The Queen's Choice

“You’re scared of it.”

“Is that so hard to comprehend? Is that so wrong?”

“No. But you should be realistic, Anya.”

He took a step toward me, and I backed away, troubled by his words. He halted, his arms falling limply to his sides.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“How long might it take to find Zabriel? What are the odds he’ll even consider ascending the throne? I think you could better spend this time preparing for what’s coming. Maybe...once you understand your duty better...it won’t be so daunting.”

I took several deep breaths, trying not to show Davic my true reaction to his words, his sensible, oh-so-typical-of-Davic words. He always walked the easiest path, always let everyone around him dictate who he was and what he would become. It would be easy to succumb to the way things were, easy to surrender my hopes and dreams in the face of resistance. But fighting would show me how much power I had over my own life. Maybe, just maybe, I had enough power to alter my future. Fighting to find out now was better than never knowing.

“Give me three months. I’ll find Zabriel, and if he’s unwilling to be the heir, I’ll do as you say. I’ll accept it all.”

Davic studied me for a long time, aware of the finality in my tone, then released a humorless laugh.

“Three months. I know I can’t stop you, so if this is what you have to do, by all means go. But after three months, be ready to give up your travels. Please. Be ready to stay with me and the Fae as our Queen.”

I nodded once, then hoisted my satchel and went around him to the door. He stopped me with one last question.

“What should I tell Queen Ubiqua? Your father?”

“Tell them I needed time away. Don’t say what I’m really doing. And when you see Ione, tell her I’m sorry I had to leave again. I wish it were different.” I smiled wistfully, willing him to understand that this last message was for him as much as it was for my best friend.

I looked at the open door before me, then backtracked to touch his face, drawing him close for a kiss. This was the last we would see of each other before my fate was decided. His hands drew our bodies together, compressing us into one being.

“I’ll be waiting for you,” he whispered.

I pulled away and walked outside, about to begin the most important journey of my life.

Chrior was alight with lanterns, and the square where the massacre had occurred was decorated with gifts, elemental and otherwise. People were still assembled there, singing and seeking each other’s consolation. The Queen wove among them, taking her subjects’ hands, offering words of sympathy and encouragement, and acknowledging their respectful bows. With her silver hair flowing behind her, she was the living embodiment of a spirit of comfort. Keeping to the fringes, I bypassed the crowd, and, in my earth-toned garb, vanished into the trees.

It wasn’t long before I was alone in the darkened woods, with only faint echoes of music and voices reaching my ears. Much louder were the snapping of sticks and the rustling of bushes caused by animals that hunted at night, and animals that were hunted at night. Without daylight to show the sprawling landscape, the walls of the forest could have trapped and confused me like a maze. But this was the route I always took to leave Chrior, and I knew it well enough to trust my feet to follow the path, despite the unsettling thoughts that were chasing around in my head—Evangeline’s stories of the supernatural creatures known as Sepulchres, together with images of Falk’s missing son, who could be hiding in these woods, waiting to inflict vengeance for the deaths of his family members.

Snow crunched beneath my boots, and it was impossible to move quietly, which grew more vexing the closer I came to the Bloody Road. I had warned Illumina about hunters, a far more realistic danger than the ones I was envisioning. Just as humans mounted the heads of bucks on their walls like trophies, so had the wings of Fae become badges of accomplishment for some of them, and near the Bloody Road was a popular place for such brutes to stalk. I could put up my shroud, but if I were seen crossing the Road, any hunter who happened to be looking would know I was no human. Humans could not survive the Road.

My heart beat faster than normal, and it was futile to try listening to logic instead of my darkness-fueled imagination. This was the reason I tried not to travel at night. It was good Illumina had departed in the morning; hopefully, she would not have been plagued by such fears.

Fed up with the way my footsteps reverberated, I took off my cloak and shoved it in my pack. With my wings uncovered, I flew to a branch, opting to hover tree to tree in silence until I had passed the Road. I looked down on the battle site as I went, seeing how pure and undisturbed the snow was, and listening to the wind. It always whistled strangely through this part of the forest. I scanned the area ahead of me, my Fae sense of sight, like my hearing and smell, heightened in comparison to the abilities of humans. Observing no signs of danger, I dropped to the ground, relieved to be past the crossing. Now I could leave the forest and its secrets behind.

The next instant I would relive for years to come. Had I adopted my shroud and hidden my wings before falling, things might have been different. Had I been quicker, or less eager, I might have been spared.

