The Queen's Choice

My desire to protect my voice lost out to frustration, and I screeched—one long, harrowing note that threatened to shatter mirrors and glassware, as well as my own eardrums. With a forceful but ill-conceived sweep of my arm I knocked the nearest object from the tabletop. I drew up short as it shattered, and, suddenly subdued, tiptoed around the table, glass crunching beneath my boots. Fragments in white, scarlet, and gold sparkled at me, and I slipped to my knees to survey the wreckage. The ruined decanter had been a gift from my father upon my betrothal to Davic; it had also been a much-beloved possession of my mother’s, the blown red glass matching the sinuous patterns in her wings.

“No,” I moaned, cradling a piece with golden inlay. I wanted to blame Ubiqua for inciting my temper, or my father for entrusting the piece to me in the first place, but my heart refused to accept excuses. I alone had broken this precious keepsake.

Filled with remorse, I had a sudden urge to go somewhere, anywhere that wasn’t here. Recalling Illumina’s comments about Zabriel, my self-pity transformed itself into grim determination. I could not let this change happen in my life until I had exhausted all other options. The broken decanter was an omen of the dreams that would be lost to me if I stood passively by.

I hurried to the bedroom, pulled out my leather travel satchel and shoved in the essentials—a small flask of Sale, jerky, a change of clothes, herbs, bandages, and other minimal medical supplies, an extra blanket for warmth, and my money pouch. I stripped off the brown dress I’d worn for the memorial in favor of warm leggings, a woolen tunic and my heaviest jerkin. The last thing I grabbed was a cloak. Looping the strap of the satchel across my chest, I started for the main room, but my eyes fell on the Anlace I did not want lying atop my dresser. I halted, allowing my gaze to linger. Without understanding why, I picked it up and pulled my long-knife from its sheath, replacing it with the Queen’s weapon. After adding my own blade to my pack, I stepped through the doorway.

“I knew you’d be doing this.”

Davic was sitting on the sofa, having come in while I was preoccupied with packing, tacit disapproval written on his face. I sighed and grabbed my bedroll, my mind searching for words that might appease him.

“I know you don’t understand, Davic, but I have to go.”

“You don’t have to go anywhere—unless you believe there’s nothing worth staying for in Chrior. For Nature’s sake, you’re hurt, and you just got home from your last trip! Why won’t you let us help you? You ought to be here with your family, with me, for more than a few days. Or is that notion so insufferable?”

“This isn’t about you,” I snipped, wishing he wasn’t between me and the door. Deciding this wasn’t the time to argue with him, I made my voice more placating and tried again. “I’m sorry, but you don’t know what’s going on.”

“I’m not stupid, Anya.” He stood and crossed his arms over his chest, toeing the mess I’d made of my mother’s decanter. “It’s obvious Ubiqua overwhelmed you today. But is it too much to hope you might try to make sense of it around the people who love you?”

“Is it too much to hope you might trust my judgment?” My spine stiffened in irritation. I wanted his boot out of the broken glass. I knew he wasn’t doing any more harm than I’d already done, but I couldn’t reason myself out of an irrational reaction. Instead, I pointed at the shattered pieces.

“Stop it. Leave the decanter alone. I’m going to fix it. I’m going to fix it, Davic!”

He withdrew his foot and watched me with more concern than ever.

“I’m going to fix it,” I repeated more calmly, enunciating clearly. “When next I’m home. There’s just something I have to do first. I want to be with you, but there’s something else I have to do.”

Now that I sounded less crazed, he rolled his eyes. “Sneak out in the dead of night without telling me or your aunt or your father where you’re going? Stay away for Nature knows how long? Is that what you have to do?”

“No!” I dropped my pack at my feet, its thump indicative of how angry I was at the assumptions he was making. “I’m going because Queen Ubiqua is dying.”

The lines in his face fell away, and he paled. “What?”

