Page 21 of The Kingdom Cursed By Iron

I scrunch my face into a frown, looking for the center of Evanthe’s being, her core. I don’t think it was simply a matter of symbolism that caused Cebba to curse Ruskin’s heart when she cast her dark magic on him. Even we humans know the importance of the heart to everything else in your body, magical or not. It’s worth checking that no iron damage has reached there.

“You may already have done enough,” Ruskin says, and I can’t help but notice the lightness of hope in his voice, something I’m unused to hearing. “All that’s needed is for you to remove enough iron for her magic to start healing her on its own.”

“We’ll see,” I murmur, still searching the elusive heart I know is here somewhere. Knowing where the heart is located in the body does me no good when I’m looking with my magic, not my eyes. I explore further and there—just out of the corner of my awareness—I see something large, beating to an even rhythm. I turn my focus towards it, only to find something pushing me backwards, away from the sight and out of Evanthe’s body.

“Eleanor. Ella.” Ruskin’s fingers dig into my shoulder, gently shaking me.

I come back to the rose garden, startled by the abrupt eviction from the deep magic I was exploring. That, and the use of the nickname I never expected to hear again. Immediately, however, I see why Ruskin was calling me.

Where she lies in front of us, Evanthe is no longer still as a statue. Instead, her chest is rising and falling in regular motion.

“She’s breathing,” I say, as if it isn’t obvious what this sudden change means.

Then Evanthe opens her eyes.

Chapter 7

“Lucan?”

The word is a fearful murmur from Evanthe’s lips as she blinks up at the bright Seelie sky.

“No, it’s me, Mother.” Ruskin kneels down beside her, his hands going to hers. “It’s Ruskin.”

Evanthe turns her head, her eyes focusing on him. She lifts her hand, and I think she’s going to touch his cheek, but instead she reaches past him and plucks one of the roses surrounding her, examining it with a frown.

“I remember…such pain…then darkness.” She lifts her gaze from the bloom to Ruskin, and I can see she has the same discerning light in her eyes that makes Ruskin’s looks so piercing. “It was dark for an age.”

“Yes, you’ve been asleep for a long time. But you’re safe now,” Ruskin says. His own words seem to hit him, and he hangs his head, letting out a sigh that sounds like the release of a thousand burdens.

Evanthe sits up, rising serene as a goddess from her bed of flowers. Now she puts her hand on Ruskin’s head, a gesture of tenderness that suddenly gives me a glimpse of what things might’ve been like when Ruskin was a child. It’s disconcerting. I’m so used to only seeing him as strong and powerful. I knew he cared for his mother—that much had been clear in the stories he told about her. But to see the happiness lighting up his face…it’s hard not to be moved. Hard not to want to smile at him, hug him, share in his joy. But that’s not my place anymore.

Evanthe glances at me, taking in my presence, and I avert my gaze and step away. I don’t want to intrude on this moment, not when Ruskin’s waited two hundred years for this day.

I’ve only given them the illusion of privacy, however. Bits of their conversation drift over to me as I examine the roses on the other side of the garden. I can hear Ruskin explaining how Evanthe came to be here and the betrayal that preceded it.

“It was Ilberon, wasn’t it?” Her voice is clear and even. Ruskin must nod or murmur some affirmative, because she continues. “And Cebba too?”

I still, my fingers absent-mindedly wrapped around a flower stem as I wait to see how she’ll respond. It’s one thing to learn of her husband’s treachery and death, but when she learns of her daughter’s fate…

No howl of rage or pain comes, though; no outburst like the destroyed room in Ruskin’s quarters. I risk a glance in their direction, and see Ruskin still talking as Evanthe sweeps tears from her cheeks, sparkling in the sunshine. I guess from her earlier words that she had a sense of the passage of time while she slept. Perhaps all of it at least feels like it happened a long time ago, the distance from those events helping to soften the blow of the terrible truths she must now come to accept.

Eventually, they rise and Ruskin leads Evanthe over to me. She’s tall like him, but she looks somehow small on his arm, frail and not yet fully steady on her feet.

Despite this, I find that I’m nervous, tugging at my dress to make sure it’s straight, wishing there was less mud at the hem. Yet when Evanthe sets eyes on me, I don’t feel like a bug under a magnifying glass like I expect. Her expression is soft and reassuring. When she offers me a small smile, I smile back, bobbing my head. It’s not quite a curtsey, but then I don’t know the protocols for humans meeting former fae queens.

“This is Eleanor Thorn, mother. She is the one who revived you from the iron sleep.”

Evanthe’s face remains pleasant, but a line forms between her brows.

“Forgive me, but you’re human, are you not?”

I nod. “Yes, my Lady.”

“Eleanor is most unusual,” Ruskin jumps in. “Her time in Faerie has awoken unexpected magic in her, and she has proven herself an invaluable ally to the crown.”

He says the last few words with his eyes on me, and I feel the admiration washing over me like a wave. After all, I have given him what he wanted most in this world. I feel an unexpected stab of discomfort, knowing he can’t do the same for me.

Evanthe watches us, one eyebrow raised.

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