Chapter Seven #5
“I think you know there’s only one person who can answer that.”
I balled and unballed my fist, bursting with the urge to hunt him down and get that answer. Tomorrow was my last day in Lumenfell. I either found him before I left, or I came back for him after rescuing my family. Either way, this was another promise this liar had no intention of breaking.
“Let’s go,” I finally said, brushing past her. “You may not know where he is, doesn’t mean no one else does. Shadowsoul ordered Aeris to bring him to the kitchens. We’ll start there.”
Eadaoin didn’t fight me. Our tour continued on to the kitchens, which was filled with more rutting couples, threesomes, foursomes, and fivesomes.
I tried asking a few of them questions about the boy, but got the hint and scurried away when a woman with a lot of teeth, a lot of claws, and a lot of fur snapped at me.
Eadaoin clapped me on the shoulder. “Are you sure you aren’t in need of my sexual services, Lady Ana? It seems our lord has left you to your own pleasures tonight, and you are very tense.” She held out her arms. “This is why I’m here. To make sure your every need is catered to always.”
I studied her, cutting the instant rejection off on my tongue. “Eadaoin, what do you think of fae?”
“Pardon?”
“Fae like me,” I said. “Unchanged fae. Do you think me stunted? Different? Wrong?”
Discomfort etched into her face. “Well... yes,” she replied, surprising me. “How can you not be, my queen? Your magic was bound and stolen from you, and there’s a slow and torturous death awaiting you because of it. Of course you’re wrong.” She gently touched my elbow. “Don’t you think so as well?”
My lips parted, but nothing came out. Of all the reasons why I thought they called us stunted, that wasn’t on the list. It wasn’t all of us they were speaking of. It was just the faewomen. It was just me.
“Why aren’t women bound here?” I heard myself ask. “Not that you should be. I guess I don’t understand how Shadowsoul can bestow kindness with one hand, and pain with the other. Which man is the true one?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed, voice soft.
“Is it kindness, or is it the nature of what we are now? In nature, the males attract the females. They dance, flaunt, gift, and woo them for the mere chance of mating, and when they do mate, they don’t betray their partner for petty jealousies and insecure needs for control.
“Any man who stole my magic from me would lose out on every potential mate, seconds before he lost his throat.”
The corner of my mouth curved up in a smile. I already pitied the man who tried to take a single thing from Eadaoin. Even if it was just the bread roll off her plate.
“It is a long, lonely, bitter life to be cut off from love, sex, friends, companionship, family. All those things would be lost if we became a society like yours.” She squeezed my arm. “All those things are lost in your society.”
I was quiet for a spell. “I agree with you completely, Eadaoin. It just amazes me... that Alisdair does too.”
Thump.
I spun around, brows crumpling.
Thump.
“What was that?”
“What?” Eadaoin asked.
“Didn’t you hear that?” I took a step. “It sounded like a thump or a thud or something.”
“I’ve been hearing lots of thumps and thuds on the other side of these doors.”
I tipped my head. “Very true.” Crossing to a window, I gazed out over the ice and snow.
“Anyway, back to what you were saying. Does that mean you don’t want the curse on Lumenfell to be broken?
” I said it out loud, and was thankful I did.
As long as I could speak of the beast curse, it hadn’t taken me.
“You don’t want to rejoin the Elvan nation, and be a summer fae again? ”
She blew out a breath. “If it means having my magic bound, my title stripped, and my future ripped away so that I can become a forced sexual companion—fuck no.”
I snorted a laugh.
“But.”
“But?” I asked.
“But... if we could keep our land and our freedom, then I think I would like”—she touched her face—“to be beautiful again.”
“Oh, Eadaoin, you are beautiful.”
She flushed red under her fur. “Thank you, Lady Ana.”
A wandering hand grasped my backside.
“Not that beautiful!” I swatted her away. “Behave yourself, you saucy minx.”
She burst out giggling, which set me off too.
We continued our walk, lapsing into conversation like old friends. Eadaoin told me of her childhood growing up in Lumenfell. Or I should say, what became of her childhood after the village that used to exist a few miles away was consumed by the curse.
I told her of the childhood that wasn’t mine—the words falling easily without me having to strain to recall. It was getting easier and easier for me to access Emiana’s memories. What did that mean for me? When would it get harder for me to access my own? And would I even realize when it did?
