“Nay, ye still would’ve bubbled up like a pot put to boil. Ye can’t resist when she bats those lashes. It was my mistake trustin’ ye with any of it to begin with.”
Luce tossed the full kettle into the yard with a clang, baring his teeth. The water gurgled from the spout and the opened lid, creating a puddle of mushy ash. “Well, let’s have a full confessional then. It was my mistake that killed that girl’s mother. My mistake that landed her here half-dead. Do you see why I might feel more responsible than most? Why I might feel a bit softer toward her than I care to admit?”
Crony groaned. She set aside the cups and stepped across the threshold to retrieve the kettle, shoulders slouched against the blame weighing them down. A patch of bleeding heart had withered beneath the boiling water. She gathered the bright pink flowers into a soggy bouquet. A stabbing twinge caught in her chest as she worried over the princess’s own bleeding heart. In Stain’s eyes, they had betrayed her. And she didn’t even know the half of it.
“I haven’t your wretched immortal body, old woman,” Luce said, recouping her attention while he kicked sand into the fire pit to stifle the flames. Some white feathers slipped into the mix and their burned stench soured the already bitter air. “I’ll die one day, from age, here upon the ground. Unless I continue gorging myself on the entrails of corpses. She was my one chance to undo the bad, to regain agelessness, and now that chance is gone. Her faith in us is gone. All because you wouldn’t allow me to tell her who she is.”
Crony stood, her back still turned to Luce. “Ye think it easy for me? Keepin’ this trap shut?”
“Yes. Because of your thick gargoyle skin. You’re impervious, don’t you see? You’re unaffected by the world around you. I’ve had burrs in my fur, I’ve had cuts on my skin. Ever since the moment I was grounded, I can feel. Just a prick of a thorn can incapacitate. Yet every day, that tender girl faces these things and more, going on without even a complaint. Becoming stronger instead. I was convinced she was unbreakable. But did you see the look on her face? This split her wide open, and at the worst possible time. And again, it’s my fault. Can you imagine what it’s like, knowing you’ve destroyed such a noble and inexhaustible spirit? Knowing the kind of queen she could have been? Knowing that you’ll never stop wrestling the guilt until you’re either cold in the grave, or you’ve flown so far into the sky, you no longer have to feel anything but the air and the wind?”
Crony stepped back into the house. She crossed to the kitchen and stood before him, tilting her heavy horns so she could meet his glistening orange gaze. “I know better than any. And I be more to blame than ye ever could . . . I feel deeper than ye ever would. For I betrayed a kindred spirit, and destroyed the world entire.”
He wrinkled his perfect forehead—an expression of doubt and anguish.
“I’ve been too harsh with ye, frilly fox. Ye took on the task without ever lookin’ back, and ye did a rouse-about job. Better than this old biddy could’ve did alone. I owe ye a thanks.” She offered him the soggy bouquet.
He took it begrudgingly.
She gestured to the nearest upended cask. “Sit and I will share me own confession. For seein’ as the girl no longer trusts either of us, there be no more risk of ye spillin’ me secrets, aye?”
Luce sat, and Crony did the same on the barrel opposite him.
She wrestled the words at first; they’d been wound so tight upon the spool of suppression, it tangled her forked tongue to try to speak them. The stuttering lasted only until she remembered how tales prefer to be told: as one would a bedtime story—leading with the happy parts.
“Once upon a time, some seven centuries ago,” she said, “there were an ugly, horned witch esteemed enough to live in the glittering ivory palace of Eldoria. Esteemed enough to be the mystical advisor to the king.”
