2. Elim
The dark was always beautiful, but less so when it painted the walls of my cell. I wrinkled my nose at the damp grey stone of my largely-underground cell, lit by a few wan strands of the moonlight struggling through the window. Iron-barred, of course, because my uncle was no fool. Soon enough harsh sunlight would be pouring through those columns of vile metal, heralding the execution that would remove his last obstacle to the throne: me.
I growled with frustration, shoving my hands through my hair: shamefully close-cropped now, my ceremonial braid lopped off in the pre-death ritual. That was the moment it’d sunk in that I was in real trouble: Vanor had sneered and dangled my braid like a prized mud-fish after his shortsword made the cut, taking it for a trophy. Boot-licking guttersnipes, he and Jerid both, so eager to throw down their loyalty to put their father on the throne in place of my own.
The Unseelie court was rougher than that of our sun-soaked highborne cousins, as we had the decency to be upfront with our backstabbing. That, more than anything, was what troubled me about all this—the duplicitous scheming instead of a proper open contest for authority. Disrespectful, honestly. Sinking onto the worn wooden bench, I sighed as my feathery black hair danced around my palms and sharp black talons, tickling against the points of my ears as I glanced out at the bars again. My entire plan of escape had relied on those bars being anything but iron, and hopelessness roosted like a raven in my chest.
The sound of a stray pebble careening down the stairs beyond the barred gate stirred me from thoughts of my imminent demise. A soft sob preceded the slender form of Glade, my fallen brother’s child, as she rushed down the steps, eyes going wide as she spotted me. “Uncle Elim! Uncle-oh!No! They’ve cut you!”
I ruffled my short hair and managed an uncaring shrug, not wishing to alarm her further. I had a deep and abiding tenderness for my little niece, and had watched out for her since her father Perikar had been struck down in battle alongside our cousins, a history I now heavily doubted given my current predicament. The little spore was, through no fault of her own, half-highborne, a product of my brother’s peculiar tastes in women. A mop of golden curls made Glade a pariah among the dark-haired Unseelie, but Perikar and I had loved her all the same. My fondness at seeing her one last time before my execution eroded as I realized what she was wearing. The lacy cover of a mushroom veil was pinned askew on her fair brow, likely dislodged on her barefoot sprint here.
I stood and stepped close to the barred front of my cell, beckoning her closer. “Don’t fret, I’m not hurt. Little spore, why in the seven soils are you wearing a veil? Are you playing a make-believe game with the others?” Even as I asked, my stomach sank like a cold stone: she wouldn’t be crying if she’d been playing, nor would she seem so frantic to find me.
“Oh Uncle Elim! Great Uncle Gretvir says I must marry him! Jerid came and took me from the tree, I screamed and screamed and he hurt my arm dragging me to the Shadow Court. All these ladies held me down while they tried to braid moss in my hair and they tied the veil on b-but I got away and ran.They said you’d been brought here but oh the stars your hair Uncle Elim!” A fresh wave of sobs wracked her thin form, clad only in a thin linen shift, and she looked at me with such grief and misery my heart panged. Hair held a great deal of societal importance, both here in the Unseelie realm and in Glade’s mother’s lands, and my niece had never seen a shorn fae before. Her distress at my appearance, however, was overtaken by a rising rage at the news she’d delivered.
Yes, I’d expected Gretvir to do some heinous things after wresting the throne from me, but Glade was a child. Perikar would have had our Uncle’s head for even suggesting such a foul thing as this union, but now that my brother nourished the soil, the duty fell to me, for all the good that did. I carefully slid a hand between the bars to stroke Glade’s downturned head, swallowing a hiss as a careless movement of my wrist brushed the unforgiving iron. “Little spore, listen to me. You will not be wed to Gretvir, I will not allow it. If you marry, you will marry when you’ve grown, and for love, not duty. I need you to be brave now, and do as I say. Can you do that?” A hasty plan to keep her safe, at least, began to form.
Glade tipped her head up and sniffled loudly, big blue eyes sparkling with unshed tears. Big words, Elim. How in the deepsoil do you intend to protect her once you’re dead? I shook off the snide voice of doom and set my jaw, doing my best to look regal and strong. “Glade, you must hurry to your mother’s lands. Peri-” I allowed myself a moment of grief as it welled up in my throat, thinking of the day we surrendered my brother back to the soil. “Your father’s issue, the things we laid with him to rest, I need you to be a brave girl and go to his tomb, take those for yourself—the sword, the cloak. Rest there with his memory, and in the morning get to your mother.”
Glade had already begun to shake her head in protest. While he lived, Perikar’s wounded heart had villainized his highborne lover, the one that had left their daughter in a basket at the edge of our woods, alongside a folded letter as if she was a market delivery. The highborne are cruel and dangerous, he counseled our little halfling as she grew, and never to be trusted with one’s heart. My brother’s ego had done his daughter a disservice, but any hopes I had to undo that over time had just been swallowed whole by unexpected mutiny.
“Listen to me, Glade. You must. You must be my brave girl, or I-” No, she didn’t need that weight on her small shoulders. Let her put all her thoughts to speed and safety, not her soon-to-be former uncle in agony. “You simply must. The sooner you get to your mother and the Highborne, the sooner I can join you and we can plot to usurp that awful Gretvir, right?”
