And she heard more than one mutter, “Well, this explains the redcap…”
The most excitement was over the dungeon and the prismatic chimeras when they were found midafternoon. The knight whose group found them and the dungeon very proudly and obviously told them all he was granting the gift of dungeon ownership over to his lord. Squirt deliberately avoided even facing the pest during the whole debacle, unwilling to see the eyes that were attempting to burn into her.
Something that did not escape Lord Everwinter’s notice.
Indeed, every single person there noted the powerful pixie’s attention on her, the way his gaze lingered whenever he could, always ready to offer her help, and how he sighed wistfully at her when she stalked away no matter how much gore covered her. He made no attempt to hide his feelings, something that seemed to irritate not just her, but also Lord Everwinter.
Still, she wasn’t ready for Lord Everwinter’s address over dinner.
“Everyone beholden to me, this is an order—that you saw this man and this child here is something to never share outside of those here in total privacy.”
The words echoed with enough fey magic that Squirt shivered, even though she was technically unaffected by the order. Those with titles or who had sworn their allegiance as part of his Guard were, including, interestingly enough, all of the hunters.
Except her.
They all gained the unfocused eyes and intoned, “As you wish,” as one as the magic command settled into their bones.
Discomforted by the display of obvious power, she shifted from foot to foot, unable to keep still, yet unable to sit. If she sat, the exhaustion would hit her, and she couldn’t do that yet. Not until she finished eating and then did the greenling thing of washing the dishes or tanning hides or something useful—
“Furthermore,” the power left his voice, no longer an absolute command, “the next person who demands Athereon’s subservience will answer to me. Her exploits have already been recognized by the Queen herself. It is because of her bravery and fierce determination that we know the strategy of our enemies. Skye Kingdom has been dumping sky ships full of fey into the deep forest in an attempt to destabilize the entire territory by overrunning us with feybeasts.”
He paused for dramatic effect, and she hated that she was hanging off his every word. He didn’t act ostentatious like the pest, and his words remained at a normal, quiet volume even when they rang with power, yet he had the same magnetic charisma as the pest did. Only his was built into calm command rather than playful fun.
It was exhilarating, flattering, and terrifying all at once.
“In one week, we journey into the depths of the Wylds to repeat today’s venture with the worst of the hotspots. I assure you now, we will see action. It will be a battle the likes of which you’ve never seen before. The beasts will not be asleep and hypnotized while we travel, and our party will attract their attention. We might even face a surge with no walls to hide behind. I suggest you all get some rest tonight, and tomorrow, you start paying attention to the lessons of the hunters. They might just save your life.”
With that, he dramatically turned and headed off to his tent, saying, “Athereon, Fel, with me.”
Reluctantly, she obediently followed him to the tent, still in a bit of awe by the way he’d somehow inspired her for the fight ahead.
Gods damn it all, he’d charmed her. Not directly, not making her do anything she didn’t wish, just a subtle form of inherent magic to strongly charismatic fey that brought out the feelings they wanted to invoke. Most considered it a positive trait to have.
She didn’t.
The pest held open the tent flap for her with a bright smile and she scowled harder. Here was yet another example of the damn charm some fey could wield so easily, only he shared happiness instead of inspiring action.
Even when she didn’t want to be happy.
She stomped into the tent, anyway, knowing he was making a point of lowering himself by serving her and deeply uncomfortable with the depths of the meaning involved. Refusing him would have far worse consequences for her than accepting it, but either way, it was a lose-lose situation.
He was doing something nice, but now she had witnesses to him lowering herself to her as a matter of course. She wasn’t looking forward to that beating. It wouldn’t be nearly as lenient as her last. She’d walk away with broken limbs for sure.
Gods, she hated titled, pompous, assholes who—
The flap closed and with a simple twist of his wrist, Lord Everwinter silenced the entire space and sighed in relief.
Squirt stared stunned at the man as he took a tired seat on a pillow on the floor before her eyes then drifted around the faint film of the tent. She couldn’t hear anything outside. All the noise had disappeared, but there was more complexity woven into it she didn’t fully understand. Casting magic like this didn’t use runes but spells, and spells were something that were far beyond her capability.
