been here?” Jeth asked the nothing.
The whispers murmured around him, but gave no answer. He couldn’t even summon up the ghost of his mother, not since he heard her strike her bargain with Aneirin all those years ago. That didn’t stop him from trying.
“Mother?” He willed her to come, sending a hum through the nothing around him along with the echo.
Nothing. She was gone.
She’s gone.
The bottomless well of pain bloomed in his chest, and this time there was no reason to stop it. He sank to his knees, burying his face in his hands as he sobbed. He let wave after wave of regret and shame and misery wash over him.
I should have told her I loved her more often.
She only died because Aneirin wanted me.
I’ll never see her again. I’ll never hear her again. Everything is different now.
The world had fallen out of step long before Aneirin trapped him in this place. Jeth had ignored it, choosing instead to pretend alongside everyone else that everything was fine. He remembered that the sky didn’t seem as blue, the whinny of a horse seemed shrill and harsh, the cold seemed stronger—but who was to say that wasn’t normal, now, in this strange new world where he was alone? Where she was gone?
Day by day, it grew more peculiar and fantastic. Jeth traveled with a faerie. He learned to cast powerful spells. He grew.
Maybe that’s why I can’t feel her anymore. Maybe I’ve changed so much she doesn’t recognize me.
Maybe his faerie blood pushed her away.
There was nothing to be done about that. He couldn’t imagine going back, even if he could. Not just because he now knew what he was, but because the world was wider than his nameless village on the edge of the kingdom. He wanted to see it. He wanted to be part of it.
The seemingly endless chasm of his grief had a bottom, after all. Though he didn’t know how long he cried, eventually the tears stopped coming. Jeth felt like a rag wrung dry, but there was a lightness to it, too. It made his head spin.
“Aneirin?” he asked the nothing, the words coming out in a petulant croak that he hated. The faerie had vanished, and no matter how Jeth stretched his senses, he could not find him again. Aneirin knew how his prison worked, and apparently he could do as he pleased within it, magic or no. Their cell was vast enough to avoid one another for as long as the faerie wished.
The last echo of his question faded, leaving Jeth in silence and darkness.
I don’t want to see him again, anyway.
The hole in his chest left by his mother’s death filled with something hot, like he swallowed coals raked from a fire.
It was Aneirin’s fault his mother was dead. He broke their bargain, and he stole her. Even after that, he tricked Jeth into an agreement that he never intended to honor.
He’s sly and full of tricks. They all are. No faerie ever makes a good deal.
Even Burne Calder, who had gotten the best possible outcome in her deal, was left reeling. She looked like her heart was breaking when Aneirin took Jeth. Even with all the good fortune and wealth the faerie had given her, she was left with regrets.
No faerie ever makes a good deal.
And what about me?
The heat in his chest ebbed as Jeth studied his hands. The blood of faeries ran through his veins, making him one of them. How long before that blood swallowed him whole? How long before he made bargains and deals that would leave every life he touched ruined, if he ever got free? How long before madness made him like his father? What would his mother think of him in a hundred years, in a thousand?
Jeth closed his hands, nails digging into his palms. “I won’t be like them,” he said.
“Like them,–ike them,–them,–em,–em,” his echo argued.
“I refuse. I can’t!”
Gleda had not raised her son to be a monster. She taught Jeth the names of flowers and animals. She encouraged him to help her with the healings and blessings and tinctures and salves. She ran with him in sun-bright meadows, laughing while her dark hair streamed behind her like a banner in the wind. She teased him over dinners of stew and fresh bread. She read to him and with him, encouraging him to find new things to learn around every corner.
She taught him…to be human, he realized. All the best things of this world, of this kingdom, she instilled in his very being. Even now, alone and trapped in the dark, he rejected the barest hint of that behavior.
“But I’m still a faerie.”
The whispers murmured.
Jeth frowned, pushing himself to his feet. “I was a witch’s son first. I’m both. I’m…me. Just me.”
Something stirred in the nothing.
“Even if I stay trapped in here for an age, when I come out, I will still be myself. I will only make good bargains if I have to make them at all, and I will never, ever trap someone. I am not a monster.”
“Monster,” the echo agreed. A glimmer of gold rippled away from Jeth’s feet.
Jeth stared at it, watching it fade. Aneirin’s light had vanished when his magic did. Were the glimmers in the endless night of this place…power?
He stamped a foot on the ground, watching the gold undulate off into the darkness. The light of it painted him in gilded ripples.
Jeth turned in place, studying the nothing. “Magic is never stagnant.”
His mother had told him that. “Look at the leylines. They flow like rivers, always moving. Even when they pool, there’s a current beneath the surface, and the power flows out again. Magic is never stagnant.”
The proof of it was at his feet. He felt the nothing stir again, turning to trace the unseen shift of magic like a hound scenting the air. Wherever it went, it ran and pooled and arced in little rivulets of silver that glowed like starlight.
“The problem with this cell is that it is pure magic,” he said, as if lecturing someone. He had seen it himself when he tried to use his True Sight upon his arrival. “If the power is flowing, that means my prison isn’t as solid as it seems. I might be able to direct the flow, to change the shape.”
To escape.
Jeth activated his True Sight. His eyes watered. The silver glow surrounding him was blinding, but he kept his eyes open.
They’ll adjust. Just hold on, hold on!
The light abated, fading until Jeth could just make out the shifts in the walls around him. How far away they were, he couldn’t tell—but he could see the ripples, the layers, the knots.
He could see the weaknesses.
Jeth’s breath caught. I can tear through.
He let his True Sight fade, blinking away tears as the nothing closed in around him. He opened his senses.
Magic was in the very air. It threatened to overwhelm him, battering at his consciousness like a storm swallowing a ship. With a shout, Jeth closed his mind, clasping his head in his hands.