Glade shivered and hugged herself, eyes still uncertain but more determined than they’d been moments ago. I only hoped she’d survive the uncertain journey; her mother’s people were not built for the damp, and even Perikar’s blood in her veins only offered so much protection against the chill. As I thought about the long, difficult journey ahead of her, I was grateful my brother’s burial ceremony had been sparsely attended; neither my Uncle or cousins knew where he lay, or what we’d tucked into his tomb for safekeeping.
I closed my eyes and sent up a silent prayer to the night that the Highborne wouldn’t turn my little spore away at the gate. Still, even living wild in the forests would be a better life than becoming a child-bride to my traitorous wretch of an uncle. I hoped with my last shred of faith that Gretvir only intended a political alliance, but faith wouldn’t keep my niece safe. I would.
I crouched, getting myself eye-level with Glade so she understood my urgency. “Hurry, little spore, go quickly. Know that I love you, and I’ll pray the seven soils keep you hidden. Find your mother, tell her all that’s happened here, and she might have some allies in the High Court willing to help.”
Glade sniffled loudly, hugging herself and biting at her bottom lip before hesitantly nodding. Her foot had barely touched the bottom step before she spun and rushed back to me, reaching under the neck of her dress. “Here. Here, Uncle Elim. I’ll tell them to save you, I’ll tell them to look for this. I ran away right after they put it on.” With a sharp jerk of her hand and a whisper of metal, I looked down to find my freedom in my niece’s small palm: a shard-of-night, glowing a deep blue amid a pooled silver chain.
I stared at the pendant as she carefully tipped it into my palm as if it was an ordinary crystal, and not one of only two in the entire kingdom. One of the literal keys to the throne, no Fae could command our realm without the pair in hand; one was typically given to each of two monarchs as a defense against the very treachery that had imprisoned me. It was also ritualistically worn as part of the marriage ceremony, but they clearly hadn’t planned for my niece’s speed and bravery. I gave her a fond smile, clouds unfurling from the moon of my heart.
I slid the silver chain over my head, the links trickling against the back of my neck as they settled against my skin—too quickly, I thought sadly, mourning the loss of my braid once more. A distant rustle and soft snort of a horse sounded high above, my uncovered ears clocking the noise before Glade. “Thank you, little spore. Now go! As fast as you can, faster than the night-hare that raced the dawn. Someone’s coming.”
Her hand shoved fearlessly between the bars, squeezing my fingertips before she slid it back out again, thankfully missing contact with any of the metal. “I’ll save you, Uncle Elim. You’ll see. I’ll be so fast!”
I smiled for her, even though worry slammed my heart inside my chest. I shooed her away gently and she took the steps two at a time, as fast as she’d promised, back up the twist of stairs. I held my breath with anxious hope, and long moments of silence told me she’d likely escaped notice. Soon after, the sounds of several riders grew closer, a jangle of bridles indicating the steeds were being tied up near the entrance to my prison. I hastily draped the necklace chain beneath the collar of my black tunic, sliding the softly-glowing pendant around between my shoulder blades and out of sight.
As heavy boots made their way down the stairs, I fell to my knees on the packed clay floor of my cell, facing the bars and repeating the final lines of what would have been a lengthy traditional prayer, eyes squeezed closed until an unfortunately-familiar voice rang off the walls of my cell.
“Get up, you spineless worm! Where is she?” Vanor growled, trying as usual to puff himself up and negate the glaring height difference between himself and his taller brother.
I made a show of getting up slowly, careful to keep the pendant at my back and out of sight. Gretvir and his kin had only come to power by his marriage to my Aunt, gone many years now from a fall from the Howling Cliffs, a fall I was beginning to doubt had actually been an accident. An idea had formed while I stalled: I only needed a little misdirection, some time to keep Glade safe and escape my cell.
“The child? She’s apparently run off to the Howling Cliffs to join your late mother. Seems your family’s brides all find impalement on the mountain’s crags preferable to yours.” The jab landed exactly where I’d hoped, right in the center of Jerid’s infamously fragile pride.
He snarled, shoving past Vanor, lurching forward, and forgetting the conditions of my confinement in the process. I bit back a pleased smile as he banged a palm against the iron bars to intimidate me, yanking it away with a hiss of pain as the metal burned.
An amused snort quickly disguised as a cough sounded behind them, forcing him to spin around to glare at the two horsemen that had accompanied them down here. “Well? You heard him—go! Get mounted up and get out there! Drag that little halfling whelp back for her wedding night!”
His guards clambered hastily up the stairs as he growled the orders, the stamp of hooves overhead heralding their swift departure in the wrong direction, blessedly far from my niece’s destination. Jerid’s cold gaze snapped back to me with a cruel smile once they were clear of the tower. “I’ll gladly assist the girl with a stumble afterwards. I wonder if she’ll scream as sweetly as our mother did.”
Cold dread poured through me at his nonchalant confession as Vanor slung an arm around his brother’s shoulder, echoing his merciless expression with a smirk. “And when the dawn breaks like her pretty little spine, we’ll come back to arrange a meeting between you and your little niece, followed by a celebration worthy of the Bright Court as our father takes the throne at last. Sleep well, cousin.”
Jerid chuckled, thumping his brother on the back as they took the stairs, leaving me once again with only moonlight for company.
Moonlight and one important stroke of luck, that was.
I pulled the shard-of-night back over my shoulder, admiring the tiny flecks of glowing brilliance in the small black crystal as I eyed the point. My eyes darted around my cell, settling on a crumbling bit of mortar beneath the beam of moonlight on the wall. Slipping the chain from around my neck, I got to work changing my destiny.