Page 13 of Till Kingdom Come

He had no right to be so enticing, and I wanted to be irritated at him, not to be so attracted to him. I wanted to pull him into my lap and lose most of the day just kissing and fondling him until he begged for mercy. His increasingly pretty face would be an allurement and a distraction—possibly even a trap to ensnare me, if I allowed it. Maybe I should make him work in the castle scrubbing floors on his hands and his knees until he wasn’t quite so beautiful anymore. That might take a few hundred years, but I was willing to wait.

Why did he look this good anyway? He shouldn’t be so appealing, and it was absolutely unnecessary. His father—his real father—had been good looking, in the way of all the Dokkalfar Elves, all with the same gold-bronzed skin, seal black hair and wintry eyes. His name had been King Brendan, and he had died six years or so ago—killed in one of the many fights he had instigated with the Light Elves. Six long years had passed since then, as the Dokkalfar kingdom had slowly withered and faded, deteriorating a little more every day that its true-blood and direct heir, hadn’t been on the throne.

I’d been there not too long ago, when King Hendris, the interim king, invited my father and I to attend talks about a truce in the Northern Liminal. We’d had many such discussions, and none had ever worked for longer than a season. The animosity between Dark Fairies and Elves ran too deep and it was centuries old. Until we started doing something differently, I didn’t think the hostility would ever be any different.

I’d noticed while we were there that the low-lying land nearest the sea was covered in sheets of ice. No doubt in warmer weather in the spring, these would become stagnant swamps. The massive Dokkalfar caves, where the king’s citadel was located, had been eroding steadily since our last visit, slowly being torn away by the relentless waves crashing against them. People said the sea had grown more violent over the years, and much more destructive. I thought it was another sign of how the whole Elven complex of underground caves was deteriorating without its true-blood king.

The king’s throne, made of a magical, rare, red crystal, had begun dulling with age and decay and slowly falling apart. Legend said that once the stone was completely gone, the Dark Elves would be no more.

King Brendan had produced only one son and heir, one true prince that the throne would truly accept. King Hendris, the reigning king, was only a substitute for this true-blood—he was a nephew of Brendan by marriage and not in Brendan’s direct line. He had succeeded his uncle as king when the so-called true-blood son couldn’t be located. The magic in the bright red stone that lay in the heart of the throne and kept the Dokkalfar kingdom thriving would only respond to a few drops of the true heir’s blood needed to maintain it. Without it, the stone would dull and darken and eventually die, taking the kingdom with it.

The child’s mother, a mysterious figure named Ashlin, had taken Brendan’s heir and disappeared in the middle of the night, and he’d never been able to track her or the child down afterward, despite his repeated efforts to find her. One story was that he had been holding her captive in his castle and she had finally escaped. I guess that story was as good as any. The fact was that no one really knew. No one was supposed to know how to find her and the child and no one had any idea what had become of them. Or that was the rumor anyway.

Actually, my father had located the king’s son a while ago and we’d been watching him ever since.

The Dokkalfar people had hoped that the nephew, Hendris, would be a close enough relation to be accepted by the magic of the stone. He was the closest thing they had to a rightful heir, after all, and truly Hendris had done his best and had tried to be a good king. But again, he had been a nephew of Brendan’s through marriage and not related by blood. If the Dokkalfar were to save their kingdom, the true-blood heir had to be found and installed on the throne. Otherwise, despite King Hendris’s noble efforts, it would continue to wither and deteriorate a little more each day. Unless, that is, the true-blood king could be recovered.

My father, for his own purposes, had been searching for the true-blood too, and from the demonic side of his family, he had his own dark sources he’d used to look for him. These sources may have been inherently evil, but they could still be useful if properly managed.

My father was convinced that the long-lost true-blood was a boy who was now living obscurely in England with an English family. The boy appeared to be completely mortal. Killian Honeywood was his name, and according to the demonic sources who had given my father the information, the boy had been glamoured many years ago by a witch to look totally human. The witch had powerful magic indeed, and it was only now, when he was back inside the Liminal realm again that the glamour she’d put on him was finally beginning to crack and fall away. Hell, it was almost gone already.

We’d never heard anyone say how King Brendan had first come across the boy’s mother. She could have been a mortal, as it wasn’t unheard of for mortals to stray into the Liminal unaware and get trapped there. It also wasn’t unheard of for mortals and Fae to fall in love.

Daeneid, the capitol city of the Dokkalfars was on the coast of Alfheim, which literally translated as the “Elf home.” It was the name of the Dark Elf district that belonged to them. In the warmer months, the dark Elves traded with many of the Fae tribes of all different kinds, so possibly Brendan had met the woman there in his own country—one of the mortals taken by the Fae over the years. Or even one of the many tribes of Fae. She could have been there with her people on a trade day each month, when they were allowed inside Daeneid.

