Winter Solstice - Chapter Three *RE-EDITED* (sfw) (Patreon)

Yet again, nothing new, just a tweaking here and there. 

This is the last of the 'old' content, as I prepare to get going with the new stuff. I might even have something for you during your 'free' month of March, but I make no promises. 

Don't forget to check out the scale-back post I just put up, especially if you're on the $10 or above tiers. The content of the $5 tier should remain largely unaffected, and will still feature the monthly story and early release content. 

“Shall I at least give you a little tour?” Mirana said with a politeness tinged with frost. The throne room doors closed behind them with a surprisingly soft whisper, shutting Prince Círdan in, and them out, with barely a sound.

Narrowing her eyes, she nodded and said tartly, “You mean: show me the places I’m permitted to explore?”

“You catch on quick, human. And I’ll show the ones you’re not permitted to explore, if you’d like to see them,” Mirana said with a glint in her eyes. 

“Yeah, how about I don’t piss off my captor on my first day?” she snorted and Mirana laughed openly, a sound like tinkling glass. 

The castle - the High House of Winter - was larger than any keep she’d ever even imagined. It seemed to have been embedded into the mountainside, from what she could see through the windows as they began their tour. The only building she had for reference was the king’s palace in Caer Gruath, which, although ancient, had nothing on this place. She’d only seen it once, and from the distance, but the red clay tiles and warm sandstone of Caer Gruath was a far cry from the frigid whites and silvers of the High House of Winter. The whole place looked as though it had been spun from sugar or grown from crystal. The walls, as the two of them walked down endless corridors decorated with lace-like plasterwork on the ceilings, were white as the fresh-fallen snow blanketing the mountainside beyond the clear windows, and the pale floors were polished to a high sheen and patterned with forking fronds of frost like rare plant fossils. 

“Let’s begin with the ballroom,” she crooned, seeming almost to float down a winding staircase adorned with a gently curved banister. The halls and rooms seemed oddly empty as they walked in silence, and when she brought this up, Mirana sighed. “Most of the Fae in our court live in their own holds,” she explained. “It’s tough living up here.”

She looked around at the opulence as they stepped into the ballroom and snorted sarcastically, “I can see that.”

Mirana rolled her eyes and turned to face her. “Nothing grows here save for brambles inland and seals on the coast. Almost everything we eat we have to trade for.”

That was interesting. “Can’t your magic grow things?”

“Not on a large enough scale to feed an entire nation, which is what the Court of Winter amounts to. The gardens here have the crystal houses, of course, but that is only for the high table and the royal family to enjoy.”

“So what’s your export then?”

The Fae’s eyes brightened noticeably at her question and she jutted one hip out as she stood surveying her new human companion thoughtfully. With pretty lips just revealing the hint of a smile at one corner, she said, “These mountains have some of the richest veins of gold, silver, and gemstones. Not to mention that we are the only place that stellarite has been uncovered.”

She frowned, unfamiliar with the word, and Mirana giggled, filling the room with a playful noise that was completely at odds with the solemn, empty ballroom. Mirrors lined each wall, framed by white arboreal columns, slender as saplings, with branches reaching up and over the glass to become the vaults of the ceiling so that it felt like standing in a silver birch forest at dusk, the crystal chandeliers unlit but still sparkling like frozen leaves above. 

“Stellarite is the metal from which we make our crowns and jewellery,” she purred, raising her hand and rippling her fingers to show off the three delicate rings she wore on each hand. The metal looked like white gold, but it had a speckled quality to it, like starlight. “It has its other uses too, of course. A single gram of it costs more than most Fae here earn in a year, and Círdan’s mask is made of an even rarer alloy of stellarite and inlustrium.” 

Her lip curled. “What’s wrong with a plain old wooden one?” she muttered, turning on her heel and pacing from the ballroom without checking to see if Mirana was following. 

Growing up on the edge of the small village, they’d not been precisely poor, but they’d certainly struggled at times. She remembered vividly in that moment the winter when her mother had hurt her back, having been kicked by an unpredictable, savage horse that should have been put down years earlier, and she’d not been able to work for months. They’d tried their best, with their father making the journey into the city to sell his turned wooden bowls and carved spoons, but it hadn’t been enough. The boys had only been eight at the time, so it had fallen to her to hunt in the forest with arrows that she and her mother had made. They’d got by, and her mother had gone back to work once her back had healed, but it had been one of the harshest winters she’d ever experienced. And here these creatures were, gloating about some useless precious metal that cost more than most people would see in a lifetime. Her stomach churned. 

