Chapter 29 Fortunes of the Universe
FORTUNES OF THE UNIVERSE
SAERIS
HAYDEN WAS HERE.
Really here, in Yvelia.
He lay in the bed, crisp white sheets drawn up underneath his chin, his bright blond curls messy against the feather pillow underneath his head. Beneath his eyelids, I watched his eyes shuttle left, right, left, right, imagining what he could be dreaming about.
Onyx sniffed my brother’s face and whined, giving his cheek a cursory lick. He hadn’t even met Hayden properly, and yet he seemed anxious for him to wake up.
I was anxious for that, too. The last time I’d seen Hayden had not been pleasant.
“I didn’t realize I was such a burden,” he’d said.
“Well, you are, Hayden. Your entire fucking life, that’s all you’ve been. Now leave me alone. Don’t follow. Do not come looking for me. GO!”
I’d screamed at him. It had been out of fear. I’d wanted to hurt him, to make him run, so that he wouldn’t follow me into the horror that I knew awaited me up at the palace, but it was hard to unspeak words sometimes. Especially when there was a grain of truth in them.
“Carrion slept for less than a day when he came through the quicksilver for the first time. But he was Fae beneath that glamor of his. It could be a while before your brother wakes up, Saeris.” Te Léna pressed the back of her hand to Hayden’s forehead, pursing her lips together.
No doubt her magic was flowing into Hayden, checking his body for injury or malady.
We couldn’t keep Hayden at Ammontraíeth. He wouldn’t have been safe, and there were no healers there who knew anything about human physiology. The decision had been made, risky as it was, to use the gate to hop from the Blood Court back to Cahlish, and so it had been done—the work of moments.
It had been only days since I’d been here, but everything felt different suddenly. I felt different.
“Where’s Kingfisher?” Te Léna asked. Her soft, warm voice broke apart my thoughts.
“He and Carrion managed to secure the silver we need. Two big bags of it. They went to take it to the armory. Fisher said he’d find me in his rooms as soon as he was done.”
The healer smiled gently, rubbing the top of my arm in a comforting up and down motion. “You should go, then. Physically, Hayden is fine. It’s just a big shift, moving from one plane of existence into another. He won’t wake for a while yet.”
I was already arguing. “I should be here—”
“You should be in bed. You look exhausted.” Te Léna’s hairstyle was new. It was tightly braided to her scalp, the ends, which were halfway down her back, decorated with bright orange beads. As always, she looked beautiful. “I’ll stay with him. If he wakes up, I’ll come and get you, I promise.”
Gods and martyrs, Hayden was going to be almost as disappointed as Carrion had been over the fact that Te Léna was mated and married. I sighed, knowing how pointless it was to push back against her once she’d decided something.
The moment he wakes up?” I asked.
She nodded. “I’ll make sure he’s comfortable first, and then I’ll find you.”
“All right. I’ll go. But only because I am tired.
” More tired than I had ever been in my life.
I could barely keep my eyes open. Channeling the amount of power I’d used back in the tomb was a massive drain on my energy supplies, both magical and physiological.
I probably wasn’t going to struggle to sleep ever again.
My hand was on the doorknob when Te Léna called after me.
She sat at Hayden’s bedside, holding his hand, with the morning light gilding her bronze skin.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t help you. I can’t quite explain it.
I . . .” She puffed out her cheeks and then let them deflate.
“It isn’t an issue that I’ve ever encountered before. ”
She had tried to heal me when we’d first arrived at Cahlish, but her magic had felt like water, beading and rolling off my skin. It hadn’t felt wrong per se. Just . . . strange. I still had a gash on my arm, as well as a cut on my thigh, but both were already knitting closed on their own.
“It’s okay, I promise. They were just scratches.” I shot her a tired smile.
Upstairs in Fisher’s rooms, Archer was busy organizing a bath.
Three other fire sprites lugged smooth, round stones from a metal bin by the fireplace and held them in their hands, heating them before lowering them into a tub by the window that was full of water.
Steam rose from the water, the stones hissing as they drew them back out of the bathwater and reheated them again.
Another fire sprite was busy cleaning off the nightstands and the desk, sorting through the scraps of paper and other bits and pieces I had been dumping there after emptying out my pockets.
Fisher’s friend squawked when he saw me. “No, no, no! Oh no. Apologies, my lady. We’ve been too slow. The room was supposed to be clean by the time you got here. Your bath was supposed to be poured!”
