Many of the gifts were for me. There were jewels and gowns and furs and paintings—done on ice canvases that made everything bleed together far more than watercolours—and a strange, empty box with a base of some sort of pale velvet that the faerie claimed would sprout white roses with diamonds in them if left outside at midday, and blue roses with rubies if left outside at midnight. There were other nonsensical presents along these lines, including a saddle of shapeless grey leather that would allow me to ride the mountain fog, though no explanation was given as to why I should wish to do this. The only presents I truly appreciated came in the form of ice cream, which the Hidden Ones are obsessed with and cover with sea salt and nectar from their winter flowers.
The king turned to beam at me lovingly every few moments, and I forced a smile in return while my hands, hidden in my sleeves, clenched into fists. The brief clarity I had felt during Wendell’s visit was gone, and my thoughts were foggy. I always felt worse in the king’s presence, by which I mean that it was harder to stop my mind from being befuddled and to avoid those disquieting instances where I lost myself for entire chunks of time. It made sense, I suppose; he was the source of the enchantments that held the palace together, that shut his world away from mortal eyes, and that no doubt altered time to suit his fancy. I was like a small planet that, when it drifted too near a massive star, began to tear itself apart.
The more I thought about our plan, the more wrong it seemed, and the more that wrongness curdled inside me. It wasn’t just that it would mean replacing one vicious faerie king with a more vicious queen; it didn’t feel at all like the proper ending to such a story. Mortal maidens forced to marry faerie kings never just lop their heads off and walk away—they are cleverer than that. I thought of the Gottland tale of the hairdresser who wove curses into her braids, so that every time her husband touched her, one of his cherished hunting dogs—who had been menacing the peasants of the countryside—would turn into a fox or some such (the transformations grow progressively more ludicrous as the story unfolds, culminating in a cricket); also of the long-winded epic that is a popular fireside tale in Yorkshire of the shepherdess who enlisted the help of the common fae of the fields to torment her wicked husband by spinning scraps of wool into dolls so uncanny they eventually drove him mad.
The plan Wendell had devised with the others felt like taking the story I’d fallen into and folding it to suit me, putting ugly creases down the middle. And yet, as much as I was convinced that there was another door out of the tale somewhere, I couldn’t see it.
My gaze floated over the assembled Folk—they glimmered like a lake full of sunlight, even more shapeshifting as a crowd than they are individually. Where was the queen?
There were a few Folk from elsewhere, from beyond Ljosland, which did not seem to surprise anyone. To my eyes, they seemed even less distinct than the Hidden Ones, barely more than shadows in lovely gowns and fur cloaks, though I don’t know if that was my faulty mortal sight or something the king had done to elevate the splendor of his own people.
I itched for my notebook. Whether or not the Folk have regular dealings with Folk of other realms is the sort of question scholars argue over for hours at conferences, and there I was, casually watching the answer stroll up and give me presents.
The next guest drove all such thoughts from my mind. Wendell swept up to the dais, short and drab and indistinct, and gave me and the king a bow. The lords and ladies who had been watching the proceedings turned back to their whispered gossip, dismissing him entirely. I saw the king frown briefly, as if some memory had been triggered. Wendell appeared perfectly at his ease, even a little bored, as he set at my feet a pair of shoes.
I sucked in my breath. The shoes were of white leather and fur, with impractical heels that would add half a foot to my height, but unlike every other adornment I had been presented with, they did not sparkle with frost or ice-encrusted jewels. Somehow, he had woven the fur with the petals of cherry blossoms, as if the pale beast who had owned the pelt had rubbed its back against a tree. When I touched them, a spring breeze fluttered against my fingers, and I smelled rain and green, growing things.
“If you would allow me the honour, Your Highness?” Wendell said. In one quick, graceful motion, he slid the boots from my feet and replaced them with the shoes. They fit perfectly, and oh, they were so warming. I felt astonished that I hadn’t realized how cold my feet had been before.
