Page 44

W e shivered on the shore, seated on the rock and wrapped in our cloaks. I watched the sun glint off the waves.

“I think I have more questions now than before,” I said, and my mother laughed, a touch of melancholy in it. “So my real father is a fae king?” I asked.

“Archfae,” she said.

“Gods above and below, an Archfae?”

She nodded. “His name is Fenodyr. I used to call him Fen.”

“Why don’t I look like him? More fae?”

“Because you don’t really look like this. He taught me to use glamour magic. And he cast it on you himself, still in my belly, before he… Before we parted. He wanted to help me keep you hidden. Keep you safe.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean you don’t look like you think you do.” She turned to me. “When I look at you, I see through the illusion he cast on you. I see you as you are.”

“So you kept my face hidden, even from me. Gods above, Mother… Why didn’t he change my eyes?” I asked.

“I don’t really know. I guess it just felt wrong to hide them.

I didn’t want to lose who you were, who I was, entirely.

Where we came from. I think he felt the same way.

Didn’t want me to forget him.” Her voice was heavy and she was quiet a moment, then said, “Would you like me to dispel it? See who you really are?”

I ran my hands over my face, smoothing back my wet hair. This was all too much. “How… how different will I be?”

“Not as different as you think. You’ve always been beautiful, Hal. But you look more like your father than you know.” She smiled sadly.

“Then show me,” I said.

She passed a hand over my face and I felt the familiar tingle of magic dissipating. Magic I had been born with, had been so accustomed to that I had never even known it was there but now felt the absence of. I realized I had no way to see my appearance.

“Well, how do I look?” I laughed halfheartedly.

“Just like you always have to me,” she said. “Here, I’ll show you.”

She stood at the edge of the water and held a steady hand out over it.

The wavelets on the surface smoothed into nothing, the water becoming glassy and reflective.

It wasn’t a perfect mirror, but I could see my reflection somewhat.

I leaned over to look and was immediately struck by my ears.

Two long, pointed Archfae ears protruded from my wet hair.

All my features were a little more dramatic. My jawline was sharper, my nose more defined. The fae grace my mother had always had was amplified in my own looks now. Yet there was something more, something wild, a feral edge to it.

“The ears will be a lot to get used to.” I lifted a hand to touch them tentatively.

“I can hide them again. Hide it all again, if you want,” she offered.

“No. I’m tired of hiding. I want to be who I am. Fully.”

We were quiet as I studied my reflection.

“You do look so like him. You have my eyes, but his… unique beauty.”

“So Fenodyr, my father, was an Archfae. But he was also a king?”

“He is now, I assume. He was meant to be when we were together. He tried to avoid it, but his father had made a deal with the queen of a court on his behalf.”

“Why would an Archfae possibly need to make a deal with a queen? Aren’t they more powerful than most fae?”

“They are, yes. But the Archfae used to have no place in the courts. Had no use for them, either. Especially Fen. You see, the courts only existed here, not on the other side of the Veil. But after the wars, the fae who inhabited our plane––the Midjalend, we call it––fled to the Fiadhain and sealed the Veil behind them. And when they went, they took all their courts and politics with them. And so the Archfae and other fae who had been there all along had to assimilate.”

“So the Archfae wanted a way into the courts?” I asked.

“Most of them didn’t. But some, like Fen’s father, did. He saw an opportunity to gain more power, and volunteered Fenodyr for the role instead of himself, to maintain his own freedom. Most of the political influence with none of the sacrifice.”

“Wow, real nice grandfather I have.”

She chuckled. “Yes, Fen did not appreciate it. But a deal is a deal, and in the Fiadhain, a shirked deal can mean death. So Fen had to marry the queen, or his father would die.”

“So he did,” I said.

“I think he did,” she repeated, with far less emotion than the phrase must have inspired in her. “I always told him he should have just let his father die, let him suffer the consequences of his own plans. Freed himself from his father’s tyranny. But Fen was too kind.”

“Doesn’t seem like kindness to put you out on your own, though. Especially pregnant with me.”

“Kindness does not always lead to happiness, Halja. He loved me, and he loved you. He was terrified for me, for us. The queen’s assassins had been after me for months.

He protected me with his power for a long time, and killed so many that she sent to hunt me.

