The Fairy Letters: A FROST Series(TM) Novel (7 page)

“No,”
she snapped. “Too dangerous. We'd never win – their magic is strong, and
without Shasta's royal magic any attempt at besieging the castle is worthless.
Stupid girl – getting herself captured like that! I ought to have her executed
the moment we get her back.” She threw up her hands in consternation. “But we
cannot allow the Summer Court the political victory of keeping her. It wouldn't
do for troop morale – oh the
fool,
the little stubborn fool!”

“We
must get her back,” I assented, and although my mother's heart was full of
anger, mine was mixed with concern – she was my little sister, after all. “What
will you have me do?”

“We
need another hostage,” my mother said. “But there's no heir to the Summer
throne in Feyland – only...” She did not say the name, but a shiver passed
through my spine at the implication. “Only Breena,” she said coldly.

“What
do you propose, my Queen?” I ignored the feelings stirring within me. “Shall we
kill her?” (Breena – remember! It was not until you melted my heart and thawed
my cruelty that I rediscovered the love I once felt for you.)

“Don't
be a fool – what purpose would that serve? We must bring her here and offer her
as a hostage – trade her for Shasta. While she's here, we can influence her –
she has no memory of this war. Perhaps she can be far more persuaded than her
father or stepmother to concede to our demands. But first we need her...”

“But
where will we find her?” I asked. “The land beyond the Crystal River is a big
place.”

“You
forget I knew her mother,” said the Winter Queen. “I know where she was placed.
I gave them some silver for them to sell – I helped establish their home. Her
mother is an honorable enough woman – but I am afraid for her own good we
cannot involve Raine in this. She may fear too strongly for her daughter's
safety to allow us to do it straightforwardly – you must take the girl by
force.”

“I
take it we are less concerned about her safety,” I said.

“It
is better for us if she does not die,” said the Winter Queen. “She is useless
to us if she dies. But – I am not overly concerned what happens to her once
Shasta is restored to us. Perhaps Redleaf will be willing to take her back for
the express purpose of having her killed – the last thing the Autumn contingent
wants is a return of the rightful heiress to the throne.”

I
nodded.

“Or
else her father, overcome by his paternal affection,” she almost spat the
words, “will barter for her like the fool he is.” She scoffed. “In either case,
it doesn't matter – the princess Breena is useful to us, and I demand that you
find her, capture her, keep her hostage, and bring her back here.”

“Your
wish is my command, my Queen.” I bowed once again.

“I
hope you have no lingering...weaknesses for the girl,” my mother said.

“I
assure you,” I said. “All my love is for the Winter Court.”

“Hurry,
then,” said my mother. “I hear talk that the Pixies are plotting too – once the
girl turns sixteen, she will come into her magic, and then all creatures in
Feyland will be able to sense her. You must outstrip them – or die trying.”

And
so I went forth to seek you, Breena – forth to Gregory, Oregon. I still recall
the first sight of you I had in over ten years – the way I gasped at your
beauty, so much richer in real life than it had been in my paintings. I
swallowed down my pride and desire, of course – as far as I was concerned, you
were my enemy. You were dangerous to me – a Summer Princess – and I was
dangerous to you, for I was, after all, a fairy – and I knew the legends of
what fairy love could do to humans. I knew Raine had been a rare case – she had
not gone mad when kissed by your father – but I knew also what a threat fairies
posed to your kind.

I
remember how cold I was to you at first – trying to ignore the magic that poked
and prodded at my heart – trying to maintain my fairy demeanor – the demeanor
of a brave, proud soldier – the kind of which my mother would approve. I did
not want to show weakness, to succumb to my incipient desires. And yet the more
time I spent with you – on the run – as we stayed in my hunting lodge en route
to the Winter Court, the more I felt that our separation, the fading of our
love, was little more than an aberration – it was not real, only a nightmarish
echo of something false, something strange. The love I had once felt for you –
the love I refused to let myself feel for you –
that
was real. Only that
was real.

