18. An Equally Doomed and Blessed Bloodline
18. AN EQUALLY DOOMED AND BLESSED BLOODLINE
ELOWYN
I discovered myself already mid groan when alertness rushed in. It was sweltering beneath the covers, and I went to kick them off?—
“Finally!”
The exclamation was loud with its obvious exasperation, and accompanied by the soft chiming of tiny bells: Dashiell.
Uncertain if I was ready to deal with the man’s attitude this soon after waking, I kept my eyes shut, kept myself still, and endured the miserable heat. My legs felt clamped in place. I itched with the need to move them.
If it was possible to sense another person rolling their eyes, I would have sworn I did. Dashiell also tsked .
“How much olvidian have you been giving her?” he accused whomever else was in the room. “I don’t have all day to wait around for her to wake up.”
“I’ve been giving her just the right amount,” Edsel snapped. “She needs it. Or have ye failed to notice she looks like she was attacked by an entire clan of bloody dragons? There’s barely a patch on her body that ain’t sliced to shit and back.”
This voice—and prickly temperament—had been a constant over the last days, so many that I hadn’t been able to track them as I slipped in and out of consciousness.
“If ye’re unhappy with the job I’m doing, then by all means, I’ll quit. No matter what ye like to say, ye ain’t paying me enough for all this trouble,” Edsel said.
I probably shouldn’t have cared that the goblin was so evidently ready to be rid of me. And still … I did.
Silence stretched out for long enough that I was deciding to confront Dashiell just to get out from under the covers, when the tinkling of glass, wood, and metal stopped me. Behind my closed eyelids, my eyeballs stung, and it had been days since that had happened.
Edsel was packing up the many vials and jars and bowls he kept at my bedside. As soon as I admitted to not knowing where Pru was, that she was likely in danger somewhere still out in the Sorumbra, he’d rush off to find her.
A heavy sigh that sounded like Dashiell’s, I peeked open my eyes in time to watch him turn toward the goblin.
“Wait. Stop.”
Edsel harrumphed loudly and continued packing a series of delicate vials into a padded wompa leather case, his movements jerky despite the obvious care for his instruments of healing.
Dashiell rose from the foot of my bed—which was when I noticed my view was markedly different from that of the previous days—and hesitated a moment before approaching the goblin. When he reached him, again he paused, but eventually rested a hand on Edsel’s shoulder.
The goblin flinched but didn’t cast off the man’s hand.
The two were a study in contrasts. While Dashiell wasn’t particularly tall for a fae man, the goblin’s head, held high, only reached groin height. Dashiell was lithe and slim; Edsel was stocky, strong, and sturdy.
But I tore my gaze away from the interaction that would have otherwise intrigued me to examine my new surroundings. The shabby clapboard cabin that had been scarcely more than a rundown shanty had somehow vanished while I slept. I now rested in a magnificent room with white-washed walls, a polished wooden floor, large windows with the curtains drawn shut, and a bouquet of fresh flowers adorning a small table on the opposite side of my bed from where the males stood. Even my bed was new, my blanket a crisp forest green woven through with strands of gold.
My mother, who’d languished in the bed beside mine … was not here.
In an instant, I was so cold I couldn’t believe I’d just been hot, and lament crowded my throat, making it difficult to swallow my swelling grief.
She was barely alive anyway , I told myself in a desperate attempt at comfort. At least I got to share a room with her. I thought she was dead, so at least being in the same room was something .
But some-little-thing , when I’d longed to know the woman my entire life, wasn’t nearly enough…
“Edsel,” Dashiell said in the gentle tones I’d only ever heard him use with the king.
Eager for the distraction, I stared at them, blinking away the tears that had been too close to the surface since waking.
“You can’t leave,” Dashiell told Edsel.
The goblin finally shrugged the man’s hand from his shoulder and stepped away—to continue packing.
With a furious purse of my lips, I hurried to blink away the sting in my eyes. He wanted to leave me? When I obviously still needed him?
Fine. It isn’t as if I’ll care. I only just met the irritable oaf.
“Edsel,” Dashiell called over to the goblin. “You can’t go.”
Edsel spun around. “Of course I can go. The Crown doesn’t own me anymore.” He whirled back toward another case and proceeded to stack a pile of wooden bowls into it, their powdered herbs still in their wells.