Her eyes finally landed back on his dual-colored ones, and she said blandly, “I really fucking hate you.”
He smirked. Then shrugged, the smugness fading. “I’m powerful enough in my own right and the title definitely gave me a boost. But I’m smart enough to understand where I stand with others. Kenna can whip my ass with any blade, Tobias is better at forging alliances and friendships, Hawke is better at teaching and training, Telos outclasses me in every way in magic, and Fel has enough raw power to even make my title obsolete. You can beat me in sheer intelligence, knife skills, and stealth. That’s three skills you best me at. I don’t mind getting to best you in one.”
She gave him a hard stare. There was something more… relaxed about him at the moment, and it took her time to figure out what it was.
It was just him, her, and the pest. He’d mentioned knowing the pest but hadn’t indicated they were friends.
She was seeing behind his lordship mantle.
He’d just complimented her.
It was a compliment, right? Not sarcasm?
Even now, he was calmly holding her gaze in a way that reminded her, strangely enough, of Zakam—no thoughts on his mind but the sincerity of what he’d said.
And it was about that moment that the meaning of the words he’d said sank into her bones. She’d heard them. She’d understood them. But now? Now she was feeling them.
Then her mind latched onto the one suspicious part in the whole thing as she narrowed her eyes at him, banishing away the watery gratitude that had threatened her eyes for a moment, stunning her with a different, more comfortable kind of disbelief. “Don’t tell me you specifically paired me with Tobias on that last training day because you wanted him to make friends with me.”
Lord Everwinter shrugged, a teasing tilt to his smile. “It worked, didn’t it?”
Squirt stared at him before she blurted out, “But that was before the traps!”
He started unstrapping the armor from his legs, thinking before he answered, his tone casual and calm as ever. “My talent is in finding the talent in others. And you are not as unpopular as you think. Just as many of the Guard have come to me singing your praises. More, actually, than those who are judgmental assholes.”
“I purposely didn’t do anything to stand out!”
The lord grinned at her, for once, looking like a young man instead of a tired lord. “And that, Athereon, is what caught my eye.”
He shifted to unstrap the armor off his shoulder until he was left in his shirt and breeches as he continued to explain. “You earned the respect of half the Guard on that first day when you were the only pixie that didn’t complain and whine about their circumstances, instead keeping up with the rest even as it was clearly difficult to do. And yet, while fit enough to keep up with fey twice your size with naturally athletic bodies, I would lose sight of you in the crowds. And when the reports from the instructors came in and claimed you had never once offered your opinion, I asked if you had ever been asked. When they couldn’t answer that, I knew there was more there.”
Numb and dazed, she asked, “But why watch me at all?”
“Because, Athereon, you had earned the respect of half the Guard in less than a day.”
Somewhat suspicious now, she asked, “There was no other reason?”
Lord Everwinter movements slowed as he thought over her question. “… no. There were others. But those were the deciding ones.”
“… one of these reasons didn’t happen to be the Whims, did it?”
He frowned. “… I can’t deny the possibility. Talent magic is not exact or well known, and mine comes in the form of instinctive draws towards certain people.”
Squirt groaned. “Gods damnit all.”
“What is it?”
Snapping out, “Fucking nothing, just my goddess somehow deciding to put a lot of sudden fucking interest in me,” she ran her hands through her short hair and cursed up a storm.
Lord Everwinter chuckled, then pulled out a box, opening it to reveal some kind of round confection with a shiny glaze to it. “Donuts.”
Her hands twitched and her mouth watered as the scent wafted over to her.
The pest looked between her and Lord Everwinter before slowly grinning. Then he whistled casually as he moved to take a seat when he caught sight of her furious green eyes.
Lord Everwinter casually set the box down, then grabbed one himself to snack on.
Her breath hitched.
He glanced over at the pest and started speaking in another language of Skye Kingdom, leaving her to her own devices as she teetered on her feet. She didn’t want to sit. If she sat, the exhaustion would hit.
