Emily Wilde's Compendium of Lost Tales (Emily Wilde, #3)(96)
When it grew too dark to continue, we made camp within a little circle of standing stones. I was not worried about bogles now, for they would know Arna, just as Poe had.
“I meant what I said,” she told me as we hunched close to the warmth of the fire, each wrapped in a blanket. “I have no interest in the throne now. I wonder at my obsession with it before—what need has one for power, nor for anything besides the wind, so clear and sweet-smelling, and the green earth beneath one’s feet?”
She stopped and gazed at the sweep of the land. I noticed that she had missed a spot of ash below her right ear, and that her palms had blisters and scabs she was scratching absently at. “I will take up a small cottage, I think, and live alone, offering this wisdom to any Folk who visit me.”
I mulled this over. Naturally I suspected her vow might originate in practical considerations, not sincerity of feeling—she knew as well as I that the game was up. She had no hideout remaining where she could lurk and scheme, and no allies left in a realm she had tried to ruin, among Folk her magic had poisoned. More materially, she had no control over the Veil; Wendell could return her to it if she so much as spoke the word vengeance. But I decided that it mattered little whether her reformation was genuine; a self-serving motive would work for us just as well, Wendell and me, and I was not above flattering her for it, in the hopes that she would eventually come to believe in her nobility, and grow more zealous in its affectation.
“I have never heard of a monarch abdicating the throne of their own free will,” I lied.[*] “The Folk cling to power and rarely have the strength of character to put the needs of their servants before their own.”
She eyed me, and I reminded myself that she was half human, and thus not so easy to deceive as other Folk. “Or the sense of self-preservation,” I added.
She smiled at that. “Do you not recall our conversation the day we met?” she said. “I am not Folk, and neither am I mortal. I am only myself.”
She lay down beside the fire, wrapping herself in the blanket and drawing it over her mangled hair. I almost rolled my eyes—this sort of melodrama was clearly a family trait. But in truth, I was a little sorry for her. Not because of what she had suffered in the Veil—she had well deserved that—but because I could not imagine existence as a halfblood in Faerie to have been easy, and I sensed a litany of slights and injuries behind her refusal to identify with either of her parents’ bloodlines. It must be wearying to exist in such a state of permanent self-denial. This did not justify what she had done, but it made her company marginally easier to bear.
“You are welcome to share our tent,” I told her, for the wind was picking up, greedily snatching at what little warmth the fire gave off. After all, even singular beings are not immune to cold.
She made no response, only shivered and drew the blanket tighter to her. I sighed and went to bed, grateful for Shadow, who curled up against me—the dog is like a furnace with legs.
Sometime later, however, I started awake at the sound of rustling from the other side of the tent. The former queen spent a moment muttering curses at the pillows, which I had piled up on that side simply to have them out of the way, before she finally arranged her pallet to her satisfaction, and seemed to fall asleep. I regretted my kindness then, as her proximity made it easier to second-guess whether she might think twice about her newfound high-mindedness and strangle me in my sleep, but I had Shadow at my side, and as always, this gave me courage. I slept.
SKIP NOTES
* Though uncommon, a handful of stories feature faerie monarchs installing a chosen heir in their place. The Russian tale “The Snow-Wanderer,” for instance, tells of a queen who wishes to live among mortals, whom she imagines as having simple, carefree lives. This queen gives the throne to her daughter, who rules until longing for her mother sends her on a quest in search of her, which ends in bloodshed when she finds the queen slain by mortal hands. In the northeast region of Ardamia, a place particularly prone to avalanches, many locals believe that a specific cave in the alpine is occupied by a very peculiar hermit—a queen of the courtly fae who abandoned her war-torn realm to her squabbling children partly to punish them, and is presently occupied in building herself a private castle by tunnelling into the mountains, which is supposedly to blame for the unstable nature of the terrain.
12th February—late
I woke before Arna this morning to fine weather, the sky clear and the winter’s chill dulled at the edge, hinting at the coming spring. Ideal for camping, I suppose, but I was eager to reach the end of my arduous trek across three worlds and back, and woke Arna shortly after I finished jotting down the previous journal entry. I doubt I need describe the storm of feeling that greeted my return to the cottage, not to mention the arrival of the woman who had murdered Wendell’s family, ravaged his kingdom, and brought about his death. Still, I’d explained the necessity of this circumstance, and never has there been a greater sign of Lilja and Margret’s trust in me than their acceptance—grudging and antipathetic, it’s true—of Wendell’s stepmother as their guest.
Lilja was blunt. “Do we need to bind her?” she said, examining the forlorn figure before her, still dressed in a bathrobe. I could see from her face that she had no complicated feelings about this particular faerie, that Arna perfectly accorded with her opinion of the courtly fae. “We could send for metal wire from the local shop.”