15. Keira

Chapter 15

Keira

A large yawn cracks my jaw, as I sit huddled by the fire with a mug of sweetened coffee in my hands. Morning came on too quickly.

I stare at the silvery lines of the bargain that run up my hand to my lower arm, turning it around so I can view the entire faint marking in the morning light.

I have lost my mind.

There was a sincerity about Aldrin that I almost find myself trusting. We have a common enemy for the moment. To get Caitlin back, I only need to tell Aldrin my story.Then we will see if I am truly his prisoner or if he will let me go.

He never specified how much of my story was required.

I won’t need to betray the priestesses or give away the purpose of our pilgrimages. I came to this realm on a journey of self-discovery. That is my story.

Not to steal relics or heart-stones or an unborn babe. The details of my secondary mission, to convince a Lake Maiden to give me a seed-stone, I mean to leave out. I will not give a fae any information on my people. Not when they could use it against us.

I stare into the fire, utterly lost in thought, when a large figure joins me on the mossy log. His weight causes it to roll slightly and I jolt out of my daydream. I whip my head to the side to find Aldrin beside me, shoveling a spiced porridge-like breakfast into his mouth with sweet flatbread.

“Not a monster. Only me.” He says as he practically inhales his food.

“Oh really? And here I was thinking you were one and the same.” I can’t help the smile that creeps onto my face. I get pure joy from taunting the man. It is absolutely different from flirting.

“Well, that hurts.” He half grunts.

“It's hard to lose the association, when my first impression of you was made while you were dripping with black blood and slicing a spriggan in half.”

“You can talk.” He looks up at me with a half grin. What is it about this man that thoroughly breaks down my defenses?

“What?” I snap. “What?”

“Really? You don’t know?” His smile widens at the blank look I give him. “Do you have any idea how many spikes of those vines you pierced me with when we first met? Why do you think we sat around all day yesterday? I had to heal, too.”

I frown at him. The bastard is taunting me. I hit him in the chest, but his smile widens. “You shouldn’t have tied me up in the middle of a damned battlefield! And it still didn’t deter you doing it a second time! You must really like it.”

“Needed to keep innocents out of the battle. I didn’t know you were a seasoned fae killer.” I give him a dark look, knowing he speaks of the Cú Sídhe from last night. If he had any idea of the full truth, he would hate me. Aldrin eyes my coffee. “Where did you get that?”

“Klara made it for me. She also told me I look like shit - her exact words - and asked if a bunch of puka had dragged me around the forest for half the night.” I swallow.

Klara had produced a small mirror, the kind many of the men use to shave on the go, and the woman staring back at me was not one I recognized. There were leaves in my knotted hair, dark rings under my eyes and tiny scratches on my face. I looked like cats, or puka, had gotten to me.

Aldrin stands, turning to her halfway across the camp. “Hey, Klara! Make me a coffee?”

“Make it yourself, Your Royal Highness,” she throws back. “The kettle is on the fire.”

“Worth a try. I think she likes you better than me.” He winks at me as he sits down.

How did I not see this side of this man? It is dangerous, because it makes my chest flutter when I should be weary of this dangerous man. I will be done with him soon enough.

He searches my face as though he is trying to see into the depth of my soul. “Tell me, how does a human woman have so much magic? I thought it would be bred out of humans by now.”

I choose my words so carefully. “I come from a province where the veil between our realms is thinnest. Entire rifts open up between our realms when the worlds align. Magic leaks through, enriching our soil and water. Sometimes low fae get lost and wander in. There is an underwater river beneath our orchards that flows straight from this realm.” I don’t mention the hunts that prey on low fae or that my grandmother became pregnant to a fae.

“Hhmmm.” Aldrin scratches his chin that is now clean-shaven.

He doesn’t believe me. The story sounds feeble to my own ears.

“The magic has always run deep in my family line,” I venture, but it doesn’t change his expression.

He considers me. “You have no idea how much magic you have. What you are capable of. I can train you, if you like?”

I give him a long look. “Why would you do that?”

“Because I am bored and curious and I hate to see talent wasted. Maybe I feel bad about the way you have been treated here. Let me make it up to you.”

Aldrin wants something from me, but I don’t quite know what. It makes every instinct for caution rear within me. There is so much I can gain in this, so I nod.

“Great. But I have a price.” A smug smirk grows on his face .

I roll my eyes. “Of course. Fae always have a price.”

“I teach you how to better wield your magic,” he raises an eyebrow “in exchange for a kiss.”

