He didn’t appear to move but I didn’t trust him even a little. The Stormwardens were no friends of mine. Allies? Yes. Under certain conditions. But I knew enough of tales under the hill to start to see beyond their exquisite costumes. Only now that I wanted to see the truth did I notice the way their wigs hid the top of their ears.
Their king, Oberon, the stories I remembered told of him. He could move faster than I could see. And he wasn’t to be trusted. But there were ways to distract him, ways to bind him. I concentrated on remembering that simple story. Something about grains, or was it salt?
But the Axe still called to my mind, nagging at my concentration. I could feel it, there on the distant throne, waiting for me to fix what I had done.
The fae lords were done with the entertainment my abrupt appearance had provided. Superior predators, the fae watched me now, deciding whether I was prey or a force of magic to be respected. From the hardened looks on their painted faces, I was not impressing the crowd.
Meanwhile, a gigantic, hungry bear sniffed my shoulder. And then, he licked my skin, tasting me. Coarse sandpaper against my collar bone would have been more pleasant.
“Benjamin,” I whispered one last time. “I’m here. I forgive you.”
As I spoke those last words, the huge beast began to shrink and change. His fingernails diminished. His nose flattened. Each step was just a second or two long. At my call, one cursed bear transformed into a man.
A miracle. And it was also odd beyond any fairytale I had ever heard. This couldn’t be my life?
Yet there he was, standing there next to me, clothes ripped, hair a mess. When the werebear looked at me, his eyes filled with a passion that blazed from his animal-core right into my very soul.
“Briarthorns,” Benjamin spoke my name. I had never heard anyone call to me the way he did: softly, brilliant with longing and an undefinable emotion I couldn’t quite name. “Y-you called me back. You saved me.”
My heart leapt.
Across the room, Oberon, the First Stormwarden shivered.
That’s what it looked like to my human eyes. But magically? Oberon moved more like a bird dusting off its feathers, I could see the fae king spark into movement. One second, he was standing at the banquet. The next, Oberon was already halfway up the stairs of the distant throne room.
There was only one thing to do. If he reached the Axe before I did, the fae king would have the power to keep both of us there, his prisoners forever.
Our lives? There was only so much I could do to save us now. But there was one person who would never forgive me for this failure.
One who mattered.
Corinne would be alone. Worse, she would never know who she really was. She would never know the magic in her blood. And Groton? That wretched innkeeper would sell her as soon as he could. Corinne would be the toy of a rich and evil man. The kind that likes children. The disgusting kind that dances with the devil.
I can’t let that happen.
Right before Oberon reached the top of his throne, right before his hand touched the silver of the mighty weapon, I spoke in a loud voice, my words ringing off the polished marble, seizing every one of the fae s attention.
“I love you, Benjamin!” I shouted how I felt.
I gave back so much of the truth the Axe demanded. I acknowledged my feelings.
It was the lie that broke my bond with the mighty weapon.
And it was the truth that set us free.
“Y-you love me?” His eyes flew wide with wonder. “How? That’s not possible. My best plan to restore the Gilded Seat almost cost your life three times.” Benjamin shook his head. “Woman, I am too dangerous to love, as a man or as a beast,” he said slowly. “You must not, Briarthorns. You must not trust me.”
I held out my hand to Benjamin, freely, openly giving the complicated man my broken heart.
It was always frozen, for as long as I could remember.
My feelings.
My hopes.
My dreams.
All of that lay in ashes when Momma died at the hands of my drunken father. Everything that I was, all the stories she tried to teach me—all of it locked away tightly until the lightning freed my mind.
Then, determination freed my heart.
And now, somewhere in the blizzard of ice and snow, hail and sorrow, a tiny ember flickered to life, lit by love and the element of lightning.
The Axe felt it, the heat of my passion, glowing in the wasteland. Truth magic summoned the silver weapon from the distant throne. With the lightness of an angel’s wing, the fabled weapon flew to my open hand, fitting to my body like a knife to a scabbard. An errant chick to a hen, the warm metal came home. The Axe settled into my possession.
The sky cracked above Stormrage See. Lightning hit the flagpoles on the tallest tower. Oberon turned pale.
“Whoever holds the Axe of Stormjen rules the Stormrage See, isn’t that what you said, milord?” I asked the shocked king as if we didn’t both already know the answer.
“This is my kingdom now,” I declared.
Impossible. Completely, ridiculously, stunningly impossible. How could a servant girl rule the fae under the hill? Just like the night I stole Corinne and ran away from an empty hearth and the ghost of my mother’s love, there in the Stormrage See, I chose a different path.
Oberon howled like a timberwolf, loud and long, hungry, and reckless for vengeance.
Calming my racing heart, I tried bravery as a mask.
Speaking to the powerful fae, I said, “I will not be your queen. I will not.” The First Stormwarden’s eyes turned red and all the stormlords gathered in a circle around us. They locked arms and started chanting obscure spells. What would happen when they finished their incantation? No mortal wanted to find what lay at the end of the fae’s wrath.
“And, I promise,” I bargained, “I will not hold you to this term of your Kingship under certain conditions.”
Oberon turned his head a little toward me. If he listened, there might be a way out. If I could interrupt his fury long enough to bribe his pride. The fae lord’s face was frozen in anger. But slowly, fury was replaced outrage and surprise.
“One, you release Prince Benjamin of the mistake he made by breaking your formal list of manners, Oh lords of the underhill fae. Free and clear you let him go, human in his form and well in mind and body. Take the werecurse or not, you will pardon his interruption of your feast and bear no grudge against him or any of his line.
“Two, I will let you keep the Axe as a ruler of the Stormrage See as long as you swear your allegiance to me as your ruler first and above all. And, you must swear no vengeance upon me and mine forever more.”
Oberon’s face shook with fury, his skin blotched white and purple now. I could count the veins on his forehead. I did not know if he bluffed.
I didn’t dare stop.
“And three, the Axe’s power will remain in my hands, and those of my able descendants. You will hold the rule of the Fae Kingdom of Stormrage, but I will hold the magic itself. The truth of it is locked in my blood and those of my family. We will keep this hold over you in times of war and need. You can be summoned. You must appear.” I looked around the room as my list of demands grew.
Fairies were all lawyers.
Momma had always said that. ‘You mustn’t trust a fairy to do right by you. Always seal the bond with a kiss. And always expect the double cross.’
Smart advice from the ghost of a memory.
Finally, I whispered to the magic, asking for one odd coarse burlap bag. THe exact potato sack that lay in the back storeroom of the inn, unopened. ‘Mixed Seeds’ marked the top in red paint across the rough, woven jute.
With a sign from my hand, the weather magic spun a vortex of earth and sky, wind and rain, and picked up that distant bag, bringing it to my side. Out of thin air as it were, this massive bag of grains appeared.
The fae blanched, turning white. Their spells against me paused and their words petered off. Leaning over towards Benjamin, I whispered, “Do you have a dagger hidden somewhere?” Benjamin looked confused for a moment and then withdrew a slim blade from his boot. Stepping towards me, Benjamin held it in his open palm, “Careful there, princess, he remarked casually.
Which made my eyes roll.