13. Nyx
The king’sabandoned quarters weren’t big enough for the five of us.
Even when only four of us remained, they were too small, still.
Seren pulled back from the scrying bowl, that stone artifice stacked with crystals fetched by the fae all too happy to do Icarus’ bidding even in his absence. His eyes darkened as the clouded mist over his irises cleared, but so did his expression.
Tethys left us shortly after Delphine and the dark fae did. The Sea Prince’s work with us was done, apparently, though he didn’t care to tell us where he went next. There was something wrong with him, something different that I didn’t fully understand. He’d pledged himself to the sea god, but he was always a fae of the sea. Now, he seemed barely fae at all.
Certainly, the fae that left us in this new land, in Luxia—a human kingdom—wasn’t the one I’d come to know over the last centuries.
None of them were.
Perhaps I wasn’t, either.
“Delphine is alive, somehow still, and so it seems is Icarus,” Seren said, “whatever good that may do. I can still barely sense his power.” His words did little to lift the solemn mood that had settled over our party in the last day and a half. Caldamir’s jaw had remained set for so long that I wanted to warn him it would stick like that if he didn’t relax the muscles soon. I didn’t dare, though. I was already on the edge with him, every word I spoke seemingly drawing him closer to some precipice with me that I didn’t care to see the other side of—let alone the bottom. He’d never understood me. Of all the princes of Avarath, his patience with me had never been anything but thin. I’d never been bothered enough to truly notice before, not when I had my own court to take care of. Even in the last war, I’d not seen him like this.
Not when he’d already been far gone, the entirety of his own court lost from the moment Mordrigal opened his mouth and commanded them to wage his war for him.
Armene had fallen into contemplative silence. While Seren worked to open and tether the pools that would allow our courts to converge together against Deimos and Mordrigal, Caldamir had tirelessly begun organizing our best approach, something that would draw the armies of our enemies out into the open as fast as possible. Armene, meanwhile, worked with whispers. His power, like all of ours, was lessened outside of his court, outside of Avarath, but that didn’t stop sand from swirling around his feet, twisting up his arms to gather in his cupped hands where his lips could move silently, hissing words that would carry across the realms, scattered in the winds that slipped through the thin places between them.
I’d been set no task, and even if I knew what I could do to help accomplish this grand plan my brothers had set into motion, I had no magic to do it. The matching sibling to the bracelet that had encircled my other wrist now once again trapped the glamour from flowing through me. That same glamour I’d used to animate the prosthetic I’d fastened in place of my missing hand, that brand of betrayal that had soured the love between my high king and me. It now remained as lifeless as the branches once left dying at the edge of my glamourless kingdom. It was like carrying a dead creature around with me everywhere, the scent of its utter lifelessness a stench only to me, once the master of the life it was fashioned from. If I wasn’t so horrified by the sight of my own fleshy stump beneath it, I’d have thrown it out the minute Armene and Caldamir refitted me with another shackle.
It would be all too easy to get lost in that obsession, the permanent maiming of the immortal body I’d been so blessed with, but even I knew there were greater concerns at hand. More, even, than my missing one.
War loomed over us all again, a war far greater than the last. It had been hundreds of years since the wounds of those battles were fresh, but they still stung. I’d spent the better part of my time since that war trying to forget it, getting drunk in the enchantment of my court, in the timelessness of the forests and, of course, faerie wine. I’d grown ever more languid beneath the trees, even as they began to shrivel and die around me. I’d relished my solitude, my separation from the world and had admittedly sunk too far into that dream of my own making.
A dream I was so rudely still struggling to wake from.
Too much was at stake for me to slip back into it. Not just for faerie, but for me.
I was no longer a master of my own fate. I had no court to slip back into. No choice to make that would seal my destiny.
I’d already made that choice.
I had little time to make a difference, to try and right my wrongs. It was far too late for that, but maybe not too late to contribute to the future shape of faerie that I’d leave behind.
Because that was what I was doing. I was leaving.
Delphine had done her best with the deal, but like so many others before her, there was too much uncertainty. Too much left to fate.
And fate, as much as Delphine seemed to think was on her side, never was.
If anything was a testament to that fact, it was my missing hand. Fate would never let something so perfect be ruined forever, even if it was by some action as misguided as my own. Sure, we had the glamour back—for now—but at what cost?
I could dwell forever on that price, my own personally paid, as well as the atonement the rest of the realms now faced, but I no longer had forever. So, instead, I tried to focus on what I could do to help my brothers. Caldamir and Armene may no longer see me as the brother they once did, and Seren may never yet, but that didn’t change the way I felt for them. I might not have their strength, their strategy, their power, but I had something to offer, still.
Even in a time of war.
I was sure of it.
The others were already waging war in their own right, not just preparing for it. Even though the cuff on my hand kept me from truly sensing the strain on their magic, so far away from their own realms, I knew it was there. I saw it on Seren, the Starlight Fae who had once been a king, and then a high king, and was now not even a prince. I saw it on him the most. Perhaps it was because of that very thing, that very sudden rise and then cataclysmic loss of title and the power that came with it, that left him pale and cloudy-eyed as he once again sucked in a deep breath as he rose once from his glamour weaving.