The words came easier as a fairy tale. They opened doors within her mind’s eye that she’d locked long ago. Yet the images weren’t covered with dust or cobwebs; nay, they were vivid and bright: She could see herself, walking among royalty, wearing sandals of gold and robes of white emblazoned with three stalks of wheat and a running horse in red. There was no personal sun to be celebrated as Eldoria’s sigil back then. They shared every day—every summer, fall, and spring—with Nerezeth, in the same as winter and the moonlit stars painted both kingdoms’ skies and shadowed their hearths. They shared also the creatures of day and night: the singing birds, the trilling crickets, the fluttering butterflies mingling with fuzzy moths. And the autumn leaves, spring flowers, drifts of snow, and summer storms swept across their terrains in equal parts, providing beauty in diversity.
Eldoria’s strengths centered around their talent for farming and livestock, thus their sigil. Nerezeth, on the other hand, lived on the heavily forested lands closer to the mountainous, eastern edge of the sea, and chose a silver fish and antlers against a field of blue satin as tribute to their proficiency in hunting and fishing. Commerce was maintained via the imports and exports of each kingdom’s goods and services—a balance that benefited everyone. Nerezethites and Eldorians traversed to one another’s kingdoms and markets in peaceful alliance.
In that unified world, Crony had an honorable title: Madame Cronatia Wisteria, Eldoria’s Royal Enchantress. She’d sworn fealty to the monarch, Kiran’s ascendant of earliest Eyvindur generations, King Kre?imer. Like Kiran, he was kind, wise, and noble, and she was honored to follow him. Her loyalty—to her king, the queen, and their three young princes—knew no bounds.
Nerezeth had a sorcerer of their own, Master Lachrymosa. He was at once stark and striking: a complexion of chalky white with streaks of black drizzling from his pitch-dark eyes like oil. The same pattern continued along the lower edge of his black lips, making it appear he’d been drinking a vial of ink; he wore a beard that furthered the illusion—dark curling strands hanging from his chin to his chest alongside shoulder-length hair. His deep voice flowed and rolled, sweet and carnal through the ears, like a song of honey and thunder. Though he was young—barely twenty-three years in the world—he was powerful. He had but one downfall: he begrudged his half-blood lineage. He’d been born of an immortal sorceress and a mortal royal guard who had died while serving in the Nerezethite army.
May-let his youthfulness was Lachrymosa’s ultimate downfall, for had he been older and wiser, he wouldn’t have considered himself half of something, instead of two parts of a whole. May-let he would even have found strength in both sides of his blood, instead of attempting to flush out all traces of humanity.
But wait . . . Crony was getting ahead of herself in the telling, for that wasn’t one of the happy parts. She backtracked, returning to the beginning when things were good between both kingdoms. When two magistrates—Kre?imer of Eldoria and Velimer of Nerezeth—joined forces to rid the skies of their common enemy: the poison-spitting drasilisks that could turn anyone to stone with one puncture from their scorpion-like stingers. The only way to kill them was by beheading with a halberd’s axe-like blade, a process only possible once they were grounded.
Crony first met Lachrymosa at a convocation between the kingdoms’ councils. He appeared at first glance to be seated beside an empty chair, with Nerezethite’s king on the other side. When Crony and her own king sat across from their counterparts, a three-eyed woman took shape in the empty chair next to the half-blood sorcerer. Master Lachrymosa introduced her as his mother, Lady Dyadia. She was there to contribute magical insight into how they might defeat the deadly plague upon their skies.
Crony had heard of her kind, descended from chameleon chimeras—a striped sorceress sharing her son’s coloring, though the pattern was more elegant and subtle upon her, like a snow tiger. Even now, so many centuries between those memories, Crony still found herself captivated by that first meeting . . . by Dyadia’s ability to blend into her surroundings, to be invisible. How often since had Crony wished for such a talent herself? Or at the least, to close her eyes and have the world disappear.
While working together, she and Dyadia became fast friends. Crony demonstrated the technique behind memory transference and herbal elixirs and potions, and Dyadia impressed her with the ability to enchant objects and divine prophecies through her third eye. They had things in common that no human could appreciate: laughing about mistakes made when first learning their crafts; commiserating over broken glass and shattered spells.
Crony paused. Luce, who’d been listening—enthralled—leaned forward.