Seventeen Faeborn Years Ago
Cress wouldn’t let go of the sharp emerald-green branches even when his tiny faeborn hands stung. He climbed until the treetop teetered, and he released a giggle at the flutter in his stomach. There he gazed at the crystal skies of the Ever Corner of the North, smiling at the sky deities and the silk birds dancing in the heavens.
“Cressica!” his mother scolded as she emerged from their house of gold-spun straw. She repositioned the large pot balanced on her hip. “Come down from there, now!”
Cress began the descent, thinking of rice pancakes and warm lowbeast milk for breakfast. But he paused on the middle branch when a thundering rhythm brushed in from the trees. The branches shook beneath his fingers, and a gasp lifted from his mother below. Cress shoved a collection of silvery leaves out of the way to see what had arrived.
Standing before his mother’s small frame was a crossbeast. Cress’s six-year-old chest tightened as he took in twelve faeborn males on glittering reindeer emerging from the woods, too. They wore antler crowns that matched the beasts they rode.
“Peasant,” a sweet voice sang. Cress inched over the branch until he saw a woman sitting atop the crossbeast. Her long silver hair became wings in the wind, and her sharp nails looked ready to draw blood.
“Queene Levress.” The pot smashed to the ground as Cress’s mother dropped to a knee and lowered her eyes.
A smile curled on the Queene’s face. “You recognize me? Even all the way out here?”
“Of course, Your Majesty.”
“I’m impressed!” The woman on the crossbeast laughed. The sound made the hairs on Cress’s arms stand on end. He slid down a few more branches and peered through a crack between the tree’s limbs.
“Tell me your name,” the Queene demanded, and Cress’s mother flinched.
“My unhidden name is Glorya.”
“Not that one, you fool. Tell me your real name.”
His mother’s mouth moved, but no sound came out as the Queene’s crossbeast stepped closer. Dripping fangs came inches from his mother’s face, and Cress scrambled the rest of the way to the lowest branch. He crept to the end, trying not to shake the leaves as he came directly over the silver-haired Queene and her beast.
“Your name!” the Queene screamed, making the woods shudder and the grass turn to black ash in all directions. “I have all ten names memorized. Don’t make me recite them all.”
Cress’s mother released a whimper. “My real name is Elene Sidius Willow. But please, I’m not alone. I have a son—”
“Elene Sidius Willow,” the Queene chanted, and Cress watched his mother’s back stiffen. “My crossbeast is hungry. Feed it all the food you have.” Her wild smile returned. “And if my beast is still hungry when it’s finished, perhaps it will eat you, too.”
Heat rippled through Cress’s legs. He sprang from the branch and landed between his mother and the beast. The animal lurched back with a shriek as Cress raised his fists, feeling the low pulses of power growing in his veins.
“I’ll kill your crossbeast,” Cress promised the Queene who blinked down at him with large silver eyes. “And you,” he added, “if you don’t leave this instant. I don’t care how important you are.”
He brought cold wind up from the ground to prove it. It rippled through Cress’s long hair, brushing itself along his frost-coated eyes.
The Queene dismounted her crossbeast, but he didn’t bow or lower his gaze as his mother had, not even when she appeared over his childling frame.
The silver-haired woman stared at Cress in silence. Her gray eyes twinkled with the same sheen as the fluttering leaves above. Her stare was potent, and heavy, and hot as flame.
“I want him,” she said to the males on reindeer.
“Please!” Cress’s mother begged. “He’s too young—”
“I will pay you for him fairly.” The Queene finally tore her gaze from Cress and put in on Cress’s mother. An ounce of respect was in her tone for the first time. “You have a powerful child. I can give him a better life than this; one of faeborn riches and glory. I can be a worthy mother to him. I want him.”
Cress’s hands tightened to fists, and he glanced back to his mother’s tear-stained face. But he took in her quivering lip, the straw house at her back, and the dying garden in the yard. He thought about the cupboards that had grown empty and the well that had dried up.
His mother looked at him, and in her eyes, Cress saw that she was tempted—not because she wanted him to leave, but because she knew she could not give him a good life.
But Cress did not need a good life. Cress just needed his mother.
During quiet, candlelit dinners, his mother had whispered stories. Some of them were about this Queene. Most of them were dreadful. He realized she could not say no.
Cress brought his stare back to the gray-eyed female standing over him. “Mother,” he called back, “what do you need to be happy? Gold? A house?”
Cress’s mother did not reply.
“Give him to me, or I will let him fight my crossbeast as he wishes,” the Queene threatened over his head.
“That’s not necessary,” Cress said. “Give my mother everything she wants from this day forward. Give her safety, a large house, a fruitful garden, pretty clothes, and true happiness. And I will come with you in exchange for that.”
The Queene’s wide smile returned. “A fairy bargain. Smart boy,” she said, seeming to think it over. “I shall do as you wish on one condition: You must never speak to your faeborn mother again. I shall be your mother from this day forward. Your only mother.”
Cress heard a sob escape his mother. He thought of all the years she had fed him crushed grains, taught him how to play the old harp with missing strings, and how she had warned him of every fairy trick she knew.
Cress chewed on the inside of his cheek. “This bargain seems fair.”
“Get off your deer, Chimestar,” the Queene called back at one of the males with her. The male obeyed. “You will walk back. The boy will ride with us.”
“Wait,” Cress said.
The Queene and her males paused as dark clouds rolled in overhead, shadowing their faces. One or two of the reindeer staggered back toward the woods when ash formed at Cress’s feet and clawed its way over the ground toward them.
The Queene lifted a silver brow.
“If you betray my trust in regard to my mother”—Cress’s bright eyes narrowed and the wind changed directions, thrusting back the Queene’s silver hair—“I will kill your crossbeast and ensure you lose whatever power it gives you.”
For a moment, dead silence filled the yard.
Then, the Queene’s loud, crazed laughter rang through the forest.
