THE BEGINNING
Some of the elves fled toward the outer edges of the forest. Others fled toward the relative safety of the castle and were rounded up by my men. The rest surrendered. What else could they do? The Elf King had been defeated by his daughter, who was mistress of the castle they had stolen. They were terrified she would feed them to the trees.
My father, my bride, both her bodyguards, the time-traveling poet, and myself—the king of this ruin of a castle—all gathered at the gatehouse to survey the damage. One of four towers remained standing. The walls were in shambles. The keep was half-collapsed, and the stables had burned to the ground.
And somehow it was fitting. I had not been ready for this responsibility. Maybe I was now. My father was right that I had needed a partner. This was my chance to start again.
I reached for Koli, pulling her close to my side. I wanted to ask how she was feeling about the death of her father. About suddenly being a queen in two countries, as well as a powerful sorceress. And especially—selfishly—how she was feeling about me. Instead, I had to figure out how to conjure food and shelter for ourselves and the men who had survived.
There were many firglas moving about the grounds, and some of the less earthy fairy creatures were already cavorting in the rubble of the castle. The redcaps, who had joined the battle on the side of the elves but switched when they saw the tide turning, were sullenly foraging for abandoned weapons—I had ordered them to leave the fallen soldiers alone. When the light was gone, which wouldn’t be long now, there would be banshee keens for the dead.
It was a kingdom not many would claim, but it was growing on me.
“What has happened to my wife and Elinor?” asked my brother as he joined us.
I sighed. “My steward took them to Faery and then got himself killed by the Morrigan.” My father and brother stared at me, alarmed. “Right,” I said. “I’ll find them.”
I glanced at Koli, hoping she would want to come—she had slipped into a whispered conversation with Ulf and was making a noise that if I had not known my wife better, I would have called giggling.
A jaunt in Faery was the very last thing I wanted right now. Or ever, really. I hadn’t gone there since before Ben Bulben, when I was still under the control of my ancestor. At the time, Knock Ma castle had only existed there, while it was hardly more than a pile of stones in Ireland. Would the merging of worlds mean it had been destroyed there too? Was there even a “there” there anymore? It was something I should have looked into—another responsibility I had shirked. I was done with all that now.
“All right, then,” I said, feeling rather sorry for myself. Then came a deafening grinding noise.
Bollocks, what now?
The ground began to quake. Everything left standing within the fragments of castle wall, along with the fragments themselves, tumbled into the moat.
“Into the forest!” I shouted.
My relations looked at me like I’d gone mad, but I could think of no better place to go.
They did as I’d ordered, and we watched from a safer distance as what was left of the castle collapsed. Yet it was only getting started. The ground beneath the castle began to give way, or so I assumed, because the stone heap was sinking. The earth around us quaked more violently and we grabbed at the trunks of the trees for support, praying they felt more friendly toward us than they had toward the elves.
When the rubble had gone, there was nothing left—only a massive well in the top of the hill. We had just a few moments’ respite before stones began sprouting from the ground. Not single stones, but oddly neat groups of them, popping up and arranging themselves like puzzle pieces.
Koli exclaimed something in Elvish. I slipped my arm around her waist, and I kissed her forehead. “It’s all right,” I said. “It’s happened before.” Not two days after the Battle of Ben Bulben in fact, when the seal between Faery and Ireland had been no more and Knock Ma had pushed up from the ground, whole again.
By the time the sun had set, a new castle stood on the grounds of Knock Ma—a new castle that was exactly like the old castle, except its towers were all standing and nothing had been blackened by fire.
“We won’t have to sleep out of doors after all,” I said.
No one found this as funny as I did, except maybe Koli, who was eyeing me in a way I very much hoped boded good things for the evening to come.
“Is it safe, son?” asked my father.
“As safe as it ever was,” I said. “Doro, at least, is gone. There won’t be monsters in the lily pond. Or so I hope.”
Koli was laughing quietly now—we were in very real danger of frightening off the mortals. At that moment two figures passed through the new castle gate and made their way toward the drawbridge.
“Here’s your wife, brother,” I said.
“What?” said Owen.
The two women were running now, and my brother and father hurried to meet them.
I turned to look for Mr. Yeats, who’d been unusually quiet since the ordeal in the forest—even for him. He hung back a little, his arm around the trunk of a tree. He looked more boyish than ever with dirt smudges on his face and twigs in his hair.
“Are you whole and well, Mr. Yeats?” I said.
He straightened and cleared his throat. “I am, Your Majesty.”
“And how’s the ticking?” Koli had told me what happened to him in the Gap gate, and how he’d developed some kind of rapport with the trees. Still I could hardly understand it.
“Diminished,” he said, “I thank you.”
