Chapter Four Furi #2
How would you know? Furi wanted to shout. Rayan had barely walked the streets since Lettle left. But she knew he was still close with Golan; more often than not the fae would join him to dine in his rooms. She wondered if it was Golan’s closeness to Lettle that made Rayan seek his company.
Rayan’s voice dropped to a near-whisper. ‘We need to end this, Furi. We need to get back to the real battle: the curse, and what it means for the obeah.’
Furi scowled. She had spent the last few months pushing everything about the curse from her mind. While the boundary stood, they were safe. Amnan was safe.
‘Lettle will be in Caperly by now,’ Yeeran said, and at the sound of Lettle’s name, Rayan roused more than he had all day.
‘She might have learned more from the grimoire; perhaps soon she’ll be able to undo the curse entirely.
We cannot take the risk of the boundary failing while an army camps at our door. ’
The curse, Afa’s grimoire, Alder–all of it–was too much. What the truth could mean, and the ramifications of it, were far greater than any one war.
Furi paced around the table, the map of the continent swirling in her vision like a whirlpool. The others watched her, and eventually she came to a decision.
‘One elf only–Motogo.’
‘No,’ Yeeran said. ‘Two at least. Their general, Malak, I think he has more sway within the coalition than he has us think.’
Furi didn’t want to concede, but Rayan looked so worn out from the conversation that she too wanted the debate to be over.
‘Fine.’
Yeeran sagged with relief. ‘When?’
‘One week,’ Furi said.
Rayan’s eyes snapped to hers. ‘That will coincide with the Flare festivities.’
‘Exactly. Let us welcome them the best way we know how–with a banquet. Let them see that we do not cower from their siege.’
The celebration happened once a year, when a pocket of sun that shone through the cavern ceiling touched the Tree of Souls.
She hadn’t intended to hold a royal celebration this year.
Not just because of the threat at the boundary but because the Flare Feast was the anniversary of her mother and aunt’s murder.
It is a good thing that you are to be occupied that day, Amnan said.
Yes, though I don’t think my mother would approve of elves entering Mosima.
Amnan stretched outwards, his claws scratching against the flagstones. Elves didn’t kill the queens. Nerad did.
He was right, the realm had seen plenty of violence before the elves marched on Mosima.
‘I suppose the feast will showcase how the fray is essential to our livelihood,’ Rayan said. Though he still seemed unconvinced by the idea.
‘And celebrating the sun striking the Tree of Souls will remind the elves that Mosima is still a prison, no matter how beautiful it is,’ Yeeran said. ‘It may make them more amenable to relinquishing the Bleeding Field.’
‘The Fae Lands,’ Furi corrected her. She didn’t like it when Yeeran referred to her ancestral land as a battlefield. ‘And we can remind them Mosima is a prison, but that we are no feeble prisoners.’
She smiled, and it must have looked a little bloodthirsty because Yeeran said, ‘You know you can’t threaten them, Furi.’
Furi pretended to look hurt. ‘I would never.’
‘I’m serious. If you make them feel unsafe at all, everything I’ve done over the last few months was for naught.’
‘I will be on my best behaviour.’
Yeeran got up to leave. She paused as she passed Furi and leaned in so she could feel her breath against her cheek.
‘You and I both know that your very best behaviour often still needs discipline,’ Yeeran whispered.
Furi shivered, her mouth falling agape as Yeeran left nothing but her maddening scent of cedar in her wake.
She toys with me. The thought didn’t incite any malice. This was a game Furi enjoyed playing.
She knew exactly what her next move would be.
‘Rayan, I’m going to call on the weavers, see if they can source us two new outfits for the occasion.’ But the king had grown distant again, his eyes glazed over as though he were seeing something beyond his mere sight. ‘Rayan?’
Furi stepped towards him and rested her hand on his forearm. He looked at her, startled. ‘Where did you go?’ she asked him.
‘Far away,’ he admitted.
‘You’ll need to be present for this banquet, Rayan. Yeeran’s right, it’s important that we represent Mosima as a unified front. Where’s Ajax?’
