Page 1 of This Midsummer Heart (Seasons of Legend #4)
Chapter one
The Last Runeships
Titaine
S
ummer
arrives
with
a
trio of scorpions scuttling across my private study’s burgundy rug, their glossy black bodies barely visible outside the twin squares of sunlight on the floor. I frown at them from where I perch atop my desk. Such creatures should not have been permitted to enter the House of Fetes.
“Vervaine!” I call, nervously running my fingers through a swath of straight brown hair that puddles in my lap. “It’s happened again.”
Vervaine, who at least has kept her sharp hearing, buzzes into the room, dustpan already in hand. I have the distinct impression this trio aren’t the only intruders in the central building today. Sweat slicks Vervaine’s brow instead of glittery dew, and her wings sag at her back.
One by one, each of my servants is fading.
I sigh from a mix of exhaustion and frustration. “Vervaine, this won’t do.”
“I’ll get them quickly, my lady,” the diminutive fete replies, “never fear. If we work at it, I’m sure we can pool enough magic to get the wards back up in no time.”
“I don’t mean that—though you should get them—yes, over there!” I hug myself a little tighter. “We can’t keep living like this.”
Brushing the last scorpion into the dustpan, Vervaine doesn’t look up. “I don’t believe that symposium for a second, my lady. For one thing, they were all humans! What do they know about magic vanishing?”
“To not believe them would be ignoring the obvious,” I reply, twisting my hair around one fist. “We know the gods have vanished—only the small ones remain. We know what’s happening to us.
Magic is becoming ungovernable—and that means unusable.
What is a fete without magic? What will become of the House of Fetes? ”
“I’ll be right back, my lady, hold your worrying.”
I hiss at her quick dismissal. Even my subordinates, who used to look at me as if I was the sun itself instead of just its lady, think I am overreacting.
Yet their wings droop, their magic slips away, and the House of Fetes is surely becoming little more than a cluster of buildings for the governance of increasingly ordinary fae.
Even our grounds, an oasis in the bustling city of Avalonne, are losing their magic.
This is not at all like the House I built. I rose to the fore of all fetes through my studies and command of magic, ruling for
beings of magic. Like their House, fetes are fearsome, beautiful, and full of an undeniable allure.
While it is clear to me that I lost all of my appeal for a certain someone years ago, I would never expect it to happen to those I rule over.
No one looks at me as if I’m the sun anymore, even as its power continues to suffuse me with a golden glow.
I light up no one’s nights. I’m beginning to feel it in my bones—alongside what I fear to be mortal-like aches in my joints—that I am losing my beauty and vitality along with some of my magic.
Vervaine returns alarmingly fast. Narrowing my eyes at my secretary, I wonder whether she deposited the scorpions far enough from the House.
“We should plant lavender,” Vervaine suggests. “It’s a human trick to keep the scorpions at bay.”
“Is that what we must resort to now, Vervaine? Human tricks?” I cannot help but say the words with distaste.
“If it works, then why not, my lady? What is there to lose?”
What is there
left to lose,
she means.
“Puk says they’ve been hanging it inside the House of Elves, too,” Vervaine adds, unhelpfully.
My lip curls. “You still speak to”—I swallow the urge to say that traitor
—“the goodfellow?”
Vervaine nods, her cheeks coloring slightly. Of course she has a fondness for Puk. Because having my secretary fall in with the enemy over some silly romance is just what I need.
Everything is falling apart. And here I am, cowering on a desk, not doing anything to stop the further diminishment of the House of Fetes.
Get up, Titaine. The scorpions are gone!
After scanning the floor for other arachnid intruders—just to be safe—I slip off the desk, onto my bare feet.
As one foot slides into a pool of light, I am suddenly certain that my skin, the golden, light olive brown of the fetes in the Isles, is losing its luster.
There is little glow of magic left to compete with this bright natural light, only sallowness.
Ah, but when did I get so vain?
