Chapter 6
How had she known?
Xavi felt his feathers deflate with frustration as he glared down at the annoying female. He’d intended to terrify her briefly before shifting back, but she’d just sat down and started to draw while a pair of gryphons battled only a few steps away. As if no threat to her life or limb existed.
He needed her to recognize that she depended on him for survival. Needed leverage for the coming moment when he would bargain with her once more. But how could he achieve that when she seemed to have no concept of the danger she was in?
He clacked his beak with annoyance before releasing his magic and returning to his true form.
“It’s the eyes,” the human said, without lifting her gaze from the paper on her lap. “They’re the same in every shape.”
Well, that answered that question.
“Tell the truth, human,” Xavi demanded. “Did they evict you from this university of yours for being utterly and completely lacking in sense?”
She finally looked up, and on her small face Xavi saw a brief flash of what he could only call hurt.
“That’s…” She bit her lip. “Remarkably astute of you. I suppose the answer is yes. They did.”
What was this? Xavi’s arms folded across his chest as he squirmed internally, trying desperately to escape a feeling of almost nauseating discomfort. It was not anger, not hunger, but… remorse.
How annoying. As if he hadn’t spent hundreds of years refusing to feel anything of the sort.
Was this her secret? No, it couldn’t be. Though it clearly distressed her.
Well, it distressed him to discover that she had so little care for her life. He needed her to survive long enough to reach the valley. Long enough to become the next bride. After that… Well, after that her foolishness wasn’t likely to matter very much.
“Come.” He tried not to sound angry. There was no point in frightening her now, if such a thing was even possible. “As I said, there are monsters here, and we would do well to keep moving until we find shelter.”
Her lips quirked thoughtfully as she tapped her pencil against them, leaving smudges of graphite behind.
“I can’t help being curious…” she began.
“Yes, I believe that much is obvious.” Xavi waited for her question, but it didn’t come. In fact, she seemed to pinch her lips together as she closed her book, stood up, and tucked it back into the pocket of her heavy skirt.
“You’re right,” she said brightly. “We should continue on. I confess I’m anxious to reach whatever shelter these mountains have to offer.”
“But your question?” he prompted, careful to hide his smile of anticipation.
“My only question,” she retorted, “is the one you haven’t answered. You have yet to tell me the truth about the King of Mists. By the terms of our bargain, you owe me a story.”
So much for his hope that she would waste her last question. While she might be heedless of her safety, a fool she most decidedly was not.
Feeling oddly annoyed by this discovery, Xavi returned to where he’d dropped the woman’s gear, shouldered her packs, and continued on his way.
The valley was not far now. Indeed, given the fact that she’d had a guide of sorts, it was entirely possible the woman everyone called Ryn would have stumbled upon it on her own. So he needed to spend these next few minutes wisely.
Tell her the story, without lying. And yet do so in a way that would arouse her sympathy. Make her willing to bargain for the sake of satisfying her curiosity.
“Much of what you know is true,” he told her. “My people did in fact arrive on these shores many centuries ago, as refugees from a war that had gone on for nearly two hundred years. We had far more magic then, and did not die unless taken by violence or disease.”
He could sense her sudden confused and disbelieving stare.
“We…” Her voice trailed off, unwilling to ask even that question, despite her shock. Despite having found herself in the company of the one remaining witness to those events.
“Yes, we.” There was no reason to hide that from her. Not when she already knew he was immortal. Not when she would very soon see the truth for herself.
“My king was the last of his family. A man who cared deeply for his people and saw the need for them to find a new home, where our children could grow up without the shadow of war. Without the violence that had taken so many before they’d even seen fifty years.
And when our ship ran aground on these shores, it seemed like an unimaginable gift.
A fertile land filled with magic and game, and uninhabited beyond the monsters that lurked in the shadows. Dangerous, yes, but so were we.
“We built settlements, embraced the magic of the land, and grew to love it as our own. Until the day the mountain awoke.”
