"Worried for me?" Finn gulped.
She had felt that she had come very close to death during her labor, but had been trying to convince herself it was emotional and out of touch with reality.
But if even the Fae had been worried, things had been dire indeed.
"I'm fine now, as you can see," She tried to put on a brave smile.
"Perhaps outwardly. I see your heart, dear one. Your tears are known to us, and your pain. You are not ready to speak of it yet, but with time, you may." Gwen's words were quiet and calm, as if trying to steady the emotions roiling in Finn's stomach.
"I hear the questions in your mind," She continued. Finn thought of the angry thoughts she'd occasionally aimed at the absent Fae and felt a little ashamed.
"There is little to be sorry for. Your thoughts cannot shock me, and your emotions do not hurt me. You have wanted help, and I have wanted to help you, but I cannot violate the Sorcerer's Will to do so."
"Is he still alive?" Finn asked, voicing one of her most pervasive questions.
"He is eternal," Gwen was uncharacteristically straightforward. It was almost startling.
"Is his Will... good? For people? For the world? This world?" Finn's brow furrowed, and Gwen reverted back to her habit of giving enigmatic non-answers that gave rise to even more questions.
"People will come to see what their actions reap. The Sorcerer's Will shall come to pass." The Fae's expression was one of reverence.
If Mayra were there, she'd have a sarcastic retort, Finn realized. Gwen's eyes held amusement as the Fae read that from her thoughts.
"I'm quite muddled, unfortunately," Finn blinked at her. "I'm sure I have several dozen pressing things I'd love to know, or learn, or tell you, but I can't think of a single one at the moment." She covered a yawn and blinked again, harder, feeling the sleep deprivation pulling her under its current. "I don't suppose you could help me know what I need to ask for help with?"
"You said my presence alone would be helpful," Gwen smiled.
"It is. I'm feeling comforted by it. So comforted that I could lay down and fall asleep here in the grass," Finn admitted. "Like I did that day in Faeland."
"Perhaps you can come for a visit soon. For some rest." Gwen seemed to ponder the possibility.
"I would dearly love that." Finn smiled. "Your home is the most beautiful world I've ever seen."
"So far." Gwen said. "I'll speak with the other Fae and see if that is amenable. Rest is a help that we love to give."
"So Far?" Finn asked. "But how would I go to any others...?"
But the Fae was already gone, leaving Finn to rub her eyes and consider her two strange encounters of the day. She couldn't glean any particularly helpful answers from either one, and only felt tired and confused by it all.
Maybe this was a weird dream she could wake up from.
________
Brenna's life felt like a waking nightmare.
Though she had escaped the men, the search parties had come close to finding her several times. She'd had to use every ounce of cleverness in her to keep from being found out.
At first, she wanted to run as far away as she could from the sea and hope to never be near any of it again, but something kept her close. Guilt?
Some hope that she could undo all the damage she'd done, though she had no idea how. It had been many days since she'd fled. Time was passing, and she still didn't know what could be done to help Edmar.
Poor man.
He seemed so strong and capable. A little arrogant, perhaps, but he had been kind to her in a moment where she needed it. He deserved better than to be held captive by those herbs she never should have used.
What had even possessed her to do so? She sighed.
She'd dreamed the night prior that the herbs had worked to enthrall her future husband, giving her a life happy ever after. She woke absolutely convinced that it could not be… not without using what she swore she never would again. Why had she given into that silly fancy?
Brenna hit her forehead in self condemnation. "What a useless person I am."
"Even useless things can be made useful again." A small voice carried on the wind.
Brenna bolted to a standing position. She'd not escaped with any sort of weapon, and raised a sturdy stick she'd gotten from an obliging tree.
"Who's there?" She demanded.
"An old acquaintance." A child stepped out from behind a tree. No, not a child. A halfling.
"I know you," Brenna said, blinking. She remembered the little man as serving Titania closely and doing much of her personal work. He was rarely seen by others.
"Roy. I know you never bothered to ask," He said flatly.
"Roy... good to see you again." She tried to smile. She'd heard rumors that all the halflings were freed from Titania's spell of slavery, but was it true? She prepared to run, just in case. Hopefully her long legs could outrun his short ones. Were halflings good runners? She'd never had occasion to find out.
"Is it? I hoped it might be," He never smiled, despite the words that were friendly on the surface. "There is one who wants a word with you."
Her eyes widened as he snapped his fingers, and a portal into the Darkness opened.
"No," Brenna whispered. "No.... No, I won't go."
"I'm not asking you to come," an insidious whisper reached her ears, caressing them in the way that a stranger's whisper from behind sends unpleasant shivers down a person's spine. "Only listen."
Brenna's feet were all but frozen in place, terrified.
"What do you want?" She asked. As she understood it, the Void needed someone to follow it to be able to come into this world. She would steadfastly refuse, no matter what.
"Nothing, just yet," The whisper soothed. There were characteristics of Titania's voice, woven in with a dozen others, changing and morphing like an eerie song. "You've been so much help already."
"What do you mean?" Brenna would be indignant, if she weren't so scared. Maybe the Void already had a follower, and was just toying with her before killing her.
"Come now," Roy rolled his eyes. "No one is that oblivious."
"Hush," The whisper chastised, "Brenna was an innocent, empty flower before I molded her. She knows only what I've taught."
The woman's eyes hardened in pride. She was more than what Titania had made her to be. She'd survived on her own for two years! She'd made a life... well, tried to make a life... and failed miserably.
"I haven't done anything." She defended herself.
"Of course you have, Brenna. You're so loyal, you serve me without even realizing," The whispers turned sweet, almost motherly.
"I don't understand," Came the reply.
"You think those herbs were always that strong? No, Roy replaced them for you. You did beautifully. You followed the dream I gave you precisely... and that bumbling son of the Commodore took up the subtle suggestion that dinner with his mother would be nice. It went perfectly. You assumed just as I predicted and sidled right up to him like the seductress you are. He'll be ours forever."
"Ours?" Brenna was intensely disturbed that the Void could manipulate her dreams. She didn't like it at all, but felt a near-panic at the rest of the implication. "I don't serve you. I'm not following you."
"No, not for the moment. You will, however." The whispers held no disappointment, just an infuriating certainty that made Brenna cower. Surely no entity had so much power. She had her own will and could keep herself out of trouble.
"What will you do, if they find you? You will be executed, or jailed, or worse. You would fare no better with the Cetoans than you would with the Klain or Rhone. You have nowhere to go, Pet, no one to serve you, no one to love you, take care of you... except me."
"I can't," Brenna insisted. "I won't. No matter what."
It seemed foolhardy to be so contradictory in the face of such an evil and powerful creature, even if it did seem to be currently bound in its own world and whispering to her through a doorway opened by a halfling. Or was that just a ruse?
"Oh, you will. As you find yourself rejected, hated from all sides, not a friend in the world, and no one but yourself to blame for your many mistakes throughout your life, you will realize it is better to follow me than to be adrift, alone in this world. Not a soul to tend you when you are ill.
"When things get darkest for you, it will be too tempting. You will befriend the Darkness, and serve me, instead of rejecting it. When the light turns its back on you, there is nothing left. Nothing in this world for you, but Darkness. And you will embrace it."