As if I need to ask. The moment I learned he’d taken up with her,
I began to doubt everything about myself. Even five years later, I still can’t quite shake these worries about my appearance, as if, deep down, I am convinced that being more beautiful or more powerful would’ve changed the course of my mate-bond with Auberon.
But all of that is history now. It’s the future I must concern myself with.
I pad to the bureau beside my desk, rifling through a series of maps. Within moments, Vervaine is at my elbow, practically breathing onto my bare arm.
Scratch that. Literally breathing on it. A quick shudder runs through me. Why did I never notice such things, when I still had free access to magic? It’s as if all my magic used to cocoon me. Without the same grasp on it, it sometimes feels as if all my nerve endings are raw.
“Which map are you looking for, my lady?”
“I’m not helpless, Vervaine, I can find my own map.”
“I’m sure you can, my lady…but which one are you looking for?”
“There!”
I slide the rolled paper out from a lower drawer, revealing a map of the northern and southern woldings, with a thin stretch of land and a pair of wicked seas on either side of it. I unfurl the map triumphantly, and try not to twitch my nose when I feel little motes of dust tickling it.
This absolutely never happened when I had all my magic. There is so little of it left now, I’m afraid to test it and learn just how much I’ve lost.
To that end, I spread the map across my desk.
The Diam Sea cuts across it, dividing East from West, lapping at the Bridge of Miracles—called such because one needs a few of them to make it across—and raking down the sprawling southern continent of Tethered Malu, and its many isles.
On the western side of that continent, somewhere in the mountains, stands the City of Nox.
The Diam Sea is difficult to navigate these days, owing to the rarity of runeships that could take on its slant-wise waves, battering ships no matter in which direction they travel.
To cross it, one risks running afoul of one of the many lava-spewing volcanos that could appear out of those crushing waves.
But the last runeships still run close to the coast, meaning a sea journey to Nox is still possible.
The mortal symposium and the heads of all the Houses of magical peoples might not understand exactly what’s happened to all the world’s magic, but in the ancient City of Nox, they say it still exists. By all accounts, it thrives.
“I think it’s time we relocate the House of Fetes, Vervaine,” I conclude. At Vervain’s moue of distaste—and her mouth opening in protest—I hold up a finger. “We’re fetes. We need magic to survive. Most of all, I
need magic if I am to lead it.”
Vervaine says nothing for a long moment, her big eyes traveling the map. “The City of Nox is a long way from here, my lady. Very long.”
She doesn’t need to add and travel is dangerous, for one losing her magic.
“Would you rather we remain here and fade?”
“There are dragons in the Middle Cross, I hear. They’re settling in just fine. Why should we uproot ourselves if they won’t?”
“I’m the Head of the House of Fetes. I won’t settle for less.” I’ve settled for less for too long already.
Still, Vervaine’s mouth twists in dissent, even as she replies, “Yes, my lady.”
“If you don’t want to come, you don’t have to.”
Vervaine wrings her hands. “It’s just—well.”
“Well what? Speak your mind.”
“It’s just that the remaining runeships are leaving port at the end of this week.”
“ What?
”
“And someone else already contracted the last of them.”
I flex my jaw, trying and failing to work out the immediate tension in those muscles. The growing pit in my stomach likewise agrees: I already know who bought the final berths.
Auberon is getting the last laugh, the final victory over me that he’s always craved. Auberon!
I cannot believe I’ve lost to him. Yet some part of me is still a glutton for punishment—the kind only Auberon can deal me.
No, I’m getting ahead of myself. Why should it be him? Why could it not be someone else who foresaw the need to reach Nox before I did?
“And who, pray tell, contracted them?” I ask, my voice overly sweet as I wait for confirmation.
Vervaine hides her hands behind her back. “Robin the Puk did, my lady, on Houselord Auberon’s behalf.”
At the mention of my ex-bonded one’s name, I grit my teeth so hard my jaw cracks. Of all the people!
Of all the people I must ask for a favor, why did it have to be him? Why should he be the one to humble me once again?
But who am I fooling?
It is always, always
Auberon.