Chapter Twenty-One Kit
Twenty-One
Kit
While Idris and his father collect themselves, I glance around the hall. Speir has come to the edge of the crowd, his gaze fixed on the Hidden Queen’s face in astonished joy. A rare smile flashes across her mouth, and Speir returns it.
I take a step toward them. I still need to rescue my unborn sibling from any curses, deals, or trades. A hand catches my arm, and Byrne firmly pulls me toward him. I had never really forgotten he was there, but the suddenness of his touch makes me flinch.
“Which of these creatures did your mother speak with?” he asks in my ear. “We will certainly see the magical side of that settled here and now. And once your mother has the babe, I’ll make sure the matter is settled at home too.”
I tighten my jaw and nod toward Speir. I have no intention of letting Byrne harm any of us ever again, but if he wants to try to save his child—it is the least he can do.
“You,” the Hidden Queen says, her gaze fixing on Byrne’s hand on my arm. “I did not give you leave to enter, and I do not see how you are connected with these events.” She tilts her head. “You would have committed violence on my land.”
I feel the phantom sting of the blow he hadn’t landed.
Byrne pauses, then straightens. “My judgment lapsed for only a few seconds. But my true purpose in being here is to beg for the freedom of my unborn child.”
“Your son and heir,” Speir adds with a trouble-making smile.
So it is a boy.
“Yes.” Byrne’s eyes gleam with eagerness. He glances back to King Hugh, now standing between his two sons. “I, too, wish to offer myself in my son’s place.”
A silence falls for several breaths. Byrne’s sudden selflessness tastes false and sour in my mouth.
I glance toward Speir, wondering if I should point out that his curse has already been undone—I have been restored to my body.
The deal my mother made has been broken, with no need for any further sacrifice.
“I would accept this exchange,” Speir says. He adds, looking straight at me, “Magic always comes at a cost, and the magic was spent even if the curse has ended.”
The queen leans back in her throne. Without pain holding her rigid, she almost lounges there.
Relaxed. Comfortable. She props her chin on her hand, considering Byrne with cool interest. There are two kings, two princes, and a princess in this room, but power radiates from her.
It makes the air weighty as the fate of my unborn sibling dangles between us.
At last, she says, “Very well. I accept these terms.”
My heart lifts a fraction. The babe spared and Byrne trapped. Can it be?
Byrne watches the Hidden Queen expectantly. Then he shifts his weight back and forth. Finally, he says, “Is that all?”
“What more do you want?” the queen asks, lifting one pale eyebrow. “Your babe will be free to live his human life. And you will remain here, as our servant. Exactly as you have requested.”
“B-but—” Byrne sputters. He points to King Hugh. “You spared him. How is my offer any less noble?”
The queen’s black eyes crinkle at the corners. Her silence grows through the room, its own presence. She does not answer because she does not care to. Because Byrne is not worth the words.
He seems to shrink. I watch him feel it—watch him feel small, perhaps for the first time in his life—and a slow rightness grows in my chest. He glances around the chamber wildly, a fox in a snare.
The room is full of more and more silence.
The Hidden Folk exude absolute indifference, and I watch in mild fascination as his panic rises under it.
“This is ridiculous!” he shouts. He makes for the exit, toward the cove.
The Hidden Folk do not move to stop him.
Byrne hesitates as if unnerved, then marches forward again.
I check the faces around me. Surely they won’t just let him walk out? That isn’t how a deal with the Hidden Folk works.
At the opening of the tunnel, Byrne stops again—this time abruptly as if he’s run into something. He mutters to himself and then puts a hand to the air and pushes.
“I wouldn’t—” Abram calls.
My stepfather does not heed him. He shoves harder. Suddenly, a cry rips out of him, and he stumbles back, turning toward us in the process. His hand has blackened, and as I watch it disintegrates to ash.
“Enough,” the Hidden Queen says, almost bored. She motions to an attendant. “Put him to work.”
Byrne babbles, looking between his blackened wrist and the Folk and me. When the attendants grab him, he tries to jerk away—but they pull him deeper into the cave, toward one of the tunnels without any effort. He roars curses, but his words are all bluster and no sense. I stand where I am.
When Byrne disappears—when his voice suddenly cuts off—I breathe.
It feels like the first real, deep breath I’ve taken in two years.
“Come, sister.” The Hidden Queen beckons me to her. “Let me see you.”
I step to her, and she holds out her hands palm up on her lap. Uncertainly, I set my warped hands on top of her perfect, pale ones.
