15. The Larger the Greatsword, the Smaller the… #2
“I cannot believe you would say that,” Torren said, finally taking another step.
“Was I supposed to inflate your ego?”
“No!” Torren insisted, but felt compelled to explain his use of a great sword nonetheless. “It’s just what feels natural. I’m not trying to insinuate anything with the size of my sword.”
“If you say so, Prince,” Cypress said as she mounted the sooty buckskin mare.
“Is this what all women think like?”
“What, that menfolk often have a sense of grandeur about them and think that if they swing a big enough sword, women will think they have a big cock between their legs too?” Cypress huffed an unamused laugh.
“Please. The bigger the ego, well,” She said, gazing down to the waist of his pants. “Sorry about your luck.”
A very undignified squawk left Torren’s throat as he realized what she was saying. “I’ll have you know,”
“I really don’t feel the need to know anything, Princeling. Mount your horse,” She said, pointing with her chin, leaning on the pommel of the saddle.
Torren sent the Lass another glare, took a few measured breaths to master his irritation, and mounted. “This way, Lass,” He said through gritted teeth, directing his horse down the path, the two horses once again connected by a length of rope.
“Is there anything I should know about before we meet more of your people?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know, Torren. I’m asking.”
“No harm will come to you while you are my guest, Cypress,” Torren retorted, emphasizing the use of her name, as she had.
“That’s no answer.”
Torren shrugged. “Does it matter?”
She sighed in resignation, though Torren could feel the anger seeping from her like a physical thing.
Slowly, the deep forest of the Wylds swallowed them once more, but the path kept opening up before him like a blooming flower. Every step he took was propelling him toward his eventual goal– killing Caelith and restoring Faerie to what it once was.
“Did you ever enjoy life at the Keep?” Cypress asked a while later when they’d stopped to give the horses a quick rest in a Faerie circle that a small stream of spring water ran through.
Torren shrugged. “I guess, but it was fairly boring.”
She rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Figures.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Of course, the pampered Prince would find his incredibly privileged life boring.”
“You’re putting words in my mouth, Lass.
I am very aware of the privilege I hold.
Anyone else wandering into the Keep after trashing the Prince’s tent would have been killed on the spot, and you know it.
As it is, I’m lucky Caelith didn’t decide to do away with me there and be done with it.
The Mother knows he’s thought about it.”
“Meaning?”
Torren sighed. “My mother’s carriage didn’t just happen to be overtaken by bandits, Lass. Those who knew her in the Human Lands adored her, and she was Royalty within the Wylds. Faerie didn’t kill Rosalind and attempt to erase her from history. No, that was all Caelith.”
“You can’t be serious,” Cypress said while bent over the creek to fill her waterskin.
“Oh, I am Lass, and all of Faerie thinks so too,” Torren said. Then, he ripped a bit of the jagged edge of a blanket to tie around his brow to absorb some of the sweat clinging to his skin. “Are you ready to keep moving?”
Cypress wordlessly mounted her horse and peered down at him with her mismatched gaze. “What do your suspicions about your mother's demise have to do with how another of the Fair Folk would be treated at the castle? Why do you believe us to be so callous, so ready to kill the Fair Folk?”
Torren scoffed. “Please, Lass. I know you’re smarter than this. What do you think the raiders, my mother’s death, and the fact that Caelith took a human wife after my mother, defying decades of tradition between our people, have in common?”
A muscle in Cypress’s jaw clenched before she said, “You think Caelith is behind it all, don’t you?”
“I’ve never pretended otherwise, Lass,” Torren replied and mounted his horse as well.
“What makes you so sure?”
Torren sighed, debating on how to answer.
“Caelith is human. Unlike his ancestors, who all intermingled with Faerie in order to keep the ties between our people strong, Caelith’s father did not.
He was born to a human woman in the castle.
I only found out recently myself. Things were always strained between him and my mother.
They never saw eye to eye, and he was quite cruel to her.
I have many memories of Caelith standing over my mother, threatening to have her killed.
We were run off the road by the guards who once stood outside our rooms.”
“That doesn’t mean the crown is behind the raids on villages, though-” Cypress began, but Torren cut her off with a wave of his hand, though he was glad she hadn’t tried to defend the people who’d attacked him and his mother.
“Save it, Lass. I know the truth.” Nothing would sway Torren from his mission, his destiny now.
“What happened to you after…” she trailed off, apparently unsure how to mention his mother’s death.
Torren remembered following the path of moonbeam through the night until he found the Wylds. His mother’s ring was entirely unique, and his only reminder that she had existed, once. He didn’t mention that, though. “I followed the Rings until eventually I found my grandparents at A’aravos Paravale.”
“Do you think Cade knows what happened to your mother?”
“That she’s dead? Yes, I’m sure he is aware, Lass.”
Cypress smacked his arm. “No! I mean, that your father had her killed?”
Torren shrugged. “I’ve never thought about it.”
“Liar.”
“Can’t lie, remember Lass?” Torren gave her a saccharine grin. “But, truly. I haven’t given thought to whether Cade knows how my mother met her untimely end. I doubt it, in any case. Cade never cared for her much, even as a small child.”
“Were you two… friends?”
“I suppose. As much as brothers can be when the King showed only one his favor. Are we done with the interrogation and dissection of my childhood, now?”
“One more,” Cypress pressed, making Torren huff a laugh.
“Fine, one. And then, I get to crack open that pretty skull of yours, Lass, and see what you’re made of.”
Cypress merely rolled her mismatched eyes at him with an infinitesimal shake of her head, dark hair falling around her face. “Do you have powers?”
“Like what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Just powers. I’ve heard so many stories of abilities the Fair Folk hold. Do you have any?”
“Of sorts. I’ll never get lost.”
“That doesn’t sound like any of the abilities I’ve heard stories of.”
Torren shrugged. “It comes in handy for a few things, among them never getting lost.”
“And I don’t suppose you’ll tell me those things, will you?”
“Not a chance, Lass.”
“Were you and Cade close?”
“That’s more than one question, Lass.”
“Answer it anyway.”
Torren shook his head, a smile threatening to break his composure. “When we would play games, Cade would often get upset that I had won and blamed the Pixie blood in me.”
“He still does not like to lose, in any capacity.”
Torren snorted. “That doesn’t surprise me.”
“Sometimes I think Queen Henrietta chose me from the orphanage because I wouldn’t just let him win.”
“You think she was trying to give him a challenge?”
“Maybe. Whenever he sparred with any of the other children, he always won and was horrible about it.”
“From what I remember of Henrietta, it wouldn’t surprise me. She was kind… I think,” Torren shrugged.