“Yes. She’s dying. And she didn’t send Illumina on her Crossing, she sent her after Zabriel. Only Illumina doesn’t have a chance of finding him—it’s her first time in the human world, after all. She’s essentially been set up to fail. I’m going to find him instead, bring him back here if I can and remind him what it means to be the Prince. That throne is Zabriel’s, not mine. It shouldn’t be mine.”

“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?”

Ubiqua was taken aback, and her incredulous laugh showed it. “Is that what all of this has been about? Love, if I hadn’t married your father, you wouldn’t even be here!”

At Zabriel’s volatile silence, she abandoned sarcasm and continued, “I loved your father. And I was—and am—trying to bring two cultures together. That is why I married him.”

“Selfish reasons. Political reasons. Did you ever think about what kind of life I would have? Growing up with no father, belonging nowhere?”

“You belong here.”

“I belong nowhere. And certainly not here.”

My eyes widened as he headed for the door, but Ubiqua summoned a great wind using her connection to the air, and the door slammed shut before her son could storm out.

“I knew life would not be easy for you,” she seethed, her jaw tight in an effort to suppress her anger. “I knew controversy would follow you, and no part of me thinks it’s fair. But there’s a greater purpose at stake here, and you represent that cause. It’s what your father wanted. It’s what all the people want, even the ones who are afraid. You have to be brave enough to face that!”

Zabriel swung around, his eyes burning. “Brave? You don’t think I’m brave? I was brave enough to try cutting off my wings, Mother. I would have succeeded, too, if Anya hadn’t been so afraid to see me in pain.”

Ubiqua’s mouth opened in horror, and I cringed in my corner though she wasn’t looking my way. But Zabriel was unrelenting. He was fifteen, no longer as intimidated by a parent’s power, and his gaze bore into hers, his fists clenched at his sides.

“I’m tired of it,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m tired.”

Ubiqua, still stunned by what she had learned, didn’t immediately respond. But it soon became clear from the straightening of her shoulders and the tilt of her head that she would react as a Queen, not as a mother.

“You don’t have the luxury of being tired, Zabriel. You have sacrificed so little compared to what I have done, and what your father did for you. He died trying to cross the Road to be with you. He wanted to raise you in a land where he would have been a foreigner, an enemy. He would have endured all that for this cause, and for the love of you. Have you no respect for his memory?”

“I don’t remember him, Mother. There’s nothing to respect. He died before I was born trying to reach an empty throne in a place he never belonged. This Realm was not his, and it isn’t mine, because I am not a Faerie. Nor do I want to be!”

“Zabriel! Zabriel!”

He was gone. And I didn’t think I would ever see him again, because I knew he had decided. He’d talked about leaving for long enough, and now it seemed the time had come. No ties of blood or of magic could keep him here, just as even the wedding mage’s aura had not been able to see Zabriel’s father safely across the Bloody Road.

And that aura had been stronger than the one Davic and I shared.

Without magic in one’s soul, one could not enter the Faerie Realm.

Now the hands of the lonely and the angry that had caressed me harmlessly so many times would take hold if I went near them.

Davic could not bring me home.

Ubiqua could not bring me home.

Unless I found Zabriel, Illumina would rule. And her hatred of humans would be fiercer than ever. With men like Falk as her lieutenants, she would bring us once more to the brink of war.

Everything we peacemakers had accomplished would be as waste, and the Faerie people would be corrupted.

* * *

I woke with a gasp, one side of my face pressed into something soft and wet. Disoriented from the vision, from memories and reality forced upon me in sharp relief, my breath came fast. Clarity, unfortunately, did not.

At first I lay motionless. My head ached, my body burned and I didn’t know where I was or how I had gotten there. Slowly I comprehended that I was in a room instead of outdoors: a room with a wardrobe, a bookshelf, a rocking chair, and a bed; a bed on which I was resting. And my pillow... It was wet with tears.

I never cried—when emotional, I broke decanters and argued with people and ran away from the things that scared me. I hadn’t cried since my mother’s death three years ago. Yet the proof was in front of me.

Unable to get my bearings this way, I pushed myself up, lifting my chest and stomach from the mattress. The movement set torture upon my back, and it all returned to me—the attack, the halberd striking me again and again. I was feeling the pain now that had felt so distant then.

