind flooding with memories of our encounter with the dryad Betula not long after I first arrived in faerie. But no sooner had my thoughts begun to wander than, to Nyx’s greatest credit, he managed to shake the memory from his own mind. His eyes refocused as he leaned forward towards the angry warrior prince before him.
“Rumors of other fae in the human realm,” he said. “Fae that didn’t disappear when we did.”
Something deep in my core chilled at his words, though I didn’t know exactly why. I’d grown up in a small village. Just because we hadn’t seen fae in what felt like an age before Caldamir made his appearance didn’t mean that fae hadn’t paid visits to other areas, to larger cities, or to even more remote hamlets. But somehow, even before Nyx continued, before the words that he spoke next seemed to surprise—and even disturb—the other fae princes, I knew that wasn’t what he meant.
“When we began to lose our glamour, we stopped going to Alderia, right?” Nyx asked. His eyes flickered now between both Caldamir and Armene before both of them agitatedly agreed. A slight look of relief flooded over Nyx, but it was immediately replaced by the closest thing to a scowl that his face had the capacity to form. “Well, there are other human kingdoms. Kingdoms that some say are no longer ruled by humans at all, but by fae. Different fae. Fae who never lost the glamour.”
This time when he paused, it was only to leave space for Caldamir to let out a scoff.
“These aren’t even rumors, Nyx,” he said. “Just old wives’ tales. Stories told to keep children in line. There aren’t any other fae in the human realm … and even if there were, they would have lost their glamour right alongside us.”
He turned to Armene, fully expecting the Sand Fae to agree with him, but he paused when he saw the expression stretching across his face. His eyes had not left Nyx, but were instead searching his expression for something within.
“What else did they say about these fae, Nyx?” he asked. “What else about this glamour?”
That something that churned beneath the surface made a chill race along my spine again. This time, however, it felt different—not like an involuntary reaction in my body, but more like the brush of the glamour now wrapped around my very soul.
I found myself leaning in, too, hanging onto every word that Nyx spoke next.
“The fae there have been ruling for centuries. Human centuries. You know I’m not good with numbers,” he said, shaking his head, “but I’d be willing to bet those fae fled the last war.”
“Doesn’t explain how they’d still have the glamour,” Caldamir said, and though his grimace remained, some of the skepticism had started to fade from his voice.
“The glamour works in its own ways,” Nyx said, and though it was a simple answer, neither Caldamir nor Armene argued. They just shared a contemplative silence that lasted only until Armene broke it.
“Fae in the human realm …” he ruminated, eyes starting to take on that far-off look once again. “A new glamour. I could see why Deimos would be interested in that.”
Caldamir nodded. “It adds value to controlling that realm, certainly,” he said.
“But why even offer to place Delphine on the throne, then? Or Mordrigal?” Armene continued. His eyes had fully gone blank now, his words spoken aloud as they tumbled out of him, once again returning to that stream of consciousness that left no room for debate or even answers. “Seems he’d be better taking it himself. Unless, of course, he plans to, eventually. This first move could simply be a way of weakening the realms, removing one high king from their place and taking control of the other courts before moving on to take the last.”
His face grew stony. “To take them all.”
It was no new story, no new stimulus for war. It was, in fact, the oldest of stimuli. The most worn-out tale of all.
Power.
Of course, Deimos wanted power. Perhaps he’d just never been offered enough of it to leave his court before. Now, with the prospect of this new glamour, and with the other high kings at their weakest, it was finally his chance to take it.
One way or another.
Armene snapped into focus, that far-off look replaced in an instant with one so sharp, so focused on reality, that it could cut. “We must strategize at once. This time we face not one high king, but two. But this time, brother, we face war together. Whatever we decide next, we go into this bloodshed not divided, but side by side.”
“For now,” Caldamir said, and for a moment, the silver bracelet on his wrist seemed to glitter with a malice all of its own. “And though I agree with you, you forget yourself, Armene. You can talk strategy all you want, but what we do next isn’t your decision to make. This isn’t either of ours.”
Caldamir turned then, to me. “This is a decision for the high king.”
Something like shame flickered across Armene’s face at Caldamir’s words. His gaze turned to me, and he looked me over in a new light, like sunlight breaking over the horizon. He took me in only for a second before he bowed his head.
“Of course,” he said, a reverence in his voice I never imagined I would hear coming from him. For me. “Forgive me, Delphine. My King.”
My lips parted as, this time, that chill of glamour overtook me. It dug in deeper, igniting my veins as his words washed over me.
My King. High king.
I should have felt unprepared for this role in every way, but somehow as Caldamir, and then Nyx, and next the two fae soldiers across the room each bowed their heads in turn, all I felt was a surge of power. Of glamour.
I was born for this role. I was bred for this role. I’d been dragged through time and realms to play this role, and I felt it now. I felt it in the silver white hair that had branded me. I felt it in the dark pools of my eyes. I felt it in the blue of the blood running through my veins, pumped faster than ever by the racing of my heart.
There was a decision to be made, and though I didn’t know what choice to make, I knew one thing well.
“One night is not enough.”
I looked first at Caldamir, at Nyx, and then finally at Armene. This might be my decision to make, but at least I wouldn’t be making it alone.
“Something that you mentioned before, Armene,” I said, “about time being on Deimos’ side. You’re right about that, but there might be a way for us to bring more of it to ours, too.”
I knew, before I’d finished, that the same idea had begun to blossom in the princes’ minds. “One night is not enough for a decision like this. We have one night in the Sand Court. One night in Avarath.”
“Say no more.”
Armene nodded his head at the two guards present, and they left us at last. As soon as the door shut behind them, Armene began moving with a new intensity.
“I trust my men, my soldiers, with my life. With your life,” he said, breathless already. “But I don’t trust Deimos. I don’t trust that his spies haven’t infiltrated the very cracks and crevices of this palace, left by his shadows and his demons to pry out any further advantage from us than he already has. I’ve no doubt that was why he was willing to give us one last night here, in the first place, not out of some mercy, but for his own even greater advantage.”
“Well then,” I said, “let’s turn this to our advantage, too.”