“The day I was born, mere minutes after I was delivered, they took me from my mother’s arms and brought me here. To the palace. I was presented to Queen Amitha, Vanora’s mother.” He pauses. “You must understand, here in the Northlands, it was seen as a great honor to give birth to the next Remnant. I was not hidden away like Enid, not abandoned like you. My birth parents were elevated in social rank, lavished with gold, given great jewels and a parcel of land by the North Sea in exchange for producing me.”
“For giving you up,” I correct softly.
Penn shrugs. “Might makes right, as they say. Queen Amitha raised me well enough, for all that she could not give me a true mother’s love. Even in her grief, she was not cruel. She wassoft-spoken. Gentle. Too gentle, perhaps, since she joined her husband in the skies only a decade after his soul departed.”
“A pity her daughter did not inherit those same traits.”
“Vanora was born simmering with a bitterness no amount of love could sweeten. I don’t think she ever accepted my sudden arrival in her life—especially as it coincided with her father’s death. His pyre was not even cold when I was brought to Caeldera, a newborn babe, a commoner at that, bearing a Remnant mark…” His expression is torn between amusement and apathy. “At the age of five, she could not understand why I possessed that which she was denied. Why his legacy had passed to me instead of her, a child of his own blood. Her bitterness, already steaming, boiled over.”
“And your birth parents…you never saw them again?”
“No. They relinquished all claim to me. But that is not abnormal. In the fae courts, it has always been so—the strongest of us taking up the reins of rule, steering the kingdoms. After the uprising, when the emperor was killed, when the maegic fled, it became even more essential. There was no one to unite the four elemental courts. No singular power to protect our borders from invasion, to shield our people from slaughter. We were on our own.” His deep voice is reflective. “Two of the strongholds fell shortly after the wars began. To this day, they sit in ruins.”
“Air and Earth,” I murmur. “You told me once before.”
And, since, I had read more about them in Soren’s tome. It was a bevy of interesting information—even if the author’s descriptions were dry and left something to be desired. Just last week, before I’d been kidnapped, I’d read a passage about the slow erosion of maegic, even in the strongholds that had survived the Cull.
Maegical gifts grow rarer with each generation. Even among the oldest high fae bloodlines, wherepower was once a guarantee, there is no longer an assurance that a child will be born with even the most basic abilities in wielding an element. Several families interviewed for this account confessed, under the condition of anonymity, that their newest offspring cannot spark a candle or fill a goblet, let alone heal after an injury.
Others say they have been in incapable of conceiving at all, leading to rising fears that the entire maegical race may die out within the next century. And while it is speculated that a child born to one of the Remnants—or, perhaps, a pair—might produce a stronger elemental talent, thus far there has been no evidence to confirm those hopeful theories.
In the margins, Soren had scribbled,Surprised he didn’t take the liberty to comment about my legions of potential bastards.
Only he could make a joke out of the total eradication of our people.
“Yes,” Penn says, calling me back to the present. “The Fire Court survived, but barely. Thousands were killed at the hands of Reavers and Frostlanders, who’d joined the mortal usurpers in their bloody regime. Dyved’s armies fought them back, but at great cost.” He stares at his home, brows furrowed, fingers flexing against the stone. “Afterward, King Vorath used what power he possessed to hold the kingdom together. He sealed our borders from all outside the plateau, closed the trade routes in and out. His reign was a time of rigid control and strict compliance. Of isolation and suspicion and fear. So much fear. That was the Dyved of Vanora’s childhood. That was the clay from which she was molded.”
“It does not excuse her actions.”
“Excuse them? No. Explain them? Possibly. She was no more than a young girl when her father pushed his powers too far, trying to keep the wards up. He died in the process. And then…”
“You were born.”
“Yes. The next Fire Remnant,” he agrees with a hint of acerbity. “Vanora was Vorath’s heir by birth. But I have his power. I have his flame.” His hand lifts to his chest, pressing against his bandolier, against the mark I know lies etched on the skin beneath. “There are many who want me to step in and take the throne. It is mine by right—far more than it has ever been hers.”
“Why not take it, then?”
He looks at me, brows high on his forehead. “Vanora may be vain and self-centered, but she has not been a bad steward of the throne. Dyved thrives. The people are happy. For more than a century now, she has been a decent enough ruler. I allow her lavish dinners and ridiculous balls and aggrandizing displays. In exchange, I keep my freedom. Freedom to travel beyond the plateau. To reopen our borders, reestablish our trade routes. To make alliances that once seemed an impossibility.” He glances back at the city. “I was barely out of my leading strings when I set out to the Water Court for the first time with a contingent of trusted soldiers at my back. I wanted to see if it still existed. When I saw that it did, I demanded a meeting with the king.”
“Soren?”
His nod is short. “Gods, he must’ve been amused by the sight of me, half-grown, rattling his gates with my list of demands. But he did let me in. More, he actually listened without dismissing my idea for a treaty outright.” There is a pause. “He may be a miserable, misanthropic bastard, but he is true to his word. We have been allies ever since, sworn to aid each other in war. Tohold the Northlands against invasion. To stave off the blight as long as possible.”
“When we were leaving the Acrine Hold, he mentioned your royal obligations to attend his sister’s wedding?”
“Princess Arwen.” Penn sighs. “She is to be married at midsummer. I suppose I will have to make an appearance. Even if she were amenable to the idea, Vanora is now too frail to travel as far as Llyr.”
I chew my lip. “And me? Am I to attend?”
The air turns static with unspoken tension. “Do you want to?”
“I would like to see Hylios,” I admit. “I am curious about the Water Court.”
The silence lingers for a breathless moment. “As I have told you many times before, Rhya…you are no prisoner here. You may go where you wish. I have no right to keep you.”
My gaze traces the lines of his profile. Two dark eyes, turned away from me. The sharp, straight slope of his nose. That stubborn mouth, so often set in a frown. I have seen but a handful of smiles from that mouth, and far fewer laughs.
I catch myself wondering what the formidable Pendefyre of Dyved might be like, had he been born without that mark on his chest, without that inferno raging beneath his skin. Had he grown up the son of a common blacksmith instead of a child of the prophecy. A sudden image of him—strong shoulders unburdened by the weight of destiny, bright smile in a soot-streaked face, handsome enough to capture the attention of every girl in his village—flashes through my mind, there and gone in the space of a heartbeat.