11. Delphine
I feltit the moment before it happened.
I felt the surge of power, felt a sickening wrenching in my gut before the already too familiar voice followed.
“True enough. Mordrigal would never accept the terms of Deimos’ deal.”
In a single second, every chair was scraping back, every fae leaping to his feet, and every sword drawn to point at the figure now seated opposite me at the table.
Icarus sat at the other end of the table, in a chair that had been previously empty.
Unless it wasn’t.
Panic rose up in me that I’d been unable to sense him before. Had I not been paying attention? Had I let my hold on this new glamour of mine slip? I’d only just begun to fully take hold of the way this power flowed through me, and somehow, I’d already begun to take it for granted. Let that hold loosen.
I myself remained seated, no weapon in my own hand to be drawn.
Icarus and I stared each other down, and in that moment, I swore I’d never let that hold loosen again.
I couldn’t, because I knew the next time I did, I wouldn’t be looking at a face that simply smirked at me across the table. It wouldn’t be annoyance twisting my gut. It would be a knife. Or the glamour. Or worse.
The dark fae sat, lounged back in his chair the same unaffected way that he had when we first met.
It was too late for us all to play the same game, but I managed to keep my voice steady even as the swords inched closer towards our intruder’s face.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I grew tired of waiting. You say you need time, well, you’re wasting it.”
Instead of looking at me when he answered, however, Icarus fixed his gaze on Caldamir, his eyes lazily flickering to the tip of the closest sword now firmly pointed between his eyes. He leaned forward slightly, until the tip of his forehead nearly grazed the end of Caldamir’s sword. Then he leaned in a little more, allowing the sharp steel to scrape the smallest cut along his skin.
He didn’t so much as flinch, didn’t so much as acknowledge the prick. A drop of blood began to bead on his skin, but where it would normally begin to heal in a matter of seconds, it instead dripped in a long rivulet of red down the side of his face and down his neck. He leaned back, casually licking the tip of one of his darkens fingers before smudging it over the cut, which vanished as he did.
He was fae, that was sure, but what kind? A fae unlike any I’d ever seen, but fae, still.
While the others remained focused on Icarus’s smirk, that dark glint in his eye, I glimpsed instead the tips of his blackened fingers, and I remembered how they’d singed.
While the rest of the faes’ attention remained fixed on each other, I spotted perhaps the most important piece of this puzzle Icarus himself seemed determined now to hide. And it changed everything. It was not his blackened fingertips, it was the hand that he now kept hidden beneath the edge of the table, tucked conspicuously between the folds of his jacket.
Careful as he was to hide it, I saw a hint of skin there that looked more than singed.
I was willing to bet if he were to take it out, it would be more than the tips of his fingers that had been burned by his tainted glamour.
So, this creature’s magic was strong, but it came at a cost. That was valuable to know.
That meant that he might be able to do things we could only imagine, but he wasn’t without his limits. He was a single fae, not an all-powerful being, after all. He had his limits. His weaknesses that could be learned like any other. Whatever he’d done to himself, it kept him from healing the way that other fae did now that the glamour was back. It was as if he’d exhausted the glamour that ran through his veins, the same one that would normally cause his wounds to heal at a superhuman speed.
That meant that he was powerful, still, but he was not undefeatable.
Just like Mordrigal.
Just like Deimos.
I interrupted the standoff before it could become the start of a new war.
“So, then, Icarus, what do you suppose we do? You’ve heard us. You seem to have your own opinions on Deimos and his deal. You think Mordrigal wouldn’t accept it?”
At last, Icarus did look at me.
A glimmer alit there, once again, just for me.
“Not unless there’s something Deimos knows that you don’t,” he said, and all at once, the swords that had been pointed so fiercely at him dropped—just a little. All eyes remained on the dark fae, but with a different kind of intensity. Mine included.
It was just the reaction Icarus wanted.
“Maybe,” Icarus continued, careful and calculating as ever with that voice of his that was so captivating. “Maybe Deimos has something else that Mordrigal wants. Maybe Deimos knows of something so valuable here, in the human realm, that the great high king of Avarath would be willing to give up—or risk—his own throne to take it. Well then, even Mordrigal might be willing to strike a deal.”
He’d been holding something back from us.
I could be angry, if I wanted to, that he’d held this card—saved it until it was most useful to him. I saw Caldamir was. His handle on his sword tightened again, the knuckles of his hand growing white as they gripped ever harder. That muscle worked in the back of his jaw as it so often did when he bit back the sort of words he might come to later regret.
I, however, felt something deceptively like hope spring up in me.
Sure, I could be angry that Icarus had kept something from me. From us.
But if he came to us with it now, he was showing more than one card. He wasn’t just showing us the hand he’d hidden, he was showing one he didn’t mean to.
It meant he wanted us to take this deal. He needed us to take this deal.
He’d claimed he didn’t, claimed he was all but giving us this deal out of the kindness of his own, likely singed, heart. But here he was, revealing more than he was supposed to. Maybe he knew he was showing his hand, maybe he knew he was showing his weakness, but if he was doing that, then it meant he was afraid of Deimos and Mordrigal, too.
It might mean he was more afraid of them than he was of me, sure, but knowing that he—this twisted creature with a power I didn’t understand—feared them, too, that he needed me, too, that sobered me.
