Page 16 of The Beginning (Covert Moon, #1)

Eamonn

The Fae Realm

* * *

I sat in one of the chairs in the commander’s office.

The leather was worn smooth by countless other occupants, and I wondered how many of them had been in similar circumstances, waiting to learn their fate.

After I'd told Devlyn that I'd seen Gavin and the Lady Annaliese leave together, he'd instructed me to sit, not to move.

"Don't even breathe!" The order had been delivered with such vehemence that I had actually held my breath for a moment without realizing, until my body's demands forced me to exhale. He then slammed the door and hurried from the room, not bothering to muffle the force of his movements. His anger was palpable, radiating from him like heat from a forge. But after he left, the room was no better than when he’d been in here.

Still cold, still unfeeling, and still painted in the harbinger of my doom.

Left to nothing but my thoughts, I considered the whole idea of being lucky. The concept that had defined my entire life now seemed like a cruel joke, a cosmic prank that I had been too naive to understand.

When I'd been a baby, only a few weeks old, my mother had been visiting with a friend who shared that a traveling djinn was staying in her home.

The memory of her telling this story came back to me with perfect clarity—how her eyes would light up, how her voice would take on that special tone she reserved for the most important family tales.

The Fae Realm was famous for having a relatively open-door policy in regard to other members of the magical community.

We welcomed travelers, traders, scholars, and wanderers of all kinds, believing that diversity strengthened our realm.

Not that we saw many djinn. Djinn tended to be connected to an object, and the object was usually held by one individual.

They also tended to be reclusive, preferring solitude to the company of others.

To see a djinn traveling on his own was quite a rare occurrence—the kind of event that people talked about for years afterward.

In this case, the djinn sought food and companionship.

He had appeared at the home of my mother's friend, polite but weary, asking for nothing more than a meal and perhaps conversation with others who understood the weight of magic.

All were happy to provide him with whatever he needed.

Hospitality was sacred among our people, and to turn away someone in need was unthinkable.

After a few days, he offered to meet with any of the children of the fae who welcomed him in to read their future.

The offer was both generous and unprecedented—djinn were not known for sharing their gifts freely.

Naturally, my mother was delighted to bring me before him.

She arranged to meet him the very next day, spending the intervening hours in a state of excitement that, according to her, made sleep impossible.

At the time, I was but three weeks old—barely more than a whisper of life, with no personality to speak of, no achievements to my name, nothing but potential.

According to her, and a few of the other women who had been there with her, the djinn had floated over to gaze at me in my basket.

She told me that he stared at me for a long time, his expression unreadable, while she held her breath and tried not to fidget under his scrutiny.

His presence had filled the room, she said, making everyone acutely aware that they were in the presence of something ancient and powerful.

And then he floated away. His expression, according to Mother, had never changed—not approval, not disapproval, just an intense focus that made her feel as though he were seeing things about me that she couldn't even imagine.

"This one doesn't need a great deal of assistance from me," the djinn said. "He is a child of luck, born under a lucky sky. He will enjoy much favor in his life."

My mother, of course, had to resist the urge to scream with joy.

The restraint had nearly killed her, she claimed, but one did not interrupt a djinn in the middle of a reading.

We were nothing special; my father was a guard in the palace, and both parents came from ordinary families.

We had no wealth to speak of, no connections beyond what hard work and loyalty could earn, no special gifts or talents that set us apart from our neighbors.

She told me that she'd never forgotten seeing the djinn peering into my basket.

The image had burned itself into her memory with crystal clarity—his ethereal form hovering over me, the way the air seemed to shimmer around him, the profound silence that had fallen over the room.

Apparently, not everyone was given such positive information from the djinn.

Most children received polite acknowledgment, perhaps a small blessing, but detailed prophecies were rare and precious.

The last time I'd been home, she'd told me again how she felt that some of my luck had rubbed off on her that day, by allowing her to be in the right place to get invited in to see the djinn.

She never tired of reminding me of it, wearing the memory like a badge of honor.

Every time I moved up in the ranks, every honor I'd received, she marveled that the djinn had been right.

Her letters were full of pride and wonder, as if she couldn't quite believe that her ordinary son had been chosen for such extraordinary things.

I accepted what she said without thinking about it.

Luck was mine for the taking, as natural as breathing, as reliable as the sunrise.

I recalled something else she'd said. The djinn—his name had been Damien, or something like it—had added that as a child of luck, I would need a blessing of protection.

His statement, apparently, had stopped all the women present immediately.

They watched him, some of them with mouths slightly open, and my mother told me that as she held her breath and waited, she could hear the trickle of a fountain in the background.

The only sound in a room full of people was the gentle splash of water, while everyone waited to hear what the djinn meant.

Because it was my mother, and she told her stories with humor she had said, "It made me feel the need to visit the necessary." Which always made us burst out laughing. Even now, alone in this office facing the worst moment of my life, the memory brought a ghost of a smile to my lips.