And this… This was where his memories became hazy. Yes, he’d lived it, but it had been so many centuries ago. The rest of the story had grown into a legend, but only he and Kel had actually been there, and they could now recall only how it ended.
“When the ground began to shake, Keldreth and I were closest, and he risked entering the mountain. He needed to go deeper, to the heart, where he could attempt containing it with his power. Once there…”
They’d tried in the years since to piece together their ragged and vague recollections of that day, but so few remained.
“We believe he must have expended too much power. Perhaps spun an enchantment beyond the reach of his abilities in an effort to quiet the volcano’s fury and protect our people.”
The human’s eyes were round and startled as she absorbed the story. Perhaps wondering whether to accept that he could possibly be telling the truth. Whether she’d truly stumbled on the only living person who could answer her questions with accuracy.
It was an odd coincidence now that he thought about it. Suspicious even, but she’d bargained for the story, so there was nothing to be done except finish telling it.
“If only I’d been closer. If only I’d not stayed outside the mountain.
But I feared the instability of the tunnels, so I reasoned that if there was a collapse, it would be better if I were on the outside and able to free him.
But that meant he was alone, with no choice but to risk everything he had to give. ”
And indeed, Kel had given everything. His future, his freedom, and all hope of experiencing the peace they’d bought when they fled their homeland and wrecked on these shores.
“The mountain was sealed, but my king fell into a deathlike sleep. And since that day, I have known but three things—that my king requires a mortal bride to break the enchantment that holds him captive; that the mountain only sleeps, just as he does; and that it will eventually awaken and cause untold destruction if I cannot find the one fated bride who will save him from this endless torment.”
“How did…” Again, Ryn stopped before she phrased her question, and Xavi, in an uncharacteristic moment of charity, took pity on her.
“How did we know about the bride?”
She nodded, watching him with rapt attention, waiting for an answer he didn’t have.
“I cannot remember.” And not only could he not remember, he had no feelings about that lack of memory. As if it existed in a void that he could neither touch nor change. He should be disturbed, and yet he could not be. It simply was.
But the little human was looking at him as if he’d handed her the keys to a castle.
“A geas,” she declared, sounding both awestruck and entirely fascinated. “You must both be under a geas.” Her hands clasped together, and she made a squealing noise that reminded him forcibly of a small child who’d just been gifted her first weapon—not pain, but uncontained glee.
“A what?”
“Oh, it’s a sort of a… curse,” she explained, waving her hands erratically.
“Or an obligation, placed by magical interference. Sometimes as a result of backlash, sometimes through deliberate action. Depends on which scholars you believe. They aren’t known to happen to human mages, as it seems our magic comes from a different source, but in systems that rely on innate or nature magic—such as night elves—there is every reason to suppose that they occur.
Our only real evidence is from a few vanishingly rare accounts of encounters with fae.
Though the fae have all but disappeared from this world now, so in some of our larger cities we are beginning to see a growing popular belief that they never existed at all, and were only invented to explain away natural phenomena.
Which is ridiculous when there are so many eyewitness accounts that agree on everything from physical description to language to habits and cultural aversions… ”
She shut her mouth abruptly, blinked a few times, and grimaced a bit sheepishly.
“I’m sorry, I do tend to get carried away on subjects that interest me.
I just… I cannot believe that I’ve met you.
That you know all of these things firsthand.
I’ve dreamed of this moment since I was eight years old, and somehow here you are, and I suppose I ought to shut up before it irritates you beyond all patience. ”
Yes, she was babbling, but for some reason, it did not actually annoy him. There was something bizarrely comforting about her passionate enthusiasm. Something that felt like water for a part of himself he hadn’t realized was thirsty.
He hadn’t felt that passionate about anything in… so long. He almost couldn’t remember what it was like. He couldn’t afford to remember. Because then he might also remember why he should loathe himself for what he was about to do.
Suddenly she grabbed his sleeve and tugged him around to face her, those innocent eyes wide and bright with excitement. “You must have met them. The fae, I mean. When you first came here. This continent was their home long before it was ours, so you would have seen them!”