Fated Crown by Eva Chase
Chapter Ten
Talia
“It’s been about a month,” I say, trying to count back through the weeks in my head as I peer over the side of the carriage, watching for the lights of the flock village to come into view through the night. Focusing on the practical details pushes back a little of the dread that keeps trying to strangle me. “A similar timeline to how often the summer fae need my cure.”
Corwin nods, his normally impassive expression grim. “I’d hoped it might last longer for us, but I suppose we’re lucky it isn’t a shorter time span. Returning to one person is a lot less of an imposition than curing the entire Seelie population.”
Of course, the real question is how easily I’ll be able to cure Fina a second time.
Zelpha, the member of Corwin’s coterie who’s warmed up to me the most, gives me a gentle nudge with her muscular shoulder. “You’re an old hat at this now. We zip over there, bring her out of the chill, and we’ll be back not too long after bedtime.”
I guess my worries aren’t hard to pick up on even without a soul-twined bond. Her mention of bed makes my jaw twitch with the urge to yawn. Even though Corwin and I spent most of the day away from the bustle of his domain and the pressures of fae politics, I’m already feeling like curling up under a nice warm blanket and not coming out for a day or two.
But this woman needs me. Fina’s the first winter fae I ever cured. I wonder how close she is to giving birth. It was her pregnancy that hit me with so much emotion I was brought to tears when I first met her—the thought of failing to save not just her but her unborn and obviously treasured child…
Zelpha’s right, though. I know what I’m doing now. There’s no reason it shouldn’t work exactly the same way the second time.
I pull away from the biting wind and tuck myself against the crystalline windshield, still watching for the lights. The carriage bottom casts a pale glow over the snowy landscape below and just ahead of us. When I make out the edge of the valley that holds Fina’s village, relief rushes through me even as my gut twists tighter.
I won’t let anyone down. I can do this.
My sense of Corwin through our bond echoes those thoughts with additional reassurance. He directs the carriage down into the valley, and not just a few but many lights gleam into view up ahead. Several beam along a broad terrace at the foot of the lord’s castle. The messenger said we’re supposed to go there, even though last time I looked after Fina in her own home. Maybe because it was her second affliction, the lord wanted to keep a closer eye on her.
The terrace is wide enough for Corwin to land the carriage right on it. He takes my hand to help me out, and a slim man with hair a mix of mauve and dun brown comes hurrying out to meet us. I catch a murmur of voices trickling from the bright doorway behind him before it swings shut in his wake.
“Good, good, I’m glad you could make it here so quickly, my lord. And my lady.” He dips into a bow for both of us, a sign of respect I’m not sure I’ll ever be totally used to. With a sweep of his arm, he gestures us toward the castle, which is made out of jagged pinkish-gray stone like a more subdued version of the man’s hair.
We walk through a small entry room into a vast space that must be intended for balls and other celebrations. Glowing gems dot the ceiling, filling the room with a hazy light, and beneath it a few dozen fae are gathered. Their conversations fall silent as we enter—they all turn to watch us.
To watch me. Their gazes prickle over my skin, and my chest constricts. It’s like when I healed the man in the village common the other day, with most of his flock come to witness it—except that at least was the middle of the day when they might have been out and about anyway.
The lord confirms my suspicion. “Many of my flock wished to wait up to witness your curing. We are honored to have the first Unseelie to have received your blessing among us, Lady Talia, and look forward to seeing Fina twice blessed tonight.”
I swallow hard, and Corwin squeezes my hand. It’s all right, he says. They’re celebrating you and what you can do for us. I’m glad to see them recognizing how special you are.
I guess that’s one way of looking at it. I draw in a deep breath and let the lord usher me across the room to where Fina sits hunched on a large velvet cushion by the room’s large hearth. As always with the curse victims, the heat of the flames doesn’t appear to be reaching her at all. Her skin has grayed, her lips turned outright blue. Her arms have locked around her belly, which is even more rounded now than before.
