A shiver ran through me, a heat that scalded my soul. For a moment, I forgot everything. I forgot why I was there, kneeling in the dirt. I forgot why my heart was racing and my lungs pulling deep breaths in. The only thing that existed was his eyes.
Request the boon ! Zeph landed on my shoulder, shocking me out of my trance.
“Boon,” I gasped out.
“So forward. Not what I expected from a mundane at all,” Rí Túath Crystallo arched a golden eyebrow as he stared down at me. He lowered his voice as he looked up, glancing around. “You request a boon? Really?”
Relief flooded me, and I squashed it down.
If he didn’t want to honor the boon, he could have just walked away or struck me down.
No one would bat an eye if a field worker were hurt.
The only reason I’d lasted several years here was because the ‘Proper Students’ rarely came out in the direction of the mushroom fields.
There was nothing here that was of interest to them, and so the mundanes who worked out here avoided their attention.
It helped that the smell of the mushrooms covered our scents, making it less likely that we would trigger the wrong instincts just from existing.
I’d learned not to shower before going to the commons for meals.
“I request a boon!” I said.
“Do you understand what you are asking for?” he said, his voice gentle.
I wasn't sure. My knowledge was based on rumors and whispered words shared between mundanes.
I sat up straighter, leaning my weight back on my heels. “By Aetheriani law, a boon is granted in exchange for a year and a day of service.”
I hoped I was right.
Even so, I still could plead my case.
I held up my dirty hands, palms up towards him, showing him the evidence of what I could offer.
“I am used to hard work,” I said, knowing he could see the thick layers of calluses from years of working in the fields.
I was filthy, but I was strong, I was sturdy.
I was a woman who had borne the weight of hard labor and come out the other end thicker than I was before.
“I have strong hands and a solid body. I will serve you well.”
"Fuuuuu," came the gasp behind me. I glanced back to see the overseer standing there, his hands on his knees as he gasped for breath.
He spent most of his time lounging about.
It didn't surprise me that it took him that long to run across the field.
He was wearing the silver jacket of a second-year 'Proper Student', one of the students who were born into this world rather than tricked from the mundane.
He had the black hair and the pointed ears of an Aos sí, a fae who had the right bloodline to be considered better than the shifters and other 'Proper Students'.
"...cking mundanes!" the overseer finished. "This one got away from me."
"I will deal with this one," Rí Túath Crystallo said.
My heart sank. He wasn't going to accept my request. I'd learned enough by now to know that when someone was going to deal with me, that meant punishment.
"That's my job," the overseer said. He reached out with one hand towards me, electricity crackling around his fist. He could only send small zaps of electricity at a distance, but if he put his hands on me, it would really hurt. "Someone has to keep these weaklings in their place."
I'd show him weakness.
Anger flashed through me, hot and heavy with the weight of the years of forced labor behind them.
I shifted my weight, lifting one leg and planting my foot, giving myself that anchor to the ground.
In one movement, I dodged to the inside of his reaching, crackling hand, lunging upwards from the ground as I took my clenched fist and slammed it into the underside of the overseer's jaw.
A crack of pain radiated down through my hand.
It was overshadowed by the joy and terror that flooded me as the overseer's head snapped back and he fell backward like a sack full of mushrooms, thudding down into the ground.
I turned slowly, flexing my hand.
It didn’t hurt at all. I thought it would hurt.
My eyes met Crystallo's, but instead of indignation or anger, I saw... delight?
Rí Túath Crystallo arched an eyebrow at me, a smile slipping across his face as his eyes met mine again, and the spark that flew between us had nothing to do with magic.
“Name your price,” he said.
Hope rose up with wings of relief, and I pushed it back down again, not letting it consume me. He hadn’t agreed yet. He could walk away from this. Even worse, he could tell the school, and I would be punished for daring to speak to him.
“Take me with you,” I said.
He closed his eyes, a shudder running through his whole body, his wings vibrating with the motion. He opened his eyes to pin me with his gaze.
“Being in my service would already do that,” he said, his voice soft and heated at the same time.
“Aetheriani law does not require the service to be done in your presence,” I said. “You could order me to serve you by remaining here. My boon request is that you take me with you, back to your homeland, so I may serve my year and a day there, with you.”
I had heard that mundanes had rights in the Aetheriani homeland. I wouldn’t belong there, not while I was a simple human in a country filled with winged people, but at least I wouldn’t have to spend time worrying about someone offing me on a whim, or worse, trying to put me in the fish hatchery.
“I will grant your boon,” he said, and the words floated through me, a liferaft that could drift out of my reach at any moment.
This time, as the hope floated up, I didn’t push it down.
I let it fill me. He would grant my boon.
He would take me with him. I would finally be able to escape this place.
He looked out across the fields. I followed his gaze, and my heart sank.
Standing in the middle of the road, soldiers curving around behind him to trample the far side of the grass rather than walk too close to him, was the man whose face had been put on posters in the dorm to inform us lowly mundanes of his importance.
It was one thing to put up banners to celebrate a sports celebrity like Rí Túath Crystallo's younger brother.
It was an entirely different level of narcissism for a leader to make sure pictures of their face were plastered everywhere.
“I am going to touch you,” he said, his words coming out quickly, as if he were running out of time.
“Okay,” I said, not sure why he was informing me in advance. None of the other fae bothered.
Rí Túath Crystallo reached out and threaded his fingers through my hair, sending a tingle down my spine as my skin shivered at the gentle touch. It had been years since anyone had touched me like that.