Mirana had adopted her frosty veneer again when she followed her out of the ballroom, and she marched her human companion down endless sequences of corridors, waving her elegant, be-jewelled hand briefly to indicate one state room or other, until finally she paused at the top of a staircase. “This is the East Wing,” she said. “The Prince, Ahrin, Raeth, and I all have our rooms in that part of the castle. I suspect you would not be welcome wandering here, human…”

“What on earth makes you think I’d willingly go looking for any of your bedrooms?” she said and Mirana pouted slightly, as if affronted and trying not to show it. 

“Fine,” she said. “Since none of this has been to your liking, perhaps you could tell me what you would actually like to see?”

“Does any of you read?” she asked acerbically. “Do you have a library I can lose myself in while I’m stuck here as your prisoner?”

Returning the venom in the human’s gaze, Mirana crooned, “Oh, I assumed a simple peasant like you couldn’t read. Now that I know that’s not the case, of course; let’s go.”

‘Bitch’, she thought, but wisely kept that to herself. Reading was one of the few things she could do for leisure once the forge fires had been tamped down for the night, and while most people of her social standing were not expected to read, her mother had taught her from a young age. Sharing stories with her had been one of the greatest joys of her childhood. 

The library in the High House of Winter was beyond what she’d expected. 

Like the rest of the palace, it was sculpted from smooth stone the colour of bleached bone, and it was as cold as everywhere else in the castle, but the three-storey high room was lined with books and scrolls. The light was muted; the enormous windows on the left hand side of the room that stretched from floor to ceiling had had their white shutters drawn halfway, and each panel had, like a child’s cut-out snowflake, fractured, geometric voids in the woodwork which let in a pale, muted shafts of light.

A gasp of surprise escaped her, however, when someone emerged through a slender, pointed archway in the wall opposite the windows, and she took an involuntary step back in alarm as the strange, inhuman figure approached. So far the least human of all the Fae she had met here was Ahrin, with the remnants of his enormous, bat-like wings, but this creature was closer to the wraith from the woods when it came to strangeness.

Stoop-shouldered, with grey-green skin and opalescent wings like a dragonfly’s folded neatly behind them, the creature had a gaunt, skull-like face with its leathery skin stretched tightly over harsh cheekbones and deep eye sockets. They were slender in the extreme, walking on legs like a bird’s with deadly jet black talons, their body swathed in a piece of fabric reminiscent of a toga, and, she noted with a swirl of fearful unease in her belly, they had four arms. Their head was bald, and their two huge eyes were a startling, blood red. 

She had never seen anything like this creature, but, despite the fact that the sight of them brought back searingly vivid memories of the tainted horror that had attacked her, she refused to look away or to be intimidated. 

When they saw Mirana standing there, they bowed low, wings buzzing a quick, terse salute, and straightened, asking, “Your Highness, what can I do for you today?”

“Nothing, Librarian,” she smiled. “I am just showing our new guest around. Apparently the human can read.”

“Human…” the Librarian hissed, drawing themselves up defensively, lips peeling back to reveal a maw full of needle-sharp teeth. It brought to mind the curiosities which sometimes appeared at the marketplace, bought from a fisherman who had dredged up something unspeakable from the deep, and she staved off the urge to reach for her belt knife. Remarkably, it had been left for her with her money pouch and other small belongings from her pockets. 

“I know!” she purred in feigned shock. Mirana laughed again, the steel-hard edge creeping back into her voice that set goosebumps shivering along her skin to hear it. “My dear brother has said that she’s not to be harmed though. I’ve grown bored with her inane company already, and thought I might just leave her here for a while, if you don’t object.”

There was clearly no way that the Librarian could have objected, even if they’d really rather not have had a human wandering the hallowed halls of their collection, sullying the books with profane fingers. They simply bobbed their head, red eyes blinking softly, and backed away. “The human will make sure its hands are clean before touching anything,” they spat as their parting shot. 

“Well, how does that sound then?” Mirana said in that brassy, overly-bright tone that made her want to punch the Fae in the face. Preferably with one of her iron forge hammers. Obviously sensing her intentions, said princess’ pretty face morphed into an unmasked expression of deep loathing and she snarled, “Listen, I don’t like you being here any more than the next of my kin do, human. I’m not sure what possessed my brother to leave you alive, but do not think for a single heartbeat that I will not do whatever I deem necessary to protect this Court and this family. If you try anything…”

“I have no doubt,” she interrupted softly, trying to keep the fear from her voice. The only salvation she felt, like an anchor on a tiny craft, was the cold iron pendant she still wore under her shirt. It had clearly not been touched when she’d been divested on arrival, and she wondered why they’d left it with her. Perhaps they’d feared to touch it. Fighting the urge to clutch it in her fingers - or, even better, to ram it straight into the flawlessly smooth skin of Mirana’s forehead - she stood tall and stared the princess down. 