My mind all at once cleared.
I knew what I had to do.
But first, before Icarus could sense it, before he had a chance to hide more of his cards, I needed to know exactly what it was that Deimos had to bargain with. It was the last piece I needed to know before I told the others what I’d already decided.
“What is it, this thing Deimos has over Mordrigal?”
“It’s not what Deimos has,” Icarus said. “It’s what I have.”
He paused for a moment.
“I have something Mordrigal needs, but doesn’t know it yet,” he said. “I have his heir.”
The silence that followed did not echo the noise that erupted inside my own head. The thoughts inside my head raced, trying to process the implication of Icarus’ revelation. An heir.
Mordrigal’s heir.
I knew little of the high king, but I knew no king would simply let his heir languish in a foreign realm without intervention.
“How do you know?” Caldamir interrupted. All eyes turned to him this time. His sword had finally lowered, but the look in his eyes was as sharp as any blade.
“Because she possesses his power.”
Something dangerous flickered in the golden brown of the Mountain Prince’s gaze. He bared his gritted teeth, that muscle in his jaw working once again. His blade raised slightly.
“Impossible. The power of the high king only passes after his death. Whoever you have here—if there is anyone—is an imposter.”
Icarus remained unflinching, even as he once again faced Caldamir’s blade.
“I can assure you,” he said, “it’s his heir. I’ve witnessed her power for myself. It matches all the stories of the power the high king of Avarath once possessed—and once again will soon possess.”
“Is that a threat?”
Caldamir was too hot-headed. I saw the way his hand steadied with a deathly stillness, saw the way his eyes narrowed, his very breaths stopped. He was seconds from igniting this second war, an unnecessary war. A war that would surely end in our destruction.
Icarus had touched on the very thing that the Mountain Prince most feared, and for that, blood was about to be shed.
“Not at all. Just a fact. If not on his own, then with his heir in his stead. Because she is his heir.”
Something about the way he said it made even Caldamir hesitate.
That was all Icarus needed to continue.
“I don’t know how it works, how the glamour chose to split the power of the high king when his queen fled here, to Luxia, only that it did. The girl that has since inherited his power is just that—a girl, barely more—but she has his power. And unlike Mordrigal, whose power only extends to those fae he calls his warriors, his heir’s power extends to all fae of Luxia. Maybe beyond.”
Caldamir was once again the one most affected by the dark fae’s words.
A vein now throbbed in his temple in conjunction with the muscle working in his jaw. He alone knew what it was to be bound to the high king’s demands, to his every rule and whim and wish. He found himself now, still, only able to resist the call of Mordrigal’s glamour thanks to the bracelet that still encircled his wrist. It left him vulnerable, unable to use his magic, and at the same time, unable to call on the healing power of the glamour. He, like Icarus, would bleed just like a human if a blade was pressed to his throat. But still, he was less vulnerable than he would be if he had to bend to his high king’s command.
At least now, he could use a sword to defend himself.
His whole court could.
He had a duty to his people, one that clearly weighed on him now. Not just his people, not just to those loyal to him like Tallulah, but to his own family. His sister. The fae he’d been willing to risk all to save, and who now recovered in the place that would soon become most dangerous to her if he alone fell to the will of Mordrigal.
Sure, we all had realms to save, worlds to save, but at the heart of it all, we each had only one thing we needed to save, one thing we strived to protect. One thing that came to mind when we considered what it would be to lose our own power of will, the ability to resist—let alone, to fight for what we cared for. For what we believed in.
The idea of an heir as powerful—or perhaps more powerful than—Mordrigal made me shudder.
Knowing that this fae was within reach of Icarus made me shudder, too.
Icarus was powerful enough on his own, but with the power of Mordrigal? That was another alliance I didn’t want to have to face.
I hated it. Loathed it. But what I hated more, what I loathed more, was the thought of how truly unstoppable Mordrigal would be if he had his heir by his side. And why wouldn’t she be? Just as the rest of us had our own duties to our kingdoms, our realms, our brothers and sisters and lineages, so too, did this heir.
But it also solved a problem as great as the one it posed.
If Mordrigal had an heir, then it meant Mordrigal could be killed, and the glamour would still have another vessel to flow through, into Avarath. It might make him agree to Deimos’ terms—whatever terms those may be. If Mordrigal truly was powerless now, it left him at a disadvantage for the first time.
It made him vulnerable in a way he’d never been before.
For the first time, Mordrigal might be afraid—and a fae like him with fear was dangerous, indeed.
I understood why Icarus feared him, too.
Caldamir, meanwhile, was worried about another fae’s power.
“And do you plan on using this heir as a bargaining chip against us, if we refuse you?” Caldamir asked, bluntly.
“No.”
Icarus answered with the same bluntness.
He leaned forward slightly. “I have no interest in dealing with the other high kings of Avarath. Not, anyway, in any friendly capacity.”
Instead of leaving us to wonder, Icarus laid his last card on the table for all of us to see.
“I lied to you, before, high king Delphine.”
His eyes lost their spark for just a moment as he turned to me.
“I do need you. Because if you do not win this war against Mordrigal, he will come for his heir, eventually, and I am not so confident that I can stop him. If there is even a chance that he will come, then I must try to stop him, because when he comes, he will come to take from me what matters most.”