“I’m a free goblin,” he added on a growl. “Or have you forgotten all I went through to earn my freedom?”
Dashiell’s gaze dipped to the goblin’s prosthetics. Then he took a tentative step in his direction but stopped, appearing uncertain, a look I’d never seen on the king’s most trusted advisor.
“No,” he said gently. “I haven’t forgotten. I’ll never forget.”
Edsel didn’t slow his packing efforts. They grew jerkier and more rushed still.
Whatever. He can go ahead and leave if he wants to so much. It’s alright.
I was lying to myself.
It will be alright, then .
I hadn’t had my mother in the first place, so I wasn’t truly losing her. And Edsel had never become a caring grandfather—granddoody—figure to me, just a paid caretaker.
Arms at his sides until Dashiell apparently couldn’t stand the stillness, he clasped his fingers in front of him and said, “You can, of course, choose to leave. But I ask you, please don’t.”
Edsel ceased his harried efforts. He lowered a mortar and pestle into a case and waited.
“She needs you,” Dashiell implored.
“No she doesn’t. She’ll survive now. She’s past the worst of it.”
“But she won’t recover as well or as quickly without you.”
“True, of course. I’m mighty good at what I do.”
“The very best.”
“Flattery doesn’t suit ye.”
“Not flattery. Merely fact.”
Edsel didn’t deny it, though he did pull his hands away from his cases to run them along the length of his breeches. Perhaps he’d gotten the dust of crushed herbs on them.
“If His Majesty isn’t paying you enough,” Dashiell added, “then he’ll pay you more.”
Wrong thing to say, Dashiell , I thought even as Edsel stiffened all over again.
“Ye think this is about treasure?” he snarled.
“Isn’t it?”
Okay, so Dashiell wasn’t nearly as clever as I’d imagined.
Edsel spun on the taller fae. His dark, pupil-less eyes glimmered even in the diffuse light from the shaded windows. “No, of course it ain’t. It’s about the queen and what she’s done, and what she’ll do. It’s?—”
Edsel’s angry, shining eyes landed on me. He scowled and flung a pointing finger in my direction. “There. She’s awake. Ye wanted to talk to her. Well, now ye can.”
Edsel stomped from the room with squat, solid steps that rattled the delicate little vials in their case, and shook the glass of the windows too. The door opened and closed with a loud thud as he left.
Dashiell hmmphed and frowned at me. “You cause trouble everywhere you go, don’t you?”
Taken aback, my eyes widened. They opened nearly the entire way this time. Progress, indeed. “What’re you blaming me for? The queen’s the one who keeps trying to kill me. This is all on her. ”
He only glared at me, his one blue eye blazing brighter than the brown.
Disbelieving, I huffed. “Or are you blaming me for daring to stay alive?”
The stare continued.
“Oh, I see. You’re blaming me for existing at all. Maybe you should point your accusation at your precious king instead. He’s the one who didn’t keep it in his breeches.”
Apparently stomping was a thing grown fae did.
Dashiell marched over to me and hovered by the head of my bed, his fingers clenching and unclenching at his sides. “If you weren’t so broken, I’d strike you for disparaging His Majesty.”
I shook my head, my incredulity overriding what should have been a happy moment at discovering greater range of motion, lesser pain in its wake. “You’re unbelievable, you know that? I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t even want to be in Embermere. I was abducted and brought here against my will—by your king , in case you forgot.”
The statement curled on the tip of my tongue even after I unleashed it, as if wanting me to retract it. Hadn’t Embermere become enough of my home along the way for me to want to fix it? To save those I cared about?
“He’s your king too,” Dashiell said.
My jaw tensed. “Maybe, maybe not. I can tell you what he isn’t. He’s certainly not my father. He may have gotten off inside my mother, but a lucky shot doesn’t make anyone a father. A father wouldn’t leave his right-hand man to attack his daughter for no greater sin than existing and refusing to roll over and die for the queen.”
My chest heaved. My breaths came easily now. I prepared for Dashiell’s next ridiculous accusation.
But his puffed-out chest visibly deflated as he retreated to the foot of my bed and sank onto it. His head shook gently, as if in lament. The little bells tinkled sadly.
