Page 34 of The Kingdom Cursed By Iron

“Was it easier, back then, when you thought us all inferior? Has the treaty really changed anything for you?”

Knowing we’re going to part ways in a few hours makes the questions slip off my tongue. I might not be able to have the answers I really want, but these questions don’t seem to cause him pain. Annoyance, maybe—but not pain. So there’s no reason for me not to ask.

I lean forward, catching Ruskin closing his eyes for a moment, apparently thinking.

“What you need to know about back then, Eleanor, was that despite her popularity, my mother’s position was still quite precarious. I never imagined what depths Cebba and Ilberon would sink to, but I knew some of the High Queen’s choices were being criticized at court by powerful people. When she named me heir after my father died, and then announced her plans for peace with the human realm not long after, it was too much for the traditionalist faction. I worried for her place on the throne.”

“So you telling Evanthe we’re inferior was just a political ploy?” I say. I’m sure he can tell by the bitterness in my voice that I don’t think much of this excuse.

“No, it was ignorance. Plain and simple. But that’s surely a folly of all youth, isn’t it? It’s easy to dismiss what we don’t understand. I had barely interacted with humans, had no interest in the stories Cebba would tell about her visits to your realm with the Hunt. Your kind were too different, and my empathy was not yet so developed.”

I narrow my eyes, trying to decide if I buy his reasoning. Ruskin is very good at locking parts of himself away. Perhaps it wasn’t that he didn’t possess the empathy, but that he didn’t allow himself to feel it. That kind of compassion tends to get in the way of things, like making deals. Though by the sounds of it, Ruskin hasn’t always been making them.

“When did you start taking an interest in my kind, then?”

“After I was cursed. When I started visiting Styrland to search out gifts and life force I could channel for my own ends. It was impossible not to catch glimpses of people’s lives, to learn about your world. It was then that I saw the breadth of human experience—people in love, the elders who’ve built for their families, the young who look after them in their old age—and decided that I’d been wrong about your realm being any simpler than ours.”

It shouldn’t have taken him all that to have reached this conclusion, but Faerie is a literal world away from Styrland. I consider all the things I hadn’t understood about the fair folk before I came here—how they’d mostly been ruthless monsters in my eyes before I got to know the likes of Destan and Halima.

Before I fell in love with Ruskin.

He’d changed so much for me, and now we ride through the forest like mere acquaintances, strangers sharing a brief history and a mysterious pair of true names that only I know about. That’s the only part of all this I still haven’t sought answers on. Now, with time running out, I decide to bring it up.

A raven swoops overhead, its croak carrying through the trees.

“Ruskin, I need to know…”

I trail off as the raven comes to land on a branch beside Ruskin’s head. Its cawing seems absurdly loud among the mysterious sounds of the forest, but as I listen, the croaking takes on a new shape, forming words.

“Prince Ruskin, you must return to the Seelie Court at once.”

It’s a messenger raven, one of hundreds that dwell in a tower at the palace, ready to carry messages in return for a handful of seed or berries.

“The iron has returned. Bring the human quickly, to the memorial square.”

The crow tilts its head to examine us with its shiny black eye, before extending its wings and taking flight in a flurry of iridescent feathers.

I meet Ruskin’s gaze, which is tense with expectation, and I realize he’s waiting for me to say something. He’s giving me permission, however selfish it might be, to refuse to return to the palace.

“Well, let’s get going,” I say. “The bird said ‘quickly.’”

I squeeze my thighs around the side of my horse and hang onto the reins for dear life as Ruskin kicks his horse into a gallop.

On the huge fae horses the return to the palace is quicker than finding a pool to portal through. The hooves of our steeds are soon clopping across the paving stones of the palace stables. Ruskin dismounts with ease, his hands around my waist a moment later, swinging me down from the saddle.

We’re close enough to the memorial square that I can feel the ground shaking underfoot, the shouts of panicked fae bouncing around the palace’s open courtyards and flowery corridors. I don’t fight Ruskin as he grabs my hand and pulls me along. I’ve been to the memorial square once before, where Halima showed me the statue commemorating the war between the two courts.

Now it is unrecognizable.

Even with the horses dashing at full speed, we’ve taken too long to arrive. The gray snake of iron that’s punctured the earth has spread across the square, the statue disappearing under the weight of crushing tendrils, a deformed face of one of carvings peering out between the thick shoots.

From the lack of blood and bodies I guess the square was relatively empty when the iron first struck, but there’s been no one here to stop it, and the dark, heavy substance has climbed the steps on the far side, coiling up the palace wall one hundred yards from us and wrapping around the edge of a gallery. This is where the shouts are coming from, a crowd of figures congregated beneath the gallery and on its balcony. Some of them are frantically waving for help, others are already doubled over, incapacitated by the iron sickness, I guess.

“That’s a residential quarter for High Fae. Five families live up there,” Ruskin says. I hitch up my skirts, eyes on the rapidly spreading iron.

“Be careful,” he orders.

I sprint across the square, clambering over the limbs of cold metal. I have to use my knees to haul myself up and over them, but it’s still the quickest route, and I’m the only one here who can take it.

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