And
then our kiss. I remember that night in all its glory – the milk-white shining
of the night sky, the way the night was spread out like a fur coat over us,
protecting us, keeping us warm and shrouded in its darkness. I remember the
curve of your mouth, the soft pursing of your lips that filled my veins with
the fire of desire. I didn't just want to love you, I wanted to take you into
my arms, to possess you, to succumb to the danger – to let it consume me, to
feel the exhilaration of all my long-held principles, all my cruel competence,
burn to ash. I longed to burn – and you with me – and yet I held back. The
danger in the air was palpable. I knew that if you lacked the strength, the
ability to burn – that the danger would be too great. I would crush you – kill
you, even. Your madness would run rampant, unchecked – it would destroy you! I
had sworn once to destroy every member yet living of the Summer Court, and yet
I could never bring myself to do that to you. Staring into your eyes, holding
you in my arms, I felt that there was nothing in the world I wanted to do more
than to protect you, to keep you safe. My desire to kiss you, to let the
ravaging of my lips drive us both mad, was outweighed by my desire to cloister
you away from this dangerous power. I wanted to destroy you and to preserve you
at the same time – to kiss you and kill you at once!

And
then you made the decision for me. As our eyes locked together, as I wavered,
torn between my duty and my desire, you reached up, with a small but impish
smile, and touched your lips to mine. I still remember the sensation that
rushed through me at such a moment, a burst of hot magic – as white and searing
as a flame. This was not the carefully controlled magic I wielded in battle.
No, this was something different – something greater! This was the ancient
magic of the earth, the primeval secrets that made it shake and grow and kill
and give birth all at once, the magic so dangerous that fairies feared it most
of all: the magic of love.

I
felt the earth calling to us, gathering its magic and connecting with ours. And
all at once we were not merely two people kissing, two figures locked in loving
embrace, but rather part of something greater, part of the pulsating force that
tied us in to all life and all love everywhere – to the buzzing of flies and
the flapping of eagles, to the rushing of river-streams and the ripe hatching
of eggs – all the greatest magic of Feyland, the magic of birth and death
alike, entered into us, and we into it.

I
held you tighter, afraid – so afraid – that you would not be able to withstand
my gaze and my kiss, afraid this magic would destroy you as it had done so many
humans, afraid you would not be strong enough to bear it.

What
a fool I was to doubt you! When, my darling Breena – oh when have you
ever
been
anything but strong, far stronger than I! When I felt your lips kissing me
back, pressing hungrily against mine, powerful in their desire, I knew in
rapturous certainty that you were
not
mad – that I had not destroyed
you! No, the magic of our love had made you stronger than ever – the fairy side
of you defeated any potential human weaknesses.

I
will not deny it, Breena. You were not the first girl I had kissed in my life.
It was the duty of a good and manly soldier to have the customary dalliances
with tavern wenches and the customary flirtations with ladies of the court. But
never had any of those lips my lips had kissed been as real to me, as full of
magic and passion, as yours. Instantly, any thoughts of those half-hearted
indiscretions vanished, and there was nothing in my heart but my love for you –
there were no thoughts in my head but of kissing you, of holding you, of loving
you forever.

And
then I knew then what I know now – with that same certainty. You and I are
meant to be, Breena. Our love is not, as my mother fears, an affront to magic,
but rather its highest culmination – only in our love is the great magic of the
world consummated. Not the spells of the pixies, not the magic tools of our
soldiers, not even our respective royal magic can compare to it. I believe
that, Breena – I have to believe it, if I am not to lose all hope. In our love
there is something more than mere desire. There is true magic.

