25. Delphine
I never setout to take the throne of Alderia.
I never set out to get us banished from Avarath, but here we were.
My first order as king of Alderia was for the throne room to be cleared, the old king to be buried without a funeral, and for all the lords of the land to be gathered together for an address.
In the meantime, I fell back into the familiar study alongside Seren and Armene, the air thick between us as we turned, at last, to face each other alone.
“Delphine.” Seren’s face was serious, stony even, as he looked me over. “Your glamour, how did you do that?”
Armene was peering at me curiously as well.
I reached for their own glamours again and still felt only the weak pull that had remained at the end of the battle with Mordrigal.
“When you were in The Endless, did you see anything?” Even as I asked the question, I felt myself hesitating. Had I actually experienced what I thought I did? How long had we been in there, it had certainly felt long enough for me to start losing my mind—at the very least to the point where I’d be able to imagine a presence, a voice.
The one thing I couldn’t explain, however, was how it had felt. Even now, as I thought back to the overwhelming pressure of the presence, it made the hair stand up at the back of my neck. I might have been lost in The Endless, but even now that I’d found my way back to the realms, I remembered how it felt. I couldn’t forget, just like I couldn’t forget the rush of what it felt like to be in Tethys’ presence now that he was bound to another god, himself.
There were some things that even the most addled mind couldn’t make up.
“The Endless?”
It was Armene who spoke, his head cocking to the side as he looked at me a little closer. His face remained streaked with dirt from the battle, his clothes dripping with tiny pinpricks of sand he’d carried back from the court that had turned on him so soon after his own coronation—the golden crown askew atop his head serving as an unfortunate reminder.
“Did you fall into the void?” Seren asked, his hand reaching out to touch mine. Something about his face was guarded, and the moment his skin touched mine, he drew back. I knew why.
His hand had been hot, like fire. Mine, shrouded in shadow, were like ice. I felt it in the way my bones had a chill, as if the cold void that I’d come from had yet to fully let me go.
“Did you not?”
Seren and Armene shared a look before turning back to me, both shaking their heads.
“I stepped through the portal like any other, expecting to step into Elysia. I was as surprised as either of you when I found myself back here, in Alderia, instead.”
“But no,” Armene said, shaking his head again as a deep frown furrowed his brow. “I never saw The Endless.”
That prickle on the back of my neck only grew stronger.
This time, when Seren reached to take my hand, he didn’t pull away, no matter how cold the feel of my shadow-streaked skin was on his.
“Your powers, Delphine,” he whispered. “How long exactly were you in The Endless?”
He and Armene shared another look, one I didn’t understand this time.
“What’s that?” I asked, my temper shorter than it should have been. “What is it you’re thinking?”
Some unspoken conversation passed between them in a second before Seren answered.
“How long exactly do you think it’s been since we left Avarath?”
I stared at him, unblinking for a second.
“Thirty minutes at most?”
I felt a little spark as Seren tried to access his magic again, but again, found nothing.
“Delphine, do you still have the crystal you used to communicate with me?”
I procured the crystal from my pocket and held it out to Seren, the faceted sides catching the light differently now that we were outside of the faerie realms. It was duller here, and yet somehow, more otherworldly than ever. It didn’t fit into this realm, just as we didn’t. My glamour had been restored to me, sure, and now that I’d taken the throne and sealed Mordrigal’s ancient deal, I felt a stronger pull on my magic, but it was nothing compared to the strength I’d felt in Avarath.
Seren’s brow furrowed at the sight of the crystal in my hand. “I’m surprised Tarrack isn’t already reaching for us,” he said, something off about the tone of his voice.
“Delphine, can you try to reach out to Tarrack?”
Despite the months I’d spent training with Icarus, the way the glamour now responded so naturally to my touch, I hesitated. I’d never successfully scried when I practiced with Tarrack those weeks I spent in Elysia, and though I’d accidentally used some of the other lines’ magic during my time there, I’d never been able to do it on purpose. I hesitated as I weighed the crystal in my hand.
It was not fear that I’d fail, however, that made me pause.
It was that I wouldn’t.
I didn’t know what I’d find on the other side, didn’t know what I’d see when I looked into the crystal. Seren and Armene had not found themselves in The Endless as I had, and something about that made me hesitate to tell them what I’d felt there. Something told me to hold that close to my chest, to keep what I’d been told a secret, for now.