“Your parents loved each other deeply.”
Although I had plenty more I wanted to say to him, like a child starved I waited and hoped for more.
He ran his fingers absently across the coverlet near my feet, tracing the path of the golden threads. “He’s never said it. Not even once. And if he hasn’t said it to me, I doubt he’s said it to anyone.”
He glanced up at me then. The anger was gone from his stare. “I believe Odelia and Oren were mates.” His shoulders drooped. “ Are , I suppose, though I don’t think she even realizes it’s him when he visits.”
“Where is she now?” I asked more softly than he deserved after threatening to freaking hit me.
“Safe. Though ‘safe’ came many years too late for Odelia.”
“Where are we? Is she here? With me?”
I cringed inwardly at how eager I sounded to have her near, even all but dead as she was.
With those unusual, mismatched eyes, the likes of which I’d only ever heard of once before, in a dragon protector, he studied me. He seemed to arrive at some decision.
“When His Majesty discovered that Odelia was alive and being kept”—his lips pursed heatedly for several moments—“and in such horrendous conditions, he immediately set to rectify the situation. He’s been building this home for her ever since. Beyond His Majesty, no one but Edsel and I know the exact location. There are a few trusted servants who deliver goods nearby. But only Edsel and I could lead anyone here to the front door.”
“What about whoever built the place? Surely it wasn’t you or Edsel.” I snorted. “Or the king.”
Dashiell huffed in affront. “Of course not. Menial labor such as construction is far beneath our stations.”
“So then what happened to the workers who actually built the house?” I asked though a part of me already understood it was easier not to know.
Dashiell frowned. “Dead, of course. For a very worthy cause.”
Of course , I thought bitterly before clamping down the next question I wanted to ask: Had the workers chosen their fates? Had they been the ones to decide whether or not their deaths were for a worthy cause?
In the end, I didn’t ask, left to wonder if I was a coward for still being eager for more even as my father was revealed to be as callous as the queen herself.
Dashiell rubbed the coverlet between his fingertips. “Construction barely just finished. But we couldn’t wait. With Talisa obsessed with ending you, and with you suddenly with Odelia, there was no time. Your presence endangers her.”
His astute gaze snapped to mine. “How did you find her?”
When I hesitated, he added, “I’ve been turning the matter over and over in my mind. But I see no way how you could have discovered Talisa was draining her very own sister of her power.”
I gasped.
“So you didn’t know?”
I shook my head, unsure I could say anything unless it was to curse the queen with every foul word I’d ever learned in Nightguard.
“I don’t suppose there’s any point to holding back the information now,” he said.
“Please tell me. I’ve wondered about my mother for as long as I can remember. Even when Zako told me she was dead, I … I missed her.”
Dashiell smiled absently, as if at a memory. “You would have loved her. She was truly magnificent. She would have made a formidable queen.” His smile soured, undoubtedly focused on who wore the crown intended for her.
“Tell me everything,” I said softly.
He leaned both hands back onto the foot of the bed and crossed his legs at the knee. “His Majesty was also formidable. Is formidable,” he corrected with a meaningful look at me I didn’t engage. “Oren was the strongest drake of his generation. He led the Leantos clan admirably before King Erasmus decided he was to marry Odelia. Together, Oren and Odelia would rule Embermere upon Erasmus’ retirement.”
I’d heard some of this before but didn’t dare interrupt. Better to learn a fact several times over than never at all.
“Erasmus only ever wanted sons. The Ethers granted him five daughters. But when Odelia came of age, he recognized that she would be a queen as great as any son could have been a king.
“The match was made, and Oren and Odelia were fortunate enough to fall in love. Do you know how rare that is? To love each other in a marriage arranged for political purposes? Practically unheard of. Oren and Odelia knew they’d been blessed with the fortune of dragons. They took nothing for granted.”
Dashiell’s stare emptied as he gazed at the flowers at my bedside. I wondered who had picked them. Had it been Edsel?
“Then what happened?” I eventually prompted.
He shook his head to clear it of whatever memory had captured him. “Tragedy. An absolute tragedy.” He frowned so deeply that lines bracketed his mouth. “Odelia grew sick. It was subtle at first, the changes in her. But before long it became obvious. Odelia was losing her mind. At first she just became forgetful. You’d tell her something and she’d insist you hadn’t the very next day. Then it became the next hour, the next minute. And the woman had been so sharp too.”