I stand, kiss him on the side of the forehead as I would my father and start to walk away, before glancing over my shoulder. “You have your payment in advance.”

The man expected me to squirm or blush like a maiden.

He grabs my wrist lightly, playfully tugging me back to him. “Not exactly what I meant.”

“Well, you should have specified.” I slip my arm away.

Silvan and Drake approach, unintentionally blocking my escape. Their focus is on Aldrin alone.

“We found Cyprien’s camp. It’s exactly where we thought it would be.” Silvan frowns profusely. Despite the tight curls of reddish-blond hair that drapes down to his shoulder, he looks mean, with the other half of his head shaved and his eyes permanently narrowed.

“Gods be damned,” Aldrin grumbles. “It's going to be bloody difficult to root him out. We’ll go for plan B.”

I glance between all three men, utterly lost by the undercurrents. Not for the first time, I feel like a rabbit surrounded by wolves, holding my breath and hoping they don’t notice me.

Aldrin stands and scales a stone table that still has food spread out on it, his boots bringing mud to the clean surface. His features pinch with anger and eyebrows furrowed in a deep scowl. Those branching horns grow at either side of his head, a crown of twigs. Beneath his tanned skin, black bands emerge, streaks that highlight the sharpness of his cheekbones, jaw, and brow.

The man I had been teasing a moment ago is gone, and this fae who took his place half terrifies me all over again. I came close to forgetting what he is.

“Everybody listen here!” Aldrin’s voice booms through the space, enhanced by the wind, and they all crowd around him, even the kelpies. “Cyprien and his men have set up their encampment at the Frozen River Fortress, on Winter’s border. While this makes it harder to penetrate their defenses, it also has benefits. The location is an hour’s hike to the Dividing Cliffs, where we know the evidence is laid bare to support our claims. No one can look upon those lands and still disbelieve us!”

Muttering breaks out through the amassed people. I scan them wildly for any hints as to what they are talking about.

“Will we be able to come out of exile?” Drake with eagerness.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Aldrin says. “You know how stubborn the man is. It could be an effort in itself to get him to look at the view from the Dividing Cliffs. Not to mention we need to infiltrate his camp first. Having one ally will not get the council to believe us, but it is a start. You have all been incredibly loyal, and as always, it does not go unnoticed and unappreciated.”

Aldrin claps his hands. “Pack up the camp. We leave immediately. It is a day’s hike to get there and I want to strike tonight, in the early hours, when their sentries are at their weakest.”

The space around me turns into a frenzied flurry of action. I am an island within a churning mass of movement. An incredibly awkward one.

People work with swift efficiency to clean away the breakfast spread and pack any belongings. I sit back down on my log, feeling incredibly useless, especially after a fae rips the unfinished coffee from my hands, throws it on the fire and rinses the mug with a splash of water magic.

My satchel is already packed and around my shoulder. It always is. I grope around for something to do, but it seems this dance is so well practiced, it is complete before I get a chance to join.

I am all but collected by the crowd as the march through the forest begins. The muscles in my legs protest after the strain of the night I just had, but I push through.

Our band stretches out in a long line through the duration of the trek, people clustering in groups of twos or threes to talk. The scouts at the front disappear from my view and the kelpies whizz up and down the line with a tremendous amount of energy. I can’t help wondering how much faster we would get there if we had enough kelpies for us all to ride. Perhaps such a thing isn’t commonplace here .

I find Klara at my side, crunching on a large, crispy fruit with navy blue skin that has iridescent, milk-white flesh within. It almost looks like an apple, and I wonder if it would taste similar.

She sees my curiosity and pulls another from her pack, offering it to me wordlessly.

“Is it normal for kelpies to join a roaming band?” I ask to fill the silence. I turn the fruit over and over in my hand, considering it. “Shouldn’t they be linked to a specific body of water?”

Klara tosses her core into a bush and licks the juices from her fingers. “No. Kelpies are nomads and typically travel the realm to visit different rivers and lakes and oceans. They don’t normally swear allegiance to anyone, but Aldrin fights for the survival of all fae. Their pack has been greatly affected by the corruption. Kai, Iris and Freya are all that are left. That is why they have joined us.”

I open my mouth to ask about the corruption, it must be whatever is creating the Twisted Ones, when a grating voice cuts through my thoughts.

“I would like to taste the water of the human realm.” Kai trots beside me, half horse and half man.

My gaze reaches the navel of his bare chest, and having to slide up all that skin to his eyes.

