The Queen's Choice

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This was met with the expected gasps and shivers, and Marissa pulled her quilt up to her chin.

“It’s said that these creatures, called Sepulchres, slip through windows and cracks in doors and steal children away to their dungeons somewhere beneath the ground. No one knows what happens then, except that the children are never seen again.”

There was silence for a moment, then Marissa whimpered, “That’s not true, is it?”

“Don’t worry. Even if it is, Sepulchres never go after big girls like you and Maggie.” Shea tweaked her younger sister’s nose, drawing a weak smile.

“Shea,” I admonished. “Your sisters are scared.”

“I know that.”

“Then tell them the truth.”

“I did!”

I sighed, feeling presumptuous for challenging Shea in front of her sisters, but hating the fear in Marissa’s enormous dark eyes.

“Not completely.”

“Then by all means, straighten me out! What is the truth?”

I turned to the little girl, ignoring Shea’s tightly crossed arms, and told the story as it was repeated in Chrior.

“A long time ago, when humans and Fae shared the lands now occupied by your race, there were these creatures called Sepulchres. They were nourished by Fae magic, but they never attacked children. And when the Faeries left the human world, all the Sepulchres died. So, you see, it’s actually a sad story, not a scary one. There’s nothing to worry your pretty head about.”

Marissa grinned and curled up on her side. After kisses and good-nights, Shea and I returned to the bedroom we jointly occupied, my mind mulling over her version of the tale.

In Chrior, Sepulchres were just another story told to demonize the humans, who had viewed us as heathens, reprobates, and usurpers, and driven us out of their lands. The Sepulchres had been trapped on the human side of the Road and condemned to death without access to our magic. Humans apparently believed the creatures still existed, while the Fae believed them to be extinct, their species one massive casualty of the war.

“So you really don’t believe in Sepulchres?” Shea demanded as soon as our bedroom door had closed, hands on her hips. “Because I’ve heard of children going missing, back when we lived in Tairmor.”

“Tairmor is a big city, and I have no doubt children go missing. But I don’t think Sepulchres are to blame.”

“How can you be sure?”

I flipped my hair over my shoulders, exasperated. “I’m not sure. But I do know that as long as monsters and demons are taking the blame for kidnappings, they’re providing excellent scapegoats for real criminals. And I’m Fae, remember? I think I know more about magic and magical creatures than you do. Besides, Marissa and Maggie would have been lying awake all night waiting for some horror to slip through the window if I hadn’t told them what they needed to hear. Isn’t that what’s important?”

Shea scowled but said no more, though she prepared for bed with a vengeance. I could tell she was still irked, but I didn’t give her the satisfaction of acknowledging it. I was plenty irked myself. Children didn’t deserve to be scared. Illumina wasn’t much older than Shea’s sisters, and she’d lived most of her life in fear. It had led to her bizarre habits, her unpredictability, a desperation, perhaps, to be more frightening than the things that frightened her. It had taken more than a scary story to subvert Illumina’s mind in this way, but the thought of Marissa or Magdalene slinking into the woods to injure their own bodies the way Illumina did was enough to caution me against beginning the pattern.

* * *

Other than collecting the promised map and jerky from Thatcher, I went about my usual business the next day, occasionally ruminating on the best way to find Zabriel. My cousin, according to Queen Ubiqua, had his father’s spirit. I’d seen it in him, though I hadn’t known the human Prince of the Fae whom some had viewed as an interloper, others as a blessing. Zabriel had always been focused on the next thing, the lands he wanted to travel, the people he would meet or, in the interim, the worlds he invented in his mind. There was always that elusive adventure up ahead. Now I wondered if it had been a way for him to escape his painful present. In any case, the current day had never mattered as much to him as someday.

