Chaos (13 page)

The girl rushed toward me throwing her arms around my neck. The surprising move made me lose my balance and tumble to the ground.

---

I hated leaving the children behind. The food would last them for days but it would eventually run out and I had no clue where or even if they had adequate shelter. I suspected not. But we had done all we could for them. Like the rest of Faerie, what they really needed from us was for us to find the Order’s leaders and with their help remove Belial from the throne. It was the only thing we could do to permanently improve their situation.

“Are there many orphans in Faerie?” Zander asked me as we wandered through the town checking door after door of its many establishments.

“Yes,” I said. “More than there should be.”

I stopped to check the door of yet another business only to find nothing. We moved on to the next.

“Belial is a tyrant who rules through death and fear. Those who oppose him, those who speak out against him, and those who do not automatically fall in line with his decrees are made a quick example of. His pitilessness has left a lot of fae children orphans, myself included.”

Darkness settled in Zander’s eyes at the mention of Belial’s atrocities, especially the crime committed against me. A spark of red ignited within the darkness, but it disappeared as swiftly as it appeared.

“Is this the kind of symbol we are looking for?” Zander asked running his fingers over a carving in the right corner of a wooden door.

I stepped closer beside him to look at it. Two triangles lying on their sides touching at their points with a vertical line running through the center of where they met sat etched into the door. It meant justice. it was the Order’s symbol and very discreet way of letting sympathizers and supporters know the people behind the door were also sympathizers and supporters of the Order.

“Yes, it is.” I closed my fist and gently rapped on the wooden door.

The rectangular peephole cut into it slid open. A set of eyes looked through them.

“Who is it?” A gruff voice called out.

“A friend in search of aid,” I responded with the words that would not get the peephole shut in my face.

“And what type of aid do you seek?” The voice asked roughly.

“The aid of a friend,” I responded again with the Order’s code phrase for a supporter in need of help.

The voice grunted and the peephole slammed shut. A moment later the door opened. A petite woman with bright orange hair whose stature did not at all match the tone of her voice stood proud behind it. She motioned for us to enter.

“Are you hungry? Bertha can get you food?” The woman asked motioning to the fae behind the counter of the bar across the room us as we settled into one of her tavern’s booths.

“We would be ever so grateful,” Zander responded for us.

She nodded to the fae she called Bertha. Bertha nodded back then disappeared into the kitchen.

Zander and I sat on one side of the booth and she sat on the other.

“My name is Marie,” she extended her hand across the table between us.

“Skyler,” I said taking it.

Zander did the same, offering his name as well.

Marie studied him intently. “Your magic is just beginning to manifest as if you were a babe and yet you sit before me clearly past the age of manifestation. How is that possible?”

Zander and I exchanged a glance. Yes, she was a supporter of the Order, but we were both thinking the details of who he was were better left unrevealed. We would find the Order’s leaders first and with them decide whom to reveal Zander’s identity to and when.

“It is okay,” Marie spared us having to come up with a lie. “We are living in dangerous times where our very lives and the lives of those around us may hinge on the secrets we keep.”

“Thank you for understanding,” I told her graciously.

Bertha sat plates loaded with more food than even I could consume down on our table.

“Eat,” Marie commanded. “Then we will speak of the aid of a friend you seek.”

Bertha came back to clear the plates away once we’d eaten our fill. Marie stood and motioned for us to follow her up the tavern’s stairs. She led us into the small interior of an upstairs parlor room.

“Sit please,” she pointed at a sweetheart sofa near us.

We did as requested. She settled into a chair situated off to the side yet still intimately nearby.

“How can I be of assistance?” Marie asked.

I decided to be frank. I was not good at speaking in codes or with complex wording.

“We are in search of the location the Order’s leaders have gone underground to. I told you my name is Skyler, you may also know that to be the name of the ward of Belial. We are one in the same. Belial murdered my parents when I was a child just as he did the parents of the Lords and Princesses of Faerie. I am more than a sympathizer to the Order’s cause. I seek the destruction and removal of Belial from the throne as actively as any of its leaders and am just as invested in it. They sent me on a mission to retrieve something valuable to them and perhaps the whole of Faerie. I have it. Now I need to locate them to deliver it.”

Marie looked from me to Zander then to me again. She was judging us, how trustworthy we were, and what she would elect to tell us.

“This tavern has also doubled as my home for centuries. I never wanted to outfit the downstairs of our home into a tavern and the mid-level into a boarding house for traveling fae. That was my husband’s dream. He loved meeting new fae. He loved gatherings. He loved socializing.”

Her eyes glazed over in bittersweet nostalgia.

