13. Mel
Once, when I was all of seventeen, a group of friends had gotten a hold of a bottle of peppermint schnapps from someone’s parent’s stash. We went to the playground of the town’s abandoned middle school, passing around that vile bottle and taking shots like we had any idea what the fuck we were doing. Eager to prove myself, I’d taken more than a few generous slugs of the cloying liquor and, at the height of my drunkenness, decided going down the twisty slide upside down was the coolest thing ever.
The nausea and vertigo from that alcohol-drenched core memory didn’t hold a candle to whatever the fuck was going on right now. When I hit something that felt like the ground long after I expected to land, I promptly rolled to my side and threw up half of the damned latte that had gotten me into this mess in the first place.
Spitting irritably before taking stock of my surroundings, my pounding head was yanked sharply up via a merciless grasp of my hair, which I swatted at ineffectively. “Ow! Fuck! Let go!”
“Put her in with the whelp. They’ll all die together, if things work out.” I was shoved into the chest of some man in leather armor, looking up to see a bleak stone tower that tilted and swam in my vision behind him. I straightened to glare back at the one they’d called Vanor back at Second Steep, who was rubbing the back of his head with a murderous expression aimed right at me.
His brother, the one they’d called Jerid, looked like he had acid thrown in his face. Angry red divots and pits stretched across his skin, with one long drip that seemed to be keeping his right eye sealed closed. “That mangy cur and his bitch threw purified salt at me. Ugh, it burns! I need to see a healer immediately. You! Send word to Lord Shadowcourt that his sons have arrived home and the plans have changed.”
The other armor-clad man hustled off towards a group of tethered horses, while the one I’d been shoved at steered me aggressively into the tower. I pulled out of his grip, intending to run, when a sharp point at my lower back made me still. “Even humans can bleed. Move, woman, or else your blood will join the soil beneath your feet.”
I swallowed thickly, tugging on the hem of my tunic as I shuffled forward, sneakers poised on the first step of a stone staircase that spiraled into a dark basement. Wherever I was, it had all the warmth and cheer of a condemned, abandoned renaissance faire, and I suspected I’d ended up wherever Elim and Vic called home. An impatient poke at my back had me reluctantly climbing downwards, where a dirt-floored cell waited. The guard pulled a key from his waist, unlocking a heavy, barred door caked with rust at the bottom edge, shoving me inside before slamming it closed again. I let out a string of choice human phrases at his retreating back, letting him know exactly how I felt about the situation.
The fucker had the nerve to whistle as he ignored me and climbed back up, leaving me in surprisingly large cell, heavily shadowed at the far corners. I sank onto the edge of a rickety wooden cot, cradling my still-aching head in my hands as I tried to plan what the hell to do next. A muffled sneeze caused me to jerk my head up, which I immediately regretted. Even though I’d experienced my very first portal today, I decided they really sucked. “Hello? Who’s there?”
A young girl of 8 or 9, small even for her age, emerged from the darkest part of the shadows, clad entirely in some kind of ornate, rubbery lace. She held a chunk of rock in her grasp, looking like she was ready either to hurl it or use it to bludgeon me, at least if we didn’t have more than two and a half feet of height difference. She tried to growl, but her pretty golden curls kind of took the wind out of the effect, as did the petulant stamp of her tiny booted foot. “I am Glade Shadowcourt, firstborn of Perikar-First-Heir, given back to the seven soils, and you’ll never take me alive!”
I sighed in relief. “Glade, oh honey, I’m glad to see you. Your Uncle Elim’s been worried sick.”
The poor thing looked absolutely crestfallen at the mention of Elim. “They got Uncle Elim? But I ran away so he could escape! I was- I was supposed to go to father’s grave and get- but, but they found me and-” Her blue eyes welled up with tears and she sobbed miserably. Wincing, I reached out and pulled her into a hug, patting her back and whispering. “Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay. He’s back in the human realm, that’s all. They didn’t get him! He and your other Uncle, Victor, they’re probably working on a way to save us right now. Don’t you worry.”
She sniffled, pulling one of the strange lacy sleeves across her face and blinking at me. “But I don’t have an Uncle Victor. I only have my Uncle Elim and my awful uncle and my awful cousins, but I don’t like them at all.”