Ubiqua had been afraid to let Zabriel cross the Bloody Road in the aftermath of her husband’s death. Her son had no elemental connection, a deficiency that had been obvious from a young age. Most Fae manifested their element within days of birth and learned to communicate with Nature at the same rate they learned to talk, but young Zabriel had feared water, abhorred the dubious flickering of flames, and been helpless against the cold wind. There had been hope for an Earth connection, since he’d loved the feel of dirt under his nails and the sun on his skin, but an incident with poison berries dashed that hope. Even as toddlers, Earth Fae instinctively knew the difference between kind plants and cruel ones, and Zabriel was oblivious. It was normal in light of the evidence that Ubiqua should fear for her son’s life against the curse of the Road. In her zeal to protect him, she’d forbidden him to go near it, and had kept Zabriel’s birth a secret from his human relatives. She wanted no incentive for him to leave the Faerie Realm, no eager arms awaiting him on the other side of the boundary. As a result, he’d believed they didn’t want him, maybe even that they blamed him for his father’s death.

Had Ubiqua suspected Zabriel harbored these fears, she surely would have told him the truth sooner, but she hadn’t done so until he was fifteen, at which point chaos had ensued, and her son’s reckless abandon had steered him to brave a Crossing of his own accord. When he’d gone missing, the entire Realm had been searched; it was ultimately assumed he’d gone into human lands when not a trace of him was found, even on or near the Bloody Road. No news of him had since reached the Queen or my father’s ambassadors in the Warckum Territory.

Would Zabriel have tried to find his father’s family? It would have been an easy task considering their prominence, another fact I had not shared with Shea. She didn’t need to know of my cousin’s connection to the man she viewed as responsible for her family’s strife. I ultimately rejected the idea that Zabriel would have sought out the Governor—when he’d abandoned his claim to the throne, he’d been tired of expectations and being defined by the blood in his veins. He had no memories of his father, a fact he never hesitated to share with anyone who happened to ripple the surface of his deep-rooted bitterness toward the human for siring him. I couldn’t picture Zabriel pursuing a history and a legacy he did not want.

Where, then, would he have gone? A place where he would blend in, where he would be difficult to track. A large city. The capital? Tairmor was busy, but it was also the seat of the Governor’s power, and offered little excitement once one adapted to its curiosities and pace. Sheness, however, brimmed with foreigners, trade, new technologies, and adventure, or so I’d heard, and the port city was as far from the Balsam Forest as the continent allowed. It was more likely Zabriel would have traveled there. After all, he saw himself as an abomination, neither human nor Fae, and one was likely to find many abominations in Sheness.

A shudder passed through me at this thought. Was I now an abomination, too? Shaking off the notion, I forced myself to concentrate only on Zabriel, settling on Sheness for my destination. Two years had passed since his disappearance, and I had to start somewhere.

I waited until evening to tell Shea of my decision to depart, when we were together in her room. A significant part of me wanted to just steal away, avoid goodbyes and potential trouble with Thatcher, but Shea and I had become friends, and I owed her an explanation. She would be lonely without me, and the resulting guilt I felt was more intense than I had anticipated. I was prepared, however, to deal with her disappointment. To my consternation, when I finally forced the confession past my lips, I encountered resolve rather than disappointment, and I realized how well Thatcher understood his daughter.

“I’m going with you,” she proclaimed, a stubborn set to her chin.

I shook my head, but Shea wasn’t put off.

“What are you going to do, Anya? You have to find a way to live among the humans now. Do you think that’s going to be easy? Maybe in your Realm people respect teenage girls, but they don’t here. We’re bothersome and in the way, too young to be taken seriously and too old to be innocent. The world doesn’t want us, and if we don’t have each other, we have nothing. I need to leave this place, and you’re going to want a friend out there in the Territory. You might even need one.”

I rubbed my temple, my feelings aligning with hers—I didn’t want to be alone. But how could I say yes when I’d promised Thatcher that I’d turn her down?

“What about your family?”

“They’ll be fine without me. I haven’t been here in my heart in a long time.”

“Your father doesn’t want you to leave.”

Shea slowly blinked her chocolate-brown eyes, pondering the meaning of my statement.

“Did my father talk to you?” She read the answer in my expression, and her eyes narrowed. “He has no right to forbid you from taking me with you. This isn’t his decision, it’s mine.”