I couldn't come up with any words when we arrived—and knew that even if I had been able to paint it, nothing would have done it justice. It wasn't simply that it was the most beautiful place I'd ever been to next to the House of Dreams, or that it filled me with such longing and mirth, but it just seemed ... right. As if the colours and lights and patterns of the world had come together to form one perfect place—one true bit of beauty. After yesterday and the event that had happened in the House of Dreams, it was exactly where I needed to be.
We sat atop a grassy knoll, overlooking a glade of oaks so wide and high they could have been the pillars and spires of an ancient castle. Shimmering tufts of dandelion fluff drifted by, and the floor of the clearing was carpeted with swaying crocuses and snowdrops and bluebells. It was two or three hours past noon by the time we arrived, but the light was thick and golden.
Though the three of us were alone, I could have sworn I heard singing. I hugged my knees and drank in the glen.
"We brought a blanket," Phoebus said, and I looked over my shoulder to see him jerk his chin to the purple blanket they'd laid out a few feet away. Kallistê plopped down onto it and stretched her legs. Phoebus remained standing, waiting for my response.
Things were still tense between Phoebus and I from earlier on but I shook my head and faced forward, tracing my hand through the feather-soft grass, cataloguing its colour and texture. I'd never felt grass like it, and I certainly wasn't going to ruin the experience by sitting on a blanket.
Rushed whispers were exchanged behind me, and before I could turn around to investigate, Phoebus took a seat at my side. His jaw was clenched tight enough that I stared ahead. "What is this place?" I said, running my fingers through the grass.
Out of the corner of my eye, Phoebus was no more than a glittering golden figure. "Just a glen." Behind us, Kallistê snorted. "Do you like it?" Phoebus asked quickly. The brown in his eyes matched the soil beneath my fingers, and the auburn flecks were like the shafts of sunlight that streamed through the trees. Even our tunics, odd and foreign, seemed to fit into the glen—as if this place had been fashioned for us alone. I could picture Phoebus here by himself, splayed out in the grass, dozing.
"What?" I said. I'd forgotten his question.
"Do you like it?" he repeated, and his lips were tugged into a smile.
I took an uneven breath and stared at the glen again. "Yes."
He chuckled, though it was strained. "That's it? 'Yes'?"
"Would you like me to grovel with gratitude for bringing me here, Imperial Lord?"
"Ah. The Alger told you nothing important, did it?"
That smile of his sparked something bold in my chest. I ignored it. "He also said you liked being groomed, and if I'm a clever girl, I might train you with treats."
Phoebus tipped his head to the sky and roared with laughter. Despite myself and the situation I was in, I let out a soft laugh.
"I might die of surprise," Kallistê said behind me. "You made a joke, Eleena."
I turned to look at her with a cool smile. "You don't want to know what the Alger said about you." I flicked my brows up, and Kallistê lifted her hands in defeat.
"I'd pay good money to hear what the Alger thinks of Kallistê," Phoebus said.
A cork popped, followed by the sounds of Kallistê chugging the bottle's contents and chuckling with a muttered "Brushed."
Phoebus's eyes were still bright with laughter as he put a hand at my elbow, pulling me to my feet. "Come on," he said, jerking his head down the hill to the little stream that ran along its base. "I want to show you something."
I got to my feet, but Kallistê remained sitting on the blanket and lifted the bottle of wine in salute. She took a slug from it as she sprawled on her back and gazed at the green canopy.
Each of Phoebus's movements was precise and efficient, his powerfully muscled legs eating up the earth as we wove between the towering trees, hopped over tiny brooks, and clambered up steep knolls. We stopped atop a mound, and my hands slackened at my sides. There, in a clearing surrounded by towering trees, lay a sparkling gold pool. Even from a distance, I could tell that it wasn't water, but something rarer and infinitely more precious.
Phoebus grasped my wrist and tugged me down the hill, his callused fingers gently scraping against my skin. He let go of me to leap over the root of the tree in a single manoeuvre and prowled to the water's edge. I could only grind my teeth as I stumbled after him, heaving myself over the root.
He crouched by the pool and cupped his hand to fill it. He tilted his hand, letting the water fall. "Have a look."
