EL BK5 | Chapter 37 - The Fae are Holding My Cousin Hostage. (Patreon)

<-<-PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER ->-> | ᓚᘏᗢ CHAPTERS LIST

Kári Eklund

━━━━⊱⋆⊰━━━━

Led down a wide marble hall by stiff, forward facing guards I had never been more aware of the dark color of my hair, or the leathers of my clothes. Fae are all the same, slender bodies in fitted uniforms. Perfectly manicured from head to foot. They walked like they were bound in rigid bracing and I fumbled along behind them like a giant oaf. Humans are a tiny species, but the Fae aren’t much taller, and it made me stand out more than I already did. 

Some fae spat as I passed, residual hatred from the war I couldn’t blame them for. Eventually we made it to a tall set of double doors. The guards stopped. Taking their positions either side, and waiting expectantly. If I had been outside, the air might have stirred with my agitation. Indoors, all that came was a gentle gust through the open stained glass windows lining the hall.

I set my hand on the door handle, feeling for the first time like a giant laying a hand on the polished brass, and pushed it open. Inside was a tall space with room enough to breathe. Endless bookshelves lined the walls. Velvet couches surrounded a low glass table and trinkets of all size and shape filled the empty gaps. Ahead was a sturdy wooden desk with an empty chair before it. I sat silent and awkward on the fancy upholstery. Did Eiríkr really enjoy living in a place like this?

The man before me waited behind his desk, ignoring me, as he finished writing. He dipped his quill back into the pot before closing the ledger before him, and slowly turn his attention to me. His eyes burned like green fire, and the kick of his icy white hair seemed to me like daggers. 

“I trust you found your way with our escort?” He began in a casual tone. 

No malice touched his voice, nor did any other emotion. The great Fae Lord Nathaniel Klein, was worse than his reputation suggested. The air around him seemed to drop a couple degrees and a flutter of anxiety tightened my chest. In many ways, he reminded me of Mercury. This man was the same cold, dangerous creature stuffed into the pale skin of a Fae. The immense calm in his expression was withering, like he was looking through me not at me. 

“Hard not to,” I answered in as dull a voice as I could. 

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

I doubted it. It sounded more like he’d hoped I would combust into flame and leave nothing but a pile of ash in my wake.

His fingers laced together and he sat forward. “Now, I’m rather busy, so let’s get to the point. You sent a letter for my Eiríkr, I have read it, he has not. You had hoped to meet with him, if that is correct?”

I stiffened, this man wasn’t even letting my cousin read his own mail? I should have expected as much. “You read the letter you should know.”

“The last time I allowed you near him, you tried to convince him to leave.” Nathaniel’s eyes tightened in a fractional sign of displeasure. “Why should I allow you around him again?

“Because I’m his family,” I muttered. This arrogant fairy. 

“His family spent the better part of a decade trying to kill him.”

“I’m not going to hurt him.”

“No, you’re not.” He agreed, leaning on the desk with his fingertips as he stood. “I will allow you to see him. But I warn you, if you try anything, an arrow will find itself lodged in your spine.”

Nathaniel moved past his desk, and gestured for me to follow him. Up close, the magic naturally emitting off him was potent. Cold enough to sting and thick enough to see, it gave his skin a subtle radiance. It wasn’t until then that I realized how young he looked. 

The fae age far slower than us, and will outlive our kind by a few hundred years. His face kept the sharp edges of youth while his eyes held the centuries like deep, wise pools as if he were an ancient creature I’d had the misfortune of disturbing. He couldn’t have been all that much older than I, in human years, yet I felt suddenly small trailing behind him.  

He trotted down the steps before me into a wide garden area with a grassy field. The dull keening of dueling swords reached us only moments before my cousin came into view. Eiríkr was locked in combat with a petit human girl. She spun around him, her muscular arms flexing under the weight of her sword effortlessly, while he deflected and countered with lithe footwork. Had the Fae healed his injury? Or had it gotten better with time? I’d wondered since the moment I first saw him.

Sensing our approach, Eiríkr disengaged from their match and turned toward the path. His eyes found Nathaniel first. The fractional tension in his shoulders dissipated and an involuntary smile touched his lips before the mask of neutrality typical for Fae and their Pets slipped back into place. 