I hadn’t noticed before that his humanoid skin has a blue sheen to it, flecked with transparent scales where a human male would have chest hair.

During the battle, Kai had a thick layer of hard, blue scales coating his shoulders like armor, but they are gone now.

His nose is wide and almost completely flat, with two long slits at its base and his hair is the color of old seaweed, a green so dark it's almost black with streaks of navy. Kai’s eyes are the most unnerving, the brown iris occupying the entire space with no white shown, the eye of a horse instead of a man.

It is unsettling, how his features change so much between forms and the way they blur sometimes. I have seen his face look much like that of a high fae, with regular eyes and a straight nose. Sometimes, his cheeks have scales and long fins that drift on the air like they would in water.

He can pull at will any aspect of the three shapes he can take, without having to commit to a full transformation.

“I don’t think you should visit my realm.” Tension ripples through me.

“And why not?” He asks.

I swallow. How do I answer such a question without admitting that we hunt fae? That we treat their bodies as trophies and delicacies?

“The fae are not permitted into the human realm,” I say. “It is punishable by death in my kingdom.”

“And yet here you are, walking free in our realm. Humans are hypocrites.” Kai spits.

I stumble on a branch caught between my feet and quickly catch myself.

“Fearful hypocrites,” Klara chimes in.

“But Aldrin says we need them,” Kai adds.

It is incredibly difficult to get a read on his emotions. The expression on his face never changes from stern disapproval and that voice is always so gruff.

“The portals have been closed for a very long time.” I find myself on the defensive. “My people only remember the war.”

“Hhhmmm.” Is all that Kai responds with. He leaps over a fallen log and transforms into his full horse form midair, before galloping away.

“He does that a lot. It makes it hard to win an argument,” Klara mutters beside me.

The hours tick by and the walk through the woods is long and brutal.

Pain sings out in my thighs and my lower back aches by the time we reach a site to stop for lunch. Klara uses most of the time to draw the fatigue out of my body, but guilt radiates through me at taking away her strength.

“It is nothing,” she reassures me .

“Aren’t you tired? Don’t you need to conserve your strength?” I ask her.

“I am fae. This walk is nothing for me. Actually, we could run and be there within an hour, but I don’t think you’d like to ride a kelpie again, and we can’t tire ourselves out if we want to attack Cyprien’s base tonight.”

The woods change as we navigate through them.

Trees with full canopies and trunks slick with moss give way to bare branches with only pale leaf buds or white flowers decorating them. Wild grasses become coated in glistening frost, which intensifies until patches of snow dot the ground, and I have to step over them in large bounds to avoid wetting my boots.

It is as though we are walking backward through time and experiencing seasons in reverse.

A realization smashes into me; we are literally marching toward the moment when winter melts into spring. It is the border between the two courts.

I shiver and rub my hands together. I didn’t dress for winter.

I practically jog to warm my frozen body and overtake some of the fae in the loose column of our band.

I spot Aldrin at the front, talking with Drake and Silvan. The two depart the group, most likely to scout ahead, and I find myself drawn to Aldrin's side as much as I know I should stay away from him. He stares straight ahead, eyes dark as he grinds his teeth.

“When you break into Cyprien’s camp tonight, I’m coming with you.” I raise my chin and my spine goes stiff and straight.

He doesn’t even look at me. “No.”

“No?” I repeat incredulously. The bastard speeds up his long steps and I am forced to practically jog to stay at his side. He is not getting rid of me that easily. “I will be part of the team that rescues my sister. No man can stop me.”

“No, you won’t be.” Aldrin turns that simmering glare upon me that would make even the bravest warrior wither, but I am far too used to being in the warpath of men. “I am the commander of this unit, and I decide who will come. I will not bring a fragile human into a battle because she misses her sister.”

I raise a single eyebrow at him. “Fragile?” I snap. “Fragile! You know nothing about me.” I don’t back down, despite how he towers over me and his shoulders are almost double the width of mine in his spiked armor. Despite how I shiver from the cold.

“Interesting that.” He unclasps his cloak and wraps it around my shoulders. His warmth envelopes me, and his earthy, floral scent fills my nose. “It’s not like I haven’t tried.” My head spins at the contrast between his harsh tone and his kind actions.

I glare at him. “Here are a few facts for you. I am a huntress, trained in stealth and survival. I may have no experience in fighting a battle, but sneaking into an encampment undetected, in the middle of the night? This plays into my strengths.”