Letter 8

My Dearest
Breena,

Writing
to you as I did about our kiss brought to mind an old fable told by my mother.
She spoke often, as I have written to you, about Queen Tamara, the great Queen
who never loved, and whose military victories and powerful magical powers were
known throughout Feyland. But she spoke sometimes about the tragedy of Tamara's
older brother, he who would have been king. For Tamara's brother Artaud, much
like a certain Winter Prince you might recognize, fell in love with a mortal
girl on his quests beyond the Crystal River – a girl called Josefina. My mother
loved to recount to me and Shasta, when we were children, about the foolishness
of Artaud and Josefina. For Artaud carried his maiden, so-much-beloved, back to
his lair, in the hopes of making her his queen and ruling Feyland with her –
much to the consternation of Tamara, his younger sister, who had hoped to rule
and who, my mother was quick and keen to point out, deserved the title far more
than did her brother. But when they were married, at the great marriage-ceremony
in the heart of the Winter Palace, as he leaned in to kiss her his wings burst
forth from his tunic- great, scaly, silver things – just at the moment that his
lips touched her. Josefina screamed – she knew her beloved was a prince, but
she had not understood the power of magic until that moment – and as her terror
mixed in with the magic and love expressed by his kiss, the great magic of his
love was polluted, and instead of blessing Josefina, it cursed her, sending her
mad. It is this story that forms the basis of the tradition of which I have
spoken to you, the idea that a fairy's kiss sends a human mad.

In
her raging insanity, Josefina jumped from the balcony of the palace, plummeting
to her death, and Artaud was so distraught at her demise that he grabbed his
father's sword – the most powerful sword in the land – and hacked off his own
wings from his back, silver pouring down from the wounds. Only once his wings
lay in a bloodied, messy pile on the floor did he rush forth to the balcony,
and in a single cry - “Josefina!” - filled with anguish and despair – did he
jump too, and with his immortality sacrificed (for not even the Snowflake can
protect against such a strong magical attack) he too died a human's death, and
Tamara ascended to the throne in her brother's stead.

“Now,
the moral of this story,” my mother used to tell me, “is that we have one wise
ruler and one foolish ruler. Which was the wise, and which was the foolish?” We
all, eager to gain my mother's reserved approval, chirped in unison that Artaud
was the foolish fairy, and Tamara the wise one.

But
we – by which I mean Shasta and I – never quite gained the approval that we
sought. I speak no ill of my mother. She was and is a brave woman, a courageous
woman, a woman who has sacrificed much – who was even forced to kill the man
she could not help but love in order to save her kingdom. I can never doubt
that, nor can I begrudge her her strength. But as a child, I did not crave
strength. From my mother and my father alike I craved affection, love – the
warmth of their arms and the sweetness of their kisses. I received such things
from neither. It was not in the fairy way – at least not at the Winter Court –
to display one's emotions openly. That is not what one did – especially not for
my mother, who even more than my father, took seriously what she perceived to
be the ancient traditions of the Winter Court, and hence of Feyland (for she,
like all good Winter patriots, believed that the Winter traditions were the
most ancient and powerful, and that the ways of the Summer Court were but a
recent innovation on the part of more “modern” fairies).

I
will not deny that it was difficult growing up with such a mother. In your
world, I imagine, one would be scandalized to think that one's mother had
locked her son up in a dungeon for failing to win a fencing-match, or for
improperly reciting the dates of major battles in Feyland's history!

Indeed,
I often think back upon my childhood with a strange mix of nostalgia and faint
amusement. I cannot deny either that I am envious of the life you lived with
Raine in Oregon. Your mother, I knew – from the moment she agreed to give up
your father and leave Feyland forever – would do anything for you. She loved
you –
you
, Breena, not some abstract heir to the Summer Throne but
rather a real, flesh-and-blood individual, her child, her only daughter. My
mother's affection was of a wholly different kind. If she did love me, it was
as a prince first and a son second. She saw it as her royal duty to impose upon
me the kind of sharp discipline that would make me a good, strong, soldier – a
good protector of the land she loved so dearly. If she locked me in the dungeon
overnight, it was not out of lack of love for me that she did so – although
this was a hard lesson to learn at six or seven years of age – but rather
because she believed in all her inflexible firmness that it was the best way,
nay the only way, to protect me and protect Feyland. Even immortal fairies do
not last forever – if they are not killed by powerful magic, they step down
from the throne to retire  when they can no longer reign as well as they once
could. If she were to be killed – it would be my duty to take over Feyland, and
I cannot deny that her harshness made me a better fighter and a better ruler
than I would have been if I had been cooed over and coddled.