The High Mountain Court by A.K. Mulford

Chapter Fifteen

Remy had never been on a boat before. She held onto the banister with a white-knuckled grip as the creaky wooden barge crossed the Crushwold River. Behind her sat the Southern Court, and so far in front of her that it was a dot on the horizon were the shores of the Eastern Court. The stench of the humid Southern jungles still clung to her skin. The last week had been a grueling slog. The cool river breeze should have been a relief . . . but not while on a wildly rocking boat.

Red witch magic could animate objects and, if the magic was strong enough, it could keep them moving, like the fountain at the prayer tree. Whatever spell was cast on this barge, the magic was ancient. It must have taken a hundred red witches to spell the barge to carry on crossing back and forth without sails or oars for all these many years. Only red witches possessed the level of magic to spell inanimate objects. It surprised Remy that their magic lived on, even though so many were killed. She wondered how many more years this barge would last before it broke, never to be repaired. There were so few red witches left. One day there would be no more magical objects such as this.

Carys and Hale had gone to the other side of the boat to discuss something while Remy perched against the railing between the Twin Eagles.

“Seasick?” Talhan asked, noting her peaky, pale face. The boat swayed wildly up and over the choppy waves. At least the wind on her face calmed her churning stomach.

“This feels really unsafe,” Remy said through clenched teeth. She was sure the banister would splinter if she gripped it any tighter.

“Only if you can’t swim.” Bri glanced sideways at Remy. “Can you swim?”

“What?!” Remy asked, sucking in quick breaths. The unpredictability of the rocking had her legs wobbling.

“She’s kidding,” Talhan said, chuckling. “The barge is perfectly safe. We make this crossing regularly to come to the South.”

His words did not soothe Remy. She had learned to swim as a child whenever she and Heather stopped into towns that had rivers or ponds, but she never swam out of her depth and not in water with heavy waves or rushing currents.

“Are you excited to be heading back to your court?” Remy asked, trying to take her mind off the swaying boat.

“None of us have particularly good relationships with the Eastern Court,” Bri huffed.

“Do you have any family in . . .”

“No,” Bri cut her off. No, they did not have any family in the East and that was that. No more explanation.

“I am looking forward to some chimney cakes from that bakery in the garden district,” Talhan said with a wink. “Maybe His Highness will give us a couple of days to enjoy the city before we head back into the mountains.”

“I doubt it,” Bri said. “He’s on a mission from the King, a mission he still hasn’t completed, and so we’re just passing through.” She chewed off a bit of her fingernail and spat it overboard. “With any luck we will not have to see the royals at all.”

Carys’s voice called from behind them. “Hale needs to speak with you at the back of the boat.”

“As long as it’s not below deck . . . ,” Remy groused.

Looking at Remy’s green face, Carys snorted.

“Keep an eye on the horizon,” Bri said, giving a patronizing tap on Remy’s hand still grasping the railing for dear life.

Remy walked shakily to the stern of the boat, where the Southern shoreline was pulling farther and farther into the distance. No other passengers gathered there, most looking forward toward the East. Hale leaned his forearms on the balustrade, confident on his feet.

Remy wobbled like a newborn fawn toward him. Turning her way, Hale was about to make some teasing comment when Remy cut him off.

“Don’t,” she snarled.

Hale remained silent, but that insufferable smirk crossed his face.

Remy grabbed on to the railing, holding it tight to keep her from moving. Hale stared out at Westdale. He twirled a purple flower in his hands. He must have picked it before they boarded.

“What is that?” Remy raised her eyebrows at the delicate flower.

Hale handed it to her, his expression sombre. Remy gave the flower a deep sniff.

“The fragrance is lovely,” Remy said. It had a beautiful sweet and fruity aroma. “It reminds me of something . . . though I’m not sure what.”

“Veliaris rudica, commonly known as blooming amethyst. It’s a wildflower native only to the banks of the Crushwold River. The violet witches of old highly praised it.” Hale’s thoughts seemed far away as he spoke. “You may well have smelled it before. They used it in many perfumes. It was once a favorite of the High Mountain royals . . . perhaps you were around them enough as a child you may remember it?”