The Hidden Queen studies my fingers—bloated, crooked, and broken—and says, “You chose well.”
“What?”
“You chose well not to use the wand on this.” She traces one swollen joint. Her touch is feather-soft. “It is more ordinary and terrible than magic. The wand would have done nothing to help it.”
I shoot a glare at Speir, still standing near the throne. I clearly remember him asking, “Didn’t your mother tell you the wasting is a curse?”
He shrugs. “I only reminded you what your mother said. I never told you it was magic.”
The Hidden Queen’s words settle, and my annoyance sinks into something colder and deeper.
“So … it isn’t a curse?” I whisper. “King Byrne isn’t to blame?”
It is only my own fault, I think. My own body.
“I did not say that.” The Hidden Queen tucks a strand of hair behind my ear like my grandmother used to do. “Your world is complex. Many circumstances met to create you as you stand before me. Blame and chance, inheritance and circumstance. I cannot read the threads.”
My throat tightens.
“But …” The Hidden Queen’s voice softens, more like Catharine when she’s uncertain than the unshakable wisdom of a grandmother. “Is there not something to be said for the fact that you are here—you, yourself, wholly as you are?”
We both look down at her feet, still inflamed and streaked with sea-foam. We are both ourselves, wholly, in a way we would never have been without our pasts. Is there something redemptive in that—something that makes who we are worth what we’ve suffered?
“I don’t know,” I whisper.
The Hidden Queen smiles and leans her forehead against mine. She smells of the north wind, of changing tides and far-off storms.
Quietly, she says, “Neither do I.”
I join Idris and his family as they give formal farewells.
True walks beside Idris and me to the exit tunnel.
At the far end, in sight of the cove, a sudden pressure rises before us like an unseen wall.
I hesitate, visions of ash in my mind, but the next moment the force has dissipated. I move forward again, uninhibited.
“She’s really let us go,” Abram says, looking around with relief.
King Hugh continues to the water without stopping. “Idris, why don’t you rest while we check the yole? We came near some of the rocks, and I want to make sure we’re seaworthy before we try that again.”
Idris glances at me.
“I’ll stay,” I tell him. “I wouldn’t be much help, anyway.”
We find a spot on the warm sand and sink down.
True tucks himself against Idris’s side.
I arrange my skirt round my legs, then lean back, digging my hands into the soothing heat and tilting my head back.
The sky above us, framed by the black edges of the cliffs, is filled with stars scattered in strange constellations.
As I watch, green and blue light drifts across them like a sheer shawl.
Idris leans back, mimicking my pose, but his fingers in the sand aren’t quite close enough to touch mine.
I let myself study him while he studies the stars.
Dark hollows under his eyes speak to his sleeplessness, and in the dim light I cannot tell if color has returned to his skin.
But his eyes are clear and focused. I hope that, with his lively spirit, his recovery will only be the work of a few months.
I curl my fingers in the sand, feeling the joints aching already from leaning on them. My stomach tightens. Not a curse. Just wasting without a cure.
“How are you?” Idris asks. “That … with Byrne …”
“I’m fine.” I dig my fingers deeper in the sand. “There was never any … That is, I never thought of him as a father. I won’t miss him.”
Idris doesn’t answer, and I wonder if I’ve been too harsh. If perhaps I should, at least, pretend some sadness that a man has been trapped in the Hidden Lands forever.
“I didn’t mean that,” Idris says hesitantly. “Or—I wasn’t thinking of him being taken away. He almost hit you, Kit.”
“Oh,” I say without thinking, “that was nothing.”
I bite my lip, wanting to swallow the words back but also feeling—strangely—lighter now that they’re out.
Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Idris looking at me.
Studying me. A weight settles in my chest, and I search for words.
But I’m not sure now is the right time. We only have a few minutes before we’re called to the boat, and even many hours would not be nearly enough time.
“It … He …” My breath trembles down my throat. “He’s done worse.”
I can’t seem to find the sounds I need. Frustration and shame begin coiling in my stomach, and I’m sinking into a spiral when Idris’s voice pulls me back to the present.
“All right,” he says. He moves his hand closer to mine, so that just our fingertips touch. “We will face the worst of it, then, together. Whenever you are ready.”
I raise my gaze to his face, surprised to find my vision blurred. His eyes are kind.
“Whatever has happened,” he says, “I am with you.”
A wild relief sears through me. Two tears drop down my cheeks, but they’re full of something pure and vivid. Not sadness. Hope, maybe.