I brushed her hair back from her face and attempted a reassuring smile. “I’ll tell you a secret: I don’t like them either. But you do have an Uncle Victor, and he’s wonderful, I’ve known him for a long time now, you’re really going to like him. And guess what? You even have an Aunt Mary—she’s a human like me and she’s the best cook ever and hoo boy is she going to love you. She’s been trying to get your Uncle Victor to have kids for a while and I think it might just happen once he meets you.”
Glade sniffled again, the barest hint of a smile peeking out, her courage visibly returning as I told her about her surprise family additions. I just had to keep her spirits up and keep her safe until Elim either found us or I figured out an escape plan. My stomach plummeted as I squinted at her strange outfit and realized the significance of the rubbery lace. “Glade, sweetheart, is this your wedding dress? Is this for the ceremony tonight?”
Anger twisted her delicate features. “Yes! Uncle Gretvir forced me to wear it, forced me to let the awful ladies braid my hair, too.” Her expression turned impish and she leaned in, whispering. “They were so mad when they found out I didn’t have the necklace anymore. The wedding can’t go on without the pretty sparkly necklaces—both of them—and I told them I threw it over the mountains. But really, I gave it to Uncle Elim! “
I blushed as I realized I’d seen the necklace she was talking about firsthand, back when it was lighting up the walk-in as Elim gave me the railing of my life. A clang on the distant cell door made us both jump, and I hugged Glade into my lap protectively. The guard that had escorted me in had crept back down at some point, and he was grinning like the cat that caught the canary as he called over his shoulder. “My lords! The shard-of-night is around the neck of your cousin! The little whelp just said so!”
Glade stared at me, wide-eyed, and started crying all over again.
This wasn’t good.
The guard returned just as I’d managed to get Glade calmed down and curled up on the cot for a rest, the blaze of sunset outside the tiny window telling me time had almost run out for both of us. “Get up, woman. The Lords Shadowcourt have questions for you. Move.”
He brandished a knife, and with a hasty glance at Glade, I got up and left the cell obediently, worried they’d take it out on her if I didn’t. I found myself back in the small courtyard from earlier, Vanor and Jerid on horseback above me, along with a portly older man with unkind eyes. The uncle, I imagined. “What is your name, wench?”
I crossed my arms, radiating as much disrespect as I could manage. “Melisandre, why?”
The older man huffed, unimpressed, and gathered his horse’s reins, leaning down. “You called Elim your fiance. Our soothsayer tells us that is a human word for intended. Are you bound to my nephew, human?”
I tilted my chin up, staring at him defiantly, trying my best to look like I had a ghost of an idea of what the hell I was doing. “And so what if I am? He accepted my proposal.”
The smile he gave his sons didn’t fill me with confidence. “And how many boons have you asked of him, my dear?”
Blegh. Gross.Unwanted terms of endearment from crusty old men was one of my least favorite parts of my job, and I wasn’t even on shift right now. “Boons?”
He raised an eyebrow curiously, sitting further back on the saddle. “Gifts. Requests. Favors. Tasks. How many of the three have you asked him for? One, or two? We know it isn’t all three because you haven’t been forced to wed him yet.”
I processed this information carefully, trying my best not to let my confusion show. Apparently whatever ritual I’d accidentally done to bind Elim and I together had more to it. I’d only asked him for one favor, unless you counted the fun sexual begging, but if that counted, I was already at three, so it likely didn’t. “Two.”
He broke into a broad grin, clapping his hands once with excitement. “Splendid! Consider this my formal invitation to the wedding, then. You’ll be a guest of honor.” He snapped at a nearby guard, and I was roughly manhandled into a pair of leather wrist bindings, which in turn were lashed to the old guy’s reins. I was forced to walk at a brisk pace alongside the horse to prevent being dragged, screams behind me telling that Glade was putting up a hell of a fight as they bundled her onto another horse. Good girl, kick em in the teeth.
I was about ready to let myself get dragged when we finally arrived at some sort of stone circle at the edge of a cliff. A somber-looking Fae stood in front of a stone platform, wearing some sort of robes edged in gold, a pair of crowns—one small for Glade, one heavy and ornate for creepy uncle, placed in front of him. The man cleared his throat, looking expectantly at us.
“Lord Gretvir, do you have the shards-of-night necessary for the ritual? It’s nearly moonrise and this ceremony has been delayed several times now since Lord Shadowcourt’s disappearance. The absence of the shards directly calls into question the legitimacy of his abdication letter.”