That made Remy’s heart clench. Yes, she knew where the smell was from. The scent took her back in a way that no word or sound could. The pinprick of tears welled in her eyes as the wind whipped her hair against her cheeks. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she sniffed the flower again.

“It’s lovely,” Remy whispered to keep her voice even.

“It was my mother’s favorite flower,” Hale said, watching the purple petals spin in Remy’s hand.

“Was? I’m sorry—”

“She is not dead,” Hale corrected, “though for all we see each other she might as well be.”

“She doesn’t live in the capital?” Remy twirled the flower again, realizing she released her grip on the bannister to hold it. Her legs felt steadier when she stood beside Hale.

“I see the stories and gossip of the Eastern Court have not made it to your little tavern in the West?” Hale gave her a half-hearted laugh. Remy shook her head. “My mother lives on the Eastern coast in a remote fishing village called Haastmouth Beach. My father banished her there when he married the current queen.”

Remy stifled a gasp. Banished? How could the King be so cruel to the woman who bore him his first child?

“Why?” It was all she could think to ask.

“I think he really loved her. But she was below his station, and he had ambitions that she got in the way of. It is not the way of the Eastern royals to marry for love.” Hale exhaled as Remy passed him back the amethyst flower. “When he announced he was to marry the current queen, it broke something in my mother. They say she went mad. They said it would be kinder to send her away than to lock her up.”

Remy clenched her jaw to keep her mouth from falling open. “They would have locked her up?”

“They kept me away from her for many years . . . I was six when she left. It was another six years before I ran away to find her.” He had been the same age as Remy when she lost her parents. “Of course, I found a perfectly sane woman. Sad, yes, but she was still in her wits completely. I think my father loved her and just wanted her gone.”

“That’s awful.” Remy chewed on her bottom lip.

“I visited her every few months after that for many years. I spent every summer of my teen years there too. My father would allow it during the weeks my tutors were away on holiday. I made friends with the locals. I learned to fish and swim in the big ocean waves. I’d always bring her a gigantic bouquet of these flowers that I had picked along the eastern banks of the Crushwold. They don’t grow by the seaside.”

“Those sound like very happy memories . . .” Remy couldn’t quite finish her thought: And yet when you speak of her you sound so sad . . . what happened?

“It has been a decade since I’ve seen her. Though my soldiers tell me she still lives,” Hale said so quietly Remy had to strain to hear over the wind cupping her ears.

“Wh—why?” she asked.

“When I was eighteen, my father assigned me my first job. I was to assemble a group of soldiers and we were to take back the Eastern village of Falhampton from Northern control. Drive them out. Oversee the building of better walls and guard towers. Train the villagers to defend from future attacks. It was a task for a general, and yet he gave it to me, despite my partying and childish behavior.” Hale huffed. “Only recently, though, did I realize he thought I would never succeed. He wanted to make a show of effort.”

“But you did succeed?” Remy smiled knowingly to the river. Hale’s shoulders lifted a bit at that smile.

“Indeed I did—it took nearly a year. And when I returned, you should have seen his face. It was the first time he had ever really acknowledged me. He made me a general, the youngest in the kingdom.” Remy felt the pride radiating from him as his chest puffed up again briefly before deflating. “I had planned to go visit my mother upon my return, but my father thought that would be unwise. I needed to show the people I was a true Prince of the East and that I had chosen him and the crown over her.”

“That is nonsense,” Remy dismissed with a wave of her hand.

As if broken from a spell, Hale looked at her and laughed. “Where were you to tell me that then?” He threw the flower into the river and watched as the choppy currents carried it away. “I wrote her a letter apologizing for not visiting and telling her I needed to focus on my job as a newly appointed general. She wrote me a letter back.”

“I’m guessing she understood.” Remy already knew the answer.