It seems her neck has already frozen stiff, because she doesn’t turn her head toward me, only managing to cast her gaze in my direction at an awkward angle. Her lips part, but the words she tries to form come out as a mumble.
An ache runs through me from throat to gut. It’s worse than last time. Did the curse creep up on her that much longer ago, or has it taken hold so much faster?
The only good thing about her obvious distress is that I don’t even need to work to summon tears. They’re already welling up behind my eyes. I have to remind myself to turn away from her, to go through the motions of hiding my grief. The burning fills my eyes and seeps down to the back of my mouth.
Why can’t I be enough? Why couldn’t the curse have left her for good?
I have no answer to those questions, and they don’t change what I have to do now. As the first tears trickle down my cheeks, I swipe them away. Our audience stands silent and mostly still, only swaying on their feet a bit as those farther back crane their necks to see. When I raise my head and turn back to Fina, a small gasp reaches my ears.
The winter fae are so unused to overt displays of emotion that my tears on their own are startling.
I walk up to Fina and touch her icy cheek like I did before. “Be well,” I say, saying the first words that come to mind. “Both you and your baby.”
There’s a raspy intake of breath somewhere behind me, and then the warmth I’m waiting for blooms beneath my fingers.
Fina inhales with a shudder. Tentatively, she stretches out her arms and legs as the chill and the stiffness recede.
I move to step back, but she catches my hand. She peers up at me with eyes glistening with what might be a few tears of her own. I’ve never seen a winter fae cry before. I stop, lost for words.
“Thank you,” she whispers, her voice still rough from her ordeal. “You’ve given me four blessings now, two for me and two for my baby. I don’t know how to repay that generosity.”
“You don’t need to repay me,” I say quickly. “I’m helping you—and everyone else the curse takes—because I want to. Because I can. I wish I could stop it completely.”
Murmurs ripple through the crowd. “Heart bless Lady Talia as she blesses us!” one man calls out. I hear a woman remark in a hushed voice that this is a magic beyond any she’s seen before. They all shuffle around, seemingly unwilling to be the first to leave my presence.
It’s not so different from the last time, but their reverence doesn’t feel any less strange. I’m still just… me, with powers I have no real control over. But I know Corwin is right, that it’s better for them to appreciate me like this than for me to keep facing the same suspicion and disrespect they might have shown before.
The kind any other human in this world would face.
Corwin ends the spectacle by placing his hands on my shoulders and raising his voice to carry through the room. “It’s late, and my lady needs her rest. We thank you all for paying your respects!”
The lord shoos his flock-folk off and ushers us back to our carriage. Even he stares at me a little wide-eyed as I clamber back into the vehicle. “It is a wonder to witness what you offer, but I hope we won’t have need to call on you again,” he says.
I bob my head in acknowledgment. “If you do need me, don’t hesitate to send a message. I’ll want to come.”
But as I sink into the bench at the bow of the carriage with Corwin and Zelpha on either side of me, his statement starts to weigh on me. Corwin glances at me here and there as he focuses on navigating out the valley, but he doesn’t push for me to open up.
Zelpha doesn’t have the same qualms. She twists the tip of her loose braid around her forefinger and studies me. “What’s eating at you, Talia?”
The fact that she’s not overtly awed by me somehow makes it easier to open up. I rub my mouth. “I was just thinking—if the curse comes back every few weeks, and it keeps striking new people as well… This isn’t like the Seelie curse where I just need to give my blood once a month and the fae can distribute it among themselves. I have to be with each Unseelie victim. Within a few months, I might need to be visiting someone every day. And after that…”
In a year, will all my time be taken up with traveling from one flock to another to heal those either newly cursed or succumbing for a second time—or a third, fourth, fifth time for that matter? How could the arch-lords really think that it’d work for them to bring all those fae to me in the human world? They’d be making the trip constantly.
My colleagues weren’t aware of the exact timelines when they made that suggestion, Corwin says, sensing my thoughts. But if you wished to remain with your brother for that long, we’d find a way to work around it.
Out loud, he adds, “Now that we know how the cure works, and that the curse will return and the requests on your presence will multiply, we can start asking that the victims be brought to the border castle for you to work your cure on them there rather than us going to them.”