But if she sat, there were donuts.
She had to swallow the drool pooling in her mouth.
They were warm.
Her pouch would keep them from going bad, but it wouldn’t keep them from losing their heat.
Damnit, she was filthy. She scowled down at the dried and disgusting gore she was covered in when a wave of the lord’s magic gently glided over her skin, cleaning her and warming her all at once.
He hadn’t even looked at her to do that trick.
Life was so damn unfair.
***
Both men found their eyes flickering over to the pixie woman, her glare making her button nose wrinkle just so. Their eyes found each other again, a shared experience between them of trying to tamp down on their smiles so she wouldn’t catch them.
Fel broke first, unable to hold back a snicker as he turned away from her, trying desperately to quash the laughter.
“What?” she snapped.
Fel waved his hand dismissively. “N-nothing, my goddess—” Gods, he couldn’t tell her it was because she had just made the most adorable pout after getting a cleanse spell cast on her and washing away the gore any more than he could out his friend for feeling the same thing. “Non, just… a joke in Skyian, is all.”
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At her withering glare, he finally managed to calm himself just for Bartos to drop a bomb on him in his native tongue.
“Your plans to return home cannot include her.”
The woman in question inched closer to the sugary treat like it was a feybeast she was stalking.
Quietly, Fel answered, “I would not force her to do something against her will.” But he would absolutely convince her. In his daydreams, he revealed his identity and she fell into his arms before he whisked her away. Though he had some concept of the reality not going quite as smoothly as his daydreams, he still had planned on wooing her to that end.
His friend shook his head and sighed. “No, I will use my boon if I must. We need her here.”
Fel stiffened slightly, stunned. His boon?
That would certainly put a wrench in Fel’s plans for his goddess.
Based on the way her eyes darted between them, she was suspicious as to the subject of their private conversation, but the lack of animosity told him she didn’t understand the language.
Fel kept his eyes from her as he considered next steps. If he couldn’t bring her home with him, perhaps there was another solution that would allow him to keep her by his side. “… and if I stayed here?”
His friend exhaled sharply. “I’ll be damned. You’re head over heels.”
Fel barely restrained his dopey smile, knowing it would confirm her suspicions and get him in trouble. “Absolutely.”
Wiping both palms down his face, Bartos sighed heavily. “… you know those people depend on you. You’d need some way of bargaining to replace what you are to them, or they will starve.”
Fel almost rolled his eyes until they landed on the pixie woman staring at the treats like a tiger about to pounce. Impulsively, he found himself asking her in Common, “If you could do something that people relied on, would you?”
His goddess gave him an odd look, squinting a little like he was a bug under her shoe. “… I do something that people rely on, dumbass.”
“… but if you had the chance to stop, would you?”
The hand that had been twitching in the direction of the donuts came to a stop in her lap as she studied him with an intensity that sent nerves up and down his spine.
Finally, his goddess dropped her gaze as her expression softened in thought. “… it’d depend. I wouldn’t leave if there was no one to take over, not unless I had to. In these parts, fey rely on each other, so if I let them know then they would send me someone to train, and I’d train them until I left. That’s what happened in my village. I had taught another to do what needed to be done, and she wanted to raise her child there with her mates, so our Guardsman sent me here, instead.”
His heart fell. “… and… if there was no one you could train to do your job?”
Strangely, Fel didn’t earn her ire, just more contemplation. Her brows were furrowed, and her arms crossed, but the expression was softer than before. “… well, then would there be a way to still get the people I was leaving what they needed from me? It’s an open-ended problem.”
He teetered before blurting out, “Food.”
Again, she didn’t snap like he expected, though there was new suspicion in the way they narrowed. Then they softened again with thought. “… then I’d make sure wherever I was going could send the food they need to them.”
“And if you didn’t? Or couldn’t?”
Her hands clenched into fists and anger lit up her eyes for a flash. “There’s a big difference between didn’t and couldn’t.”
Then his goddess softened again, dropping her eyes in thought. He even wondered if she knew how often she did that, reflexively dropping her eyes the moment she wasn’t fully aware of her surroundings.
