Fugitives and Heroes
ASH
When my eyes snap open and I sit up with a jerk, it is not the feel of the sun that wakes me. Nor is it the snore of the absolutely hideously loud hobgoblin curled up next to my bed roll, wrapped like newborn Fae in Bearynfur coat of the beast Dionie hunted down last night.
No.
It is the pulse of magic that I imagined I felt through my chest that woke me. The sensation was uncommonly strong. It thundered with enough force to rip me from a truly wonderful dream.
A dream of Daphne and I in the castle of Hadimere. When things were simpler. When she was mortal.
Alright, so she was never truly mortal, but something about the way it felt to be enchanted by her when I believed she was - sticks with me so profusely that I nearly long for those days.
She needed me then. She ached for me. I can only pray that after what I’ve done to her - locking her away with my mother - that her heart remains warm. I don’t know what I would do if she suddenly turned from me in her affections. If she suddenly… hated me.
Yes you do. You know. You’d beg. For the next thousand years if need be.
Because… just as you revealed… you love her. The damnable little wench.
It certainly doesn’t help that my cock is now harder than the ground I sleep upon.
“Fucking hell,” I murmur, rubbing the sleep from my eyes as the first blue rays of this morning’s light cast the color of truth about our tiny little company. Looking down, my ravenous beast pulses and I groan. “It was a dream. She’s not here and there will be no relief until we return to her so the faster you go down, the faster we can travel and the faster we can go home.”
Nope. Not listening. And as my balls begin to throb anew, I believe I may have just made my own dick very angry.
“Fuck,” I gripe, falling back down onto my bedroll.
“Do you often speak to your genitals, prince?” The kelpie, whose name I’ve learned is Bregda, asks me from the opposite side of our meager campfire. He magicked himself into a fallen Fae soldier last night at my behest, not wanting Finn to completely freak out when he finally came to and I told him that our numbers had once again increased. “Does it help the worm to grow?”
“Unfortunately, creature-” I say with ardency and he actually fucking laughs - which by the way is a ghastly sound “-it’s not the growing that seems to be the problem this morning. It's the shrinking.”
Bregda smiles a wide wicked grin, complete with bladed teeth. “Would you like me to shift into a tavern wench so that you might choke it off before we ride out this morning?”
The disturbing part about his offer is that I actually consider it for a second. Not the shifting of him into a tavern wench… but into Daphne….
It might work.
Don’t be disgusting.
If only there were a universal symbol for ‘fuck you.’
Then again… if he were an ugly tavern wench or a two thousand year old whore it might, at the very least, cure me of my thundering erection.
“I think I’ll pass,” I answer snidely.
He grins, his needlike teeth sparkling in the bright shafts of light that quiver through the trees. Their teeth are the only things that kelpies are unable to change when they shift - something that may become a problem once we reach the lands of winter if he cannot keep his burgeoning mouth shut. But… I cannot deny that I will be glad to have him once we reach the frigid bitch’s realm. There are no kelpies in those lands, for they do not enjoy the cold. At least not in that capacity, they don’t.
After our initial discussion last night, I waited until we made camp and Finn was asleep and well on his way to healing - his fractured leg splinted and strapped tight with cloth from his very own cloak - before sharing the complete truth about Daphne and my former curse with the loathsome gatekeeper. He pledged his allegiance - not to me, but to her (for fuck’s sake) - and claimed that all the kelpies of Marrow Hill were once creatures of the Missing Meadow and had been awaiting her return for over eighteen turns. They were the loyalists that chose not to follow the False King after the disappearance of Clayeira. Bregda also claims that that there are quite a few others and that all of them, even the ones that chose to follow the Meadow King, felt her magic return when she crossed.
That knowledge has me rethinking everything about that meeting I had with him back in the Forgotten Wood. When he accosted me asking that I return what belonged to him, I still thought Daphne to be human. I believed he spoke unto Faery Law, not familial tendencies.
Could it be that the false king actually thinks that Daphne is his child? Is it possible that the odious pretender does not realize why Clayeira ran all those years ago?
Or does he know and plans to kill her come the Tithe to extract her power for his own?
Either one would make him wrong and neither can be allowed.
And… rumor boasts that he is allied with the Winter Queen.
The more I think on it, the more his invitation to the Great Feast consumes my thoughts. And I wonder for the first time, if I should reconsider choosing a side in the oncoming war between realms.
Shit.
The screech of a messenger bird wakes the remaining sleepers in my convoy as the two foot tall crow lands at the edge of our small circle. Believe it or not, crows often wander through the gates unintentionally and oddly enough tend to thrive here much more efficiently than they do in the Mortal Realm, hence the height difference. This one bears a collar with an FR made from gilded snakeskin. The crest of Fury Rekyr.
A tiny scroll is tied to its feet.
Something has happened that has bid my mother or Klyesque to send me a message.
I push to my feet, conscious of every set of eyes that is glued to my back as I retrieve the parchment. The very moment I do, the messenger crow takes off, telling me that whomever sent it does not expect a reply.
Not good.
Unrolling the scroll as I read, magic begins to crackle and smoke around me, the fury of my namesake taking center stage and setting the tone for the day.
“What is it, Ash?” Dionie squawks. “What has happened?”
“It is from the Elder Council,” I barely manage to growl out and when I finish reading, the parchment sizzles at the end of my fingers, becoming naught by embers and… ash. “They hunt two fugitives that supposedly murdered a member of their guild.”
“Fugitives?” Bregda snickers. “Or heroes?”
“Whom?” Dionie hisses, but when I look at him I see that he reads the answer in my eyes.
“The Captain of the guard and her companion. The mortal prisoner. Daphne.”
Klyesque… what have you done?