‘Basking in the sun topside,’ he said with a small smile. She was glad his obeah’s pursuits brought him comfort, but she could see Rayan was lonely.
‘Call him to you,’ she said softly. ‘I haven’t seen him in Mosima for some time.’
He shook his head. ‘No. He prefers the sun to the fray.’ He stood from his chair and walked to the window then added quietly, ‘And so do I.’
We all do, Furi thought but didn’t say.
‘What if we walk away from all of it? Leave Mosima to rot?’ he said.
Furi laughed until she realised Rayan wasn’t joking. ‘You would condemn the whole of Mosima to death?’
The Jani dynasty was bound to the land: if either royal abandoned the city it would decay. Furi and Rayan had left for mere hours once and a frost destroyed a large portion of their plants. If they were to leave permanently, Mosima would not survive.
‘The price of freedom is high,’ he said coldly.
Furi was shocked. This was not the Rayan she had come to know, the Rayan who couldn’t kill a spider, and instead would diligently spend half an hour coaxing it outside.
‘Look at me, Rayan,’ she said.
He turned bleary eyes towards her. She often forgot how new he was to the prison bars of Mosima. The curse had been a constant in her life. ‘Cursed to endure, cursed to survive ‘was etched into the Tree of Souls, and so too onto the walls of her mind.
The burden of the curse had been passed through generations, even though the origins of it had not. All they knew was that Afa had cursed them, and that was guilt enough.
But Rayan had been born free under the light of the true sun. He knew what it was like to see the seasons change, to feel real rain on your face. Then in a blink he had lost it all; the moon, the sun and the sky.
I do not envy him his experience.
She rested a hand on his shoulder. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying. Death to every creature? And what of the fae whose home this has been for a millennium?’
‘When the blight was affecting the land, the plan was to relocate to the Bleeding Field anyway, right?’
He pressed his thumb onto the map where the word ‘Lorhan’ was written in the centre of the Bleeding Field–the capital of the Fae Lands.
‘Yes, but—’
‘Why don’t we do that now?’
‘The peace treaty Yeeran has negotiated includes an end to the occupation in the old Fae Lands. We will return one day, but if we go now without the infrastructure to build the city—’
‘We’ll build a camp like the elves have!’ His eyes were wild.
‘Rayan.’
‘Let’s return to the Bleeding Field. Please, let me go home.’ His voice turned thick with grief, and tears filled his eyes.
She realised now this wasn’t about Mosima, or the war, or even about reclaiming the Fae Lands. This was about turning back time.
Furi embraced him as he shuddered out a sob. ‘You cannot go home again. The home you remember is written only in your past. Let the ink dry.’
‘It was simpler then,’ he choked out.
‘War is never simple. You and I both know that.’
He pulled away from her and wiped at his eyes. ‘True, but I wasn’t king then.’
‘Are you wishing away your royal blood?’ Furi said with mock horror. ‘Welcome to the Jani dynasty, none of us chose this. None of us want this.’
Except Nerad, Amnan said. It was true, her cousin had committed murder to be on the throne.
He did not know the weight of the crown’s load. To be tied to the land was to constantly feel the binds of a knot. Only those of Jani blood could manipulate Mosima like she could. Only we can open the boundary with the human language.
‘We are keys,’ she said softly to Rayan. ‘But we are also prisoners.’
Rayan exhaled slowly. ‘I wouldn’t have really done it. I wouldn’t have abandoned Mosima.’
‘I know.’
The silence began to stretch and Rayan’s eyes turned distant once more.
‘Lettle will be all right,’ Furi said, drawing his attention back to the present. ‘But when she returns you must fix this thing between you two. I cannot rule with half a king.’
He scrubbed a hand over his face, and when he looked back at her his eyes were brighter. ‘I’ll do my part at the Flare Feast. Just please don’t ask the weavers to make us matching outfits.’
Furi laughed. ‘Fine, yours can be red, mine will be burnt orange.’
He groaned and all was right with the world once more. If only for a moment.