Again that deep frown, a sad shake of his head to the tinkling of mournful chimes. “We tried to hide it from Erasmus for as long as possible, but soon there was no hiding her descent into madness. The same as some of her ancestors. The family curse. An equally doomed and blessed bloodline.
“Her temperament also changed. She’d never been gentle. Oh no, not Odelia. Erasmus had raised her to be the son he wanted. No, the woman could have led armies to the very entrance to the Golden Forest of Faerie and probably succeeded.
“But even though she was strong, she wasn’t unkind. She respected honesty and integrity in her advisors, in her subjects. She was fierce, but she was fair.”
“Wow. Wonder what that’s like,” I muttered.
He snapped his stare to mine, accusation unfurling across his narrowing eyes.
“I meant the queen. Talisa. How different things would be if she were interested in the same virtues.”
His eyes relaxed. The sorrowful downturn of his lips returned. “Aye. Indeed. How different everything would be. How different my king would be… You know, he can’t look at you without remembering all he’s lost?”
So I’d overheard…
“You look so much like her. He sees her when he looks at you.”
My throat bobbed as I swallowed. “That’s not my fault,” I whispered when I wished I could growl my outrage at the injustice of my father’s reactions .
“No, it isn’t,” Dashiell conceded. “But it doesn’t change how he feels. He can’t help it.”
“Oh, but I’m supposed to control my emotions? I’m supposed to not inconvenience anyone because of his feelings ? I’m supposed to make do without a father or a mother because he’s mourning her? What about me ? Why don’t I get to mourn her? I never even got to know her. I should get to grieve for her more than anyone else.”
There was the righteous anger I’d been looking for. “I was sent away from my birthplace, practically exiled, forced to live as a slave among strangers, because ‘my father’ couldn’t deal with me. I was lied to about who I was my entire life, up until I was taken away by force, only to be hurt over and over again.”
“You were never a slave,” Dashiell said, as if that were the only issue that needed addressing. “That wasn’t the deal Oren made with Lohan.”
“Wait, what? Lohan? He’s Erasmus’ brother, right? What’s he got to do with anything?”
“It took Oren a long time to find him, but that’s where Lohan disappeared to. With the dragons.”
“What? How?”
“You should know all this, girl,” he snapped. “It’s basic history. Well, not the part where Lohan ended up. His fate was a mystery not even Erasmus knew.”
“I don’t know Embermere’s history because I was raised as a slave in Nightguard, remember? My entire lineage and origins were kept a secret from me. I mean, you are listening to me, right? ”
I was still no more decided than when I’d lived in Nightguard about whether or not I’d qualified as a slave, but Dashiell didn’t need to know that. Slave, servant—a person without free will to do as they wished—it was pretty much all the same thing.
Dashiell’s mouth and nose rose to meet each other as if he were smelling something rancid. “Lohan was the first-born son. He was always intended to wear the crown and take over for his mother, who was queen. He was to rule Embermere and continue the golden age of the Mirror World.”
“Let me guess,” I interjected. “Erasmus forced him away and took the throne, then killed all the dragons. No, wait. Erasmus probably killed his brother too.”
“Not at all. Erasmus adored Lohan. Or so the story goes. That was a bit before my time. Erasmus looked up to Lohan, admiring his big brother in every way. When Lohan became enamored with the dragons, so did Erasmus. They spent a great deal of time with the beasts. Lohan in particular was said to have a special bond with them. The dragons used to be practically worshipped in Embermere.
“But one day Lohan disappeared. Erasmus searched to the ends of the Mirror World looking for him. When he was never found, it was assumed he’d ridden off on a dragon, something that had never before been done. Dragons were never ridden, not by any fae ever. But Lohan had that special connection, and Erasmus believed it the only explanation. That he’d flown off on one, beyond the boundaries of our portal world … somehow.
“For days, months, and then years, Erasmus waited for Lohan to return. It took Erasmus a very long time to accept his brother was gone, but then his mother had Lohan deemed dead, and Erasmus suddenly found himself the new crown prince, when he’d never imagined he’d rule. That had always been Lohan’s destiny.”