“Hold onto my wrist to support yourself,” he said, his fingers curling as he took a thick handful of my hair. I reached up to grip his wrist with one hand, wincing as the copper brown dusting on my fingers smeared across his skin.
“Both hands,” he instructed. “Pull against my wrist to partially support your weight.”
I lifted my other hand and wrapped it around his wrist, my knuckles whitening.
“If you can cry or pretend to be in pain, that would be helpful,” he said.
He dragged me forward, and I stumbled before I lost my balance, falling down as he stepped back out of the way.
He lifted my head to his hip with a single fist buried at the roots of my hair, forcing me up to the back of my toes.
The pressure pinched my scalp; heat prickled behind my eyes.
Then he began to move, dragging me along beside him.
My toes skimmed the dirt between the rows of mushrooms as he marched.
My arms burned, but my scalp didn’t hurt.
Even so, the fact that he could lift me like that and drag me, one-handed, was impressive. I hadn’t ever been a small woman, even before my day-to-day existence turned into endless physical labor. Muscle weighed more than fat, and I was dense.
He was strong despite his fancy pants appearance.
His white robes billowed, gold-edged seams catching the harsh light.
The gilt feathers of his wings almost glimmered in the sun as he moved, soft feathers brushing against me as he dragged me down the row as if I were as light as one of his feathers.
My weight hung from his grip, shoulder sockets stretching.
He kept the pace unbroken, wings half-flared for balance.
Copper spores dotted his immaculate robe where disrupted stalks had puffed into the air at our passing.
That would ruin my quota.
Good thing I wasn’t ever coming back here.
Loam and eggshell gave way to hardpack. The road’s gray grit rasped my bare knees as they touched down. He halted at the edge, wings folding like silent doors behind his shoulders. My shoulder muscles still burned from supporting myself, but he didn’t let go, and so neither did I.
Then he let me go, and I fell forward to my hands and knees again.
“Was there a problem with the inspection?” a cold, cruel voice asked.
Danger . Zeph hissed. Remain small.
I didn’t look up.
Zeph was my ally. He had just as much of an incentive to want me to be free. The only way they were able to force him to work at this school was to use me. So when he gave me advice, I listened.
I kept my eyes down and tried to make myself invisible.
I stared at the embroidered boots that belonged to Seelie Ard Ri Lacnevioda Terithni’i Unlar Stormchaser.
I had missed the most recent assembly where he spoke to the school, as my quota came before anything else, classes and assemblies included, but there had been an announcement posted in the dorms with his image all over it, his name and titles plastered across in gaudy, gilded gold.
“The crops are robust,” Rí Túath Crystallo said. “The spell is holding.”
I stayed where I was, still and motionless on the ground by his feet.
“I’m sure you’re aware that the Goddess has awakened,” the Seelie Ard Ri said. “Your people’s unique spell will not be needed once she sees fit to create a proper Order spell to serve the purpose.”
There was a threat hanging in the words, heavy and overt. In my investigations to find out who Crystallo was, I found out more about the outside world. There was an uneasy truce between the forces of Order and the Aetheriani, one brokered over the many years the Order Goddess had slumbered.
Everyone knew war was coming.
I didn’t want to be here to be caught in it.
Whatever the truth of the situation at the school, it was a problem for gods, imaginary or real, to work out. My problem was how I was gonna get away.
“I look forward to her creation,” Rí Túath Crystallo said, even though the mushrooms that fed the school with an abundance were due to the spell that only his family could cast. “It will be a great day when she steps free from her prison.”
“Watch what you say,” Seelie Ard Rí snapped.
“Whatever do you mean?” Rí Túath Crystallo said, an edge of a smile in his voice. I risked a glance up at him to see his eyes glinting like daggers in the sunlight as he stared down his enemy. “Surely you are not implying you wish your Goddess to remain imprisoned?”
“She protects us all with her sacrifice,” Seelie Ard Rí said. “Your people included.”
“Indeed, she is a gracious and proper Goddess,” Rí Túath Crystallo said. “Now, it is high time you show me the fruits of the fields. I have heard that having mundanes working in the kitchens has resulted in some unusual dishes?”
He took a few steps forward as the two of them began to head up the road, towards the fort that blocked the single entrance to the Caldera.
I looked up again to see two fairy hive workers floating nearby, one with green feathery hair and the other with brown, their insect wings catching the sunlight as they hovered, ready to run any errand.
I'd learned over the years here that part of the fort that blocked the entrance to the caldera was a fairy hive.
The 'proper students' referred to it as a captive hive.
“Workers,” Rí Túath Crystallo paused as he reached them. “Clean this mundane up and bring her to serve my meal. Put her in something more revealing.”
“A farm mundane?” Seelie Ard Rí sneered.
I looked back at the ground as his hard eyes fell on me, the haughty edges of his face not softened in the slightest by his long black hair, an outward sign of his Seelie heritage.
“She was foolish enough to ask for a boon,” Rí Túath Crystallo said, a cruel edge to his voice. “I intend to reward that presumption with an introduction to Aetheriani anatomy.”
Seelie Ard Rí laughed, bright and sudden.
“I’ve always wondered how long it would take a mundane to die on an Aetheriani dick,” Seelie Ard Rí said.
My heart plummeted as they walked away from me, leaving me kneeling in the dirt.
I just made a horrible mistake.