Both Armene and Caldamir’s heads turned to look at him, their own magic forgotten for a moment as Seren stepped back and doubled over, his hands outstretching to steady himself against the lip of the pensive for support.
“Not much longer now,” Armene said, though there was little relief in his voice.
Seren let out a gurgled growl, color purpling his cheeks as he forced himself back up to stand.
“If we had an age to prepare, it wouldn’t be enough.”
“At least we have days,” I said, my voice cutting through the cold. “Deimos has only hours.”
Three pairs of eyes settled on me, but no one spoke. Caldamir’s jaw worked, Seren’s face began to pale again, and Armene let out a sigh that had his sand scattering around his ankles on the floor.
“In all ways, time works against us,” Caldamir said, eyes staring blankly ahead for a second before they sharpened slightly as he turned to Armene. “Any word?”
He let out a sigh. “My sands have reached all the courts, and thankfully my whispers have not fallen on deaf ears.”
“But?” Caldamir’s face was all too knowing. He heard the tone in Armene’s voice. Heard his doubt.
“Are we quite certain this is the way?”
The question hung between them for barely a moment before Seren answered.
“It’s the only way.”
The Starlight Fae may no longer have been a king, but he certainly still looked the part. A pang of jealousy shuddered through me at the sight of him standing there, long silver hair cascading down his back like a breaking waterfall. I’d never thought I’d meet a fae more intimidating than my brother in arms, Caldamir, but Seren was a different picture of danger. It was hard not to listen to his words. It was as if they’d been written long ago, as if he was simply a vessel of fate, his lips parting to speak truth as deep and ancient as the glamour itself.
Seren looked between the other princes, but his eyes never landed on me. That pang of jealousy turned to envy, then frustration. I was a prince too, and yet none of them so much as looked at me. Was I really so useless?
“Delphine is high king, now. This is her way, so it’s the only way. However …”
His eyes flashed slightly with something like pride. “If this works, it could stem the flow of blood in Avarath. It could be our best shot at ending another war before it begins. Is it the best strategy, the most battle-tested plan?”
He shook his head.
“No, but it is the best way to ensure our courts remain intact.”
If this works.
That was the part that settled in my mind.
If this works.
But what if it didn’t? That was the question I knew settled in the others’ minds as well. None of us spoke it, none of us would dare, but they had to be feeling the same. Or, perhaps, I realized as the three fae returned to their work, perhaps it was just me. Perhaps because I played no part in these preparations, I couldn’t feel the flow of power that they did.
I knew something of Caldamir’s strategy, but what he actually planned evaded me. He wanted to stir the courts up, to get them ready for battle. Armene reached out to his spies in all the courts, telling them to gather the armies, to prepare for war at the first break of Avarath’s light. Seren readied the pools to carry them to the Sand Court.
All five armies of Avarath would gather to fight Mordrigal and Deimos. If Seren could call on his own court, if they recognized Delphine too, for her place on their throne, then perhaps it would be six. If they came, too, then there would be six of our armies. Six courts against Deimos and Mordrigal. It was two kings this time, but we’d won a war against one—and never united like this. Never with Mordrigal’s own army on our side. He had his court, but the High Court of Avarath had been in slumber for too long. They were not the warriors we were. They were not prepared to fight.
If only Delphine actually planned for any of us to fight.
I didn’t doubt her. I refused to doubt her. But that didn’t mean I didn’t wonder if there was something missing, some part of this plan that had been overlooked. I felt an uneasiness in me that I refused to accept was my own impending death. I was nothing. I was a prince of faerie, but I, like the trees and flowers of my forest, was never truly meant to live forever. I’d never considered the end, really, but I was ready to face it now that it was here.
I was ready to face anything for her.
For Delphine.
For all of them.
Something in my heart ached as I looked between Seren, Caldamir, and Armene as they worked tirelessly to prepare for this battle that was never meant to be. This could be the last time I was together with any one of them. Delphine had dreams of retrieving me from that dark place in the Afterworld, but that was uncertain. I’d made my pact, sealed my fate. Nothing was guaranteed but the cold dark. But that was not the thought that made that ache grow deeper.
I knew, as I looked between my brothers—even Seren counted among them, now—that I couldn’t just sit and watch. They’d given me no task, entrusted me with nothing, but I had to find something to do to make a final mark.
There was nothing I could do here to help them, no magic I could perform with my powers under control of the bracelet still encircling my wrist, but there were other things I could do.
And I had an idea of just what that could be.
I stood from my seat at the table, careful not to interrupt Armene and his whispered words imbuing the glamoured sand with the messages passed on from Caldamir. The Mountain Prince himself paced back and forth, his head tilted back slightly, eyes glazed and hands moving as if he could see the intricate dance orchestrated and woven in his mind. Across the room, Seren’s eyes were still cloudy as his own lips moved, casting the spell that would bind another pool meant to carry soldiers safely through the planes of Avarath.
I moved with the kind of silent feet that only years of learning how not to rustle fallen leaves could teach me.
None of them so much as noticed me stand.
So, none of them noticed me leave.