That will make it easier. But it still means I’ll essentially be on call every day at every hour someone might turn up. Especially if the curse continues to take hold faster and faster.
I press the heel of my hand to my temple and risk saying the words I know will cast a shadow over all the good we’ve done. “It won’t be sustainable. Maybe for a few years, but eventually—” Eventually it’ll be dozens a day. Will I even be able to summon that many tears over and over again?
Corwin and Zelpha exchange a look. Zelpha’s mouth slants into a wry smile. “Well, we always knew your cure couldn’t sustain us forever, right? This is a stopgap measure until we can find a more permanent solution.”
“And hopefully we’ll strike on that before the situation becomes overwhelming,” Corwin says.
I touch the bronze bracelet Sylas gave me, thinking of the prediction Nuldar the sage gave him. The solution might be coming soon… whatever that means in fae terms. Nothing about this situation has been simple so far, though, so I’m not going to count on the next developments being any different.
What can I do about the problem now anyway? Fretting doesn’t help anyone, least of all me.
When Corwin sits down on the bench next to me, I tuck myself under his arm and try to think about nothing but how lucky I am in so many other ways.
I doze for a bit during the trip back, and Corwin leaves me at my bedroom with a lingering kiss good night. But after I’ve washed up, I find I’m keyed up all over again. And hungry. We grabbed something to eat on the journey to Fina, but I didn’t have a proper dinner.
I slip through the halls and limp into the kitchen, planning to put together a quick midnight snack. To my surprise, Beth is still there, eyeing several spice containers she’s set in a row on the counter in front of her.
She startles at my entrance and then giggles, a blush coloring her cheeks. She hasn’t seemed to know exactly how to relate to me after finding out I’m both human like her and not like her at all with the powers I can wield.
Seeing her reminds me of my earlier thoughts about how the fae treat most of their human and somewhat human companions. “What are you doing?” I ask as I grab a loaf of bread to cut off a slice.
Beth lets out another giggle and tugs an errant curl back from her face. “I want to come up with better flavoring for the moss-shoots. I feel like they’re missing just a little something the way we prepare them now. I’ve been trying different combinations, just tasting them, to see if I can figure out the right one, but it hasn’t really worked so far.” She frowns at the spice containers.
I consider her as I spread a little butter and some preserved fruit on my bread. I carry the snack over to the island and perch on the stool across from her. “You really like doing this, don’t you?” I ask. “Working in the kitchen for Corwin and everything?”
Beth shrugs, looking self-conscious all over again. “Yeah. It’s kind of fun. Dad says they never had ingredients anything like we’ve got to work with back where he came from. And it’s not like it’s all work-work-work. I’ve gotten to see some pretty spectacular things.”
I hesitate, not sure the question will come out right, and then push myself onward. “Corwin’s very… kind with his human servants. I’ve gotten the impression that’s not really the case with a lot of the fae lords. I’m not sure if you talk much with the staff in other domains or anything. Have you heard about anything—like people being mistreated or overworked?”
Beth freezes in place and drops her gaze. “I mean, Dad does say we’re lucky to be in Heart’s Cadence. I have heard a few things. But I don’t know for sure—I mean, people might exaggerate or whatever. I wouldn’t want to accuse any lords of anything.”
Of course not. “I wouldn’t want you to either,” I assure her quickly. “I just… I’ve been thinking that because of what I can do, I’ve been able to get more recognition than humans normally do in this world. Maybe I can use that to help out other people who’ve ended up here. I think we all deserve some happiness.”
Beth shivers. “There are definitely some people around the Heart who don’t get a chance to be happy much at all.” Then her gaze darts to me. “You won’t tell any of the arch-lords I said that?”
“You don’t have to worry,” I say. But my hunger has been swallowed by a heavy lump in my stomach.
I told myself I needed to find out more about how Jamie’s coping before I decided how much he needs me. How can I even think about abandoning this world without figuring out exactly what my fellow humans here are facing too?