Eventually, she spoke softly once more, and he found himself hanging on her every word. “It’s fey like me that suffer from things like food shortages. His lordship will likely not go hungry this winter, but the villagers? The deer populations are already dropping, and it’s not even summer yet. Crops will be ravaged no matter how hard they fight to protect them. The lumberjacks and the rest will have the danger of their work increase a hundredfold this fall and winter. In the Capital, when there was a shortage of food? It was never fey like you that ever felt it, only fey like me. I know what it is like to be starving. I wouldn’t leave someone else to that if I could help it.”
Fel groaned, falling backwards and sprawling out over the furs that lined the bottom of the tent. Then he sat up quickly. “That’s it! I can just produce the food here and ship it over the mountains.”
***
Squirt gave him a hard stare as a spark of knowledge hit like a lightning bolt, jarring her out of the moment of his excitement.
***
Fel, ignorant of her epiphany, continued excitedly in Common and forgot to use his native tongue to mask his plans. “I can make enough to help the villages and people here and send the rest back to Skye.”
Bartos raised an eyebrow, answering him in Common. “And how do you intend to get it to Skye?”
He opened his mouth and closed it in thought, not noticing the way that his goddess’s eyes widened slightly, or the way she tensed. “… I… could summon an airship?”
Dryly, his friend responded, “Yes, sending airships between the countries will be an excellent idea when we are on opposite sides of a war.”
He winced. “Ah, but, you see, we could… could…” he dropped his head in his hands, clutching his head and groaning. “Gods, I do not know.”
Bartos’s eyes slid over to the pixie woman. “Athereon? Are you alright?”
She stiffened at his name for her, her eyes never leaving Fel as she said tightly, “Fine, thanks.”
Bartos took a calculated sip from his waterskin. Ah. She’d figured the prince out. He raised a brow at said prince, having warned him that she’d figure it out quickly. His attempt to hide himself from her had been pointless from the beginning.
The prince, however, remained blissfully unaware as he searched for a new topic. His eyes landed on the untouched donuts, and he grinned. “So do you think I can have the rest?”
The woman turned to stone.
“You know, since she doesn’t want any—”
“I never said that—” she snarled, her green eyes flashing.
“Well, you haven’t had any—”
“I will!”
“Oh? Okay. Eat what you want, and I’ll take the leftovers.”
She was caught and they both knew it.
Bartos was mildly impressed. She always accepted the treats given to her but had yet to eat one in front of anyone, even Tobias.
To their surprise, her cheeks flushed with shame as she dropped gaze and twisted away from him. “Just… is anyone else coming in?”
“Not tonight,” Bartos answered with calm conviction, silently updating the wards to reject Tobias and Telos. He hadn’t invited them to his tent, but they both had a tendency to invite themselves.
Though Telos only when she was looking for Tobias.
She teetered, a conflicted look of pain in her eyes that made him subtly hold his breath. Instead, he focused on pulling out the stack of parchment she had given him on feybeasts, returning to his task of memorizing it all.
It worked. Only a handful of seconds later, she reached a hand forward and gingerly took a donut, scowling the whole time. She held it up, it being as large as her face was and needing two hands, then slowly took a healthy bite.
Her entire expression changed. Gone were the furrowed brows and glares of suspicion, replaced instead with the delighted flush of sated desire. Her lips tugged up into a satisfied smile as she chewed, one hand lifting to her cheek as she savored it.
Then opened her eyes suddenly and suspiciously. Luckily enough, both men were fast enough to hide their attention had drifted to her.
She went back to enjoying her confection, and when she got to the jam, her wings popped out.
Mortified, she blushed a deep red, but to her knowledge neither man reacted.
At first.
***
Squirt went back to enjoying the treat, one hand on her cheek, her broken wings pathetically trying to flap in joy and leading her through a roller-coaster of emotion she wasn’t prepared for. And just when the shame was about to outweigh the happiness, suddenly there was a soft, gentle hand on her head. She glanced up, realizing that the pest was shielding her when Lord Everwinter let out a growl that shook the very ground under the tent. Fur burst along his body and he landed on all fours, growling and snarling.