Damien, or whatever his name was, reiterated to my mother that what I truly needed was protection, rather than any further luck.

He said the children of luck had to be aware.

They had to take care to make the best decision possible, or their luck would take unexpected turns.

The words had seemed cryptic at the time, the kind of mystical warning that sounded impressive but meant little in practical terms. Damien offered me protection against poor decision-making.

He said that one poor decision could completely throw off the luck one carried and it would take time to find it once more.

Until this moment, I hadn’t believed it.

The djinn's warning had been nothing more than a family story, something to smile about during holiday gatherings, a charming tale that my mother loved to tell.

But in thinking of this, and thinking of the storm heading in my direction, I could now see where one poor decision changed my luck forever.

Not the moment I chose to investigate the screaming girl instead of staying with my charges, but the moment I trusted Gavin to complete our mission alone.

The moment I allowed myself to be distracted from my primary duty.

Where was my protection from that? What should I have protected myself against?

I trusted Gavin. As such, I allowed him to be alone in the completion of our orders.

Instead, he had run off with the Lady Annaliese.

Was that the lesson? To trust no one? To trust in myself and my ability to make the most of my situation, with no thoughts of luck?

The idea that I could trust no one was not a happy thought.

It meant that everything I believed about friendship, about brotherhood among the Guards, about the bonds forged through shared danger and common purpose—all of it was suspect.

And what of Wenda? The thought of her brought fresh pain to an already overwhelming situation.

I'd have to write to her, since it was difficult to see her.

Her Lady was demanding, and companions rarely had much free time.

The constraints of castle life meant that our courtship had been conducted largely through letters, careful notes passed between us when opportunity allowed.

We wrote to one another regularly. The tone of her letters told me that she was hoping for, maybe even expecting, a proposal of marriage.

Her words had grown warmer recently, more intimate, full of dreams about our future together.

Our families certainly expected it. Both sets of parents had been dropping hints for months, speaking of grandchildren and the joining of households as if it were inevitable.

And I loved her. The admission came easier now, in this moment of crisis, than it ever had in moments of peace.

It hadn't been instant, but it had grown.

A comfortable love, the meeting of two people who wanted to create a life together.

Wenda was a hard worker, intelligent and kind, with dreams that matched my own in their quiet ambition.

I was lucky to have known her for so long.

Gods, what was I going to tell her? The question circled in my mind like a carrion bird.

Hopefully, I'd have some clarity of my punishment before the end of the day, so that I could warn her, and then serve out whatever sentence Devlyn required.

But even as I thought it, I knew that some punishments could not be served out and forgotten.

Some mistakes echoed forever. I tapped my feet on the floor, the nervous rhythm providing no comfort.

Devlyn had left me sitting here so he could see the king. To see whether one of the guards—one of his guards—had been ordered by the king to accompany the Lady Annaliese. The commander's tone as he spoke these words did not inspire. If anything, they sent me into a spiral of despair.

I felt as though the world I had been building for myself, the foundation on which my career sat, which was expected to last for hundreds of years, if not thousands—was starting to crumble.

My rising through the ranks of the apprentices in the palace guards had been one layer of bricks, carefully laid and mortared with success.

When I was selected to be a squire to the King's Guards that was yet another layer, built on the foundation of the first. Then my selection to the King's Guards, this position not even a year old.

Each achievement had seemed to strengthen the structure, to make it more permanent, more secure.

Yet in only a year, I had already made a mistake so grievous that I couldn't contemplate what might be happening to me next. The entire edifice was threatening to collapse, and I could see no way to shore it up. Even without thoughts of Wenda, I couldn’t quiet the other voice in my head that wondered what would happen to me.

Unable to sit still, I got up and paced the small office.

The space felt even smaller now, the walls seeming to contract with each circuit I made.

My heart rate had not slowed, and now I found myself taking deeper breaths to try to compensate.

The air in the room felt thin, insufficient, as if there weren't enough to sustain me through this ordeal.

My world was falling around me. How could this happen? Where had I gone wrong?

The questions multiplied in my mind, each one breeding more doubt, more fear, more certainty that everything I had worked for was slipping through my fingers like sand.

I had been so careful, so dedicated, so determined to prove myself worthy of the opportunities I had been given.

And now, in the span of a single afternoon, it was all coming apart.

I stopped pacing and stood at the window, looking out at the gardens below.

The view was peaceful, serene—a stark contrast to the turmoil in my mind.

Servants moved about their duties, gardeners tended to the flowerbeds, life continued as it always had.

The normalcy of it all seemed impossible.

How could the world continue to function when mine was ending?

When would Devlyn return?

What was to be my fate?

Afraid that I’d wear a path on the floor, I sat back down, closing my eyes. Trying to calm my thoughts, my racing heart, everything.