The pain faded. The only sounds were his breath coming in pants and the echo of it.
I need help.
No, not help. He needed a focus. Jeth pulled the orb from his hip, cradling it in both hands. Already a flicker of golden light danced in its depths. Cautiously, Jeth opened his mind again, slower than before.
The magic poured through the small channel he made for it, setting his teeth on edge and making his hair stand up as it ran through his arms, into his hands, and then into the orb. The glimmers of gold around his feet swelled into a puddle, growing with every moment he channeled. He felt it through every inch of his body. It was more power than he had ever touched in his life.
The orb glowed brighter and brighter, the golden core of it bulging, growing, swelling. Jeth’s breath caught as he opened a second conduit to the power in the focus, only to find an ocean of magic raging inside.
That must be enough!
He gathered his will. “Let me out,” he breathed.
“Out, out, out,” the echo chanted.
Crack. The surface of the crystal fractured, a spray of golden light pouring out of it. Jeth’s heart began to race. Did I pull too much? He tried to bring up the walls around his mind—and failed. His will was in control now.
“No, no, no!” he cried.
Crack! Another fissure formed. The orb shattered, shards flying in all directions. Jeth howled, staggering as several pieces struck his hands and face. He lifted his arms over his head, waiting for the inevitable wash of power to consume him.
And it never came.
When Jeth lowered his arms, it was to find himself facing a golden gateway that hung in the air in the shape…of an orb. He walked around it in awe, a similar pool of gold at his feet. The edges of it flickered like it held barely contained lightning in its heart.
Jeth lifted a hand toward the power.
“Stop,” Aneirin commanded.
Jeth froze, glancing over his shoulder.
The faerie stood tall behind him, hungry eyes fixed on the glittering gate. “You will take me with you.”
“Why?”
“Because I am your father.”
Jeth frowned. “You’re a murderer, a monster. I don’t have to take you anywhere.”
“And what does that make you? My blood flows through your veins. You are as much a faerie as I am.”
Jeth laughed. “What does it make me? I am the son of a faerie king.”
Aneirin lifted his chin, a smug smile forming on his lips.
“And I am the son of a witch. I straddle the magic of two worlds, and I can pull from both.” The gold around his feet swelled, and the nothing stirred, pressing in.
Sparks flew from the edges of the gateway like embers in the night, there and then gone.
“I don’t need to take you with me. When I leave this place, it will be to prove that faerie magic can be used for good, and that none of you creatures choose to use it thus. I will change the world.”
“You cannot be released!” Aneirin shouted, rushing forward.
Jeth slammed a wall of will into being between them, taking no small amount of satisfaction in watching Aneirin crumple against it. The faerie king howled, banging his fists against the barrier.
“I don’t need your permission to be released, Aneirin. I can leave on my own.”
“No! No, you cannot leave!”
“Watch me.”
With a pull on the magic of the nothing, he made the wall around himself and the gateway stronger, thicker. With no magic of his own any longer, Aneirin wouldn’t be able to break through. He’d be trapped. He wouldn’t be able to use the gate.
Jeth stepped through the portal into the unknown.
It was too bright to see. With his eyes closed and his arms shielding his face, Jeth walked. Whatever he walked on still felt like the nothing, cool and smooth like marble. Then it crunched, giving way beneath his foot.
Jeth lowered his arms as the cold air of morning enveloped him. A single bird trilled somewhere nearby, the first promise of the impending spring. A rustle of bare branches dropped icicles to the ground in a tinkling symphony as two squirrels raced overhead. All that was left of the campfire were ashes covered with a thin layer of snow.
For several moments, Jeth didn’t move. He breathed deeply, reveled in the light of the sun, and let his nose grow cold in the winter air. Breathlessly, he laughed.
“I did it. I did it!”
A whinny answered his words. Jeth turned to find his horse, still tethered where he had left it with a neatly cropped circle of grass around its feet. Shadowstep was gone without a trace. There was no sign of the portal he had stepped through, either. No mark on the ground, no shimmer in the air. Just a little clay jar in a leather holder, the top stoppered with a cork. Unassuming as it was, the vessel radiated magic in a hum that Jeth could hear, with no need for his True Sight at all.
Jeth bent to scoop up his father’s prison, only to stop short.
He was…different. Where his skin had been peach-pale, now it held a golden warmth. The sleeves of his coat glittered with gold that he couldn’t dust off. When he looked down, he realized that all of him was coated in a layer of gold. He brushed his fingers over the supple cloth of blue and gold.
It looks like the night sky, he marveled.
Jeth curled his hands into fists, hissing as he prodded one of the cuts left by the shards of the orb. He sat in the snow beside the jar, studying his wounds. Those bits can’t stay in there, they’ll get infected.
Only there weren’t any. Each scrape was clean, if still fresh. Blood welled, but it would soon scab over. Another laugh bubbled up from Jeth’s chest.
“What is happening to me?” he asked his gelding.
The horse tossed its head and stamped a foot, giving his tether an impatient tug.
“Alright, I hear you.” Jeth picked up the jar and fixed it to his belt next to the empty leather pouch, then untied the reins. He paused when he caught sight of his reflection in the horse’s dark eyes.
The face that looked back at him was different enough that, for a moment, he thought it was someone else. His dark hair was gone, replaced with blond hair down to the very roots. His eyes were still dark, but there was a faint gleam to them, a spark of power he knew he could summon at will.
“Good. I still have magic.” He patted his horse gently on the cheek. “Let’s go use it.”
First, he would go to his village and help them rebuild their homes, and find them a new witch. Then, he would warn the Queen.
And after that? he asked the air as he swung into the saddle.
The breeze rose, tickling along the back of his neck.
Anything, it seemed to say.