Gather
ASH
Standing in front of Daphne's towering palace, along the gnarled, knotted, root stairway that drops from the open front archway to the buzzing circular courtyard which remains alive with the flurry of hidden fae, I scan the raucous for any trace of the Woodland Witch.
"She fucking lied to us, Bregda. I know she did," I hiss. "To think we've been sat there in the receiving hall until third moonrise waiting for someone who was never going to show - and meanwhile..."
"Meanwhile?" Bregda hisses. "Meanwhile nothing. And she did not lie. I'm highly attuned to the flavor of lies and her words tasted of murky truth at worst."
A pulse of anger shivers through me as I roll my eyes in his direction. "She insinuated that Daphne needed us. She painted a narrative that led me to believe Daphne sought our company immediately. A lie is a lie. She must have known we were planning to cross."
Bregda shrugs. "Perhaps. But telling us that her majesty bid us await her in the hall, does not a falsehood make. It's your guilt that had you believe she meant this moment. Now."
"But she watched us step into the corridor. She baited us in there... the question is... why? Why would she do such a thing? Why not simply reveal our plot instead. It's almost as if she was-" my words cut off when it dawns on me exactly what the witch had done.
With a hiss my attention rips toward Bregda and I see it in the fire of his eyes as, he too, realizes how we have been cleverly misdirected.
"She distracted us," Bregda growls out. "But to what purpose?"
My eyes heat and it becomes a real task not to burn the ground beneath my boots. "So that they might pass undetected. Daphne. Klyesque. Klyesque must have read her the missive from her sister and then-" I growl so loudly a few pixies near the steps actually whimper with fear. "Where is Laksha?"
Bregda grumbles, "He is..." he stops, sniffs, turns a full circle "...perhaps in hiding. They went for the oracle, didn't they?"
I begin to laugh, heckling so loudly that half the yard 's eyes fixate on me in scrutiny.
Oh Daphne, my Daphne... do you truly think to rule me? To keep me from remaining your protector?
Anger rises in my, flooding my veins with the cold burn of fearful consummatiion. I knew her call to power would begin to draw too much of her. I knew her claim as queen would begin to separate her love from mine. But I tried sooo hard to believe otherwise. I wanted to be wrong. Was dying to be. But... I'm not. She's drifting away from me. Charting a course and setting sail without taking my hand.
She's no longer the innocent little peasant girl that I fell in love with.
Now she is the Faery Queen that I yearn for instead. That I long for. The woman I once had. Who once turned to me for her answers. Her support. Her companionship.
Now she is forgetting me.
The pain of that realization nearly bringe me to my knees, yet I continue to cackle like a hobbled jester.
"Stop the fucking giggling," Bregda snarls. "Don't you realize what this means?"
I snort. "Certainly I do," I quip, "it means I have been demoted. I am now your queen's whore."
A sharp crack to the back of head has lightning trembling at the tips of my fingers as I turn my entire body to stand chest to chest with a kelpie and glare into his face.
"Whore or no," he spits with a dark chuckle. "Our way has been drafted. We no longer must wait to disguise our passing. We can march right toward that gate and leave."
The weight on my chest, the talons which have gripped my heart, suddenly ease and my relief is expelled iin a whoosh of breath. "Go after her. Trail behind her."
Bregda nos, "Run interference with the false one should he so much as gaze in the direction of the keep."
I grit my teeth, worry burrowing in my gut. "That would mean taking the way of the Missing Meadow and should we happen to get lost, my magic won't-"
"You forget, little prince, I am one of the few kelpies in all the realms to keep two forms and, I too, possess a good deal of high magic. Woodland and Hidden, I am both." Bregda and I share a slow, steady smile and for the first time I find his bladed teeth most charming. "I can navigate the Missing Meadow quite easily. After all, it is where I was born."
"So... you are to be my pony for this ride, correct?"
Bregda loses his smile. "I am nobody's pony." His eyes light up. "Except, perhaps... your captain's." He wags his bushy black eyebrows and I contemplate barfing on his magicked boots.
"Klyesque is like a sister to me, and that is an image I cannot unsee."
He winks. "Picture that when you're bouncing on my hide, ey?"
After a quick glance around, the pair of us race for the gate, and when a cyclone of leaves rustles behind us, I swallow a groan and stop to grant the witch her attention.
"If you mean to stop us, Magda, I'm warning you now, I won't-"
"Stop you?" she laughs, molding herself from green mist to wrinkled old bird. "I only mean to help you." She shakes her head, her eyes lighting as she lifts a small wooden flute from her robes and it floats toward us, her eyes fixed on Bregda. "Play the song of the meadow through this, and it will call all lost ones home." She squints as Bregda's jaw pulses. "You do remember it, don't you? Captain?"
"I do," he replies.
"Good," she says, her eyes flashing with spirals of emerald green flames. "Because the time to gather armies has begun and time is the one thing I cannot charm no matter how hard I try." Again Bregda nods, pocketing the little flute as Magda shifts her attention to me and says, "Go, both of you. And do not fail your next test, Ash... Prince of Smoke and Fury. Because you will not like how it ends."
"My next test? What are you-" I begin to ask, but she waves a hand, disappearing into naught but a whisper of leaves and wind. I growl at nothing, "I fucking hate witches."