“You’re early,” he murmured, opening his arms in a subtle gesture that beckoned the Fae to him. 

To my shock, Nathaniel stepped into him willingly. Hugging him tight for a brief moment, his fist held a handful of Eric’s hair and his lips found the tender underside of his throat. So then, not a show of affection but a declaration of ownership. He wanted me to know Eric was ‘his’, I thought with little regard. Although Eric didn’t fight it, he’s always liked attention.

As he pulled away Nathaniel whispered something in Eric’s ear, and the familiar set of blue eyes came to rest on me.

“Kári?” 

“Yeah,” I grumbled, awkwardly rubbing the back of my neck as I avoided the Fae’s cold glare.

I’d hoped to feel less out of place in this shiny, proper castle with my cousin. But he didn’t look Vanir. Dressed in button down, pressed and perfumed clothes with no leather or fur, he was as much a Fae as any of them.

“Why have you come?” He demanded, his tone emotionless as the tension returned to his posture. He must’ve read the look on my face. 

“To see you…”

His expression softened into something that almost looked like pity. Was that what his own family was to him now? Something to pity? 

Eric glanced back to Nathaniel as if asking permission, before making a vague motion to the human girl. She understood what he was asking without a word, anticipatory like all Fae Pets are, and brought him a black and silver wooden cane. So his injury wasn’t healed. He leaned on it as he walked toward me and I tried not to let the affront on my face show.

Vivid flashes of our childhood came racing back to me, watching him struggle to stand and fall. I’d been ridiculed for helping him when he fell in the snow, so I stopped helping. The shame of it cloyed in me. I shouldn’t have been so childish. Maybe then, he wouldn’t have been taken by the Fae.

“We can sit, if that’s easier for you,” the offer tasted like disgust and embarrassment even as I made it.

“We will,” he answered, unbothered. “The bench is over there.”

Eric glanced down the path to the wooden seat a little ways off, and walked ahead of me toward it. The kid I’d known would never have accepted the help. He was stronger now, less ashamed, or was he pretending? I couldn’t tell.

Nathaniel stayed with the human girl, taking Eric’s position in sparring with her. No doubt he could still hear us, even at a distance. 

“You look like you’re ready to run,” my cousin commented. 

“Fae castle,” I mumbled the excuse.

Eric sat on the bench and gestured for me to do the same. “No, I think it bothers you to see me use my cane.”

I gave a small tsk, unable to respond fast enough to suppress the accuracy of his accusation. “I thought the Fae fixed you.”

“To some extent,” he laid the walking aid over his lap. “The magic is limited, I have to conserve it for when I really need it.”

“And they allow it?”

He tilted his head. “Shouldn’t they?”

“I don’t know…” I fidgeted, this wasn’t what I had wanted to discuss.

Eric gave a small chuckle at my expense. “Truthfully, I didn’t think they would accept it, but it never bothered Nathaniel and this is his castle. I don’t have to pretend, and neither do you.” 

I ignored the last part of his statement. “You look better than the last time I saw you.”

“There’s no need to be rude.” His lips twitched into the faintest of devilish smiles. “How has your war on the Selkies gone? Did you find peace yet?” 

“I have no interest in peace.”

“No? Only in elimination then.”

“Yes.” 

Eric gave me a pitying look, and in the depths of his eyes I saw the same kindness I had always known in him. “You’re not like that Kari.”

I shifted uncomfortably again. “What would you know?”

“I know enough,” he leaned back. “Just like I know why you’re here, and the answer is no. My counter offer is that I will help you, if you give up on vengeance.”

A dull flame of rage ignited in my stomach. “They killed my mother. I don’t need help with anything else.”

“Then you should leave. I won’t perpetuate the cycle of hatred,” he spoke in a calm way, lacking the judgement I expected and deserved. 

“You never change. You still think you’re better than everyone else. Morality makes you weak. Not better.” I returned the kindness with spite. “You’ve forgotten what it’s like, here in this prim and proper farce. You’re not Fae. And pretending to be one doesn’t make you better than us.”

