Page 17 of This Midsummer Heart (Seasons of Legend #4)

Chapter sixteen

Briars

Auberon

S

omething

peculiar

is

happening

to me by the time we cross the border from Laufee into Lisania. My knees

hurt. Persistently.

As if that weren’t enough, now my feet are beginning to chime in.

My stride slows as I try to stretch without Titaine noticing.

She keeps marching along, her wings fluttering a little as she approaches the next steep hill, the terrain of southern Laufee clearly laid out just to torture us.

But I catch myself frowning as I study her. Have I ever seen her do that before?

Just as my newly loosened body is threatening to continue this foolish journey, I halt again. I can’t recall ever seeing Titaine go uphill while fluttering her wings. It’s actually…adorable.

What else don’t I know about this woman I’m married to?

My memories—the lack of them—keep jolting me. How have I never walked through nature with her since our first fateful meeting, when neither of us were after a simple stroll but a trade contract along the coast?

I lope after Titaine, trying to focus on keeping my aching feet from any appearance of shuffling. I don’t even know how one would stretch a foot. I’ve never experienced pain and fatigue like this before.

I’m becoming so ordinary. Becoming like a human mortal.

All while realizing I’ve never taken the time to do ordinary things with my wife.

Would that have made a difference? I can’t imagine it would’ve. I’m still me. She’s still her. A better connection to nature was hardly going to change our personalities.

Some fae and elves are just city folk. There’s no sense in making something melodramatic out of it.

It just seems a touch…strange. How could we both be so busy that the fae lady of the sun and the king of the dark elves never thought to take time away from our duties?

How long has it been since she spent all day in sunlight, or since I walked through a deep forest?

As I follow Titaine up the slope, she is already reaching the crest. The light catches her wings then, making their ephemeral shape flare to life. My breath catches in my throat as she turns back to face me, her features lost to shadow. Her hair and wings are lit up with golden fire.

I shake the thought loose. Of course the fae lady of the sun is like a Muse’s creation, beautiful and full of magic—more beautiful, even, than her mother, who came to Glowarian Forest once to treat with my father. But it wasn’t her beauty that drew me to her.

Titaine told me once that other men who pursued her treated her like a prized bird to be kept in a cage, appreciating only her beauty and resisting any acknowledgment of her power.

I never minded having a powerful wife. I sort of think I preferred it.

And it’s not as if there’s anyone out there whose power can compare to Titaine’s.

No, her allure lies in a thousand little things, in a secret smile as she solves some magical problem beyond my grasp, in the way the flowers seem a little brighter when she traces her fingers across them, in the way she finds common ground with every kind of fae, or how she would burrow into my side in the middle of the night, so that I woke each morning to the two of us lying like entwined branches…

What am I thinking? All of this strange fatigue—like weights around my neck and each of my limbs—is making me foolish.

But I swear that, for just a moment, her face lights up with a smile when she sees me.

“There’s a human village up ahead,” she calls down from the top of the hill. The evenness of her tone proves I’m imagining things. “There’s nothing for it. We’ll have to spend the night there and resupply.”

As if Titaine would smile at me.

I lurch up the hill, sticky dampness growing beneath my collar. Was this the effect of magic diminishing in the world? I never imagined it’d be so human. So…

Disgusting. Do I smell? I think I might smell.

By the time I reach the crest, I no longer cared about my appearance.

A lock of black hair sticks to my forehead, my shins burning and my clothes cling to my skin.

And Titaine thought a sleeveless style was foolish!

I might perish if I wore anything more. As things stand, I am sorely tempted to chuck my shirt into the nearest hedge and continue on wearing only mail.

Then I stand at the top of the hill at last, gazing down at the so-called village that lies sprawling in the valley below.

As we begin the descent, the leeward slope of the hill is no more forgiving, studded with rocks and patches of loose gravel. If we’re lucky, we’ll reach that town before nightfall. Already shaded by the descending sun, it’s difficult to make out the dark terrain surrounding the town.

I blink a few times, then resorted to squinting. It seems my eyes are getting tired, too. As an elf, I have excellent sight. As a dark elf, a little shade shouldn’t trouble me.

Yet I cannot not make out what lies ahead.

“Notice anything?” Titaine asks, as if she senses my new shortcomings. That would be just like her.

“That’s a town, not a village,” I say curtly.

“It most certainly is not!” Titaine stiffens, and I notice how fresh she still looks, how untroubled by our trek. Is this a glamour?

Now I’m back to hoping she doesn’t notice my breathlessness, my sweat and my… odor.

This is preposterous. Elves smell of woodsy things, of the understory and loam after a gentle rain. They do not smell malodorous.

“I won’t let you bait me,” she says, her expression becoming serene, and then she glides on, her steps as brisk as when we set out this morning. I make sure to keep extra distance between us.

As if I could keep up. If she is bearing this journey better than I, it cannot be just a glamour. She walks too quickly for that. Where I begin to fret I’ll lose my footing on a loose stone, she simply hops over it, as sure-footed as a cat.

It isn’t until we’ve traveled another half hour, the sun dipping low, that I chance a look ahead.

From above, the land surrounding the village appear dark, like some kind of murky ring of water surrounds it. Now that we’re closer, my eyes can finally make it out.

It’s a thicket, full of rosebuds. And at least from here, I can see no clear path through it. And just as Titaine’s beauty is entwined with viciousness, so too do these roses mean thorns.

I eye my bare arms, then the rose briar ahead. I didn’t imagine it. Titaine really did

smiled at me.

She just loves to be right.