“My husband loved a good party for the common Unseelie, complete with music, spirits, and merriment. It was the night of one of those revelries that Belial and his forces marched through this town. He stopped and asked what we thought we were doing? Hadn’t we heard of his newest decree? All gatherings larger than ten fae were outlawed and would be considered an act of conspiracy against the Crown. It was shortly after he got wind of the Order and its initiative to dethrone him. He personally left his stolen palace and marched through fae city after fae city in an attempt to root out what he saw as a cancer. Our town is a provincial one hundreds of miles away from the palace. We are largely removed from and ignorant of court politics. We attempted to beg for mercy, explaining to him as much, but our pleas fell on deaf ears. He had his men lock all of the patrons inside, including my husband and I, and set fire to our home. Everyone inside perished…I should have too.” She said the last part quieter than the rest.

The guilt in her voice struck a familiar chord. My heart squeezed in empathy for her. My parents and my brother died because of me. I was spared by Belial’s hand, but they died because of what mine could one day do.

“Lord Darrien is the one who found me after our home had been razed to the ground. I don’t know why he was so far away from the palace. Maybe fate set him in my path or maybe it was pure coincidence. My body was charred beyond recognition and the pain was so great I begged for my un-making. My magic is what kept me alive when everyone else perished. It is not like normal curative magic that allows a fae to heal another. It is limited to self-regenerative abilities. Darrien found me among the remains of my husband, our friends, our guests, our home. He stayed with me while I healed and helped me to rebuild the only home I have ever known. From that day the Order and its leaders, Darrien in particular, have had my support and
Belial
,” she spat his name out as if the syllables used to speak it sat sour on her tongue, “has my un-ending hatred. Before I cease to exist I will see that monster burn as he saw that my husband did.”

“I am very sorry for your loss and your pain,” Zander took Marie’s hands in his.

She looked up into his warm, comforting amber gaze and weakly smiled.

“Thank you son,” she said gratefully. Her expression turned perplexed as she continued to stare into his eyes.

“You look familiar. Like I know you or have known of you. Are you from around here or a nearby town? Perhaps a larger city?”

“No, I am not,” Zander shook his head. “I come from a land very, very far away.”

Marie looked at him for a moment longer in the way you look at someone when their face tugs at the edges of your memory but the answer to why they are familiar remains out of its reach. Eventually, she gave up letting the question go.

“Perhaps I knew someone you resemble.”

“The Order’s leaders?” I gently prodded her. “Can you tell us where to find them?”

“You are truly acting at their behest?” She wanted to have faith in us, but she was a woman who had seen one too many duplicitous and ugly things in the world to have any traces of naivety left.

“I am,” I assured her. Then I decided to help her put her mind at ease. Marie had cause to hate Belial and want him dead as much as the rest of us. I took the first step toward building a bond of mutual trust between us. It was the only way she would give up the information we needed.

“Zander,” I inclined my head in his direction, “is the thing I was sent to retrieve. His magic seems like it is only beginning to manifest because it is. He is mortal, or was mortal. Faerie is changing him into one of us as it recognizes his blood as being a part of the Asteroth line and the magic it carries is coming alive within it. Belial hunted down and killed all the remaining fae with Asteroth blood inside of Faerie, but he only recently learned there was a boy outside of it whose blood Faerie would recognize as Asteroth. When I was born, I became the first fae in millennia with the magic to open a portal between Faerie and the mortal realm. It is why Belial murdered my parents and locked me away in the palace as his ward. I was supposed to retrieve Zander and take him to Belial so he could eliminate the threat he posed to his reign. Instead, I am working in league with the Order’s leaders. I am taking Zander to them so they can help us lie low while Zander changes and his magic fully manifests. Once it does, we, with the Order at our side, will challenge and make Belial pay for every atrocity he has committed since he took the throne from Regias.”

“You are to be our savior?” Marie asked Zander in hushed reverence.

For the first time since I have known he, his solid air of confidence was not present. In a very me like gesture, he averted his eyes unable to meet the hope exuding from Marie’s. 

“Skyler tells me I am.”

“Then act like it,” her voice came out sharp and commanding.

Zander’s eyes snapped back to meet hers.

“Act like it,” she repeated just as sharply. “Belial is a cunning, ruthless bastard who will not hesitate to rip your head off to ensure it will never wear the crown he claimed as his. If you are going after his head then you had damn well better get some gusto about yourself or you will lose yours, the Order’s leaders will lose theirs, and she, whom I presume you love from the look in your eyes every time they fall on her, will lose hers.”

“How?” Zander asked in a rare moment of unsurety.