Gods. Even for a wolf shifter, he was big. His wolf was easily the size of a small horse.
Trying to decide between the confection and her life as she swallowed hurriedly, she almost threw the treat away when the beast suddenly dropped to its belly, crawling forward until it could nose at her knee. The lord’s wolf didn’t bare his throat, but the submissive act was not lost on her.
Stunned again, thoroughly off-balance, and having just faced down death again, Squirt lost it a little. It was the only explanation.
Reaching one trembling hand forward, she held it out in front of his snout, noting numbly that his nose was bigger than her whole hand.
The lord’s wolf whined and licked her palm once, nuzzling it.
Mechanically, Squirt’s hand patted his head as his animal half tried desperately to comfort her. She knew what this was—the animal halves of shifters didn’t always understand. If he’d adopted her into his pack, if his wolf half had, too, then this was his wolf’s reaction to her wings.
He… really did consider her pack.
She was proven right as his wolf whined again, nuzzling under her arm towards her wing. She flinched reflexively and the wolf pulled back, ears down and whining to appease her.
Her hand resting on his head, the wolf found his way into her lap, scuttling forward until he could rest his head over her thighs. She held the donut up with her other hand as she stared down at the wolf and had the abrupt realization of what the various reactions over the last couple of weeks to her wings had been. Why there had been anger that wasn’t directed at her.
Did they all feel the same as this wolf?
Oddly enough… transformed like this, she was less inclined towards her natural suspicions. She didn’t feel the need to read into his every action.
Animals kept it simple.
The combination of everything that had happened that day, the confection she could still taste in her mouth, the exhaustion, and the wolf attempting to comfort her broke down her walls in a way that nothing and no one had in decades.
She grimaced, baring her teeth as she bit out, “Damnit. Why… why couldn’t you have been there, then?”
The heaviness of the statement fell upon both men like shackles.
Tears fat with regret and mourning fell without her consent no matter how hard she fought against it. She stopped trying, still grimacing with bared teeth as she bit into the donut again, determined to finish it, only for more tears to fall down. “Stupid wolf,” she choked out. “It’s your fault.”
He whined again, his tail thumping against the ground as he tried to crawl onto her belly, effectively knocking her over. Her wings slid back away before her back hit the rug, and she sighed, sniffling and wiping her face with her sleeve as she accepted the comfort he was trying to provide.
Wolves were like this with their family—it was a well-known fact she had witnessed but never experienced for herself. Wolves were social, fiercely protective of their own, and often comforted each other in big cuddle puddles. They weren’t the only shifters known to be found in a group cuddle puddle after a family member’s death as they sought to comfort each other, but they were among the more famous for it.
That was what he was subjecting her to now. Determined to make her feel better by smothering her in wet dog.
Okay, he smelled like sea salt and pine tree, not wet dog, a decidedly much more tolerable smell. She would have preferred caramel, but this didn’t overpower the flavor of the donut.
It was strange. She munched on the donut as she stared up at the ceiling, smothered by an animal that was mourning her wings like no one ever had before, in a tent with who she had realized was a gods damn prince of Skye, munching on a sweet she’d wanted to try for a hundred years now.
There was an odd comfort in it all, especially the warmth and weight of the wolf curled up over her. By the time she was licking the sugar from her fingertips, her eyes had started to droop. Next thing she knew, there was the gentle sway of someone carrying her before laying her down on a bed that smelled of earth and rosemary and flowers. The softest moss she’d ever laid on.
Then she was gone.
She woke with a startled gasp, drenched in terror induced sweat from the nightmare, sitting up and almost panicking when she couldn’t feel a blade under her pillow.
“My goddess, easy, easy! You’re safe!”
Her wild eyes landed on the pest as he stood in front of an armchair sized perfectly for a pixie.
She blinked, her eyes scanning around the room.
Everything was made for pixie sized people. The bed, the armchairs, the couch…
Also, this room was huge.
“My goddess? Are you alright? Nightmare?”