“It’s okay, Archer. Please don’t worry—”
“No.” He shook his head vehemently, and a tiny ember flew off him and began to smolder on the rug. I stepped on it before he noticed and got even more upset. “There’s a way things are supposed to be done, my lady. You aren’t even supposed to see us unless we’re serving dinner.”
“I want to see you, Archer. I want to be your friend. All of you. Yes, I want to be friends with you three, too . . .” I trailed off, the words dying on my lips when fire broke out atop one of the other fire sprite’s heads. The little sprite stared at me, mouth hanging open, fiery eyes wide.
“There’s a way things are supposed to be done.” Archer repeated this slowly, in an exasperated tone, as if I just wasn’t understanding what he was saying.
“I hear you. I do. But the realm outside the walls of this estate changes all the time, doesn’t it?”
I’d never seen a fire sprite pout before. I had now. “Not really.”
“Archer, come on. One day, maybe I’ll live here, and it would be nice if we didn’t have to stand on ceremony all the time. You should be able to relax around me. You shouldn’t call me my lady, either.”
“What are we supposed to call you, then?”
“You should call me Saeris. It’s my name.”
Archer wobbled like he might fall over. The sprite who had been cleaning the nightstands was standing over by the bookshelf now and had a little knickknack in his hands.
A ceramic bird, by the looks of things. Archer squawked when he noticed what the other sprite was doing.
“Put that down! That was Lady Edina’s favorite! ”
“It’s okay, I’m sure he’s just looking at it.”
The offending sprite pulled a sheepish face, put the bird back on the shelf, then scurried away.
“No, mistress. You don’t understand. That ornament is how Kingfisher got his name!
Lady Edina saw it in a market in Ballard when she was pregnant with the master.
She wasn’t usually taken by things like that.
She didn’t own many knickknacks, but she said she had to have it.
She was so taken by it that on his first birthday, she announced people should call her son Kingfisher.
She set that ornament there herself, on that shelf, when the master was just a Faeling. She didn’t like anyone to touch it.”
“Okay, Archer. It’s okay,” I said, laughing a little at his anxious rambling. “The ornament’s fine. It’s back on the shelf. We all know now not to touch it.”
But Archer wouldn’t be consoled. One of the sprites helping to heat the bath dropped the stone he was holding into the bathtub with a splosh, and that was it. “Out! Get out, all of you! Go! I’ll leave you out in the snow,” Archer cried. “I’ll turn you into doorstops. Go!”
The one who’d been investigating the Kingfisher ornament ran out of the room first. He was smaller than the others, which made me think he might be the youngest, but I honestly knew nothing of how fire sprites grew or aged.
The others, who had been warming my bathwater, scuttled out with their eyes glued to the ground.
Archer was last to go. He backed out of the room, his voice warbling with stress as he went.
“There’s some food on the tray for you, my lady. A clean robe on the bed.”
“Archer, come on.”
“If you need anything, just pull on that tassel there by the bed. Yes, you know the one.”
“Things are going to have to change!” I called after him as he drew the door closed. “We can’t go on like this!”
The tub was heavenly. The rocks—still sitting at the bottom of the bath—radiated heat for a long time, keeping the water nice and hot. I let my head fall against the back of the tub, and before I knew it, I was dozing.
I didn’t want to fall asleep yet, though.
Not until I’d seen Fisher. Once my fingers had pruned and my muscles felt loose, I climbed out of the bath and dried myself off, dressed in one of Fisher’s loose shirts, and prepared to settle in the with the book on Alchemy that I’d removed from Ammontraíeth’s library against Algat’s wishes.
But then the door opened.
He stood in the rectangular square of light for a moment, watching me, then slowly stepped into the room and swung the door closed behind him.
I didn’t say anything, and neither did he. We just savored the sight of each other. Relished the fact that we were both in the same room, breathing the same air, and nothing had succeeded in killing us while we’d been apart.
Fisher took a couple of steps toward me, eyes pensive. He bent and drew off one of his boots, his mouth forming a disapproving line as he upended it and a stream of sand poured out of it onto the floor. It kept coming and coming . . .
I covered my mouth, trying not to laugh.
He repeated the motion with his other boot, turning it upside down, gaze locked stoically on me while he waited for the sand to be done pouring out of his footwear.
When he was finished, he dropped both boots to the floor with a thump, thump and took another small step forward. “Do you know how incredible you were back there?” he asked.
“When I was fighting for my life?”