The aureate sparkling water that dribbled from his hand set ripples dancing across the pool, each glimmering with various colours, and—"That looks like sunlight," I breathed.
He huffed a laugh, filling and emptying his hand again. I gaped at the glittering water. "It is sunlight."
"That's impossible," I said, fighting against the urge to take a step toward the water.
"This is Asteria. According to your legends, nothing is impossible."
"How?" I asked, unable to take my eyes from the pool—the gold, but also the blue and red and pink beneath it, the lightness of it ...
"I don't know—I never asked, and no one ever explained."
When I continued gaping at the pool, he laughed, drawing away my attention—only for me to find him unbuttoning his tunic. "Jump in," he said, the invitation dancing in his eyes.
A swim—unclothed, alone. With an Imperial Lord I was supposed to kill. I shook my head, falling back a step. His fingers paused at the second button from his collar.
"Don't you want to know what it's like?"
I didn't know what he meant: swimming in sunlight, or swimming with him. "I—no."
"All right." He left his tunic unbuttoned. There was only bare, muscled, golden skin beneath.
"Why this place?" I asked, tearing my eyes away from his chest. "Why the House of Dreams, too?"
"They were my favourite haunts as a boy."
"Which was when?" I couldn't stop the question from coming out.
He cut a glance in my direction. "A very long time ago." He said it so quietly that it made me shift on my feet. A very long time ago indeed, if he'd been a boy during the Human-Fae War.
Well, I'd started down that road, so I ventured to ask, "Is Oberon all right? After yesterday, I mean." The last I'd seen him he'd been hurt and scarred, but maybe that has eased a little today. "He ... didn't react well."
Phoebus shrugged, but his words were soft as he said, "Oberon ... Oberon has endured things that make times like yesterday ... difficult. Not just the scars he bears—though I bet last night brought back memories of that, too."
Phoebus rubbed at his neck, then met my stare. Such an ancient heaviness in his eyes, in the set of his jaw. "Oberon hadn't always been Elanor's army commander." I straightened. "Instead, he had been once a baker's son. The best bakery in Elanor that is—a small family business. Oberon never really wanted to have an ordinary life, never really wanted it even when he was a child, so he spent his youth doing everything an ordinary faerie probably wouldn't: coming up to the Estate of Elanor to watch sentries train, making friends with sentries his age—" a faint gleam at Phoebus's eyes at that—"and soon joining the ranks of Elanor's army." Phoebus paused for a moment, and I could almost hear the smile behind his words before he said, "Oberon was a skilled warrior when training in Elanor's ranks, and he'd quickly outshined the others. Elanor's army commander took a liking to Oberon then, and he treated him like one of his own—privately training him, providing him with whatever he needed, and cared for him like how he would to his son. And so, no longer than a week, Oberon became the protégé of Elanor's army commander of the time." A tight sigh. "But war soon called the commander away, and he promised Oberon that he would make it—that he would stay alive and come back to him. Oberon was left with only his hopes that he would return."
My stomach turned, and I pushed a hand against my chest. I knew what was coming and I couldn't imagine, couldn't comprehend that sort of loss.
"He didn't." A sharp sigh. "Oberon left. He cursed the war, cursed Elanor's Imperial Lord back then, cursed the world, and walked out. And without his second father to protect him, his former friends, brothers thought to eliminate the contender to the title of Elanor's Army Commander. Five of them went out to kill him; one came back."
"Oberon ... killed them?"
"He killed three," Phoebus said. "The Imperial Lord killed the other, as there was no point in keeping egotistical, heartless traitors in the ranks." A cold, brutal statement. "Oberon was named Elanor's Commander that day since he'd already proven how skilled he was in battle during his training while he was also the former commander's protégé. He is by far the oldest out of all of us—Kallistê, himself and I—old enough that he'd been my mentor when I was just a boy. Oberon's been here ever since."
I gasped at the new bit of information I'd learned. Oberon was primordial I'd ever thought Phoebus to be ancient. if "As commander," I began, "has he ever had dealings with his sentries?"
