Page 6 of The Maleficent Faerie
“Fuck you.”
Before I can think better of it, I smack her rump soundly.
She inhales a startled breath and stops thrashing.
“Good girl,” I murmur. “Treat me with respect, and I’ll give you the same courtesy.”
The Princess responds with a flood of words so loud and filthy that Fitzell turns around in her saddle to stare, quirking an eyebrow. “I wouldn’t have thought the Caennith Crown Princess so foul of tongue,” she calls.
Nor would I. From the scanty reports we had of her, I expected a frail, mousy, soft thing, incapable of defending herself. Perhaps our information was wrong, and she has been secretly training as a warrior. A clever move on her parents’ part, if so.
But no matter how skilled she is at combat, this girl is only human. She is no match for me.
3
I can’t use my magic. Not yet. They have to think I’m human until we’ve gone through this portal they spoke of. If I show my hand too soon, they might decide to turn back and hunt for Dawn.
My rear stings from the impact of the Void King’s palm. I’ve always been slower to heal than most Fae, but the pain should pass soon. My shock and humiliation, on the other hand—I suspect they will linger awhile.
Lying across the Void King’s abomination of a steed, between his muscled thighs, is the last thing I expected to be doing today. His scent floods my nostrils—leather, rain-washed grass, and something darkly, enticingly bitter, like the blackthorn tea Elsamel makes me when I’m sick.
I’m told that in the old times, the Fae rarely sickened. But ages ago, when the godstars ruled, some of their great workings went awry. Chunks of land were torn from the human realm, Temerra, and the faerie realm of Faienna.
Instead of letting those pieces whirl away into space and be lost, our goddess, the godstar Eonnula, took the fragments and crafted a new pocket realm, a remnant of worlds, which we now call Midunell. She saved all the Fae and humans who might otherwise have perished, and gave them a place to start over.
Midunell is a single, oval-shaped plane of land with mountains, lakes, rivers, and hills, surrounded on all sides by the Void. The border where the Void begins is called the Edge, and it is forever pressing inward, eager to swallow up our little scrap of a realm, like flesh closing around a foreign object, inflamed and seeping along the borders of the invading element.
The Fae of this realm do not live for thousands of years as faeries once did in the home realm. We live perhaps five hundred years, and we can sicken like humans do, though we recover more quickly. By contrast, humans in this realm live longer than those in Temerra—up to three hundred years or so. Humans married to a Fae spouse live longer, but such unions are not permitted in Caennith.
The pace of the King’s steed increases, and I turn my head in time to see an oval of whirling green magic up ahead, between two trees. The Edge-Knights are already riding through it.
The Void King plants one clawed hand on my back as we charge through. His palm is strangely hot.
As we enter the portal, magic blasts over me like a breathtaking wind. For several long moments we ride through a mad chaos of green light and twisting smoke—and then we break through on the other side, into a forest of tall pines with bare branches below and upswept green boughs high above our heads.
We are now in Daenalla.
Mentally I review what I know of this place, its landmarks and history. There’s a spine of black mountains, some deep, cold lakes, towns with metalworks and mills, and a great spiked castle called Ru Gallamet, where the Void King reigns.
I’ve heard that Ru Gallamet sits among the mountains, near the Edge itself. Only someone deeply insane would place his residence so close to the Void. My people say the Maleficent One built his castle there so he could access the Void and Spin his foul magic.
Years ago, one of Dawn’s tutors explained how the rift between our peoples began. It all started with a prophecy, that one day a savior sent by Eonnula would arise and save our realm from the encroachment of the Void, stabilizing it forever. A group of humans and Fae, who later became the Caennith, decided to devote their lives to joy, worship, and the magic of light while they waited for the salvation of Eonnula. Another group, the Daenalla, rejected the prophecy and the promise of a savior. They decided they must save themselves. They abhor the “frivolity” of the Caennith, and they believe in the crafting of machines and the harnessing of the Dark for shadow-magic. They are a cruel, somber, wicked, faithless race.
And I am now at their mercy.
But at least Dawn is safe. If she can’t make it back to the palace herself, my mothers can find her and bring her home,.
My mothers will worry about me, though. I suppose I have some worth as a hostage, when my disguise eventually fails. After all, I’m the daughter of the Three Faeries, the Regents of the Caennith Fae.
Perhaps I will get out of this alive, though I hate to think what price the Void King might demand for my safe return, once he discovers I’m not the Princess.
I should keep up the ruse as long as possible. Once we arrive at our destination, perhaps I can ask to use the privy and take a moment to lay my glamour afresh so it will last longer. Glamouring myself requires several stanzas of chanting and intense mental concentration. Whenever I practiced laying a glamour at home, Genla used to say I looked as if I was pushing out a week’s worth of shit. Not particularly encouraging, and yet another sign that I’m nowhere near as powerful as my three parents.
Now that I’ve begun thinking about bodily needs, I have to piss. Which is an uncomfortable sensation at the best of times—worse since I’m lying on my stomach over the shoulders of the King’s steed. Fortunately the creature seems to mostly float along the ground, so there’s not as much jostling and bumping as there would be on a normal horse.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask.
The Void King’s hand still rests on the small of my back, against my bare skin. I pray to the goddess that my wings remain intangible as well as invisible. When the spell begins to wear off, he will be able to feel the wings before he can see them.
