Chapter Thirteen #4
I sat back, taking it in. “Are you telling me that you care for these children? And the fox boy?” I cried. “After all that bullpie about our castle not being an orphanage? Why would you lie to me?”
“I did what I must. That morning in the throne room, I was testing you.”
“Testing me?!”
Alisdair gave me the same hard look. “Yes. I told you I had spy reports on you. They all said you were harsh, prejudiced, and unforgiving. You cared not for anyone below your station. Worse, you treat them like bullpie stuck to your slippers.
“I won’t entrust my people to someone who sees a hungry, desperate child, and pulls out a sword to chop off their hand.”
I sputtered. “But that was your idea! I chose mercy from the start. You were the one spouting mad, crazed nonsense.”
“And you didn’t back down,” he shot back. “You physically stood between me and Foalan to protect a boy you didn’t know. You even kept searching for him to make certain he was safe.
“I won’t lie, you quite endeared yourself to me through those actions. I bedded you twice as hard that night in reward.”
I fell back, shaking my head. “You’re unbelievable. Only you could lie and manipulate me, and then act as though it was a reasonable thing to do.”
“It was reasonable. Talk is pointless. Action is all,” he said. “To know the true you, I had to see what you do, not bother about what you or others say.”
Rubbing my temples, I let it go. Arguing with Alisdair on if he was right or wrong would go nowhere, especially since I understood his reasoning.
The true Emiana would’ve been a terrible ruler of faeriken.
If she’d been put through that test, she’d have sharpened the sword herself.
She cared not a whit about the troubles of a hungry little orphaned child.
“Why do this, though? Why keep them hidden away and separate?”
“It’s for their sake,” he said, gesturing with his chin. “You know how our people behave when the day’s work is done. That’s not for a child’s eyes.”
I did think of the many orgies taking place everywhere and every night. “That cannot be argued with,” I muttered. Finally, I relaxed—gazing upon the happy children with a smile. “How did they come to be here?”
Alisdair relaxed too. The smile he gave me did funny things to my stomach.
“The usual unfortunate ways. Either their parents passed away or abandoned them. But they aren’t commonly dragged in by irate jam-sellers.
My soldiers know to bring every lost child they come across here.
” He nodded firmly. “Where they can be safe and cared for.”
“But, Alisdair, I don’t understand. Why in the name of Meya did you tell me I should stop looking for the boy, because if I discovered what you did to him, it would forever change my opinion of you?”
He trapped my gaze, a smirk stretching his lips. “Well... hasn’t it?”
I swallowed hard, pulse picking up. By the All Mother, yes.
My opinion had changed. That morning, when Alisdair sentenced that boy to slavery, I thought him the lowest form of slithering worm.
Even as we got to know each other, and our nighttime activities became more fun and frequent, what he’d done to that fox boy was always at the back of my mind—reminding me that I couldn’t fall in love with him.
Because Shadowsoul was a monster.
But looking at him then, I was thinking other things. About how sweet he would have been to Meli when she was little. About how sweet he would be to our children from the moment they were born.
Alisdair wasn’t the kind of beast who abandons. He was the one who stayed, who protected, who cared when everyone else forgot to.
He was the beast I loved.
I stood up. “Well, well, well,” I sang. “This looks like a fun game, but it’s missing something.”
The fox boy skidded to a stop. “What?”
“A tickle monster!” Roaring, I chased the kids shrieking around the courtyard—tickling breathless whoever I caught.
Everyone laughed, but no one as loud as Alisdair.
THAT NIGHT, WE WERE back in our bedroom, and I was finally tending to his bandages.
“Although, it doesn’t look like I need to,” I said, examining the closed and healing scars. “You’re healing better without my fussing.”
“Don’t say that.” Alisdair sat up in bed, reclining against the pillows while I unwrapped each bandage; checked his healing, pink scars; and rewrapped the wounds that needed more time.
“Your fussing brought me back. I heard you when I was in the Meadows.
Something or someone wanted me to stay, but you wanted me here.
“So I came back.”
I ducked my head, cheeks flaming. I never knew what to say when he spoke to me this way. Nothing had changed on that score.