Aldrin’s mood shifts as his eyes roam over me. “Maybe you can show me some of your moves and impress me then?” He purrs mockingly.

I breathe in, then breathe out, forcing the rage to seep out of me. “And then you will allow me to come?”

Aldrin smiles. It is a predator’s smirk. “We will spar after we make camp and wait for darkness. If you can disarm me of my favorite blade, you can come. I’ll even make it easy for you and wear a blindfold.”

He pulls a jeweled knife from his belt and shows it to me. There is a large, oval ruby right where the hilt and guard meet the blade, with a handful of smaller rubies scattered across it. Decorative swirls adorn the surface in silver wire.

It is absolutely stunning, but does not look like the kind of dagger that would be used in battle. It is far too ornate. Unless it is imbued with magic.

“Done,”,” I say before he can change his mind. The man has no idea of what I am capable of. He gives me a side glance with a coy smile. It sets my nerves on end and destroys my carefully cultivated calm, digging beneath my skin. How does he know exactly how to aggravate me? “Did I say something amusing?” I peer sweetly back .

“You are very confident in your abilities,” he ventures.

“The hunts back home saved my sanity. Participating in it. Training for it. It enriched a mundane life of waiting.” I am suddenly flooded with that feeling of loneliness. Of having no identity of my own to hold on to and putting my life on hold while I dreamt of Finan.

“Waiting for…a man?” Aldrin probes, giving me a sidelong glance.

I cringe as Finan’s betrayals come crashing down into me.

“And he wasn’t worth it,” Aldrin murmurs.

“That remains to be seen.” I keep walking, chewing over my thoughts, but Aldrin watches me.

I let out a long breath. “It is my duty to marry him. Both our families are relying on our union, but his loyalty to me came into question. I ended the commitment between us before I crossed into this realm. I told him I needed time for self-discovery and he said he would wait, but I don’t know for how long.”

The pain of those wounds rips open afresh. I haven’t thought about Finan once since I crossed to this realm and the mess of my life back home. Hysteria begins to bubble through me.

“Well, he sounds like a bit of a prick to me.” Aldrin scans the treeline ahead.

I laugh. The sound is half-choked but damn it feels good. “Yeah, he is a bit of a prick. Self-absorbed too.”

“Who cares about duty and marriage right now, you are a world away from your life. Gods, stay here with me and my band of merry misfits if you like.” Aldrin flashes me a charming smile.It should feel like a threat, especially since I have no idea if he will let me leave, but the way he said it is so disarming, like it is my choice.

For a moment, I believe him. Right until my sanity comes flooding back.

I look over his shoulder, to the grim-faced, hardened band of warriors behind him, who look anything but merry.

The forest gives way to a small clearing, encircling an impossibly immense tree, both in girth and height. My breath hitches in my throat as I crane my neck to look up and up, but the gnarled trunk reaches far above the canopy of the woods. Its own foliage is almost out of sight. It is taller than Appleshield Castle, hill and all. It could rival a small mountain.

“We will wait here for night to fall,” Aldrin commands the entire band as we file out of the treeline. “Let me talk to them first.”

Talk to who? I glance around, trying to spot more fae.

Everyone seems to stop in the meadow that surrounds the giant tree, and Aldrin walks ahead of the group.

There is a massive doorway set in the tree's base, between two snaking roots that run along the clearing, wide enough to fit half a dozen men shoulder to shoulder. A gate barricades it, woven of brambles, thick branches and vines, and dotted with red roses. The thorns among them are as long as my forearm.

“Coroliss. Embla. Myrthe. Saga. Tauriel,” Aldrin bellows, his words echoing back to us as it bounces around the clearing. “I summon thee!”

His roar fades and silence stretches out. The muscles in his shoulders ripple with tension, causing the spiked shoulder guards of his bronze armor to rise. Aldrin turns and gives a worried glance to Silvan, who shrugs back.

My attention is still on the gate as I try to peer through it at this distance. The tree is completely hollow and a massive, grassy field occupies its center, dotted with patches of snow and the colorful shock of tulips breaking up the mottled green and white.

The shock of realization hits me. This is not one trunk.

It is multiple trees grown together and warped into the shape of a tower, each trunk like an arm that reaches out of the ground and its canopy a cupped palm forming a large platform. The trunks are woven and twisted around their neighbors, but there are distinct color differences that belong to each tree. Ash, caramel, tan, pistachio, and cinnamon.