At any rate, Brendan met her somehow and they married, but then she was rarely seen by anyone. The rumors ran rampant, and it was said she was being held captive. One fine day, only a few years later, she had apparently escaped him, and she had taken her baby son with her. It had been unusual that any Fae woman would have done so—Fae weren’t particularly known for their mothering skills and the children were most often raised by the fathers. It was all pure speculation.

According to the stories, King Brendan had been frantic and furious when he found out she’d left and he’d searched for her everywhere. But he soon learned she had disappeared without a trace. He never stopped looking for her, though, and since he was immortal, he must have thought he had plenty of time to find both her and the boy.

But immortals could still be killed, like my captain had been, though it was quite rare and usually the result of some freak accident. Brendan had been in battle, however, and though the dark Elves had tried to replace their king with Hendris, it never really worked. The blood stone wouldn’t accept anyone out of the direct line. The Dokkalfar kingdom had suffered—and was suffering still.

To this day, no one had been able to find Ashlin or more importantly, Ashlin’s son—except for my father, who was convinced that the boy I was looking at was Killian Honeywood, the long lost son of King Brendan. My father thought the boy’s mother might have been mortal and had fled back to the mortal realm. First of all, that wasn’t so easy—hundreds of mortals had died in the Liminal, unable to make it back home. And having met Killian and being around him, even though it had only been for a little while—it was more than obvious that he’d been disguised by a glamour that was wearing off. I wondered now if he had even a drop of mortal blood.

“Are you deliberately trying to annoy me or are you hard of hearing?” I asked Killian as he still stubbornly sat there pouting, wrapped up in his fur. “I’ve asked you to get dressed so we can eat.”

He blinked at me and an adorable pink blush stained his already rosy cheeks. “I-I don’t think so. I mean, no, I’m not hard of hearing—I heard you, but I don’t understand why I need to eat. I’m not feeling hungry.”

I frowned at him, and he began to twist his hands together. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m really not hungry. I’m really not trying to annoy you. But I have so many questions.”

“Questions about what? What don’t you understand?” I asked, trying for a softer, more patient tone. Patience was not one of my virtues.

“Why you took me. Can’t you explain it to me? Is this personal in some way? I mean…why was I chosen to be sold to the Fairies? Have I offended you somehow? If I have, I’m really sorry.”

As a matter of fact, he had offended me, from almost the first moment I’d seen him, though of course, that hadn’t been why I’d been sent to acquire him. My father was ambitious, and he had long wanted to take over the Dark Elf kingdom and incorporate it into his own.

As for the people who already lived in the Dokkalfar kingdom, he would enslave them to work in their own mines. To do all of this properly, he had to not only find and install the true-blood Elf king but find a way to control that person as well. He had decided that the best plan would be for me to marry Killian and become not only his consort but also his Regent. Considering the fact that he was only a half-mortal boy—according to my father—and had shown no sign of any of his father’s magic and was therefore severely limited, he should be easy for me to control. In other words, I’d be in charge for the foreseeable future and could order the Dokkalfar people to do whatever I liked. If they refused to follow orders, then they would be handled accordingly.

We had found the boy outside a little village called Maling, not too far from where Sir John’s estate was located. We’d had a tip about where to look from the Solarian Lord Ellien, who had seen the boy on a visit to Sir John’s estate when he attended a tournament a year ago. He’d noticed him because of his skill with a sword, and on a hunch, he had given him an enchanted scarf that showed a person’s true nature for a few seconds when they put it on. When Killian wrapped it around his neck, his beauty had shown through for a moment as brightly as the sun breaking through clouds on a cloudy day.

Realizing the boy had been glamoured, he suspected Killian might possibly be the long-lost Elven prince my father had set a bounty for, and he contacted us about the reward.

When I had first seen Killian, he’d been in a group of young men—some of them his brothers along with a few of his friends, as I later learned—and I’d had no idea which one he was. They were playing one of their insane “tournament games,” calledpas d’armesand they had staked out a bridge going over the broad stream leading into the town. They had stopped me and my father there as we attempted to ride into the tiny village.

The day had been a hot one, and we had intended to stop at the small public house known locally as The White Hart, to drink a few glasses of ale and get a meal before we investigated further. My father was going to pass himself off as a traveling physician, and I, his assistant. We had decided to attend one of Sir John’s tournaments and observe the boy there. We were traveling in disguise because mortals could easily spot Fae .

As we had learned over the many years we’d co-existed with humans, they could easily tell the difference between a Fae creature and one of their own if we didn’t transform ourselves or use a glamour.

Our bone structure, our smooth skin and bright eyes, even the length of our hair all marked us as Fae. Most of us preferred not to cut our hair, so it fell to our waist or below, though we males usually kept it tied back. Then of course, there were the ears.

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