A soft knock on the wood of the open door behind them drew their attention away from one another, and she watched a servant approach on deferential feet, head bowed low. This one looked almost human, save for the pointed ears and unnatural grace. His hair was black, long - as seemed to be the fashion in the Winter Court if the male Fae she’d encountered so far were anything to go by - plaited back off his face, and his skin was a warm, rich brown. When he rose from his deep bow, she saw that he had freckles all over his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and bright green eyes. 

“Forgive the intrusion, Highness,” he said in a soft, heavily accented voice. “The Prince has asked for your presence. He is in his private study.”

Message delivered, the Fae waited for a dismissal, which came in the form of a flicked wrist, before he bowed once more, shooting the human a quick, nervous glance before backing away a few paces and then turning to leave. 

“Well,” Mirana sighed dramatically. “I suppose I’ll leave you here. You know how to get back to your rooms? Good.” The princess didn’t wait to find out the answer, and in fact, she didn’t know how to get back at all. Their route had been so winding and circuitous that she had lost all sense of direction, but she was damned if she was going to let on that she was disorientated. 

Mirana swept from the library and left her alone with the creepy looking Fae Librarian, who buzzed their wings menacingly from the shadows nearby, a stack of books now cradled protectively in their lower set of arms. There was something insectoid and unsettling about those emaciated limbs that made her think of a mantis, with the tightly-stretched, grey-brown, almost chitinous skin that made her shiver. Still, not one to let herself be outfaced by a situation, she chirped, “So, what’s the system here?” 

“Excuse me?” the Fae asked, half turning back to look at her. 

“The system. This is a huge collection - it must be ordered, so I’m just wondering how I find out what’s where, without - how to put it…? - putting my ‘grubby little hands all over everything’ until I find something that attracts my attention…”

Those teeth flashed momentarily before the Fae reined themselves in. 

They set their small pile of books reverently down on a nearby table and turned back to face her. “History,” they began, pointing a three-fingered, clawed hand at the nearest section and then gesturing along a huge swathe of bookshelves. “Magic, alchemy, and spellwork,” they added, indicating a narrow archway into a separate section of the library. “Fiction,” they sneered, pointing upwards at a shadowy gallery that honestly didn’t look like it got much foot traffic, and finally they included, “Music, Nature, Travel Journals and -” here they buzzed their wings again, “- The Mortal Realm.” There was undoubtedly much more to the library than that, but she didn’t press, and the Librarian did not explain further.

She bowed her head and smiled, knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that it was insulting for a human to ‘thank’ a Fae explicitly, given that it implied that they had offered the human some kind of favour. The Fae were a prideful lot, if legend was to be believed, and none would willingly offer anything without thought of something in return. Whether it was impolite for a Fae to offer their thanks to another was a different quandary for another day. 

“I’ll head up there then,” she said, nodding at the dusty fiction section. “Nice and out of the way…”

“You do that,” the Fae rasped and a cold shiver thrummed down her spine as they bared all those needle-sharp teeth again in a grimace. 

With a false smile of her own plastered to her face, she scampered up one of the polished wooden ladders, climbing nimbly and easily. She could almost dare to pretend she was back in the hay loft at their little smallholding and not in the enormous library of a Fae Prince, held there until goodness knew when, completely at the mercy of their every petty whim… Blinking back the prickling in her eyes as panic welled in her chest, she licked her lips and looked around at this part of the library, pacing along the catwalk as if it were a minstrel’s gallery in a lord’s hall. 

She’d been right about the fiction section not getting much attention. Leather bound books with brittle, crumbling spines beckoned her closer and, curling up on the floor of a gallery and leaning her weight against the end wall, she drew out one called, ‘The Lay of The Ember Knight’. It was a ballad, written in verse and hand-scribed onto the pale velum of the book. As she carefully turned each folio, she lost herself in the lilting rhythm of the lines. Someone had loved this book once, she realised, seeing that the spine was worn and the velum bore the waxy-looking marks of fingers in the corners of each folio.

Swept up in the action as the Ember Knight - actually one of the Unseelie Royal Princesses in disguise - did furious battle with a raging fire drake on the ruined, volcanic landscape of some distant mountain range, the voice calling her from below didn’t rouse her from the story. When someone materialised directly in front of her with a soft ‘whoosh’ and a theatrical rush of odourless smoke, however, she screamed in surprise and dropped the book into her lap. 