Well. We’ll see how well those flowing silky layers of her dress fare. As if she’s dressed any better!

After five minutes of picking my way through the thicket, the answer is clear: She is

dressed better, her enchanted gown repelling all the briar’s attempts at snags and scratches. But I’m not going to tell her

that.

I wince as the realm’s thorniest roses bite into my bicep.

There is indeed a path in and out of the town, but it’s overgrown and narrow.

Already, I’m having my doubts about the town’s habitability, even as I spot the smoke of cookfires winding into the sky above us.

If this is a living, breathing town ahead of us, how do supplies and produce get in and out of it?

No wagon or cart could fit through this narrow path.

As I dash away blood on my arm, my movements falter.

“Titaine,” I call after her, for as usual she has floated on ahead, the thorny briar seeming to part for her and the excessive layers of fabric she calls a dress. “Is there another way in and out of this town?”

“Of course there is.” Her voice sounds worryingly faint, even as a flash of ivory silk appears ahead of me. “How else would crops and merchants get in and out?”

I narrow my eyes in her general direction, hoping she’ll somehow feel the ice of my glare at this distance. “But did you see

it?”

“Of course I did, didn’t you?”

My words come out a mumble. “Must’ve missed it.”

“It’s not as though we have daylight to spare,” she replies. “It would’ve added at least a half hour, trying to go around to the wagon path.”

“And you think we’re making good progress this way, do you?”

“Don’t whine. It’s just a little further.”

It most certainly isn’t. And I wasn’t whining. But experience tells me there’s no point in arguing that with her.

She’d

be whining if her arms were being sliced to shreds. The gods forbid it mar her perfect skin.

As I follow her at a much slower pace, I stop seeing the white flashes of her dress. I begin to think I’ve lost her.

That’s when I hear it. The burble of a stream.

Of course. There couldn’t be a town of this size existing solely on the runoff from these high hills around it. This must’ve been Titaine’s plan all along.

In addition to seeing my exposed arms ripped up by the briar, she means to see me soaked through, too. She’d flutter over the water while I’m forced to trudge through it.

“There’s a footpath along the bank,” she calls back, her voice muffled by distance and the sheer quantity of briars around us. What is

this place? Lisania’s strategic supply of rose petals? Who on earth would plant all this?

A glance at the bleeding slashes along my arms adds to my unease. The briars are meant to keep most people out; in that sense, it’s little different than a town with a wall. What worries me is how

they had done it.

It couldn’t be possible to grow something like this without magic, could it?

I bite my lower lip, ducking beneath a swath of woody stems that had knit together over the path like an arch. This is unnatural. But when it comes to magic, Titaine is the knowledgeable one. Either the briar is harmless, or she’s counting on her magic to protect her from whatever is wrong with it.

And counting on me

to be all but helpless against it.

The cruelty of it nearly steals my breath—not that I’ve had much breath to work with since climbing the hills.

If something happens to me on this journey to Nox—something accidental and convincing—Titaine would be rid of me for good.

Maybe she’ll even charm my dark elf successor, whoever they are.

A distant cousin of mine, I’m sure. Given more time and less acrimony, Titaine and I might’ve gotten to the producing heirs part of our relationship and taken care of that.

A cousin, then. Someone I met long ago and couldn’t pick out if I tried.

Who am I kidding? Once I’m gone, the union of dark elves under my family’s crown will break apart.

In all my years of rule, I’ve yet to make all the factions see sense.

And then there are the others. The moon elves will leave the dark elf umbrella for good.

Wood elves will be too suspicious of dark elves to continue the peace.

Through my lineage and the battles I fought, I became the sole entity that bonds them together.

If Titaine has her way, it will all fall apart.

Maybe she thinks the legendary City of Nox won’t be big enough for both elves and fae.

Maybe she simply doesn’t wish to share whatever magic is left with the elves.

All I know for certain is that she hopes for our undoing, like centuries of fae leaders before her.

But does she really want me dead? If that is her aim, she could’ve managed it years ago, when the flow of magic through the world was still relatively steady. She wouldn’t have needed the help of a malicious briar patch then.

So what does

she want?

At last, I spot her up ahead, her dress turning golden in the intense light before sundown. The stream is close. But when I catch up to her, I eye it with dismay.

The path along the banks is narrow—slim enough to compete with the Bridge of Miracles. On one side are the reaching briars and the uniformly closed buds. On the other, the foaming waters. The stream is surprisingly deep, and I can barely make out the rocky bottom to it.

The current is also swift enough that it makes Titaine difficult to hear. “What?” I ask when her lips move but very little sound reaches me.

She turns to face me, her eyes flashing with anger.

Oh. She isn’t speaking to me. She’s performing an incantation. Either Titaine is

losing a bit of her magic, or she’s performing some kind of major working.

The noisy stream suddenly grows quiet.

Heat rushes to my face, flooding the tips of my ears. In the name of the elder forests, how does she still have this much magic? I feel so mortal.

My body agrees, for as the stream somehow diverts to one side, the water slows to a trickle nearer to us, and I swear I hear my joints creaking.

I hang back a moment, watching a mist rise from the now shallow stream. She hasn’t diverted the water at all, but used her sun magic to burn through the water around us. Ahead, the stream slows, but behind us it still runs knee deep on an elf, and swift.

And I can’t help but watch Titaine as she enters the altered stream, following it towards the town. If she’s feeling the loss of magic in our world, it hasn’t hurt her in the least.

Which begs the question.

What does she need me on this journey for anyway? And how in the boughs of Dauron do I stop her from leaving without me once she realizes I’ll only slow her down?