But it was too much, all the time. They were always after us, always found me wherever I hid, and it was terrifying, never knowing if I’d lose you.

We were exhausted, so tired of fleeing, of hiding.

Eventually the queen threatened to call the deal off, declare that Fen’s father had defaulted on his bargain because Fen was so clearly unfaithful to her.

Unless he handed me over to her to be executed, you along with me, and committed to his marriage to her. So he sent us here to keep us safe.”

“He abandoned you here, alone, it sounds like. Why didn’t he just come with you?”

“I begged him to, but he couldn’t live with the guilt of what it would do to his father.”

“A father that willingly sacrificed his son into an eternity of misery in a court he never wanted,” I said.

“It’s funny...” She smiled. “I told him the same thing.”

“But Fenodyr was an Archfae. Doesn’t that make him far more powerful than any queen or court? Why didn’t he just kill his betrothed?”

“He wanted to. Oh, he wanted to. And it was well within his ability. We talked about it many times. But an open attack on any of the courts by an Archfae could make that Archfae a threat, and an enemy, to all courts.

“See, when the fae from the Midjalend, this plane, came back to the Fiadhain for good during the last war, they brought their courts and crowns with them. The concept of organized governance was new to the Fiadhain then. The Archfae had never had any need for it or interest in it. Their own powers were enough for them, they didn’t need crowns or boundaries to fight over.

They enjoyed the leniency of a lawless land.

“So when those crowns and court boundaries arrived, there was a… tension between the courts and the Archfae. Many of the kings and queens welcomed the allyship of any Archfae, wanted their powers on their side. But an open attack on a court by an Archfae, on the other hand, could lead to another war. And while an Archfae is powerful, they’re no match for an army by themselves.

Not to mention multiple armies, if other courts got involved. ”

“Still… It sounds like he could have done more, in the end.”

“He could have.” Her eyes were on the dark sea. “He could have. But they tamed him, Hal. They took the wildness from him. And all the love he had for me, and for you, brought him so much fear. He was so scared to lose us to death that he lost us to distance instead.”

A pair of Arctic terns swept by, flashes of graceful white against the storm-healing sky. Their long, forked tails and pointed wings painted trails of sunlight where they flew through gaps in the clouds.

“So you ended up here by yourself. And then you met Father,” I continued.

“Then I met your father. I told him I was pregnant, but he said he didn’t care.

He didn’t know the story, didn’t know where I had come from or who your real father was.

Just that I needed somewhere safe. And he opened his home to me.

He said he would raise you as his own and we would never speak a word of it again. ”

“But he must have known I was different.”

“He did,” she said. “I think at first it didn’t bother him. When you were a child you were much easier, more innocent, less to contend with. But as you grew, you developed such a spirit of your own. So much of your father’s wildness in your blood. And I think it scared him.”

There was quiet while I processed. Then I asked, “So when you came through the Veil, did you come through near our home?”

“No, actually. A standing stone near Skeioholm. There was a little steading there with just one woman living in it. She saw me arrive and didn’t seem surprised at all.

She gave me tea and dinner, and let me stay with her that night in a little bed in an alcove by the fire.

Her home was so small, I remember thinking how kind it was of her to let a total stranger into such a tiny space.

She listened while I cried to her all evening.

I was so upset, I’m embarrassed to say I told her everything.

She told me I could stay as long as I needed, but I left for the sea the next day.

I needed to orient myself with something familiar. ”

“Her name was Eilith,” I said. The realization dawned on me at last, like it should have so long ago. Of course, Eilith knew who I was more than I had all along. I smiled and shook my head.

My mother looked at me in surprise. “You’ve met her?”

“I’ve been living with her. Sleeping in that same little bed by the fire in the same tiny cottage for the last year.”

“Ha.” She huffed an incredulous laugh. “There truly is no such thing as a coincidence.”

“I felt the same way when I arrived there,” I said. “Like I was meant to.”

“Did she tell you about me?” my mother asked.

“No, never a word. I told her about you, though, about my home and family. She must have realized who I was, who you were. She probably knew it right away, knowing her. But I think she knew that was not her secret to tell. She never said anything about it.”

“Still has the same integrity as ever, then,” my mother said.