The six foot six figure in front of her was that of Ahrin, his one remaining wing hanging behind him like a darker shadow in the already dim gallery. And he was laughing softly at her reaction. 

“Fuck, you scared me,” she growled, gripping the end-boards of the book in her fingers until her knuckles went white, and staring up at him without standing. “What do you want?”

Still chuckling, he reached his rough-palmed hand out to her and held it there, clearly expecting her to take it and help herself to her feet. When she didn’t, he rolled his amber eyes and withdrew the offer, folding his muscular arms again. “Thought you might want some food… You’ve been in here for hours.”

“You expect me to eat Fae Realm food? Do you lot really think I’m that stupid?”

Again, the hulking Fae showed his amusement freely, shrugging too as he laughed. The sound was rich and warm, with no artifice or pretence to it. He seemed as open as the book in her lap, and even easier to read. “We have access to human food too,” he said. “In fact, Círdan sent me off to the Mortal Realm to get something for you so that you didn’t have to eat our food.”

“I don’t believe you for a second,” she blurted before she recalled that Fae were supposedly not able to lie. Then again, he hadn’t explicitly said that the food she would be offered to eat would be from the Mortal Realm. ‘Tricksy fucking Fae’, she thought darkly. 

“Well, that’s up to you,” he said, turning around and shifting into black mist that swirled like a drop of ink in a glass of water. The darkness shot away like smoke pulled by a draft, and he reappeared heartbeat later on the main floor of the library. 

“Guess ladders are too mundane for you lot,” she grumbled, easing herself to her feet, stretching her spine until each vertebra had popped satisfyingly, and sliding the book back into the case. 

As she descended the ladder, she heard Ahrin say, “You try squeezing through the small gap in those railings with one big wing and broad shoulders.”

“Oh what a terrible burden it must be to be so muscular,” she sarcastically, and he tipped his head back and crowed another laugh. 

“I like you,” he said, eyes flashing gold. “Come on. I’ll escort you back to your rooms if you’d like to eat there.”

Deciding not to look that particular gift horse in the mouth since she didn’t actually know the way herself, she accepted. She could always refuse the food when they got there, and the two of them left the library together. As Ahrin stood politely back at the doorway to usher her through first, she glanced over her shoulder and caught the creepy Librarian staring after them. 

Once outside, with the doors closed, Ahrin leaned down and hissed in a conspiratorial stage whisper, “Don’t worry; they give me the creeps too. I think Círdan only hired them so that no one would dare walk off with one of his precious books…”

“He likes to read?” she asked, astonished. Somehow she hadn’t taken him for a lover of literature.  

“Sure,” he said. “But only the really boring stuff…”

“Figures,” she retorted, unable to forgive herself for warming to the enormous brute of a Fae. These were the Fae! These were the creatures of nightmare who lurked in the shadows and lured young humans off to drain their blood or keep as pets. And here she was admiring one of them for his strong physique and easy laugh.

Ahrin carried a straight sword at each hip, their matching pommels a simple half-moon of what looked like silver but she couldn’t be sure, and he had another smaller knife hanging just in front of those on a frog from the belt. Frankly, he looked a bit rough around the edges compared to the other pristine Fae she’d encountered, with stubble on his anvil of a jaw, and rough, practical leathers instead of fancy silk tunics; Ahrin was definitely a warrior, and she wondered if he was the prince’s personal bodyguard or something. The two had certainly seemed close back in the great hall. 

“So Mirana tells me we’re still calling you ‘human’…?” Ahrin ventured. 

“You think I’m just going to give you my name?”

“You could at least give us another name,” he said a bit sheepishly. “Seems better than ‘human’…”

“We’ll see about that,” she hedged and he tossed her a roguish, lopsided grin. 

A second later, she shot his ruined wings a cautiously curious glance, and all the mirth drained out of his handsome face when he saw where her eyes had landed. He didn’t utter another word to her, even when they reached the vaguely familiar corridor which led to her rooms. He simply stopped outside the door, nodded tersely, and stalked off, shadows roiling around his leather boots until he vanished in a rush of darkness, leaving her alone in the pale hallway with only her pounding heartbeat for company. 

Blowing the air out of puffed cheeks, she set her fingers to the door handle and pushed it open to find that she had company waiting inside. 

___

 Hope you enjoyed revisiting these characters! Don't forget that Ahrin's story went up on here (and then Tumblr a week later), if you want to read a pre-WS story with him!

Stay tuned for more updates in the next few days in preparation for the  rest of the story. It's currently 15 chapters long in the plan, but that  might change (increase!) as I actually write it all!