“Thank you,” I said, trying to read the meaning of this gift on his unfamiliar face. But he gave me no assistance, only smiled, bowed again to the king, and faded back into obscurity.
The king was watching me with a frown between his lovely blue eyes. “Are you all right, my darling? Your heart is thundering as if it wishes to escape from you.”
I swallowed—it would be an understatement to call his knowledge of my heart rate an unpleasant surprise. “The shoes are beautiful.”
“Ah,” he said, smiling. I didn’t think him an idiot, only his expectations of me were so limited that I never found him difficult to lie to. I had the sense that he viewed all mortals as akin to his pet ravens, whose lives revolve around the treats he tosses their way, which made me wonder if he’d ever had a comeuppance before, and I don’t mean by a fellow monarch. The literature is, after all, strewn with examples of arrogant faerie lords given their due by artless maidens and practical rustics.
“I should have guessed,” he said. “I’ve been wrong to spoil you with jewels and servants, haven’t I? Never fear. After our wedding, I will have my shoemakers fill your rooms to bursting with boots of calfskin and rabbit fur, all covered in diamonds, flowers, and frost; you shall have a different pair for each day of your life.”
I didn’t care for the way he said this, as if the life of a mortal, measured in ridiculous shoes, was so puny a thing that there was nothing at all extravagant about such a present. He turned his attention to the three guests approaching our thrones.
If my heart had been suspiciously thundering before, now it was a racehorse spooked to a gallop. The mortals stood out against the lovely watercolour gathering of Folk like accidental splotches of ink on a canvas. Aud, Finn, and Aslaug walked steadily, staring in front of them, though as the thrones loomed closer, I could see their resolution falter.
Aud was the bravest. She kept a little ahead of the others, dressed simply but well in her furs with her hair intricately braided. Given her smallness, it was all the more impressive, and I could see the king start to smile. Finn was pale, but I could see that, alongside his fear, there was amusement, as if he could see no other way to react to such an impossible situation.
Aslaug surprised me the most. She had gained weight, and her gaze had lost its cloudiness—she looked like an altogether different person. When she met my gaze, she smiled—a quick, fierce thing that was also a promise.
“Do you know them?” the king enquired, politely nodding at the villagers as they bowed and curtsied.
“Yes,” I said, for there was no reason to lie about it. “They are—friends of mine.”
“You honour us, Your Highness,” Aud said, and swept me another note-perfect curtsey. “And we are honoured to be invited here to pay our humble respects to His Majesty and his bride-to-be, as well as to welcome what I hope will be a new era of friendship between mortals and Folk. It has been too long since we have been honoured with an invitation to your realm.”
“I quite agree,” the king said. “And you put it prettily too—I know very well there were no invitations made to mortals during the interregnum—only abductions. Rest assured such occurrences will no longer be tolerated.”
He gave her one of his kind, beautiful smiles, and I could see that Finn and Aslaug were dazzled; Aud smiled back, though I knew her well enough now to detect a certain opacity about it.
“If I might be so bold as to present His Highness with a token of the mortal realm,” Aud said. “It is nothing so fine as the gifts you have so far received.”
“Then I’m sure I shall like it all the more,” he said with such graceful condescension that several ladies in the audience swooned.
Aud held up the bottle she was carrying. “This is our finest honey wine, which has been maturing for nearly a century of our years. I can attest that there is no choicer vintage in the mortal world.”
The king looked positively charmed by such a humble gift. Glasses were brought out by faerie servants, and Aud filled them all, emptying the bottle among the king’s nearest courtiers. They drank politely, and showed no ill effects beyond a few grimaces—and why should they? The wine in the bottle was not poisoned.
Aud moved to offer the king a glass, paused, smiled, and handed it to me first. My hand shook as I gripped the stem, splashing wine on my sleeve. The wrongness of what we were doing overwhelmed me then, leaving me lightheaded. Those other stories flickered through my mind like dark birds.