Isolation
Kerboros
After leaving the great hall, I’m free to pursue my own ends, though I remain watchful as I wend my way deeper into the corridors used by the wild fae.
There are always those who seek to elevate their status at someone’s expense, so I give no sign of my intentions until I return to my quarters, where I can spy to my heart’s content.
I don’t do this because I enjoy it. But information is currency, and I sell secrets. Over the years, they’ve kept me safe.
I settle on the floor, as my powers serve best when I’m grounded by earth or stone, and I summon the tendrils, shaping spiderlings nobody else can see.
My mother taught me this secret magic in the dungeons while awaiting execution; it was how we received news of the outside world when the guards would tell us nothing.
Though she resembled the high fae, she came from older lines, where the magic runs deep and sometimes dark.
I have heard rumors that my mother may have been related to Macha, the swamp witch, but she never spoke of that connection, and it could be unkindness that followed after her passing.
There will be consequences for Thea, and I wish to learn what they will be.
This time, I set different parameters and search for ripples aligned with her essence. The spiders find her at once, but I don’t linger over her getting her hair styled. There must be more ominous overtures in play.
Soon, the spiderlings draw my inner vision to the spectacle of a hobgoblin named Mudge being dragged from the kitchen, where he was about to polish off a pear and cheese tart.
The palace is warded against wild fae magic, weakening it to the point that many cannot perform powerful spells at all.
Mudge says a few words. My spies cannot provide audio, but I usually don’t require it.
I can discern a great deal from these echoes, traces left from recent events.
He’s absolutely cursing them, but in the end, he goes quietly.
They likely threatened Thea. Love is a tether and a weak point.
I uncoil from the floor and roll my shoulders. It seems I will visit the dungeons next. This isn’t the first time, but I wish it could be the last. If I ruled the Winter Court, I would do away with that desperate place entirely.
The cells smell of misery.
To me, misery is unwashed bodies and salt and copper, tears and blood. There’s waste as well, an animal musk born purely from terror. I wish these awful odors weren’t so familiar, but it reminds me strongly—
Stone. Stone. Stone. Interlaced, before my gaze.
I will not remember. I will not. The stones in the wall are gray, seamed in dark brown.
I count them until calm overtakes me. I have visited the dungeons many times, usually in secret.
I greet Melas, the boggart in charge, with a slow inclination of my head.
He’s a good-humored soul, and I don’t begrudge him the role he plays. Others, as I know all too well, revel in the power they hold over the most vulnerable.
Today, I have caught Mel in the midst of a meal, something gray and viscous.
The broth bubbles, and something squirms, rippling beneath the limpid surface.
This dish smells oddly of the sea. I do believe Mel has a taste for tentacles.
I have been amassing such useful observations for ages; much use have I for these trifles.
“Have you come on his lordship’s orders?” he asks, tilting his head with a quizzical air.
Mel seems surprised that I’ve come empty-handed. Normally, I bring bread or slivers of soap for those imprisoned for irritating Lord Liskaal or, occasionally, for no reason at all.
I shake my head silently. “Is Mudge here?”
According to my intel, he should be.
“It’s not been long, but yes. He’s in the fourth cell.”
“I’ll speak with him.” It isn’t a request.
Mel isn’t inclined to argue. He chucks the control stone, allowing me to pass the checkpoint.
There is a glowing crystal behind me, and I tap the stone against it.
The discordant sound echoes within me, and it feels like a sideways wrenching when I arrive on the other side, a dungeon so deep that it’s elsewhere entirely, not even part of the Winter realm in the most technical sense.
I don’t want to remember, but it’s impossible to forget the first time I saw this place.
After my father’s failed rebellion, we were all brought here—the family members who survived.
My brother, Geraint, died for our father’s ambition, and I sometimes wonder if he was the lucky one.
He died believing he could bring about a brighter future for the wild fae if he fought hard enough.
I watched Winter’s warriors cut him down, his blood so red on the whitest snow.
And my father? My father knelt. He surrendered after Geraint had given everything to his cause.
I was too young to fight, but I had daggers, and though I was still a child, I followed my brother against my mother’s wishes.
I remain unable to shake the horror that lives in my skull, even to this day.
In my mind’s eye, I see them now, crowded into one cell.
My mother knelt on the floor, weeping silently, while my father fixed a spiteful stare on the opposite wall.
He wanted to rule but not to suffer or sacrifice.
And I, stone-faced, was determined not to display my despair or terror.
