Of Fairytales and Magic by Emma Hamm

Chapter 25

Ahorrible whimper burst from her throat as she stared at the images of her friends. Dead. Cold. Long gone from this life, even though she logically knew they were well and alive. She had just left them. And they hadn’t been dead.

“Why?” she asked, her voice ragged and thick. “Why are you showing me this?”

“Every sacrifice you have made has led you to this point, Freya. I know it must seem barbaric to you, but there is always a reason behind what we ask of our leaders.” Death’s eyes turned cold and icy. Unwavering and unrelenting. “Snap yourself out of this emotional turmoil and think back to the other sacrifices. Why did they want those particular sacrifices from you?”

“Because they are cruel and horrible beings.” Tears fell from her eyes and she dashed them away with an angry hand. “Because they want nothing more than to see me on my knees before them, begging for their mercy.”

“No,” Death replied. “That is not the reason at all. You are leading right now with your emotions, and no Thief can do that. You have to rip through what you have been told, what you have suffered, and understand the meaning behind all this.”

“There is no meaning,” she snarled.

“That’s not fair, nor is it logical. I chose you as my Autumn Thief because you were capable of more than the others. Capable of seeing through the magic and the powers into what is really there.” Death grew all the more serious, staring at her as though he could burn her to the ground if he wanted to. “Try again, or I will take back my opinion and make you run the gauntlet as the others had.”

Well, she didn’t want to do that. But she also hated what he was making her do. This wasn’t fair to stare at her friends like this. It wasn’t fair to face death long before her time.

And yet, here she was.

The life inside her flipped, shifting and moving in her belly as though the baby was already large enough to feel. The child couldn’t be, and yet... She knew better than to expect only the possible.

She couldn’t argue with him. There was no winning this argument, no matter how hard she wanted to win.

Freya took a deep breath and stored her anger away for another time. For now, there was no place for anger such as this.

“The Owl Mother wanted to test my wit,” she finally said.

“No, that was your trial. Not your sacrifice.”

Oh, he wanted to know how all the others had hurt her? How morbid. “The Owl Mother wanted my blood. I cut my wrist over a goblet for her to drink.”

Death’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not going to hold your hand for much longer, Freya. Your sacrifice to her was not your blood. What was the real sacrifice you made?”

She didn’t know. Blood had no meaning. The Owl Mother had cared more for proof of her intellect rather than actually gaining anything from her. But if Death thought that it had meaning, then perhaps it did.

She stilled her mind. The power of the Autumn Thief hummed inside her, apparently thinking as well until they figured it out.

“The Owl Mother is intelligent. She’d want to create some kind of fail safe, so she wanted to be able to use my blood in a spell, didn’t she?” Freya shook her head ruefully, not even realizing that she’d given away something so precious until this moment. “She wanted a second way to control me if I didn’t bend to her will at first.”

“A sacrifice of your own free will, should you fail her expectations.” Death nodded. “And then you met the Horned God.”

“He wanted a finger. A feast.” But there had to be more to it than that. Obviously. “So perhaps he wanted to devour something of mine for... I don’t know. To take some of my magic, perhaps?”

Death shrugged. “It’s fairly close to what he did. If it makes you feel better, he’s probably already used all that magic up. I wouldn’t say he’s the smartest of us.”

“I agree with you on that,” she replied with a snort. The Horned God was nothing without his Midnight Monsters, and even then, she didn’t fear him nearly as much as the other two. “Which leads me all the way to you. Here. In this horrible place of a thousand graves.”

She couldn’t begin to guess what he would ask of her. Death at the end of either path didn’t make sense. She’d been promised this was the only way to live, and that her child would be fine. But if she died, then so did the baby.

Freya pressed a hand to her belly and tried to still the shaking of her fingers. “I don’t know what you’re going to ask of me, Death, but I want you to know that I’m pregnant. This child is more important than anything else. If you wish me to die for this, then I will have to insist you allow me to give this life inside of me a chance. Allow me to rule as the Autumn Thief, or appoint your own Autumn Thief until the child comes. But I will do nothing that puts my child in danger.”

To her utter shock, Death reached out and put his hand on top of hers. “I would never threaten a life that has yet been born. Your child is not just of a mortal woman who stole the Autumn Thief’s magic. Your child is that of the Goblin King, a man I consider my very son. This child is my granddaughter. I will not, ever, risk her life.”

She should have focused on all those words, but all she heard in her head was granddaughter.

“It’s a girl?” she asked, her voice wavering with emotion. “Do you know that for certain or are you simply speculating?”

Death’s fingers tightened on hers. “I know when a life is sparked who they are or who they might be. I know their entire thread of life and all the stories that come with it, Freya of the Goblin Court. You are going to have a daughter and she is going to be magnificent.”

Tears fell freely down her cheeks at the realization that she was going to soon hold a little girl in her arms. Someday, she hoped.

If anything, that light inside her grew ever brighter. As if the child knew that her mother was excited to meet her.

“She is so loved already,” Freya whispered. “By me. Her father. A goblin dog who most certainly will be known as her uncle, although I don’t know how I’m going to explain to her that her uncle is a dog. She’s going to grow up in a rather unconventional family. Goodness, even her aunt has a tail.”

Death tilted the skull head back and laughed. The booming sound filled the clearing with unnatural gaiety considering they stood in an open faced graveyard. “She’s going to grow up in the faerie realms, Freya. Nothing here makes sense, and it’s all wrong no matter how you look at it. Mortal eyes will fail you here, especially in raising your child.”

She supposed that was another thing she would need to give up. Looking at this world through the eyes of mortality would only end in her disappointment, or worse, not knowing who or what she might insult.