At least until I was sure I’d heard it at all, and that I hadn’t simply been on the verge of losing my mind, trapped there in that dark void.
I held the crystal between my hands, focusing on Tarrack’s face. I felt a stirring inside me, and at first shadows started to cloud the inside of the crystal, filling it like a dark venom that poisoned the perfect clear glass-cut crystal even after I drew them out.
I saw Seren move closer to me, his hand itching to reach out and take mine, his lips start to move as he prepared to coach me through how to use the crystal, but something nudged my power on its own. I felt a different kind of spark within my veins, something clearer than the shadows, something made of light.
This time when I called forth my power, I felt it pouring into the crystal in a stream of starlight instead of shadow. It flooded into it, banishing the smudge of darkness that I’d left, glowing so bright for a moment that I was temporarily blinded. When it faded, however, no shape began to take form. An emptiness swirled on the other side, a haze that obscured me from seeing anything beyond. The light faltered as I did, and then died, my glamour once again turning to dark smoke that filled, blackened, and then cracked the crystal from side to side. That black shadow spilled out over my hands, where it swirled around my feet like a puddle.
Something soured in my stomach, and not because my glamour had failed me. It was because it had worked…but like Seren’s call on his own power, it had still somehow broken.
Not just in a figurative sense, but in the most literal one. The scrying crystal sat useless now between my hands, cracked not just across the surface, but shattered all the way through. It was nothing more than a rock now, as useful as the shards of glass that littered the throne room floor on the other side of the door.
I glanced towards that door now, as if expecting it to burst open with an army on the other side. I felt the fear of the humans all around me still, but still, I was wary. We wouldn’t have much time alone, the three of us, and the fate of more than one kingdom hung in the balance. Not just that, but the fate of me—and fate itself. Try as I might to put the god’s words from my mind, they refused to leave, now more than ever. Something in me told me that the crystal had not cracked on accident, just as we’d not ended up here, in the position to take the human throne before Mordrigal even had the chance, on accident either. Everything about the moment we’d arrived was too perfect.
If it weren’t for that entity that had reached out to me in The Endless, I’d have thought it was fate.
Now I was sure it was something more.
Seren sensed my unease, though not the true reason why. He reached out and plucked the broken crystal from my hand and sent it flying, his hands sliding into its place to take mine. The warmth of his touch was reassuring as he squeezed my hands in his.
“There are other ways to reach Tarrack and see what’s going on in the faerie realms,” he said. “For now, I suggest we secure this throne, make sure that neither Mordrigal nor any other fae tries to step in to take it. I don’t know how you got your powers back so quickly, Delphine, but they will assume you don’t have them, either. We all felt you drained of them in Armene’s Court. Mordrigal will have some strength now with the Mountain Court back on his side, though, so who knows how long he’ll wait to make his own counter-attack.”
My head ached as he spoke, that ache growing with every word.
I’d never intended to take the human throne. Deimos had wanted this, wanted me banished here, but I’d never agreed to it, never imagined this would be my burden to bear. I already had one throne, one court I couldn’t reach. I had a brother who I’d sent to Icarus, who I needed to find—or at least make sure he wasn’t buried beneath a heap of bodies or trapped in a sea of angry, undead soldiers who’d just found themselves in another realm. And then I still had the two high kings of faerie to deal with, two powerful fae whose greatest desire was to take every court, throne, and realm for themselves. Now that Mordrigal knew he had a potential heir here, in the human realm, he was sure to make a move between the realms before long.
Icarus would not be pleased. He’d spent months training me so that I would defeat Mordrigal, keep him from coming for the heir that now made him more vulnerable than ever. I’d not only lost to the high king, but I’d riled him, made him feel exposed for the first time, perhaps ever. If the heir that Icarus so loved had not been in danger before, she most certainly was now.
Given how quickly Icarus had known of Deimos and the goings-on of the court before, it wouldn’t be long before he knew this, too. My only hope was that his weakened state kept him in the dark long enough for me to work out how to fix it before he became an even bigger problem than the ones I already faced.
All this, and I was supposed to move against fate?