“Excellent. I need to thank you for your valiant service, and for taking good care of my wife.”
He gave a short bow. “I think it was she who took care of me, sire.”
I nodded. “As she does of us all. Can I make one more request of you?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
“Look after the others? Help make them comfortable? The queen and I are passing the night . . .” I looked at her, and she gave me a puzzled smile. Ulf, on the opposite side of her, was frowning. “Elsewhere,” I continued. “We’ll return in the morning. Ulf and Treig will help you. Are you up to it?”
I could feel Ulf’s glare, but Treig gave her lady a knowing smile.
“I am, Your Majesty,” said Yeats.
Koli
Just outside the new guardhouse, a group of soldiers had been rounding up the horses that had fled the burning castle. After claiming one of them, Finvara fashioned a halter and reins from a long coil of rope.
“Where are we going?” I asked, though I had already guessed.
He climbed onto the horse and then gave me a hand up. “You will see,” he whispered into my ear.
With night coming on, our journey was not leisurely. Yet I was content to relax against my husband’s chest, as I had on our first ride to the cottage. How much had changed, and in such a short time. The despair I’d felt then had been replaced by an alien emotion—joy. Along with a fuller sense of who and what I was. The loss of my father—I had yet to really feel it, beyond my new sense of freedom. There was a legacy that I must think of, but that could wait.
Though it was too late for hunting by the time we reached the cottage, the clouds had cleared, and Finvara declared there was enough moonlight to travel to a nearby farmhouse. “I’m sure they’ve food to spare,” he said. “I’ll be back soon.”
When he’d gone, I went around to the stream in back of the cottage. Kneeling on the moss, I splashed cold water over my face and neck, and I combed out my hair with my fingers. Then I sat on the bank, listening to the small night creatures and the gurgling of the stream.
I am home.
It was a strange realization. I knew I could never forsake my own country, but because of Finvara, there was room in my heart for this one. And I was eager to know it better.
I got up and went inside, where I cast a tiny fire spell to light a candle. Then I used it to light the others, and by the time I got a fire going in the hearth, Finvara had returned.
“Unfortunately they weren’t expecting a night visit from the fairy king, and I frightened them half to death.” He unloaded a feast—a round of yellow cheese, fresh bread, a pastry of some kind, and a bottle of spirits.
“It was worth it,” I said, and he laughed.
When the table was set, he came over to me.
“How are you, wife?” he asked tenderly, tucking my hair behind my ear. Running his finger up and over the backward-curving point that we did not have in common.
“Very well, husband.”
He frowned. “I am sorry about your father. I know that you weren’t close to him, but it can’t have been easy.”
I nodded, resting my forehead against his cheek. “I wish . . .”
Finvara waited patiently, and finally I looked at him. “I wish it could have been different. My mother was soft. She cared for me.” Moisture stung my eyes. “He saw no value in those things.”
“Aye.”
After a moment, he cleared his throat. “You had Ulf, at least. He cared for you, and you for him.”
I studied him. I had seen that Ulf’s change of heart had made him uneasy.
“Yes,” I agreed.
“I’m glad about that,” he said. “Glad that someone was there for you in that cold, hard place. How is it between you now?”
He watched me closely, and I began to tremble. “Ulf has changed,” I said, and I thought I saw something in his face shift. “We fought. We almost killed each other. I don’t know that you can understand it, but after that, we were different—he was different. My father tortured him because of me.”
Finvara took a step back, and my belly went cold. “I do understand,” he said, “or at least I think I do. I don’t know if it has dawned on you yet—your life is really just beginning. You don’t have to be queen here. You can be queen in Iceland. You and Ulf—you can rule together. Or you can rule alone. You have choices.”
I hesitated, unsure what to make of this speech.
He let out a sigh, and he ran a hand over his head. “I don’t mean to confuse you. I only mean to say I wish you to be happy.”
He was right about all of it. My father’s people—they would accept me. Things were different with the elves. I had killed their king, or so they would understand it, and that would make me strong in their eyes, not a traitor.
“I cannot go back to Iceland,” I said finally. “Not to live, anyway.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Can you not?”
I shook my head. “Ulf is family. He always will be. But it is he who must go back, so he can mind the kingdom in my absence.”
His gaze held mine. “And why is that?”
The wings of my furies beat at the walls of my chest. “Do you not know?”
“I do not,” he said. “All I know is that I love you, and I would be lost without you.”
I closed the distance between us, wrapping my arms around his neck. He pressed his forehead to mine.
“I would have to be a cold and heartless thing to leave you to such a fate.”
He smiled, and his hands came to my waist. He kissed my cheek, my nose, and finally my lips. “That you could never be.”