“She did.” Hale’s eyes crinkled as he gave her a sad smile. “She told me she was proud of me and that I knew where to find her when I was ready and to remember to bring her a bouquet of flowers.” He sighed. “And as the years went on, the shame felt greater. It felt harder and harder to make that trip. It felt less and less likely that she would forgive me.”

“She will,” Remy said confidently, leaning her shoulder into his.

“You seem very certain of that.” Hale chuckled.

“I am.” Remy pressed her shoulder into him again. “She loves you. A mother’s love . . . it does not fade with years. It burns brightly forever.”

“Where did you hear that?” His cheeks dimpled as he looked at her.

“From my own mother,” Remy said.

In that moment, standing there on the bow of that boat, they both seemed like two small children, missing their mothers. It was something deep and vulnerable that they rarely showed others. Remy saw her own pain mirrored in Hale. It made him seem less like a prince and more like a normal person, a son, with a family he loved and missed like she did her own.

“After you find the High Prince and restore him to the throne, you will go to her with a big bouquet of fragrant flowers, and she will smile and hug you like no time has passed.” Remy smiled. Staring off into the distance, she imagined it was her going to see her own mother.

Hale’s mother was still alive, and Remy couldn’t let his shame keep him from seeing her ever again. It left a deep hole in her heart to think someone had the opportunity to hug their mother again and didn’t.

“You seem awfully confident that all this will happen,” Hale said. He had shuffled closer to her so that the whole sides of their bodies touched. It felt incredibly intimate after days of barely looking at each other.

“It will happen.” Remy nodded.

“And how would you know?”

“I’ll make sure of it,” Remy said confidently.

“You plan on sticking around after all this?” Hale said, turning his gaze back to the river. “You are a red witch—you will want to stay in Yexshire.”

“Red witches used to serve the courts of every kingdom, you know, not just the High Mountain Court.” Remy couldn’t believe what she was offering by saying it, but she forced herself to continue. “And you, Your Highness, and your rag-tag bunch could surely use the guidance of a red witch.”

Hale chortled. “Yes, I suppose you are right.” He bent his head down to look at Remy. His face pulled so close to hers that she felt his hot breath on her cheek. “I think you are the first witch I’ve ever met who feels free to speak so boldly. There is no point to people who tell me what I want to hear. It is the very thing I looked for in each of my soldiers: warriors who would be honest with me, tell me when I was out of line, be loyal to me only if I remained loyal to them.”

“They sound like good people.” If the rest of his crew was anything like Carys, Talhan, and Bri, then they must be.

“They are.” His eyes softened, scanning her face. “So you want a job then? You’d be willing to follow me?”

Remy shrugged, and he grinned. Her voice was softer than she intended when she spoke. “I will pledge to you the same thing that your crew has: I will be loyal to you as long as you are loyal to me.”

Hale smiled then, a true genuine smile, and sighed. His breath tickled her lips. Each hair on her body rose as though trying to reach out and touch him.

Remy had been hiding all her life and it still hadn’t protected her. Maybe living openly as a red witch with the protection of a royal fae would be the safer option for her. She knew the mission they were on would eventually fail, and she needed protection for when they realized they would never succeed. But there was something else too. Something inside her that said, despite everything, she wished to stay by Hale’s side.

Hale’s grin widened as he looked at her. “And as my new head witch, do you have any advice you would like to give me?”

“My first guidance I would bestow on you is to go see your mother.” Remy’s smile was so wide her cheeks pinched her eyes half closed.

Hale leaned over and tucked her flapping hair behind her ear. Puzzled by the gentleness of the gesture, Remy looked at him. She felt ensnared in the long stare they shared, lost in those gray eyes.

The boat rocked, and they pitched forward. Remy clawed at the railing as the boat evened out again. Hale pressed his lips together to keep from laughing at her.

“I take it you are not looking forward to heading home?” Remy said, changing the subject.

“No.” Hale sighed. “The East is a beautiful and pleasant court, so I am told, though I’ve never seen it much that way.”