I collapsed, a moan slipping through my parched lips. The sound drew someone’s attention, and the door into the room opened, light breaking in like a beacon, but with my hazy vision I couldn’t make out the person who entered. I fumbled to protect myself, hoping to somehow go unseen, only there was nowhere to hide, and no way I could run. The person’s weight depressed the mattress, and I heard a female voice.

“Mother, she’s roused!”

Dropping her volume, she whispered to me, “You’ll be all right. We’re taking care of you.”

Unable to fight the pain, I lost consciousness, once more wandering in fevered dreams.

* * *

I stood at my mother’s side, her body already prepared for the funeral pyre, and said one last goodbye. Her red hair was as beautiful as ever, and had far more life than the rest of her. Slowly I reached out to touch her hand, then squeezed it hard enough to bruise, not believing she couldn’t feel it. When she didn’t respond, I lost the grounds to protest her burning. She’d been a Fire Fae in life, and it was fitting to return her to the element that had chosen her. She was wrapped in a white cloth so the assembly wouldn’t have to watch her skin blister and slip away from her skull like petals spreading from the heart of a flower. I knew it was happening anyway. I’d once accidentally burned myself, and the sting had remained far longer than any cut. The licking of flames against flesh was agonizing.

My lips were dry with cold as my father put his arm around me, blocking the wind, and led me back to the Great Redwood from the assembly’s gathering place in the distant woods where we Fae said farewell to our dead. Our party was quiet, Ubiqua walking in front, her hand on Zabriel’s back, Illumina and her father behind us. My cousins and I were now equal—there were three parents between the three of us. We had each lost one.

When the bittersweet reception was under way in the Redwood, I left my father’s side to sit alone on the ridge, watching Faefolk below console one another with food, drink, and warmth. Before long, someone came to sit beside me—someone with whom I could talk.

He handed me a mug of hot Sale, as usual having none himself. He wasn’t allowed to drink it. I took his offering gratefully, the gesture enough to bring tears to my eyes on a day when tears desperately wanted to come. But I sniffed, bit my lip, and dried my face of the few that escaped.

“I know,” Zabriel said, leaning against the bark wall behind us with one arm resting on his knee. “You’re not supposed to be sad. You’re supposed to be strong for your father. Being sad will make things worse for him.”

I nodded, not stopping to digest what he’d said. Thinking was what gave birth to self-pity, and self-pity served no purpose.

“That’s stupid, Anya,” he said, and I turned to him in instant agitation, one powerful emotion easily transforming into another.

“And what would you know about it?”

He hung his head, thick hair falling forward. I shouldn’t have snapped at him. He was a year older than I was, and the heir to the Faerie throne. For these reasons and more, he deserved my deference and respect. But rather than put me in my place, Zabriel’s big dark eyes met mine of green and he scooted closer to embrace me.

“It’s okay to be sad, Anya. It’s okay to be angry, even at your mother. People leave us when they have no business leaving. And your father can handle himself. He’s got the Queen, the Council, and his friends to look out for him. He doesn’t need you to be strong.”

I tucked my head against my cousin’s shoulder. Maybe he was right. Maybe for just a minute I could let the weight of my own loss settle suffocatingly on my chest. Maybe I could take a moment and gasp and sob.

I gazed ahead, my eyes dead like my mother, tears leaking down my face and onto Zabriel’s jerkin.

“What’s it like to only have one parent?” I stammered, my emotions inhibiting my speech. “I want to know before I wake tomorrow.”

“The rest of the world doesn’t change. Only your world. And you wonder why this happened to you and not to somebody else. For a while, people will treat you like you’re a puzzle with a missing piece, until they realize the piece missing was just part of the background, not part of the actual picture.” He rested his chin atop my auburn hair, and I waited, hoping he would say more. “You don’t need that background piece to be what you’re supposed to be, Anya, even though it looked nice and everything. You’re still whole. Even though it doesn’t feel like it.”