The Fairy raised a hand, and Donnersmarck’s shadow became that of a stag. “You misunderstood. I can help you be both, but you have to stop fearing him.”
She left him with the shadow he tried to flee. And she resisted the temptation to show herself the shadow she was running from.
Her moths had spread their night-catching net between the only trees standing near the riverbank. They were young willows, reminders of when, thanks to her red sister, she herself had nearly been turned into one. That night she’d felt the cruelty of the punishment suffered by those who’d misused the Fairy lake’s water for their mirrors.
Chithira had laid a pattern of blossoms on her pallet, a greeting from a faraway land she’d seen only in his eyes. Donnersmarck felt very uncomfortable in his presence. The soldier liked to separate life and death as carefully as man and beast. Sometimes Chithira amused himself by walking through Donnersmarck, as if by chance, to enjoy the confusion on his face when his mind and heart were suddenly flooded with memories of a royal childhood in Bengalian palaces. The Fairy had forbidden Chithira to do that, but princes, even dead ones, did not do well with orders.
Outside, Chithira was talking to some Rusalkas. The Dark One could hear them laugh. It really did sound like tinkling water. Rusalkas were much less aggressive than the naiads who lived in the river next to the royal fortress of the Goyl. There was no place Kami’en loved more, and yet he hadn’t been there in months. Kami’en didn’t live for love alone. There was much that was more important—another thing she’d learned only very late.
The Dark One kneeled on Chithira’s carpet of flowers and swiped away the moth that wanted to settle on her chest. The red wings betrayed the sender. Her sister had been sending her fluttering messengers for weeks. Fear. Her sisters were always afraid. A wilted leaf, a card floating in their lake, the crossbow of a dead King…as though she hadn’t seen all those as well. “Come to us. You’ll only be safe on our island. You’re putting us all in danger!” Maybe. But she wasn’t going to hide. She wanted to be free. Kami’en had nearly made her forget that, but she wasn’t going to forget again.
The Fairy crushed the moth, and her sisters’ cries and clamors stuck to her fingers. “You’ll only be safe on our island.” Safe from what? Not from the pain of betrayed love. Was she supposed to sit with her sister under the willows, pitying herself, or maybe send death to Kami’en, as the Red One would have done with an unfaithful lover?
Outside, a Rusalka laughed again. But then she heard some less peaceful sounds through the moth’s net: hooves thumping on the damp grass, voices, louder than the lark that was still greeting the day.
She stepped through the net, and for one absurd moment she expected to see Kami’en surrounded by his guards—even though she knew how he hated to sit on a horse. One of the many fears he hid so well. The strength of that hope made her feel ashamed, and yet, through that shame, she felt the old longing she’d tried to suppress since her flight.
The riders approaching through the meadows were not Goyl. There were around fifty of them, all wearing the same colorful dress their ancestors had worn when they rode into battle. Cossacks. Hentzau liked to joke that the day he’d start being afraid of Cossacks was the day they realized that a uniform was more practical than their flapping wide pants. The Cossacks, in contrast to the Goyl, did not think much of modern times, though they were also warriors. The elected their leaders, did not tolerate women in their ranks, kept their chins clean-shaved to distinguish themselves from their hairy enemies in Varangia, and preferred to be paid in horses rather than gold for the rich harvests of their fertile fields. Their leader’s gelding was probably worth more than that entire train Kami’en so liked to ride in. And the horse was definitely more beautiful. His rider sat as proudly as a young cockerel claiming the morning, the river, and the land the Fairy had so recklessly entered as his own.
Reckless? No. He took her to be stupid, like all women. The discarded mistress of a King.
Love had made her so small.
His men stared at her with the usual mixture of fear and longing. Men liked to claim how different they were, yet they were all so alike.