“I’m sorry for that.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about,” Hale added. “When we dock on the other side of the Crushwold . . . I will have to be a different sort of person.”

“More princely?” She jested.

“No, I . . .” Hale struggled for the words, and Remy regretted being so lighthearted. “The world sees me as . . . they call me the Bastard Prince.”

“I know,” Remy said. She had called him that before, and she hated that she had wielded those words like a weapon. “I will forever regret calling you that.”

Hale looked to her, one side of his face pulling up as he said, “Thank you.”

Remy knew how much those names dug their claws into a person. She knew how being called a witch had evolved into an insult over the years, as if she were something evil or lesser than others. And she knew how—despite how hard a person tried to not let those words sink into them—they would linger. Then a person would start to believe them to be true. It stung to know she had ever called him a bastard; she had added to that belief.

“So you become the person they fear you to be?” Remy guessed.

“It’s nice, this.” Hale’s eyes crinkled at the corners.

“What?”

“Talking to someone who actually understands what it is like to pretend to be something they’re not.”

Remy looked out to the river and cleared her throat. “Yes, hiding my red witch powers felt like my only purpose in life.”

She could no longer make out the shores of the Southern banks of the river. The enchanted boat neared the other side already. They moved with incredible speed.

“I have arranged for you to go with Carys when we enter the city. You will stay with her until it is time to depart for the Rotted Peak.” Hale’s eyes dropped to his hands. Remy turned to him, an unasked question on her face. “I’m sorry you will have to hide your magic once more.”

“Why?” she said. “Shouldn’t I be coming with you? They know you have found a red witch and possess the ring, I assume?”

“I don’t want you or that ring getting anywhere near my father,” Hale ground out, that muscle in his jaw popping out again. “The knowledge of who you are and where that ring is gives him a power I am unwilling to put in his hands.”

“You think he will take it?” Remy wondered. “But wasn’t it his idea to find the High Prince and reunite him with the lost talismans?”

“It was,” Hale said, his attention pulled back to Remy’s face, “and yet, I still do not trust him or any of his advisors.”

“Why not?” Remy regretted asking. Hale’s body language said everything. The prince didn’t trust his father for many reasons. There was a history there she did not know.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Remy added, “I trust in your judgment.”

Hale held her eyes again, another long look. She saw her reflection in them. It was like a mirror to her own soul, her own fear, her own wounds. There was something there, some magic that existed only between them.

“Won’t your father know who I am if I go with Carys?” Remy asked.

“Carys joined our ranks from the Southern Court a year back during one of the skirmishes on the border with the North,” Hale said. “My father knows Bri and Talhan, but not her. Still, it won’t be long until they identify who this red witch is that we brought with us, but hopefully by then we will be on the move into the mountains again.”

“Will you be all right?” Remy asked. Her question seemed to surprise Hale, though he hid it well.

“I’m used to walking into the lion’s den.” Hale faked a laugh, but Remy knew well enough by now that the sound wasn’t genuine. “But I’m glad that you won’t be dragged into that place too.”

“I don’t know . . .” Remy bit her lip. “I’m pretty good at playing the doting red witch.”

“That you are.” Hale laughed again, his smile broadening into something more real. He toyed with the red string still around his wrist, as though contemplating the moments that they had shared in the South. “But I don’t want to put on an act like in Ruttmore.”

“Oh.” Remy tried to hide her disappointment. He didn’t want a repeat of what happened in Ruttmore.

“My father is a cunning man—he sees more than most. He’d take one look at me with you and he’d know,” Hale said.

“Know what?” Remy breathed.

“That I’m not acting.”

Remy froze at his admission. He said it so nonchalantly, and yet she knew what a tremendous thing it was to say those words out loud. Hale pushed off the railing and walked away, leaving her with that confession. He wanted her to stay away from the King because he cared about her and didn’t want the King to hurt her to get to him. She opened and shut her mouth. What could she say to him? That she returned those feelings? Remy did not know what that would mean for them.

The distant shouts from land sounded. They had made it to the Eastern Court.