CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE（Untitled）Wranth

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Wranth

His words punch me in the chest, stopping my breath.

Here it is, the thing I haven’t wanted to face. For as wrong as this world feels, it also feels familiar. What does it mean that I come from this twisted place?

My bride shares none of my trepidation, her sunny nature shining through.

“I did it,” Naomi punches a fist up into the air. “I really did it!”

“Explain.” The word emerges as a choked growl as I set her on her feet.

“I searched within you for a connection to your original home.” My bride spreads a hand across the center of my chest and looks up at me with shining eyes. “I wasn’t sure if I could do it, but I was damned well going to freaking try. I know it bothered you a lot, and I wanted you to have answers.”

“Thank you for bringing him home,” Tumbletoad says.

I whip around to stare at the brownie, who somehow already has a fire burning in the hearth.

Walls flicker into being, and a ceiling appears overhead. Tumbletoad bustles through the room, gathering food that appears within suddenly whole cupboards. His magic curls around him, suffusing outward to fill the fully functional kitchen.

“This isn’t actually a ruin, is it?” I narrow my eyes. “You’ve cast an illusion over it.”

“Sadly, the hunting lodge was reduced to ruins five-and-twenty years ago. It’s taken what little magic I can manage to bring it back to this state, and only the kitchen is fully repaired.”

“Wranth, look.” Naomi points to the back wall of the room, where a little nook set into the wall contains a brownie-sized bed. Folded clothes and belongings line a wooden shelf, and an open curtain hangs to one side, ready to be pulled across for a bit of privacy. “He lives here, in the kitchen.”

“I have always lived in the kitchen.” He stops in front of her and waves a wooden spoon. “Where else would a brownie live?”

Her lips twitch with suppressed amusement, but she makes a pretty apology. “Sorry, I don’t know anything about brownies.”

“Sit, sit.” He shoos us toward the table and chairs rising from the floor. The cowering creature we found in the forest is gone. In his place stands a fae fully confident in his place in the world, even if that place is a kitchen. “The stew’s almost ready.”

Plates and bowls appear on top of the table as we take our seats, and the smell of fresh bread makes my stomach rumble. All the tales say there’s nothing quite like brownie bread in all the realms.

Yet nothing is as important as answers.

“How long do we have here?” I ask Naomi. “Did you open the door to Avalon permanently, or will we be snapped back to whence we came like we were pulled back from your world?”

“I don’t know.” Her eyes grow troubled, her fingers brushing over the crystals on her necklace. Then her expression brightens. “Maybe the red crystals will help us stay longer? I mean, we already have, right? We weren’t on Earth for this long.”

While I appreciate her enthusiasm, I do not like maybes. Especially not with so much at stake. I turn to the brownie and growl, “Who are my parents? Where are they?”

I cannot make myself voice the question that truly haunts me: why did they abandon me?

“They were good people, some of the last left in the realm.” He places pillowy rolls on our plates. “I was proud to be in their employ.”

My teeth grind together. He’s told me so much without saying anything of substance. A growl rumbles in my chest as the old, familiar anger fills me.

A soft hand on my forearm startles me out of my daze. Naomi shakes her head at me.

I subside back in my chair as the brownie ladles stew into our bowls, chunks of mushrooms and fiddleheads showing on top.

“It’s not much. Things don’t grow like they should these days. The darkness covers the land.”

Naomi makes a distressed noise and tugs on my shoulder. When I lean over, she breathes in my ear, “Should we eat? What if this is all the food he has?”

He lets out an indignant squawk, and I explain. “Brownies take great pride in their hospitality. You will do him more injury by refusing.”

To put proof to my words, I bite into the roll. The lightest, fluffiest bread I’ve ever eaten melts like butter on my tongue. I grunt in surprise. “The tales did not do your skills justice. This is truly fine bread.”

Naomi takes her own bite and moans, “So freaking good.”

Tumbletoad beams with delight.

I set down the roll. Spearing Tumbletoad with my most serious stare, the one that always gets new recruits to step up their training, I say, “Now talk. We might not have much time.”

“It started three-hundred years ago, when the doors of Faerie slammed shut and Titania and Oberon disappeared.” He hops up onto a special chair that raises him to the height of the table. “Numerous regular fae disappeared, and a darkness began to spread across the land.”

“Titania and Oberon are the Queen and King of Faerie?” Naomi asks. “I’ve read stories about them.”

“Yes. They’re the rulers of all the realms,” I say. “Some say they birthed all the races of fae in the time before recorded history.”

“With them gone, a new ruler emerged, a nameless being we call the Dark God. He offered power to any fae who swore allegiance, but any who accepted were twisted by his magic, made fearsome and strange.”

“The dark fae,” I say. It’s what the brownie called me when I first pulled him from the oak.

He nods.

“The elves didn’t fight them?” I eat a spoonful of stew, the flavor the taste of the forest distilled into meaty richness by the mushrooms. If this is what he considers poor fare, I can only imagine what he could do with a well-stocked larder.

“There are no more elves. They were the first to succumb. It was as if the Dark God had a special hold on them. He told them they’d have the power to change the land. It wasn’t a lie, but it wasn’t the truth as they expected it. He turned the elves into the dark fae.”

“What? How can th—”

“Wranth!” Naomi’s upset voice startles me from any other concern, her eyes big and worried. “I feel something weird. I think we’re about to be pulled back.”

“Quick,” I say to Tumbletoad. “My parents. I must know—”

I slam to a halt. Know what? Their names? Their life stories? I don’t know how to finish that sentence, because I want to know everything . How do you distill entire lives into only a few words?

“They were King Strakk and Queen Belva. They led the orcs in protecting the realm from the dark fae, but their forces were whittled down over the years until they fled here, to the old royal hunting lodge. The Queen gave birth to you in this very house.” The brownie’s eyes fill with tears. “It was the happiest day any of us had known for some time.”

My bride’s fingers dig into my arm, telling me we have no more time.

My heart pounds faster as the seconds fly by.

“Only a month later, the dark fae found us. While your father fought to hold them at the door, your mother called upon her magic. She had a very special gift, you see, one she traced to an elf ancestor. She could move places in the blink of an eye.” He snaps his fingers.

“She’s a teleporter like me!” Naomi says.

“The king fell, outnumbered ten to one. As the dark fae rushed through the doorway, the queen prayed to Titania to take you somewhere safe, since there was no such place left in Avalon. She poured all of her life force into completing the spell, and you disappeared right from her arms as she breathed her last breath.” The brownie snaps his fingers again.

Roaring fills my ears as the whole world tips sideways, everything I thought I knew about my life turned on its head.

I wasn’t unwanted.

I wasn’t unloved.

My parents gave their very lives to save mine.

“They loved you more than anything.” Tumbletoad’s words resound through my soul like a struck gong as a giant hand picks me up and hurls me across worlds.