I blink as branches unravel and re-twist, not believing my eyes as a humanoid shape forms from them.

Twigs wrap around each other until two perfect calves form, a blanket of fuzzy moss sprouts around full hips of vines and a stomach curves out from brambles. Branches grow from the torso to form arms and moss to create full breasts. The branch still connected to the tree resolves into a head, the wood thinning and trailing away into twigs that fall like hair and snap away from the mother tree. Leaves immediately bloom across them.

I stare at the beautiful tree nymph with my lips parted.

Another transforms into a full humanoid figure, with blunt woody spikes jutting from his elbows, knees, and spine and cascading horns of curling branches on his head. His entire body is modestly covered in spongy, yellow lichen.

A female appears, with a twisting trunk giving way to multiple thick roots where a human’s legs would be. The last two males remain connected to the mother trees, showing only humanoid faces of wood peering out from coiling branches and leaves.

I can’t drag my eyes away from these majestic creatures. Tree nymphs. And to think we humans dare to steal their heart-stones, their souls, and condemn them to death. Again I am flooded with the realization that we are as much the villains as the fae who steal brides.

“Aldrin. Aldrin. Aldrin. Aldrin.” Their voices sing like the wind, rippled over the top of each other.

“The golden hope of spring. We heard you had been exiled. You are not here to plan a rebellion, are you?” One almost wails.

“And if he is?” another responds. “And if he is? We do not follow the whims of the council. We could not deny him. Would not deny him.”

“The golden hope of spring. Bring us hope. Bring us salvation.” That singing, over and over.

“Aldrin. The protector of all fae. High and low. High and low. Your brothers and sisters have forgotten us.”

“Is this war? Rebellion? Retribution?”

Those voices overlap and repeat in my head, ringing in my ears, around and around.

Aldrin holds up his hands. “Good Fair Folk, I simply ask for shelter for one night in your watch tower. I do not come here with the intent of war. It has not come to that. ”

“Welcome.”

“Welcome golden one.”

“Welcome.”

I knead my temples, trying to release the pressure from those voices laden with emotion.

The branches of the gates groan as they retract back into the trees, opening a narrow portal through the gate wide enough for us to walk through in single file, with Aldrin at our head.

I try not to touch the curling and swaying tendrils of thin creepers as I pass under. The thorns of the brambles are as long and thick as a carving knife, and I bet they would turn into weapons against an enemy trying to penetrate this gate.

The space inside the trees could easily fit a camp of a thousand men, dwarfing our tiny band of eleven high fae, three kelpies, and me. I turn around in a circle, taking in the meadow within, the impenetrable wall of trunks around us, and the wooden staircases and platforms that scale the fortifications to the canopy above.

“What is this place?” I ask half to myself.

“This is a Watchtower Tree.” A tall figure stops beside me.

I turn to Silvan with shock. The man rarely speaks. I can’t help feeling unnerved around him. His words are always bitten off and there is a constant whipcord tension within the muscles of his lean build, as though he is permanently ready to strike. The coldness of his narrow gaze that never seems to warm, like it promises death alone.

“What does that mean?”

“They are watchtowers,” Silvan offers most unhelpfully, then stalks off, bellowing orders to a group in his path setting up a tent. I stare after him.

I find myself utterly alone within a crowd of people for the second time today, idle while they busily set up the camp and rush by me. I don’t know how to make myself useful and am too intimidated to approach some.

“Hey, Keira, if you’re looking for something to do, you can help me skin and gut this.”

I whip around toward Drake, who has an entire deer hoisted over his shoulder, with two arrows extending from its back. Well, not quite a deer, but close enough.

He gives me a wide, mischievous grin as though he expects me to balk at a bit of blood. His eyes dance mischievously while he waits for me to take his bait.

“Well, that is something I can do.” I pull my knife from my belt as I approach him. I have skinned and butchered a beast plenty of times on a hunt.

Drake dumps the creature on the ground by a pile of large sheets of slate. “Really?” He raises his eyebrows.

“Sure,” I say, squatting down. “I didn’t know this realm had deers.”

The creature has antlers of pure, branching crystal, so pale it is transparent, and the fawn fur has green moss growing through it, with drapes of vines hanging from its spine and in place of a tail.

“I think the moss-deer originated from your realm.” Drake wipes his hands on his britches. “But traveled here through the veil and perhaps mated with our creatures.” He pauses. “You don’t really need to help me with?—”

Drake trails off as I get to work on the kill, then falls into step beside me.