If my words stung, he showed no sign of it. Instead, he stared at me blankly until I began to feel uncomfortable.

“… Sorry… I didn’t mean it.”

“I know,” he assured, “How is Karyna?”

“She still hates you.” 

“I’d like to speak with her. Arrange it for me, the next time you visit.” 

As he spoke Nathaniel broke away from the human Pet to approach and Eric sighed. “Our time is up.”

I tracked the Fae with my eyes, and lowered my voice. “If you ever want to be free, my offer still stands.”

Eric inclined his head toward me, and I saw for the first time a dim spark of danger in his sapphire eyes. “Look around us.”

I didn’t see the point in the request, but I did as I was bid regardless. The expanse of the gardens stretched out in all directions, birds flitted between the trees. Nathaniel was a handful of steps away, and the human waited motionless further back. Nothing seemed out of place, or unusual. “What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“There’s no one else here. I’m not a hostage, Kari. I’m the problem. I won’t let them leave me alone, so they’re containing me. I’m not allowed to be around anyone other than Calla, and she’s not allowed to leave until someone else arrives. I’m the monster here. Not them.”

“You’re not a monster,” Nathaniel disagreed.

My cousin scoffed. “Aren’t I?” 

“No,” he tugged on Eric’s hair, chastising him. “Monsters can walk better than you can.”

Eric grew red with embarrassment and smacked Nathaniel’s hand away. “You rude, arrogant fairy.”

The argument between them began abruptly, and dissipated just as quickly. The boy I had known, would never have dared to answer back, and as I stared dumbfounded as all the stress drained from my cousin. Maybe I was wrong about the Fae… 

When they were done arguing, Nathaniel sent Eric away, and turned his focus to me. The fleeting softness in his features evaporated, leaving only the Fae lord behind.

“I’ll escort you from the castle,” he announced calmly. 

*** 

The journey out through the streets of Leúchtend was a slow one. Houses I had once seen reduced to rubble were now clean and restored, although light scaffolding lingered as stonemasons carved the pillars anew. Some Fae stared as I passed. Surprised to see a Vanir in their presence, or perhaps they thought or I was Eric.

We reached the tall gates in uncomfortable silence. Nathaniel hadn’t spoken a word since leaving the gardens, and I was more than a little surprised when he left through the castle gates with me. Leaving behind the rows of rigid Fae guards, the free, fresh scent of the wild land reached us. Ýri waited for me, grazing near the forest line, unaware of my return and I grew anxious wondering what this Fae wanted to have come out so far with me?

“Do you know how to speak and write in Vanir?” he asked at last, catching me off guard with the question.

I cast a wistful glance to Ýri, hoping she could save me. “In the old and new runes you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah… Why?”

Nathaniel watched the boar as intently as me. “I want you to teach Eric.”

The wind stirred with my surprise. “Why? He already knows…”

“He doesn’t… He’s forgotten much of what it is to be Vanir.”

“And you want him to remember?” I muttered more than a little skeptical.

The man turned to me with flat disdain. “Eric has spent much of his life pretending to be human or Fae, but he is neither. He is Vanir. It would benefit him to know his heritage and culture.”

Struck dumb by the implication, I read his face for signs of deceit. “It doesn’t bother you that he’s Vanir? ‘Savages’, isn’t that what your kind call us?”

“Eric is mine. If he is savage, then he is my savage. I don’t care what he is. Whether he writes his name in common letters or runes, if he speaks like a Vanir or not. All of him is delightful, and I won’t have him turn his back on who he is to appease others.” 

The statement was final, and he began to turn away only to pause. “You will remind him. Teach him about his family. See that you arrive precisely each morning after the sun has begun to rise.”

“And if I refuse?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

Nathaniel snorted. “Did any of what I said sound like a suggestion?” 

Fae are long arrogant creatures. But, he was right, I wouldn’t refuse for the simple fact of wanting to know Eric again. If I could get close to him, perhaps I could convince him to help eliminate the Selkies.

<-<-PREVIOUS CHAPTER | NEXT CHAPTER ->-> | ᓚᘏᗢ CHAPTERS LIST