"Yes ... but not as much as he'd used to. The one who lived has never apologised, and his sentries are too frightened of him after knowing what he'd done to those three." No arrogance in those words, just icy truth. "But he has never forgotten what the war did to guiding light, or what his brothers tried to do to him. Even if he pretends he has."
It didn't quite explain how he managed to still keep strong though, how he manages to lead when he may be lost himself, but ... I understood now. I could understand the walls and barriers he had no doubt constructed around himself. My chest was too tight, too small to fit the ache building in it. I looked at the pool of glittering sunlight and let out a heavy breath. I needed to change the subject. "What would happen if I were to drink the water?"
Phoebus straightened a bit—then relaxed, as if glad to release that old sadness. "Legend claims you'd be happy until your last breath." He added, "Perhaps we both need a glass."
"I don't think that the entire pool would be enough for me," I said, and he laughed.
"Two jokes in one day—a miracle sent from the Mother," he said. I cracked a smile. He came a step closer, as if forcibly leaving behind the dark, sad stain of what had happened to Oberon, and the sunlight danced in his eyes as he said, "What would be enough to make you happy?"
I blushed from my neck to the top of my head, forgetting all about this morning. "I—I don't know." It was true—I'd never given that sort of thing any thought beyond getting having my own little cottage with enough food, and time to learn to paint.
"Hmm," he said, not stepping away. "What about the ringing of bluebells? Or a ribbon of stars? Or a garland of moonlight?" He grinned wickedly.
Imperial Lord of Asteria indeed. Imperial lord of Foolery was more like it. And he knew—he knew I'd say no, that I'd squirm a bit from merely being alone with him.
No. I wouldn't let him have the satisfaction of embarrassing me. I'd had enough of that lately, enough of ... of that girl encased in ice and bitterness. Yet, I knew I would need her again soon enough. So I gave him a sweet smile, doing my best to pretend that the two sides of my stomach weren't grappling with each other to gain control.
"A swim sounds delightful."
This isn't part of the mission, but I didn't allow myself room for second-guessing. And I took no small amount of pride in the fact that my fingers didn't tremble once as I removed my boots, then unbuttoned my tunic and pants and shucked them onto the grass. My undergarments were modest enough that I wasn't showing much and I was lucky enough that Willodean had provided me with a singlet top to cover my scars.
Bless that woman.
I looked straight at Phoebus as I stood on the grassy bank. The air was warm and mild, and a soft breeze kissed its way across my bare legs.
Slowly, so slowly, his eyes roved down, then up. As if he were studying every inch, every curve of me. And even though I wore my ivory underthings, as well as the top, that gaze alone stripped me bare. I flinched inwardly.
His eyes met mine and he gave me a lazy smirk before removing his clothes. Button by button. I could have sworn the gleam in his eyes turned feral and longing—enough so that I had to look anywhere but at his face.
Out of the corner of my eye, I let myself have a quick glimpse of a broad chest, arms corded with muscle, and long, strong legs before I walked right into that pool. He wasn't built like Aslan, whose body had very much been in that gangly place between boy and man. No—Phoebus's glorious body was honed by centuries of fighting and brutality—
I shook my head. Never—this was wrong. I already had Aslan back home and Phoebus and all these faeries were my enemies. The humans' enemies. Taking, those sickly thoughts from my mind, I burned them into cinders. I turned to face the pool.
The liquid was delightfully warm, and I strode in until it was deep enough to swim out a few strokes and casually tread in place. Not water, but something smoother, thicker. Not oil, but something purer, thinner. Like being wrapped in warm silk. I was so busy savouring the tug of my fingers through the golden substance that I didn't notice him until he was treading beside me.
"Who taught you to swim?" he asked, and dunked his head under the surface. When he came up, he was grinning, sparkling streams of sunlight running around his eyes and over his nose like an aureate mask.
I didn't go under, didn't quite know if he'd been joking about the water making me mirthful if I drank it. "When I was eleven, I watched the village children swimming at a pond and figured it out myself."
It had been one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, and I'd swallowed half the pond in the process, but I'd gotten the gist of it, managed to conquer my blind panic and terror and trust myself. Knowing how to swim seemed like a vital ability—one that might someday mean the difference between life and death. I'd never expected it would lead to this, though.