I cleared my throat. “The Meadow, huh? I’m surprised Meya let you anywhere near the place.” Smiling, I poked his side to let him know I was kidding. “Figured it would’ve been the Burning Plains for you.”
Alisdair chuckled. “I’m not a monster, little bird. I only look like one. Meya knows that better than anyone.”
I know it too, Alisdair.
“Her name was Constance.” Alisdair gazed at the horizon that was no longer there—because of the walls and the darkness.
“It’s rare for humans to be born with magic.
Exceedingly rare, but not impossible. When they are, the women always discover their power.
It’s in them. A part of them. It can’t be denied.
“Whereas for the human men, when they’re born with the power to draw magic out of their environment, they more often than not never know. Why would they? They don’t have crystals, runic knowledge, or any of the tools needed to access their power. They don’t even know they should.
“That’s why when magic was discovered, and the humans did what humans have always done to the different, they only came for the women.”
My quick, working fingers slowed. “Came for them? Do you mean they...?”
“They hunted them down and killed them.”
I hissed. Mama said our land was protected by magic—concealing us from human eyes, weapons, technology, and any method they might use to find Elva.
But she always said that if these protections somehow failed and I ever crossed paths with one, I had to run.
Run so hard and fast, I didn’t stop until there was half a world between us.
“Among the different, Constance was even rarer than rare,” Alisdair said. “She was born with incredible power. More than anyone I’ve ever known. More than Gisela Raekin. More than me.”
My brows blew. Someone more powerful than the most powerful man walking the earth? I couldn’t conceive of that.
“She was blessed, if not for the fact she was born in the wrong time and the wrong place.”
“They tried to kill her.”
“They did kill her,” he dropped. “They burned her at the stake. Her flesh bubbled off her bones while they laughed, cheered, and toasted their good works.”
“Meya, take it! That’s barbaric.” I shook my head. “That poor woman.”
“Don’t feel sympathy for her just yet,” he gritted, wiping away my mask of sorrow.
“You see, people don’t understand curses.
Not even the fae. We study them, we use them, we live under them, but we don’t know how they’re born, or why.
And fewer know that a curse doesn’t need incantations, potions, or even intent to be born.
All it needs is the hatred in one’s heart to take root. ”
Understanding dawned. “When they burned her. She cursed them.”
“She didn’t know that was what she was doing when she screamed and raged at them, swearing revenge.
But with all of that raw, bottomless power swirling within her, it responded,” he said.
“When the dawn broke and the fire was nothing but smoking cinders, Constance stepped off her funeral pyre, and left behind a sea of corpses.”
“Her murderers? They died and she lived? How?”
“Not even I fully understand her curse. Near as I could figure, whatever someone tries to do to her, it’s turned around and done to them.
Stab her and your chest splits open instead.
Burn her and your skin chars and bubbles.
Slap her and the pain explodes in your cheek.
Kill her... and you die. Die in the same method and manner you chose for her. And it didn’t end there.”
“It didn’t? But what more could the curse do?”
“After her murderers died, they weren’t allowed the peace of waking up in the Meadow.
It’s how she healed and survived their attacks.
In that moment, she’d steal and eat their souls.
The soul became pure, raw, magical power for her—making her stronger.
While the would-be assassin became nothing more than an empty husk. ”
I whistled. “Wow. That’s awful—for her attackers. It doesn’t sound like a curse for her.”
“It was, Ana. As you know, Meya demands balance. She will settle for nothing less than order and harmony in nature, and because of what Constance made of herself—an immortal, all-powerful, souleater—Meya birthed the means to destroy her.”
“What was it?”
“Fire.” Our own fire seemed to crackle louder, dancing in his eyes.
“Has to be fire from a burning oak, the same wood her stake was made from, but oak is easy enough to acquire. Everywhere she went, she was hunted down, chased, and besieged by torch-carrying mobs. She could stop the people, but Meya wouldn’t let her magic put out the fire when it started. ”
I thought of Alisdair ordering his servants to destroy the purple flowers instead of doing it himself. The All Mother was exacting in her rules.
“That’s why the night she and her lover woke to a room on fire, she couldn’t save him. She couldn’t stop it.”
“But she was so powerful,” I cried. “Her pursuers were only human. Couldn’t she hide?”