Swallowing hard, she met Death’s glowing gaze and nodded. “All right. What do you want from me then, Death? My life is the only thing I can assume you might desire, but you keep saying that isn’t what you’re asking of me.”

“No. I don’t want your life.” He looked back at the graves, and the set of his shoulders changed horribly.

Dread set deep into her belly. “You want my mortality, is that it? What could I trade you that Death would desire but a taste of life itself?”

Again, he shook his head in denial of what she asked. “No, I’m afraid it’s much worse than that. I know this isn’t what you want to hear, Miss Freya. But the sacrifice I claim from all Autumn Thieves is... themselves.”

Well, that didn’t make any sense whatsoever.

“You’re speaking in riddles,” she told him. Daring to do more than just stand at the edge of a grave, she reached forward and put her hand on his shoulder. As though Death needed her to support him as he explained. “I think there’s a lot of that going around these days, but I’m afraid I’ll need you to speak as plainly as possible.”

“I forget you’re mortal sometimes,” he replied, his voice barely more than a whisper. “And I mean that as the highest of compliments.”

“I took it as such.”

He waved a hand over the image of a thousand graves before them, gesturing to all the lives he had taken. “The Autumn Thief is a newborn babe, in a sense. When they are fully accepted as the leader of this court, they are no longer themselves. That is not because of the power or the ordeal they have gone through. The sacrifice I require is all of who you were before the magic, Freya. I need you to give me the woman you once were and you will join all the others in their graves.”

His words struck her over the head like he wielded a hammer upon her skull.

He wanted her to die. Or a version of herself, at least. That would mean that she pledged everything she had been in her life to this creature who she had no control over.

“Um,” she stuttered, unsure of what she should even ask him. “Will that version of myself be aware of what happened?”

The worst thoughts she had were what if she would be splitting herself in two? What if that version of herself knew what had happened? What if she was stuck here, aware but never able to escape? It was a fate worse than she could imagine.

“No, she won’t be aware of your choice or anything other than the fact that she is gone. I am not so cruel that I would force my own people to relive their lives or to know what happened to them.” Death turned his head to the side, watching her too intently. “You will give me who you once were, so that you can become someone so much more than you are now.”

She didn’t think she needed to become more than what she already was. Freya was very proud of how far she’d come in this life, and all the things she’d done to get herself here.

“Will I be able to remember everything that happened before I split?” she asked, stammering now at all the possibilities this entailed.

“You’ll be yourself, yes. You will still remember everything, although it will be... muted.” He waved a hand in the air, gesturing wildly with the staff. “You will know that it happened to you, but the emotions will be duller. Easier to think of all those memories without getting emotional.”

“But what about love?” She didn’t want to give up all that. She wanted to feel like Eldridge stole her breath away for the rest of her life. Not a dulled version of what they had built.

Death’s eyes glowed brighter until they rivaled the very sun above their heads. “Even I can not diminish love. That, my darling, is forever.”

Well, she supposed this was the best she would get, then. As long as her love for all the people in her life still burned as brightly, still ruled her decisions as thoroughly, then she would give the rest up so she could continue forward. So she could stay with Eldridge until the end of all days with their child still in her arms.

She pressed her lips together and nodded firmly. “All right, then. I accept your terms, Death. The sacrifice will be made, although I do not know how to do it.”

His eyes stared down at the graves just in front of them, and he clucked his tongue. “I thought perhaps you would want your own final resting place when I first realized we would be testing you. All the others had wanted their own place to be honored. But now that I have met you, spoken with you, seen what the inside of your mind is like... Well. I think it’s more likely that you’d rather rest with him for all eternity.”

She followed the line of his finger as Death pointed his skeletal hand to the grave that held Eldridge’s former life. Perhaps this was how her Goblin King wasn’t as affected by his childhood as she thought he might be. He rarely spoke about his family or what had happened all those years ago.

Maybe Death had taken away the feelings that went with the memories.

“Can I ask why?” Freya met Death’s gaze for the last time with a question burning in her chest. “Why must I give up so much to become the Autumn Thief? And what are you all going to do with the things that you took from me?”

Death shrugged. “I’ll watch your memories when I get lonely. I’ve never been to the mortal realm, so they will be a lovely diversion from the memories that I usually watch from all the others here. The Owl Mother will clutch your blood to her chest in the hopes that it will ease her anxiety. And the Horned God will lick his wounds and tell himself that he was the one to beat you because he devoured a part of you.”

“None of that is an answer to my question. Why do I have to give up so much?” She took a step closer to Eldridge’s grave, toes hanging over the edge.

“Great power requires great sacrifice,” Death replied. “Without it, then power might flow throughout all the realms. Unchecked. Unbalanced. And uncontrolled.”

And wasn’t that what Eldridge had always said? Power and magic never came without a price, even though she never saw the price that was paid. This was hers, and maybe it wasn’t the same as the others. But it was still the price she had to pay.

Taking a deep breath, she dropped down into the grave. She didn’t want to step on the perfectly preserved image of the man she loved.

The hairs rose on her arms as she slowly laid down next to him. All of this felt so incredibly wrong. Like she’d never realized what was happening until this moment. She really was going to become the next Autumn Thief. She was going to die here in this grave, or at least, this version of herself would.

She laid her head on Eldridge’s chest and wished there was a heartbeat to sooth her fears. But there wasn’t. Of course not.

“We will be together again, my love,” she whispered against his chest. “I promise you, I wouldn’t have made this choice if there was any other way.”

One last thing before she was ready to go. Freya reached for Eldridge’s hand and lifted it. The limb was surprisingly supple for a man who was supposedly dead. She put his palm on her belly over their child. And hopefully, hopefully, they would all come out of this together.

For there was no other choice.

“I’m ready,” she said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“As you wish,” Death replied.

And she knew no more.