I closed my eyes against that constant thrumming growing louder inside my head. I’d been so focused on one thing, on defeating Mordrigal and Deimos together, at once, before war was truly looming, that I’d not planned for any contingency in case we failed. Failing was not an option, and yet, here we were.
Isolated. Alienated. Without our courts or half our number. I had my powers, but Seren and Armene would take time to recover. Even with their powers returned to full force, there was little I could think for us to do. If Mordrigal marched against us, I’d have no choice but to send his army to the Afterworld to save us and Alderia. Saving us meant damning us to Deimos, instead.
Any way I looked at it, every choice that lay before me, ended only in worsening the already terrible position we found ourselves in now.
Sure, we had the human court in our grasp, but that meant little when we’d lost all the others. We’d traded true power for the mere illusion of it.
Was this really what the gods intended, or was this simply the best they could do if fate was truly against us.
Part of me wanted to find my brother and simply slip away to a realm where no one would find us, to simply abandon Alderia and Avarath and Elysia as fate so desired. Had I not done enough, already? Hadn’t I secured the glamour by fulfilling that old deal, by taking the throne? Hadn’t I, and my brother, re-awakened the high king of Avarath as fate intended? Why did we have to continue to be punished, simply for being born to this role? Would fate really not rest until I and all I loved perished in pursuit of whatever it was it wanted for this world?
Even though I ached to find my brother, felt the urge to abandon the humans now that my basest duty to the fae was done, I knew I couldn’t do it.
I knew I couldn’t leave Alderia unattended and undefended. It might be just, might feel like the revenge that they deserved, but I couldn’t let all of humankind suffer for the cruelty really only inflicted by those closest to me. And even then, even Nerys and Draigh and Ixora, I’d chosen to forgive. If I could forgive them, then I could forgive the countless humans who would still suffer—and suffer greatly—should Mordrigal or Deimos take the throne instead. I felt my own humanity growing distant, each day dragging it further and further away like the carcass of an animal that had served its purpose until it was now too spent for even carrion to bother picking at the bones.
Because here we were, fate or otherwise. If this throne, now mine, fell into the wrong hands, then not just humans would suffer. The fae would, too. Because Mordrigal would not stop here, in Alderia. Not when he had an heir in another realm, a realm of faerie courts for him to conquer. And he would not stop until he’d conquered all of them, enslaved and cowed every one of them to his will.
And that included the fae who I loved too, as much as I loved my brother. As much as I loved him, as much as I had a duty to him, I loved and had a duty to them, too. I could not abandon them, too, no matter how dark the path ahead appeared to be. They’d given up everything for me, everything to stand beside me. The very least I could do was return the favor. I’d given up much, but there was more left yet, to give.
Though my humanity barely lingered, held on by the barest of threads, I did still find myself unable to abandon the humans. I was part human, still, in theory. The fae side of me may have taken over, overwhelmed me, transformed me—but I was born human, and if I died soon, I’d have lived the vast majority of my life as human, with human desires, fears, and wants.
I was fae, but I was human, still, too—in all the ways that truly mattered.
Maybe it made me weak, but maybe that was my strength.
“You’re right, Seren. I’ll work to secure the throne, make this a stronghold here, for us to plan our next move.”
There was a great deal more work to securing the throne than there was taking it, I knew that, and I knew if there was anyone who knew intimately, and recently, the details of transferring power from one ruler to another, it was the other fae who had stepped through the portal alongside me.
“Armene,” I said, the distant sound of voices echoing towards us from the other side of the door making my words tumble after each other in more and more rapid succession, “I need you by my side. I need you to help me clean up this mess of a kingdom so that by the time I need to leave it, it won’t simply fall at the snap of the next fae’s fingers.”
“By the time you need to leave it?”
I felt something catch in my throat for a second, and I had to swallow it down.
“By the time we have to leave it,” I clarified, but even as I said it, I knew it was a lie.
I felt it growing in my bones, this feeling. This was my throne, my crown to take, my burden to bear—but I wouldn’t be here forever. I doubted I’d be here for long. One thing I knew more certainly with every passing second was that I’d be leaving here alone.
And not just to fetch my brother.
No, when I left Alderia, it would be for some far darker purpose. Fate and the gods would make sure of that.