I heard the whipping of an arrow and turned toward the sound an instant before the weapon pinned my wings, both of them in one sharp strike, to the tree I had just vacated. Gasping, I tried to tug free, succeeding only in tearing the membrane of my wings. As excruciating pain seared through me, I shrieked and braced against the tree, trying to keep the strength in my legs. If my knees buckled, I would hurt myself further. My vision was darkening, filling with spots, but then fingers gripped my chin, turning my head, and my eyes focused once more. I was staring at a human, a broad, grimy, stringy-haired man. “Got one,” he muttered.

There was movement behind him—more humans, one woman amongst four men, her feminine aspect revealed by her manner of dress and her slight silhouette in the moonlight.

The man holding my chin pushed my head against the tree. He fitted something made of leather around my wrists and snapped it tight so I couldn’t move my hands. My arms felt weak under the immobilizing pressure of the shackles. Then he nodded to one of his comrades.

I knew what they were going to do. Frenzied, I tried to draw on my elemental connection to the water, asking the snow, the ice, the sap in the trees, the water in the earth, to rise up and shield me. But unlike the waves that had rushed to the aid of the Queen’s Blade to extinguish Falk’s Pride, no response was forthcoming. Usually, a Faerie’s pain and distress alone summoned an elemental reaction, but I had nothing. Not a single bead of sweat answered my call.

I cowered, waiting for the second man to deliver fortune’s justice. I was helpless, so completely helpless in that moment. All the independence I was so proud to possess, all the dignity and potential others saw in me was gone. I was no one in the eyes of these humans, and I could not stop them from degrading me, defiling me, robbing me of what made me Fae.

A halberd the comrade carried.

A halberd he brought down on me not once, not twice, but three times in order to sever my wings from my body. Cutting through the bone near my back to make sure he didn’t miss a shred of the light and delicate but fiercely strong appendages.

I didn’t feel the pain especially. I was numb. Shocked. Agony was like an echo, loud and close, but strangely detached from its source, strangely detached from me. I fell to the ground, staring at the Road I had been so careful about navigating, aware that the hunters were leaving with their prize. Someone was wailing; no, I was wailing. The woman approached and I rolled away from her, not knowing what else she could do to harm me, but clawing at ice and snow in an effort to avoid her. She leaned down behind me and stroked my hair.

“Shhhh,” she whispered in my ear, and then she, too, departed.

I was bleeding. Nature, I was bleeding. Not only from my back, but from my chest, my arms and my bound hands. Magic was seeping out of me, black and excruciating. I could see it drifting away. The magic that would let me pass the Bloody Road to reach home again.

Leaving dark red smears in the snow, I kicked and flailed, trying to catch the intangible substance, my one unrecoverable hope. But only unconsciousness came to me, and when it did, I prayed it would hold on to me forever.

CHAPTER FOUR

TRAPPED

“Zabriel, what happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Then I suppose you woke up with your wing torn like that.”

“Maybe I did.”

“Just because your father was a human doesn’t mean you can lie to me.”

Whether the Queen had intended it as an insult or not, it was clear from Zabriel’s stormy expression that the comment had stung. Fae nature was complex: we could confuse, evade, and conceal the truth, but we could not tell an outright lie. It was the price we paid for our magic. Dishonesty was a trait reserved for humans.

The medicine mage had already departed, having stitched the wing, leaving Zabriel hunched on the edge of his bed, his arms wrapped around his legs, hugging them against his bare chest. I sat on the floor in the corner of the room, wishing to be invisible. But I couldn’t leave, for I was the one who had brought this injury to my aunt’s attention. I was the one who had been frightened.

“Mind what the mage said, Zabriel,” she warned, watching as he rose to find a shirt. “You’re not to fly for two weeks.”

“I don’t care.”

He shrugged on a tunic, wincing as his bandaged wing found its way through the fabric.

“Well, I do,” Ubiqua responded, tone biting. “For Nature’s sake, Zabriel, what is wrong with you?”

My cousin’s dark eyes shot to his mother. His eyes were his father’s, but he had the unusual silvery-blond hair with which Ubiqua had been blessed when she was younger, only his was wild, reflective of the apathy of a lonely soul.

“What’s wrong with me?” He laughed humorlessly. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What do you mean?”

Zabriel slammed the door of his clothing cabinet shut, the color high in his cheeks. “You married a human! That’s what I mean. How could you do that to me?”