Cloaking
DAPHNE
“What do you mean - we have to step into the Woodland Realm?” I harp, my chest growing tight when I think of the hundred or so faeries that will be marching behind us. “With everyone else there’s no way for us to remain hidden.”
“I knew witches were mad,” Klyesque grumbles, “but I didn’t know they were suicidal as well.”
After my outburst, my insistence that we should leave at once, Magda informed me that we would need to travel to the edge of the Woodland Realm to find the Missing Meadow, that the Lost Gate lay there like a forgotten secret. A realm within a realm. A gate locked when its queen decided she would never return.
An hour’s walk from here.
“Calm yourself, dear one,” Magda says before calling out for Lohan who appears before us with a stick and a satchel. One much like the farmers used to carry grain back in Hadimere. Magda looks to him and whispers, “Go and gather those wanting to travel by foot and have all without flight or mount head for the northern stairwell. We will meet you there once you’ve arrived.”
Lohan nods solemnly, then turns to me. “If that is what your grace wishes.”
Is it?
I do not know.
“Tell him,” Magda urges. “He will not go unless you do, and as the three of us will take less time to travel, they must go now.”
“But to let them travel alone while the Mead-false one is out there,” I frown, my gut burning with worry, my magic pulses anew in my chest, “I will not agree to that. They need protection.”
Magda sits back, pride shining in her gaze and Lohan’s face crumples, his eyes filling with tears before he leaps for me, nearly knocking me over in my seat as he wraps his arms about my person. “Oh, your grace! You truly are our lost queen!”
“The stairwell is underground,” Magda informs. “Within the Emerald Passage. It is the farthest exit into the realms. They will not be without you when we exit, but I will need to teach you cloaking before we head out and that must be done in quiet. For the number you shall need to hide is in fact great and without all of your powers, it will be difficult for you to endure.”
“Cloaking?” I ask, thinking of the time on the ship when I became invisible. When I touched the book and disappeared. “I think I’ve already done it once.”
“Mayhap, you have,” Magda says, her eyes lowering to my cloak pocket. “But I am near certain t’was only you that was hidden.”
I nod, noting Klyesque’s eyes sparkling teal as she stands and gestures to Lohan. “Come little imp,” she says. “I shall help you gather your kin and ready you for the short walk to the stairwell.”
Lohan’s body stiffens around me and he whispers, “She scares me, she does.”
“Oh for Goddess sake,” Klyesque gripes. “You’ve seen nothing yet, little faerie, now hop along. Let’s go.”
“It’s okay, Lohan,” I whisper in his pointy little ear. “She is the most fearsome knight in all the realms, but she’ll not hurt you. I swear it.”
Lohan stands back, releasing me, his lime green eyes flashing with excitement. “She’s a knight?” He lifts his brown tunic to reveal a belt and sheathe. “I too, am I night, oh mean one! Knighted to protect Daphne, her grace, just this past eve.”
Sharing a knowing grin with Klyesque I nod to him. “Then go with her, Lohan, and heed her tutelage, because you’ll not find a fiercer sword than hers.”
Lohan smiles wide and eager, then after one hard look at his cavern home, he sighs, “I’ll miss this place, but it has been so long since I’ve seen my brothers and da. I must go. I must.”
“Then come,” Klyesque urges him. “And I will show you a few tricks that will keep your enemies on their toes.”
The pair of them leave us in the quiet of the dwelling and Magda gestures toward my cloak pocket. “You shall have your first lesson now. Go on, retrieve her.”
“Her?”
“Th’e ancient one. The Book of Hidden Fae.”
ASH
When we separated with Dionie and Finn, my cousin was only just waking from his forced rest and was spewing curses the likes of which even I had never heard before. But for every insult he served toward the Kelpie, Bregda only smiled, knowing what he did, which was that Finn’s treachery would soon be his demise.
I’m not sure when it was that I truly realized that it was he and not Ambassador Furel that had been feeding the Winter Bitch information.
Maybe when it became clear of whom Daphne was, or maybe when my messengers heads had been dispatched to me after the Ambassador’s death. Who was to be sure? But it mattered not, because when I realized he would be the only one to gain upon my having to marry the Winter Queen… I knew.
She probably promised him the high magic he wasn’t birthed with.
She might have promised him Fury Rekyr.
Suddenly my aunt and uncle’s deaths made a tad bit more sense. The timeline certainly fit. They’d been found slain in their beds after the great battle. When my curse had just begun all those years ago. And because it had been a time of war, no one truly questioned it.
We probably should have, but we did not.
Because when Neil died, my father’s brother, his magic passed onto me not his heir. A shame as far as Finn was concerned, but it happened from time to time. The magic chose its bearer, probably seeing something in Finn it did not like.
Therefore the second heir to the realm was no more. Leaving his only son the same way he had been during birth. Without high magic.
I really should have realized his treachery sooner.
Now, as we pass through the interior of the Marrow Woods with Bregda in the lead, I call out to him, “How does it feel to ride upon the back of your kin?”
He snarks back, “Probably not as pleasurable as it would feel to ride upon one of yours.”
I have to laugh at that, thankful he does not design anyone by name. “I’m sure you are correct,” I reply, pushing my steed forward so that Bregda and I are neck and neck with Laksha just a breath behind us. “Where, pray tell, are you leading us?”
He smirks, the gesture so human that I almost forget that what lay behind the mask is a true monster of nightmares. “To the trench between the realms where we will travel more swiftly toward our chosen destination."
“The Alley? I have read of it once,” I announce, glancing behind us to be sure Laksha still follows and grinning at him when I see his head low and his face determined as he pushes his mount to its limits.
“What you have read in your scriptures of old, are only half truths faeries were led to uphold. The truth of The Alley was never in books,” Bregda snorts. “Be not convinced by the way a thing looks.”
“For fuck’s sake,” I groan. “Do all of you bastards speak in rhyme?”
“We do, we do!” Laksha shouts out. “Be it true that we do.”
“The Hidden Fae are many, young prince. More so than you will ever know,” he says, before yanking back on his reins and throwing out an arm almost as if in protection of me.
The three of us come to a skidding halt where the trees grow sparse and begin to give way to the giant boulders beyond The Pit.
Bregda growls, his eyes roving heavenward as he grumbles, “Something comes.”
The unmistakable sound of wind rushing and wings flapping reaches my ears and my head jerks back to scan the sky above.
A golden steak of movement bears down on us, shifting in shape when it is not but twenty feet higher than the branches of the Marrow trees.
“Not something,” I hiss, recognizing the golden scales and armor immediately. “Someone.”