Chapter Eighteen: Emma Endless
2324 Words
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
EMMA ENDLESS
The magic mirror ended. It was like one minute, I was in the field that my grandfather had grown up in. Another minute, I was back in the room that Oberon had made specifically for me. I looked from the mirror, to the maidens. They had come back into the room sometime after the mirror had finished.
“Did you see?” Autumn asked.
I frowned. “I…I don’t know what I saw.”
“It was the truth,” Autumn said, “Oberon’s not a monster, and your grandfather wasn’t a crook. But there were very, very complicated things going on. He’s a man you could love, Emma, if you let yourself.”
I squinted at her. “He’s your King. How do I know that you’re impartial?”
“You don’t,” the girls said in unison, “but we want what is best for our king, and you are what’s best.”
Breeze took me by my hand. “Come along, your majesty. His Highness is waiting for you.”
Before I could ask anymore questions, the girls started walking, and I followed. I noticed, for the first time, I noticed the way the three girls skin shifted colors. Autumns was a warm brown, Breeze’s slightly red, and Fall’s was tinted green. As if they were the wind themselves. Sometimes, I thought I noticed leaves following them.
We stopped in front of a room with Oberon’s crest on the doors.
“Where are we?” I asked.
“The war room,” Breeze answered, “Summer and Winter have dueled for centuries, and there seems to be another war brewing between them. Oberon is trying to talk them down but it isn’t easy. He thought perhaps a visit from their new Queen might convince them things are settling down. Since there is no heir, it’s caused a lot of trouble.”
“His majesty hopes that with you presenting a united front, it will help to ease some of the strife,” Fall answered.
Autumn opened the door, and I found myself pushed inside.
In the room, there was a round table, with Oberon at the head of it, surrounded by the Lords and Ladies of the courts. There were eight in all. All of them wore human masks, no doubt for my benefit.
But their elements shown through. Winter had a tint of blue skin, and white hair. The Winter Lord had a long, white beard, and wore blue robes. Next to him was his Lady, with a round face, high cheeks, and white lips. Her hair was blue, with snow flakes stuck in it. Strangely, her skin glinted with flecks of gold.
There were two Ladies of fall, both with golden skin, and hair as red as the leaves on the trees. Their arms were locked around each other. They wore black dresses, with white necklines, like two, little, ghosts from a horror story.
There was one Lord of Summer, who mysteriously did not have a partner, but who glowed like the sun.
There was a Lord of Spring, who had vines wrapping around him, and green skin. Of course, the vines, I realized, were a snake. A snake that locked eyes at me, and hissed, at the same time that the Lord of Spring looked up at me.
“The Queen arrives,” he purred, “aren’t you a delight?”
“She’s my delight, Floris,” Oberon said curtly, from where he stood at the head of the table, “but yes, she is my Queen. She is your Queen. This is Emma.”
They looked at me expectantly, waiting for me to do something. I stared straight ahead, looking at Oberon. “I’m sorry my Lords, and my Ladies, but the King is mine now. He’s promised to show me my new home, and I intend on making him keep that promise. You’re dismissed.”
I stared at Oberon, waiting for his reaction.
A slow smile crossed his face. “Of course, my Queen. We’ll reconvene soon.”
“Oberon, I must protest,” the Lord of Summer said, “you haven’t resolved this, and it won’t stand----”
“It will,” Oberon hissed, his eyes flashing yellow, “Solis, I am a newly married man. I want to look at my wife’s face, not yours, however charming you are when you want to be. For now, return to your courts until I say otherwise.”
“You’ll bring ruin to us,” hissed the Lord of Summer, whose name was apparently Solis. Sparks danced on his skin. “I hope your human is worth it.” He disappeared, in a puff of smoke, and the others departed.
Autumn in flurries of leaves, Winter in flurries of snow, and Spring in a rainstorm.
I glanced at him. “Well?”
His lips curved into a smile. “Well, what?”
“Well, are you happy with yourself?” I asked. “I assume that spectacle was to serve as a warning?’
He rounded the table. “My sweet, I’ve no idea what it is that you’re talking about. I merely requested for you to meet me at the chamber, I did not request such a spectacle.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, “because you, you wanted them to be aware that simply because I was human, it didn’t mean that I was weak. You were worried about them trying to use me. I know.”
“How, precisely?” he asked with a raised eyebrow. “How?”
“I asked the mirror to show me if you could be a good man. I know. What you did for my grandfather, what you did for those children in World War Two….”
He shrugged. “I know what it is like to be unwanted. Faeries were not supposed to exist. We are the off spring of fallen angels, and humans. I don’t tolerate anyone who makes someone feel less than. It is the worst kind of evil you can do. It takes away hope, and without hope, there is no possibility for good in the world.”
I shook my head. “I don’t know what to make of you.”