He went under again, and when he emerged, he ran a hand through his chestnut hair. "How did your father lose his fortune?"
"How'd you know about that?"
Phoebus snorted. "I don't think born peasants have your kind of diction."
Some part of me wanted to come up with a comment about snobbery, but ... well, he was right, and I couldn't blame him for being a skilled observer.
"My father was called the Merchant Prince," I said plainly, treading the silky, strange water. I hardly had to put any effort into it—the water was so warm, so light, that it felt as if I were floating in air, every ache in my body oozing away into nothing. "But that title, which he'd inherited from my mother and her family, had only lasted for so long. My mother's title, the Merchant Princess was just a good name that masked my father's original poverty. My father had been trying to build his own name for years so as to not rely on the Asterin family's name." I swallowed.
Phoebus frowned. "It's risky. But I understand his intentions of wanting to live off not only on the Asterin family's name."
"Well, he failed. It had taken too much time, and before any of us knew, my mother had passed." I tipped my hair back in the water, clearing the memory of my father's face the day he realised it was too late. "But what we didn't know was that there was a generation of debts waiting to be paid under the Asterin family's name. And since my father was officially an Asterin after he wed my mother, the Asterin's creditors were breathing down his neck. He continued trying to ease those debts for months but without my mother's name and wealth, the creditors circled him like wolves. They ripped him apart until there was nothing left of him but a broken name and a few gold pieces to purchase the cottage. I was almost eleven then. My father ... he just stopped trying after that." I couldn't bring myself to mention what had happened after that. The final moment when the creditors had ransacked our home and the madness with the village Elders after.
"That's when you started hunting?"
"No; even though we moved to the cottage, it took almost three years for the money to entirely run out," I said. "I started hunting when I was fourteen."
His eyes twinkled—no trace of the warrior forced to accept an Imperial Lord's burden. "And here you are. What else did you figure out for yourself?"
Maybe it was the enchanted pool, or maybe it was the genuine interest behind the question, but I smiled and told him about most of those years in the woods.
.____________________.
Tired but surprisingly content from a few hours of swimming and eating and lounging in the glen, I eyed Kallistê as we rode back to the manor that afternoon. We were crossing a broad meadow of new spring grass when she caught me glancing at her for the tenth time, and I braced myself as she fell back from Phoebus's side.
Her eyes remained wary, unimpressed. "Yes?"
Phoebus had also told me a little about Kallistê's past which was enough to persuade me not to say anything about it. I would hate pity, too. And she didn't know me—not well enough to warrant anything but resentment if I brought it up, even if it weighed on me to know it, to grieve for her.
I waited until Phoebus was far enough ahead that even his Seelie Faerie hearing might not pick up on my words. "I never got to thank you for your advice with the Alger."
Kallistê tensed. "Oh?"
I looked ahead at the easy way Phoebus rode, the horse utterly unbothered by his mighty rider. "If you still want me dead," I said, "you might have to try a bit harder."
Kallistê loosed a breath. "That's not what I intended." I gave her a long look. "I wouldn't shed any tears," she amended. I knew it was true. "but what happened to you—"
"I was joking," I said, and gave her a little smile.
"You can't possibly forgive me that easily for sending you into danger."
"No. And part of me would like nothing more than to wallop you for your lack of warning about the Alger. But I understand: I'm a human who now lives in your house, and you have to deal with me. I understand," I said again.
She was quiet for long enough that I thought she wouldn't reply. Just as I was about to move ahead, she spoke. "Phoe told me that your first shot was to save the Alger's life. Not your own."
"It seemed like the right thing to do."
The look she gave me was more contemplative than any she'd given me before. "I know far too many Seelie Faeries and Unseelie Faeries who wouldn't have seen it that way—or bothered." She reached for something at her side and tossed it to me. I had to fight to stay in the saddle as I fumbled for it—a jewelled hunting knife.
"I heard you scream," she said as I examined the blade in my hands. I'd never held one so finely crafted, so perfectly balanced. "And I hesitated. Not long, but I hesitated before I came running. Even though Phoe got there in time, I still broke my word in those seconds I waited." She jerked her chin at the knife. "It's yours. Don't bury it in my back, please."