“Oh,” Eadaoin cried out, running ahead in the sandstone hallway. “I can’t forget. This is the commander’s barracks. If you’re ever searching for Foalan, you’ll find him here or in the training yard.” She tapped her ear. “Although, he is a wolf, so yell loud enough, and he’ll find you.”
“Good to know, thank you.”
Eadaoin tipped her head. “He’s in right now. Let’s say hello.”
“Oh, no, we can do that some other—”
She threw open the door, revealing the activities on the other side before I had a chance to close my eyes. I guessed the activities on the other side, and I still wasn’t prepared.
Foalan was lashed to the bed with so many ropes, I didn’t know where he ended and the hemp began. Two naked bird faeriken stood over his ass, whipping it with riding crops.
Foalan saw me and smiled through the gag. “Hmm. Hmh phff nnm—”
“Lovely to see you too, Foalan,” I squeaked, slamming the door shut.
The noise brought a head out of his room, surveying the hall for the source. I recognized him only a second after Eadaoin.
She pushed out her chest, whiskers twitching and a low, soft purr rumbling out of her throat. The guard who had his way with her in the hall the other day gave her the same look back.
I knew where this was going.
“Eadaoin, I can take it from here. Consider yourself off duty,” I said. “Go enjoy the rest of your night.”
She bit her lip, winking at guard man. “Are you sure, my queen?”
“Yes, I’m—”
She took off running, leaving me and my goodbye in the dust.
Leaving everyone to their night, I crossed to a window, gazing out over a snow-covered courtyard.
Frozen raindrops fell from the sky, casting a hazy curtain over the rolling black mountains.
There was a peace and quiet in Lumenfell that could never be achieved in Lyrica.
Something about this place—this land the stars forgot—made me feel that if I stopped and listened closely, I could hear Meya whisper her secrets on the wind.
I breathed deeply, inhaling the staunch, unforgiving chill into my lungs. Even the air fought back in Lumenfell. A kingdom where every creature demands to be free, even if it means growing wings and soaring through the trees.
Lumenfell was beautiful. I’d never utter such a truth outside of my mind, but it was truth all the same. It was wild and free and ruthless. It was the jungles and forests our race was born in. The life we abandoned for riches and society. Yes, it’s beautiful—
“But it’s not home,” I whispered. “I am going home tomorrow night, but not to the same life. And not alone. Where are you, little boy? This is one carriage ride we can’t afford to miss.”
I lit on something through the curtain of white. “Is that...?”
A glass dome stuck to the end of the east wing. I assumed it was the east wing because Eadaoin started our tour in the west wing, and we didn’t happen upon any room that doubled as a conservatory, sunroom, or greenhouse.
If the little fox boy was still in the castle, then searching the east wing until it turned me out into the conservatory was my only chance of finding him.
I continued on by myself, making my way out of the soldiers’ barracks. On my way, I lifted diamond necklaces off their displays, gold rings out of their cases, and a silver dagger with a pearl inlay hilt off its pedestal, and tucked it away inside my bottomless pockets.
Now I understand why princesses wore all those heavy skirts and cumbersome gowns. To hide all the weapons.
“Not just the bleeding kind.” I grinned, twirling an emerald-and-gold tiara around my fingertip.
I was going back, packing up my family, and we were leaving.
Leaving poverty, leaving Gutter Galley, leaving Kirwan, and leaving Lyrica.
Maps upon maps collected dust in that war room, charting out the many lands where we’d be free to live in peace, or with plenty of coin to buy peace, if we were so inclined.
Leave it to the real Princess Emiana to determine if there was goodness beneath Alisdair’s brutality. Let her repair the cease fire she destroyed. Lumenfell was an interesting place with many mysteries, but only one was mine to solve. The rest was her fucking problem.
I wandered the halls, sticking my head in doors, calling for little fox boys, and stealing everything that fit in my pockets.
The little boy couldn’t come with me to a land where he’d be jailed on sight as a faeriken spy, but half of these jewels would give him a new life in one of the outer-lying towns of Wind and Wild.
I was suddenly thankful Alisdair saw fit to show me where they all were.
If there’s time, I’ll drop him off on my way out of this frozen enigma. If there isn’t time, it will take longer, but I will see to it that he gets somewhere safe.
I paused beneath a ceiling-high window, and looked upon the soldiers’ barracks—stark and staring across the way. I was heading in the right direction and searching every room along the way. No sign of him. Did this castle have a dungeon? Entirely possible considering the man I was dealing with.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.