Her eyes slowly drifted to his. “… why are you here?”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “Because it’s my room?”
She pulled the sheet up over herself even though she was fully clothed and snarled, “Why in the damn chair, huh? Watching like a creep—”
“Non, my goddess, non, I just, I, I don’t sleep!” he finally burst out. He sighed. “I don’t need to. And… it’s this room and Paloka’s room and then the doorway out, and Paloka doesn’t let me to do that.”
“Doesn’t let you?” she asked frostily.
He sighed. “… yes, for the same as she won’t enter a building without me. She did once, and they trapped her while they tortured me. Nothing I say can make her forgive herself for something that wasn’t her fault, so I let her to guard me.” He gestured at the door. “Hers is the next, and her door is open. She will eye if I go past, and she will not sleep if I do.”
The tension in Squirt slowly eased at the explanation, realizing he’d been reading a book that had been hastily closed and set aside, likely when she first snapped awake.
She rubbed her eyes and yawned. Wondered if she should address the elephant in the room that he was a gods damned prince.
But if he never confirmed it, she could reasonably deny knowing it.
At least this explained his interest. Super high-level nobles like himself were so high up, the man had never been rejected a day in his life. He’d lose interest eventually when something new and sparkly came along and took his attention.
Even as she had that thought, doubt circled the edge of her mind.
Rather than addressing any of that, she ignored him, stretching before rolling out of bed, pulling on the boots set just off to the side of the bed, and grabbing her belts of weapons and supplies.
“… already working?” he asked softly.
She paused, then nodded.
He nodded. “If you need anything, just come down here.” He shrugged with a wry smile. “Paloka is a growing girl. She needs her rest still.”
She gave him a hard stare. Sizing him up. Because he didn’t know she knew. He was still under the impression she hadn’t made the connection yet.
And something about making him deal with the gore and boredom of tanning felt like sweet petty revenge against the type of fey that had wronged her. She smirked a little as she asked, “Looking for something to do?”
He jumped on the bait, clearly eager as he nodded. “Sure! If there’s something I can do from in here. Anything at all.”
She pursed her lips. “I might have something, but it would depend. How steady are your hands?”
And that was her mistake.
The idiot quickstepped over to her, stopping bare inches from her lips as he hovered over them with a sinful slight upturn to one side of his own and murmured, “Very steady.”
For the first time, her resolve was starting to crack, and they both saw it in the same instant. Time stopped as they both waited to see what move the other would make.
Her blush was her undoing as, mortified, she shoved him back and hissed out, “Never fucking mind,” before stomping off, deciding no amount of help tanning would be worth it, and anyway, his hands couldn’t possibly be any steadier than hers. She left him to grin triumphantly at her back as she stomped away.
Decoded by Lord Everwinter using the Dex’at cipher:
Dear Lord Everwinter,
Please be advised that we have suspicions of my brother’s murder being an inside job. We have since been attacked by those who wish to usurp us, a group calling itself the Righteous Ones, claiming retribution against us for going against the natural order. We have yet to pinpoint much more about the group than that, but I’ve included a sketch of the emblem we found on the one we could get to talk. Be on the lookout.
In the chaos, the woman that Zoln had been watching disappeared. I am unclear as to where she might be, or if she might even still be alive, or if her disappearance is entirely unrelated to the recent attacks.
As one of the University’s Scholars, I find it suspicious that she hasn’t released any new breakthroughs in the last fifteen years or so, and while with any other I might not think the worst, I worry about how it might relate to Athereon. Doesn’t that line up with the timeframe you estimated? Perhaps I’m going crazy. It certainly feels like there are villains behind every door now.
Attached is an artist’s rendition of the woman in question. Her name is Siabith Moorn of the Muun Family and she is on track to join the University’s council in the next vote. Her colleagues have many wonderful things to say of her, and I confess I thought her pleasant enough. I have no evidence pointing to her being hostile.
I just can’t shake the feeling something isn’t right about her.
Let us hope that I am not catching my grandfather’s madness.
Be well,
Queen Annabelle
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