Riding next to the cockerel was one of the blind minstrel
s without whom no Cossack ever rode into battle. Their musical craft was reserved for the blind, as though the past they sang about could be seen only if one were blind to the present. Most traveled through the lands begging for their meals, but some had the fortune of falling in with a band of soldiers—if fortune is what you’d call it. Cossacks loved to have their feats praised in song, but the wrong verse could easily get the minstrel shot.
The leader would, of course, not stoop so low as to address the Fairy himself. The man who spurred his horse to approach her was smart enough to fear her magic, though he was ashamed of that fear. His skull was bare except for the chupryna, the long lock of hair only experienced Cossack warriors were permitted to wear. This man’s story was known even at Amalie’s court: Demian Razin’s escape from the dungeons of the sultan of Turkmara, his courage under torture. Just a year ago, Razin had tried to buy weapons from the Goyl. Kami’en had sent him home with a polite refusal. The Goyl respected the Cossacks for their bravery, but they were not half as powerful as their eastern neighbors, the Tzar, the Wolf-Lords, or the Mongolian Hun Khans. Maybe the young cockerel saw an opportunity to change that with this early-morning visit.
Razin nervously wiped his mustache before he swung himself out of the saddle. The Cossacks pampered their hairy lip ornaments with the same dedication Kami’en’s doll-wife spent on her golden hair.
He did not dare look at her.
Donnersmarck eyed him with open disdain, but the Fairy felt for the old warrior. There was nothing soldiers feared more than what they couldn’t fight with their weapons.
“My lord, the most noble Prince Yemelyan Timofeyevich welcomes you to his father’s kingdom.”
Ah, yes, she’d heard Kami’en’s generals mention that name. The Dark One used to regularly attend their briefings, as did Amalie—to the generals’ great discomfort.
Razin waited for a reply. He stared at the grass in front of his feet, his hand on the hilt of his saber. The Cossacks shared the Goyl’s love for this weapon, but their saber had a double-edged tip. They called it a szabla. Kami’en owned a very nice specimen. How her mind kept finding excuses to think of him!
“The most noble Yemelyan Timofeyevich...” Razin actually dared a quick glance. The desire flushed his face like a rash. Desire—and shame. “...conveys his father’s greetings and welcomes you to his kingdom.” His kingdom? As far as she knew, Yemelyan’s father was fighting a whole horde of lords for the throne. “Prince Yemelyan is offering you his protection. His warriors are yours. These woods and rivers are yours, every animal, every flower...”
Donnersmarck shot her a quizzical look. Yes, let him talk to them. All that pride, the hunger for power, the unending urge to fight one another, and their unquenchable thirst for conquest. Mortals. She was so sick of them.
“In exchange for what?” Donnersmarck’s voice was so cool it made not only the messenger frown but also the prince himself.
The Cossacks were better riders than the Goyl, but their bravery made them careless. Donnersmarck had been a soldier long enough to know that. Kami’en was going to have no problem with them, should he ever decide to fight them. The Cossacks would, of course, never surrender, but instead would fight him from their dark woods, from the fog that perpetually hung between their mountains. They all feared death. Why were humans constantly seeking it?
The prince was growing tired of letting the old warrior speak for him. He spurred his gelding forward and stopped it only a few feet from her.
“We have come to escort you to my father’s castle.” He spoke in the language of the Goyl. The East had always found it easier to coexist with their stone-skinned neighbors. Kami’en had told her about the old Goyl cities, underground fortresses of amber, malachite, and jade that lay even farther east and had been depopulated by disease. He had promised to take her there.
“We have come to escort you to my father’s castle.”
What had become of her that the spawn of some local strongman dared to speak to her like that? His glance was even more insulting than his words. He eyed her like one of his father’s concubines. “Look at the Dark Fairy. She’ll do anything for the man she loves. And now that her lover has discarded her, she must be looking for a new one.” Yes. That’s what they were thinking. She had turned herself into an accessory, had misused her magic to fulfill the wishes of mortals. So small. And the fault was all hers.