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When the four pixie females first saw the girl, she had hair as gold as sunlight. A hue so violently warm that it near blinded their cold eyes. But then, day by day, her hair shifted. A strand here, a strand there. From gold to yellow. Paler and paler, second by second.
Now, as the four of them halted in the mausoleum, their gaze was snared by the opalescence of her hair. No longer a golden sunlight but a white moonlight, as pure as the complete absence of colour itself.
The first of the females crept forward. She frowned as she stepped carefully over the young pixie-king, his body forever at her side where he folded himself against her cold body. He did not stir as the female moved past him, hardly noticing the careful placement of her feet.
Her three companions moved with her, in her shadow as they always were. They, too, shot the king a hesitant glance before moving onwards, not wanting to wake such a force of nature.
He would not know what to do if he saw them. And if he did, they would have to kill him.
The third of the females was the only one to pause at his side, offering him an extra glance as her sisters moved on towards the woman.
She craned her neck as she watched the king shudder in his nightmares, her heart full of pity as she watched his heart break within his body.
A shattered male, he had always been. Yet now, she thought perhaps it would have been a mercy to put him out of his misery.
Four days and four nights he had remained at the woman's side. Never moving. Hardly eating. Forcefully drinking at the hands of his companions. He never moved, never so much as took a step away from the lifeless body of the woman he loved.
Eventually, the female left him in her shadow, gathering with her three sisters at the edge of that raised platform, looking down at the woman.
She was theirs, not his.
Not anymore.
The moon bled down across that paned room, illuminating every surface with a milky light that energized the four females.
“He will know,” the first of them declared, a female with a terrifying height and a broad width to her shoulders. Her hair, just as silken and radiant as the woman's, shone beneath the twinkling stars above them.
“Yes,” the fourth said, sighing as her words drew from her lips.
The eldest of the four sisters, wiser and more cunning than the others.
But such an intelligence had plagued that female, leaving her scowling and furious.
It was she who shot the king a decimating growl before she looked back to the woman in front of them.
So pale. So lifeless. All of the blood had drained from her face, leaving her skin just as void as that hair upon her head.
Her body, dressed in the mourning robes of the pixies of Saoghal, had not moved in the five days since she had been slain.
The corners of her lips were still pulled ever so slightly upwards, the last smile that she had offered her king.
“He will suspect it was us,” the second of the females said.
The smallest of the group, a frail little thing with enough crinkles on her face to suggest she was the eldest, yet she was the youngest. Warfare and bloodlust had aged her skin, driving her personality to a sharp point that she often utilized more than her own blade.
“He might,” the third said, daring to look back at the king.
His face had always looked so pained, but never so much as now.
Even as he tried to sleep, his nose wrinkled over and over as he whimpered and cried out the woman's name. Over and over. The noise brought a tear to the third’s eye – something that had not happened in centuries.
But she drew in a sharp breath and looked back to her sisters. “Let him suspect.”
“It is too risky,” the first hissed, taking a small step away from the lifeless mass upon that stone-bed. “We should never have come.”
“Saoghal teeters on collapse,” the second whispered.
“The King declares all Rachainn to be slaughtered on sight, he keeps the Prince of the Sea within his dungeon, and now his soldiers prepare for aerial war. This is the beginning of the end for their realm – it was now or never. There will be no second chance for us to do this.”
“Enough,” the fourth snapped, setting her three sisters into a rigid state of straight spines and raised chins. “What the pixies of Saoghal do is none of our business, sisters. Quit your whining and let us move swiftly.”
But the third still hesitated. She still frowned at the king.
It had been a long time since she felt empathy. Sympathy. But she could not help herself, not as she looked at the tear that trickled from his unconscious face. How could she take the last piece of him? How could they leave him with nothing but an empty tomb and an even emptier soul?
The first of the sisters elbowed the third, earning her a snarl as the females regrouped once more.
“She does not belong here,” the second said.
“She never belonged here,” the fourth barked.
“And now we know it to be true,” the first sighed, moving towards the lifeless woman once more.
She placed a pale hand around the arrowhead still in her chest, rolling her eyes as she scented the infamous iron that the blade was crafted of.
Affirming her grip on the shaft, she pulled that weapon from the woman, sparing only a shred of her attention to look back at the King.
He continued to wail in his sleep, his face pinched tight.
“It is time –” the third breathed, watching as no blood pulsed from that wound. Instead, they witnessed the woman’s skin healing, stitching itself back together. “–for Olivia to come home.”
None of the four females gasped as Olivia suddenly drew in a sharp breath, shooting upright and nearly waking the King that mourned her.
They each tilted their head as the woman stared at them, wide-eyed and terrified.
“Let’s get her home,” the first beamed.
“To Reultan,” all four whispered.
~
Olivia Loughty did not belong to the sea nor the clouds, the forest nor the meadows.
Olivia Loughty belonged to the stars.
And at the fault of that arrow, as her transformation finished, the stars would welcome her home.