My breaths grew short. “Erasmus punished the dragons for taking his brother from him,” I guessed.
Dashiell allowed his eyes to flutter closed for a moment. “He laid siege to the dragons we fae had been taught to hold sacred. Killed every single one he could find. Burned the eggs before they could hatch. Dragons had been a great part of our culture. And then, suddenly, they were gone. None left.”
“Except for Nightguard,” I breathed.
“Except for Nightguard. But Oren didn’t learn of its existence for a long time. Not until after you were born. That’s when he discovered that’s where Lohan had gone.
“Lohan was old by then. When he heard what his brother had done, it killed him. Broke his heart. Erasmus was already dead at that point, Talisa already in power.”
“I’ve never heard of Lohan. Zako never told me, but I guess that’s not a surprise. Everything was a lie with him.”
Dashiell sat up suddenly. “Zako was an honorable man who made a significant sacrifice in honor of his king. He was the best of us.”
“Did you know him?” There was something there, something potent, just beneath Dashiell’s words.
“Yes, I did, and I won’t stand by you speaking ill of him.”
I let his words hang in the air until I worried he’d stop telling the story. “Continue. Please.”
He scowled at me as if I were a rotten, spoiled child, then crossed his arms over his chest. After a glare of open disapproval, “You wouldn’t have heard mention of Lohan by that name. The prince heir changed it once he arrived in the Nightguard Mountains. Apparently, he went by the name of Fueridiah.”
I gasped. “I have heard of him. He was a legend. They say he could speak with the dragons in his mind.”
I suspected the dragons might have even given him his new name. After all, the sapphire dragon had been the one to tell me dragons were once known as fuerin . It wasn’t a stretch to guess they might have extended that name to the man who connected with them so deeply as to speak to them through his thoughts.
Just like I did .
“What? What is it?” Dashiell asked.
“Nothing,” I answered, a bit too quickly, too defensively.
“You’re hiding something.”
I snorted. “ I’m hiding something, he says. Do you have any concept of how many secrets have been kept from me? How many times I’ve been lied to? You still haven’t even told me where exactly we are. Or how I could have been born when my mother had lost her mind. Did Father have sex with her when she wasn’t capable of making decisions for herself?”
Dashiell’s one blue eye blazed as if a fire were actually blazing behind it. “My king would do no such thing. Never. And especially not to Odelia.”
“Then how did I come to be?”
“You’ll have to earn that answer.”
“Earn the answer of how my parents had me. Great. Sounds really just there, Dashiell . Until such time as you deem me worthy of understanding how my father could have gotten my mentally ill mother pregnant, I’ll go ahead and assume the worst of him, shall I?”
That blue eye flared. His jaw clenched so that the bone delineated its sharp outline. He breathed in, out, in and out again, all the while trying to scald me with his silently accusing glower.
“How did you find Odelia?” he asked.
“How did the king find her?” I countered. “He assumed she was dead for most of my life, I presume?”
Dashiell hesitated, but only for a moment. “Of course. Don’t you think if he’d known she was alive he would have done something to help her before now?”
“I don’t know. It’s not like he’s done a thing to help his daughter .”
“That’s different. ”
“How?”
“Because you aren’t her. You aren’t the woman he loves. Just a cruel reminder of what he once had.”
I shouldn’t have been surprised, truly I shouldn’t have. It’s what he’d been leading up to. He’d all but said this already in as many words. And yet—still—he might as well have poured salt over my open wounds.
I went totally still, so still that the man seemed to notice.
He opened his mouth, closed it. “I’m…” Closed it again. “Oren found Odelia by chance. Because he’s been trying to figure out how Talisa is so powerful for many years now. But you … how did you find her?”
I looked away, toward the curtains, wishing I could see out the windows. At least then I’d have some hints at where I found myself.
“I don’t owe you anything else,” I said. “At least not until I get answers of my own.”
The coverlet rustled as Dashiell stood and moved into my line of sight. I looked toward the opposite wall, mindlessly studying Edsel’s many healing accoutrements.
Dashiell sighed and— sliiide , sliiddde— drew open the curtains. Light streamed in but I didn’t yet look.
“Elowyn,” Dashiell said.