Creepy Uncle Gretvir climbed down from his horse and stalked to the platform, grabbing the priest by the front of his robes and pressing him dangerously close to the cliff edge. “You dare address the future Lord Shadowcourt so disrespectfully? You are here as a formality only, and I don’t want to hear another word from you beyond the ceremony, else you’ll meet my dearly departed wife firsthand. Do I make myself clear, chancellor?”
The man’s eyes went wide, darting over his shoulder to take in what seemed to be a very long drop. He nodded hastily as Jerid and Vanor both pushed the edges of their tunics aside to reveal knife hilts behind their father. “A-abundantly, my lord. Shall we proceed?”
Jerid brandished his knife and sliced through the strap tying my wrist restraints to the horse’s reins, using the cut end like a leash to pull, stumbling, up to the platform. Vanor struggled carrying a kicking, shrieking Glade up to the platform beside me, to the visual discomfort of the chancellor. She stilled as her captor brandished his own knife against her throat, the darker edge raising a raw, red welt on her pale skin as she whimpered.
“Now, Melisandre. Use your final boon to wish for Elim to bring me the shard-of-night from around his neck, and declare your refusal to wed him, or we will discover all the ways we can hurt my dear, sweet little grand-niece without completely ending her life.
“No! You can’t!” Glade struggled against Vanor’s hold, sobbing desperately. “Uncle Elim will die if she refuses him!”
“I’m counting on it, little one.” Gretvir smiled and tapped the tip of her button nose with a finger, dodging her furious attempts to sink her tiny, pointed teeth into his finger. “That way I can get rid of all of your meddling family at once. Well, save for your mother, but she doesn’t even know you’re alive.” He shrugged amicably, eyes sliding appreciatively over the ostentatious gold crown in front of him.
My mind spun quickly, trying to figure out the best way to give Elim an advantage. I didn’t know much of anything about Fae, but I did know about genies, and I remembered from my storybooks that phrasing was very important. “I wish that….”
The three men looked at me with undisguised glee, holding their collective breaths as I finished. “I wish that Elim’s planned method to return to this place works flawlessly so that he can come and give me the shard-of-night.”
Gretvir roared with rage, backhanding me so hard my vision swam and I fell backwards onto my ass. “You insolent whore! I’ll gut you like a mudfish and take the shard from your corpse. You know damn well what I asked!”
It had been unendingly chilly and overcast since I’d arrived here, the damp kind of cold that got into one’s bones. That’s why, as the horses whinnied and stamped restlessly and a soothing wind full of warmth swept the plains around us, I knew the cavalry had arrived.
Mat was the first one through the blazing ring of fire, and he looked pissed. Four flaming fox tails swept and undulated behind him like angry serpents, and a great ball of blue fire burned above his head. He turned to me, his eyes white fire lined in gold. “You good, Mel?”
I grunted, trying to pull my wrists free of the stupid leather straps as I kept my eyes on the portal. “I will be now. Good to see you, Mat.”
He nodded and grinned, his teeth too sharp, his mouth transforming into a vicious muzzle as the chancellor looked nearly ready to toss himself off the cliff in terror. “Hey, go easy on the priest dude, he wasn’t down with this.” Mat nodded, advancing on Vanor, who immediately held Glade in front of him like a shield.
Bailey came hauling ass out of the portal next, brandishing a rusty crowbar and…was that a purple plastic water gun? She gave a close approximation of a Xena warrior princess battle cry and swung the crowbar in a menacing arc towards the assembled Fae. She glanced over at me with a grin and stage-whispered. “I always wanted to do that.”
Jerid howled with rage, dropping my tether and lurching towards her as he pulled out his knife, apparently intent on revenge for his unscheduled plastic surgery. As I watched Bailey lift the water gun with a savage grin, I smirked: dude doesn’t know what he’s up against, clearly.
Elim emerged from the portal at the end of a running leap, immediately beelining for me and pulling me out of reach of his uncle and cousins. An anguished cry of pain came from a crumpled Vanor, Glade frantically crawling towards us and away from the flaming mess Mat was making of him.
Just as Elim pulled his necklace off and dropped it on over my head, Gretvir reached for me, tearing me away from Elim’s protective grasp. The kiss of metal at my throat, delicately clinking against the necklace chain, told me some tables had just turned. Devastation stormed across Elim’s face as he froze in front of me, Gretvir’s knife digging at my throat until my would-be savior backed away a step. “That’s right, keep your distance. Now, girl. Deny him the bond. End this, and my damned nephew, and I might even let you live. Declare your refusal.”