“It is something you will have to figure out for yourself but you had better do it
before
you confront him. The magic coming to life inside of you is strong. The power will be there. It will hold up against his. But it will mean nothing if your will and your heart and your belief in the cause and yourself is not just as steadfast.”

Zander nodded in understanding.

Marie stood and walked to the fireplace behind her. She tipped the head of a statue that sat on its mantle downward and a small rectangular hole in the wall above it appeared. She stuck her hand in it and it came out holding a folded slip of paper. She put the statue’s head back in place and the wall looked as uninterrupted as it did before.

She handed the slip of paper over to Zander, not me. I wasn’t offended. It was her none too subtle way of reiterating what she had just told him. I knew she was right. I had gotten us this far, but for our coup to be successful and for us to survive Belial with our heads intact, Zander would have to own the position we were thrusting him into.

Zander unfolded the paper, read the information it contained then handed it to me.

I read the words scrawled on it in Darrien’s handwriting:

The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. To the east lies Cartwright at the end of the road

“Thank you,” I said to Marie.

She nodded her at Zander.

“Take care of him, guide him, help him become the leader we all need him to be. Bertha can sift. It is unwise to ask her to sift you to the exact location you need to go. Pick somewhere close, but far enough away that it cannot be traced to the Order’s leaders should we ever be forcibly questioned. ”

Chapter 23

B
ertha sifted us to the city of Ellewey south of Darth. From there we headed north and then west in the direction of the setting sun. I was confident we should not be traveling east to Cartwright. If Darrien wrote the message then he meant for us to do the exact opposite of what one reading it would infer.
It is time for the sun to set on the reign of a tyrant
are the first words he ever spoke to me. They were barely above a whisper, uttered softly as he brushed past me in the palace courtyard. They were meant for me to either hear or choose not to hear. I chose to hear.

At the westernmost edge of Faerie sat a town long neglected by the fae. Much of the land around Darth was infertile and no matter how much Earth magic they poured into it, its inhabitants could not get life to spring forth from its soil. Eventually, its people relocated southward to the more fertile grounds of Ellewey.

The Order’s leaders choice of Darth was brilliant. No one lived there, no one would see them, and no one would think to look as far as it.

We stuck to the shadows of the forests that spanned between Ellewey and Darth. When the sky opened up, raining crystal-colored droplets of water that glittered under the moonlight, I cursed the fact that we could not seek shelter in Ellewey for the night. Staying in one place for too long was dangerous. For all we knew, Belial’s seer or trackers had already detected my return and hunted us.

“Skyler, we need to stop and make camp for the night,” Zander shouted over the claps of thunder that bounced of the surrounding trees.

“We can’t,” I shouted back. “We have to get to the safety of the Order’s leaders. They can place the same cloaking spell on us that they have on themselves. Until we reach them, we’re vulnerable to Belial finding us.”

Zander grabbed my hand, forcing me to stop walking. He spun me so I faced him directly.

“Are we going to make it to Darth tonight if we keep going?”

“No,” I admitted knowing where he was headed with the question. “If we are lucky and keep moving non-stop we will make it there by nightfall tomorrow.”

“Then we stop. What’s the point of remaining cold and drenched? If we are moving through the forest or hunkering down in a tent, we still will not be in Darth and under the safety of the cloaking spell. We may as well take cover.”

Not wanting to argue, I conceded to his logic.

We huddled together, using our bodies for warmth in the makeshift tent Zander and I constructed from the supplies Marie sent us away with. Even with Zander’s arms wrapped tightly around me and his body pressed up against mine, I still shivered violently.

“How…how...is…it….you’re….you’re…not…freeeeezing…too,” I said through the chattering of my teeth.

I felt like a block of ice while Zander appeared completely warmed and unfazed.

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I should be in as bad a shape as you.” He pulled me closer, rubbing his hands up and down the length of my bare arms.

As his palms touched the exposed skin, a warming sensation thrummed behind every spot that he touched. Under the soothing comfort of his embrace, my eyelids grew heavier. They eventually felt like lead. I fought to keep them open. I needed to be alert should anyone happen upon us.

“It’s okay, Skyler.” Zander brushed a stray curl behind my ear. “Sleep. Get some rest. I’ll stand watch. I promise nothing will happen while you sleep.”

I believed him. I felt completely secure wrapped in his arms. I sighed contentedly and allowed my lids to flutter shut. Sleep claimed me, but with it so did another vision.

It started off the same as any time before with the pair of lovers that looked like us but were not. Then they morphed into Zander and I and our fate ended the same as theirs-- in tragic un-making.