“That’s precisely how I want it,” he told me, grabbing my arm and looping it through his, “you look ravishing in red, by the way.”
“The skirts too heavy,” I admitted, “I’m not used to this type of wear.”
“I could remove it, if you would like,” he suggested.
I put a hand on his chest, stopping him before he could get any further. “No, Oberon, you promised me a tour, and I want my tour. Besides, you still have yet to tell me what the quarrel is between Winter and Summer. Or why the Winter Lady mysteriously has sunlight glowing from her cheeks.”
“She is not Kristoff’s wife,” Oberon said, “the Lord of Winter. She is his daughter, but she is of age, and able to take the title of Lady of Winter. Since her father allows it, the two-sit council together. But Blizzard, Bliz as we call her, she has fallen in love with Solis. Solis found one of his soldiers killed when Bliz was caught sneaking back, and he suspects that Kristoff is responsible.”
“What happens in a faerie war?” I asked. “Will it come to it?”
He shook his head. “Not if I have anything to say about it. You forget with whom you speak. I can turn people to stone with my touch. Or water. Or dirt. Or a twig. I have the power to curse people however I wish. They would not dare strike against each other, without striking against me.”
I stared at him. “It seems they already did. The Summer Courts soldier was one of your subjects, and now that subject is dead. Isn’t that a direct hit against you?”
He took me in, as if seeing me for the first time. “I suppose it is. What are you suggesting, my sweet?”
“I’m suggesting that you investigate. Find the culprit and curse them to let them know that a move against the other courts is a move against you.”
“Aren’t you a surprise?” he grinned. “It is taking everything in my power not to ravish you right now.”
I blushed. “Isn’t that the point?”
He wrapped his hands around my waist, pulling me close to him. “Oh, it is. It is exactly the point. But we’re not going to get to the point yet. You see, I have a plan. A plan that involves the long haul.”
“What is the long haul?” I asked.
“The long haul is that you are going to be mine, Emma Endless. Not for nine months, not for a year. But for eternity. Ever after. That’s what’s going to happen. You, and me, ever after.”
“I thought you wanted an heir.”
“I do want an heir,” he told me, “but I don’t simply want an heir, I want a family. I am ancient, Emma. I have been around for centuries, and I have been alone enough. The faeries world is not one for love. That’s the real reason I wanted a human wife. Because humans can love.”
“I…” I blinked, stunned by his words. “Oberon, are you saying that faeries can’t love?”
“Oh, we can,” he said, running his hands through my long, jet black hair, “but the thing about centuries, it wears on love. When you’re around as long as I have been, it eats at you. Petty fights, grievances…. immortality is not the blessing that others would make it out to be. Hell is never being able to escape your past, and Heaven is acceptance of yourself.”
“So, you want me because I’ll die young?”
“Oh, you’ll never die, Emma Endless.” He stroked my cheek, as if it were the most precious thing in the world to him. “You are my wife, my Queen. Where I go, you go.”
We stood there in the war room, looking at each other. There are only a few gazes in your life that change you. The look your parents get when you know they’re proud of you, and the look of a lover when they realize that you are something special. It was that look that Oberon gave to me.
That look that made a stirring in my heart, that I knew I shouldn’t have felt, but I was feeling anyway. It was an all-encompassing feeling, to be seen truly as I was for the first time by someone.
Not the object of Clark’s daydreams, the little sister that my siblings had to protect, or my mother’s burden. But as me, a woman. Not any woman either. As of three nights ago, the Queen of faerie.
I never thought, in a million years, that I would ever feel that way. Let alone that it would be Oberon who did it, with a single, meaningful gaze.
“Come on,” he said, surprising me by picking me up, “you can’t fly, but I can. I want to show you the world, Emma. Our world. So that you can understand what I’m fighting for, when I say I want to love you. That I want you to love me.”
“Show me,” I said, “show me everything.”
We walked out of the war room together, out to one of the many balconies that the castle had. Faeries had to have places to fly off from, after all. When we went outside, we looked out to the forest. I wrapped my arms around his neck, preparing for the flight.
“Ready?” he asked
“Ready,” I said with a nod.
I shouldn’t have let myself get swept up into it. If I let myself get swept up into it, I would have to stay in faerie. I would never see Ben again, I would never see my family again. I would give everything up for Oberon, for a life that I had never wanted in the first place.
But oh, how easy it was to get swept away.
Oberon pushed off the ground, his wings spread out from his back, flying us into the air. As he flew us, I soared, and my heart did too. A nervous laugh escaped me, a wide a smile crossed his face, and before I could think of what I was doing I was kissing him.
Whether because we were flying, or because he made me feel like I was, I didn’t know. All I knew was that the rush of being up in the air with him was like nothing I had ever felt before. And I didn’t know how to let that go.
Or if I would even want to.
- Writer