Tears sprung to my eyes as I channeled all the fear and stress I’d been through, doing my best to play the damsel in distress to keep my throat intact. “Oh, no, please—don’t make me deny my love! He’ll die!”
“Do. It.” Gretvir growled through clenched teeth, pressing the knife too close for comfort. Elim looked stricken but confused as I straightened with a fake sob.
“I deny you, Elim Shadowcourt! I will not marry you!” I put some real oomph to it, a real Shakespeare in the Park spin on the declaration. I deserved an Oscar, really.
Elim thankfully caught on after a long beat, throwing himself to the ground in an answering bout of theatrics. He wasn’t as good as I was, it was a little over the top, and the choking sounds strained belief.
But it worked.
I looked over to the portal where Glade was wrapped protectively in Victor’s arms, my manager having made his own appearance to help. He crouched down to kid-height, patting Glade reassuringly on the back while keeping her head turned into his chest, away from the violence. Yeah, he’s gonna make a great dad. Mary is gonna be thrilled.
Gretvir, in what would be his last mistake, loosed his grip on me to laugh in triumph, shoving me aside to grab at the crown on the platform, sitting in front of the shell-shocked chancellor and the barely-surviving bodies of his sons. “Dead! Lord Shadowcourt is dead, it is time for the new Lord Shadowcourt to take his crown!”
I cleared my throat. “My King?” Gretvir turned, clearly thrilled to be addressed with the honorific, regardless of who offered it. His face fell as I inclined my head towards the fallen form of my fiance. “Oh, I’m sorry. I meant the actual King.”
I pointed to Elim’s prone form with a smile as he rolled onto his back in the grass, folding his arms behind his head, the picture of casual comfort. “And what is your third wish, Melisandre, my Queen?”
“Nothing elaborate. Could you…hmmm…could you possibly turn Gretvir, Vanor, and Jerid permanently into powerless toads and exile them to the largest swamp in the human realm? Oh, and make sure it’s one with plenty of toad-eating predators. Wouldn’t want them to get bored, you know?”
Elim rose, folding into a deep bow as the air shifted, the heaviness of a storm brewing as he gave me an uncharacteristically playful wink. “As you wish, my Queen.”
With a single, sharp clap, Gretvir’s scream of indignation faded into an indignant croak before he, and his sons, vanished entirely. The chancellor sank to his knees, eyes darting around the clearing, shaking slightly as he struggled to take in everything that had just happened.
Mat and Bailey were engulfed in harmless flames near the edge of the clearing, indulging in something that looked like a victory kiss with a lot more tongue than usual. Hey, good for them. Get it, girl.
Victor was sitting cross-legged in the clearing with Glade in his lap, telling some kind of story with wild hand gestures that had the little girl laughing for the first time since I met her.
And Elim looked at me with something between hope and resignation as I leaned down and retrieved something from the stones. “My Queen, you’ve saved this kingdom from tyranny, and kept my niece safe. I can never repay you for your kindness and bravery, but if you’ll give me the chance, I’d like to try.”
I leaned in, draping the necklace that toad-Gretvir had left behind over Elim’s head, kissing him softly with a smile. “Deal. I mean, the priest-guy is already here and the venue’s rented, no sense wasting a good party, right?”
He cupped my cheek, tucking a stray lock of hair behind my ear with a talon. “As much as I love your humor, you must always be clear with Fae. Will you marry me, Melisandre?”
“Yes, you pointy eared pain in the ass. I’ll marry you, Elim.” His face broke into a bright grin as he wrapped his arms around my waist and spun me so fast I was sure everyone had gotten flashed by my commando status under the tunic. “But-”
I folded my arms and lifted my chin. “I’m not moving here. We can, I dunno, work out a timeshare or something but it’s too damned cold and I told you, I like dancing. Vic has a life and a job and I don’t want to leave my friend behind, either. What about you, is there anything you’d like to negotiate?”
Elim frowned for a moment, thinking. “Will you agree not to….do as we did in your club, so close to another? You are truly beautiful to gaze at, but I would like to be the only one to hold you.”
I tilted my head back and forth, considering. “No lap dances? Hm. That seems fair, as long as I can stay on stage. Honestly, I never liked doing them anyway. You’ve got a bargain, husband.”
Elim’s face lit up and he squeezed my hand with excitement, waving at the shaken, robed man who’d only just begun to get back to his feet. “Chancellor Truvo, old friend! My intended and I are in need of your services…”