Determined to give my enemies nothing. I lost track of the days, waiting for execution.
No, it is not easy for me to visit these cells. And yet, this errand won’t wait.
The first cell contains two sleeping sluagh.
For obvious reasons, I leave them be. I count my steps as I pass the second cell, ignoring the hag’s piteous cry, knowing that if I step close, she will use vicious nails to rend my flesh.
In the third cell, a redcap sings eerily in the dark, and the stench of copper clings to my throat.
Soon, I find myself standing before Mudge, who clambers to his feet with a facile grace.
He always looks so serene, regardless of his situation.
It is an aspect of his character that I admire, even as I find his demeanor frustrating.
The hobgoblin aims a smile in my direction and stops on the other side of the bars.
The redcap pauses, no longer inflicting his uncanny song on an unwilling audience.
While he appears to pay us no attention, I know better.
He’s listening. In fact, the walls are listening.
“And how can I be of service?”
“I came to warn you,” I say then.
“About what?”
“I know you have your own intelligence network. There’s no point in denying it, but I’m wondering how much you know. About why you’re here.” Best to keep my words vague.
“That would be telling.” Mudge gets a canny look in his eye as if weighing how much he should reveal.
Clever of him, as he has no notion whether I can be trusted. Those in the Winter Court tend to serve their own interests. But I have joined no factions, forged no alliances. I exist outside the seasons spent jockeying for position.
In my way, I am both untouchable and inviolable.
“I’m trying to help you. Believe that…or not. It’s all the same to me.”
“I’m listening,” Mudge says.
“I’m sure you’ve gathered that they rounded you up to use you against Thea.”
“I did suspect that,” he admits.
“But do you know what they’re planning for her?” There’s a limit to how much I should stick my neck out, even for Thea.
She’s…good. In the way that few are among our kind.
I witnessed her joy at setting the pookas free.
And it’s not the first such valiant stunt she’s performed.
No, she’s infamous in the Winter Court for toeing right up to the line, weighing her worth against how much she can annoy Liskaal with her small rebellions.
My cousin uses her as he uses everyone, and I don’t wish to see her bright light dimmed.
“Not the particulars as such.”
“I can only advise you to encourage her to cooperate. There will be dire consequences otherwise.” That’s all I can say with so many prisoners listening to my words.
“Will they ask something of her that she cannot bear?”
How am I supposed to answer that? I lift a shoulder. “If you want her safe, ensure she understands that this choice isn’t a choice at all.”
I turn then, leaving Mudge to consider what he’ll do to keep his daughter from harm. I hurry through the dim corridor, not breathing deeply until I touch the control stone to the crystal and appear on the other side behind Mel, who slurps up the last of his meal.
“Finished?”
“Yes.”
I depart without another word and retrace my route.
On emerging from the recessed staircase, I hear footsteps, a larger group making their way toward the prison annex.
Just in time, I slip around the corner of the building, hiding out of sheer instinct.
I narrowly avoid encountering Thea and her guards.
For as long as I have known of her—and she’s grown up dashing in and out of the Winter Court—I have never seen Thea thus.
The sight of her leaves me reeling, and I stumble against the cool stone, damp moss cool against my fingertips.
In such finery, others might find her beautiful. To me, she is the essence of sorrow.
They have polished and plaited the wildness out of her.
Her face has become haunting, heartbreaking because she is pale and glittering, la belle dame sans merci from that old human verse.
The handmaidens have plastered over her vitality, confining her, enforcing her smallness in a gown that makes her resemble everyone else in the Winter Court.
Until this moment, I didn’t realize how much I cherished her fierceness.
Now that it’s gone, I feel the lack in a bone-deep ache, searing loss married to a weeping wound.
She passes so very close to me that I smell the sweetness of crushed flower petals and the woody herbs that must have been in her bath; I breathe the honey in the cream they massaged into her skin. If I reached out from my hidden vantage, I could graze the sleek fabric of her dress.
The wan light of a distant lamp finds her face; Thea is not smiling. Living at court will destroy her, one way or another. The spiderlings have shown me glimpses of documents and of secret meetings. I have a grim feeling down in my bones.
Now she’s gone, marching down into darkness.
Erdene flashes a cunning look in my direction, as if she knows I’m lurking in the shadows. But then, I am always lurking in the shadows.
I wonder if Thea knows how long I’ve taken joy in her tiny rebellions.
I wonder if she knows how long I’ve loved her.