When I kept my stare fixed right where it was, on a jar labeled Powdered dusky cultivated lettuce in a tight scrawl I guessed was Edsel’s, he added, “Talisa’s been feeding off Odelia for decades.”
Even my bones seemed to go rigid at hearing my mother’s long-lasting torment put so bluntly .
“Talisa will soon notice we’ve moved her, if she hasn’t already. We can’t afford to have Talisa ever find Odelia again. So, I repeat myself, how did you find Odelia when it took my king twenty-two years to come upon her?”
My father was no ally. He’d proven that much over and again.
Dashiell was loyal only to him.
There was no way I’d tell either of them of the map branded across my skin that only Rush and I had ever seen.
If those glowing lines of meandering crimson had flared to life a second time across my skin when I was being attacked by all those monsters, I wouldn’t have noticed behind all the blood and startling brightness.
The map was my secret. And my mate’s secret.
Our one unanticipated chance at bringing down Queen Bitch Talisa. At changing the Mirror World into something bearable for everyone and every creature.
“Elowyn,” Dashiell called.
Had he ever bothered to address me by name before today? I couldn’t recall another instance.
“Talisa has Ivar out searching for you right now.”
The windows behind him opened up onto a bright blue sky with fluffy white clouds. It seemed an incongruous, idyllic backdrop for mention of someone as dark and ugly as the queen.
“Ivar has Azariah with him, and the pegicorn can sense magic others can’t. He’ll be able to find you … eventually. My king has shielded you from Azariah’s magic for now. But his protections won’t last. We need to be certain Azariah can’t find Odelia when he finds you.”
No if s. When s.
“So I’ll ask again,” Dashiell said. “How did you find yourself with Odelia, in the shack only Talisa knew about up until recently? Well, other than Ivar and Braque of course, but that goes without saying. They’d never betray Talisa, though I’ll never guess what she’s done to earn such undying loyalty.”
“What’s the king done to earn yours?”
He tipped his chin upward and stood straight, clasping his hands behind his back. “Everything.”
He waited for me to step up and save royals who’d never done a damn thing to save me—unless it was a coincidental byproduct of saving themselves.
Eventually, I sighed. No matter what, despite everything that had happened, I wouldn’t be the one responsible for the queen getting her nasty-ass hands on my defenseless mother.
“It was during the first event of the Nuptialis Probatio. I went through one of the doors the queen had set up for the challenge. Monsters attacked me from everywhere. I was dying.”
Dashiell nodded as if he already knew all this and didn’t care to hear the information repeated. The man, apparently, wasn’t much bothered by such common decency as sympathy.
Get on with it , his eager eyes said. Get to the relevant part .
“Well, I basically just … pressed my hand to my chest and wished myself away from there.”
Again with the sour-smell scrunch of his nose. “You wished yourself away.”
“Kind of. I didn’t actually wish. I don’t think I believe in wishes coming true. I just … I dunno. I needed to get out of there or I was gonna die. And next thing I knew, I was here. Or, there, anyhow. In the same place as my mother.”
“How very peculiar,” said Dashiell. “I must tell His Majesty.”
“What about the rest of the story? How I came to be?” I asked in what sounded to my own ears a bit too much like panic. My only chance at answers.
But Dashiell was already stalking across the room. “Your questions can wait.”
Without so much as a single assurance, he stalked through the same door Edsel had used and closed it behind him.
“Of course my questions can wait,” I muttered miserably to the open room, empty save for myself. Improved though I was, I wasn’t yet ready to attempt getting out of bed. I doubted my body would hold me upright with how weak I still felt.
“Couldn’t wait a few more minutes?” I asked the spot where Dashiell had stood next to the windows. “How long could it have possibly taken to tell me how my father knocked up my mother? Not long, I’d bet…”
“What a rotten, dirty scoundrel,” a tiny voice piped up .
I yelped and searched the room for its source so fervently I got dizzy. When I recovered, I looked again—more gingerly this time. Still, I spotted no one.
Speaking to someone invisible was one of the least odd occurrences since my initial arrival in Embermere. “Whom do you mean is the scoundrel? Dashiell or my father?” I offered an amiable, inviting chuckle. “Since the qualification readily applies to both of them.”
But before my invisible roommate revealed themselves, the door snicked open … and I was left with far too many questions unanswered.