The only time Aury had seen a water mage with her own eyes was during the war when the fighting had come to Illumahrah. Five Wylfen and their trained scar wolves had torn a path in the forest, heading for the Agate Palace and the Fae Queen’s treasure.
When the alarm call had gone up from the sentries, Aury had trailed Werian outside, where he quickly joined his fellow purebloods in battle with bow and arrow. Werian was a master marksman, but the Wylfen’s wolves ripped into the fae, the arrows not slowing them much.
Just when Aury had begun to lose hope, a single rider had crashed through the trees, raised his staff, and swung it around his head. The water mage’s movements brought the dew off the leaves of every plant in the garden, every tree in the wood, then froze the droplets and shot them like shards of glass. Wylfen fell to their knees, clawing at their shredded eyes and desperate to escape the ice that cut them as well as a thousand tiny knives.
Using every bit of his inborn magical energy, he’d saved the fae court, Werian and Aury included, and then slid from his horse and slumped to the ground unconscious. The Fae Queen had housed him until he recovered his strength and gave the mage a feast when he woke.
Would Aury someday be capable of magic so powerful? Her blood raced at the idea. Yes, she would. Somehow. Some way.
Snowy hills spread out beyond the Forest of Illumahrah, and Aury urged Goldheart down a steep incline and into the wide meadows that housed the Silver River. Past the meadows, dark mountains supported the amethyst snow clouds.
That was where her betrothed lived, somewhere up there with his bloodthirsty kin. He was probably murdering people right now and drinking their blood. She shivered and set her jaw. She wouldn’t be afraid of him. Never. She would be polite but would simply let him know that the marriage wasn’t to be. Athellore had told her his people were to gain farmland from the union of the two kingdoms. She’d simply let this Prince Filip know that even though they weren’t going to marry, when she was crowned queen of Lore, she’d make certain his people had that land as agreed. No marriage needed to take place, surely. They would have a secret verbal agreement, binding through her royal blood as she’d seen Prince Werian do behind his mother’s back once. Prince Filip could just march right back up to his mountain abode and stay there for eternity, or however long mountain elves lived.
Aside from the fact that they longed for bloodshed and quite possibly ate their enemies, her knowledge about elves was muddled. They didn’t have the healing power of their fae cousins, but they could run like the wind and fight like no other beings. That much she was aware of. According to her royal parents, if there were more mountain elves, they could probably have destroyed the Wylfen long ago.
Goldheart stumbled, and something flashed in the sunlight. She’d thrown a shoe. Snarling at the delay, Aury dismounted and gave the mare a pat. “We’ll get you taken care of, darling.” She inhaled the sweet scent of horse and let herself forget about the evil elven mage who would become her husband if she didn’t figure out a plan. If she were a strong enough water mage, she could surely put the wedding off indefinitely, right?
Fatigued from travel, they entered a middling village filled with curious children and the sound of a blacksmith, which was welcome. While the smith aided Goldheart, Aury walked to the market with Hilda, Gytha, and Eawynn in tow. And about three dozen human villagers who had probably never seen a fae or a princess.
The villagers tentatively peppered the fae with questions that Eawynn answered before Hilda or Gytha had the chance. Aury stepped on a stone and stopped to examine a hole in her boot.
She removed it and held it up. “Looks like I need a shoe as well. I should be wearing stouter boots than these anyway. Children?”
A bevy of rosy-cheeked faces were immediately staring up at her. It was cute but also a tiny bit creepy how fast they moved. There hadn’t been many young ones at the fae court, but it seemed the humans—my kind, Aury corrected herself—bred as often as the fae brushed their fine hair.
“Anyone know where I can have my boot mended?”
The children took her hands. Based on how her parents had acted when they’d stopped at a trading outpost bursting with the merchant’s little ones, they would have a fit if they saw this. Aury grinned and let the children drag her down the snowy road, all of them talking at once.
“The cobbler is ill.”
“But another cobbler sent his niece, and she’s lovely.”
Aury raised an eyebrow. “Looks probably have nothing to do with the ability to make solid footwear.”
A little girl glared. “You don’t know.”
A boy punched the girl’s arm, and she howled before Aury pulled them apart.
The boy took Aury’s hand and held it like she was Dragon Queen Elixane’s treasure from the ancient stories. “She is a princess. She knows everything.”
Flinching at the use of her title, she silently cursed the king and queen for not having her trained to be the person they now expected her to be. “Thank you, but I assure you I do not,” Aury corrected. Thank the Source, she’d had Werian around to learn from.
Hilda, Gytha, and Eawynn trailed along, whispering about the sky and what looked like a coming snowstorm.
The cobbler’s shop squatted between a tailor and a chandler. Sure enough, inside, the cobbler himself lay on a pallet, his face pale, while a pretty woman a few years younger than Aury worked at a table covered in strips of leather, varying sizes of nails, and small tools. The cobbler’s replacement—the niece of a master cobbler from three villages away, as the children told it—pried a shoe apart with a metal clamping tool, the name of which Aury was ignorant.
The little boy at Aury’s side gripped her fingers and gasped. “She’s sinister-handed!”
The cobbler looked up, her eyes glazed from long focus. “Oh, hello. May I help you? I’m Rhianne.” She didn’t seem to have heard the boy, but he was right. The cobbler’s niece was indeed left-handed.
A little girl ran from the shop, bumping into Hilda and Gytha, who fussed at her in their uptight fae manner.
The boy tugged at Aury’s fingers. “Come, Princess Aurora. She is evil.”
A foolish superstition. “I seriously doubt it, lad. Go on, if your courage fails you, but I’ll stay and get my boot mended.”
The cobbler—Rhianne, she had called herself—smiled, eyes shining. “Thank you for staying. I hoped this village would be less superstitious than my own. I guess I’m to be the outcast no matter where I go. Oh! Oh, I should have…” She worked her way around the table and gave a curtsey. “Your Majesty. I must confess, I didn’t know we had a princess. But I don’t see many heralds in my small village.”
Aury set her boot on the table. “I just found out about the whole thing myself, so don’t worry.”
“Really?” Rhianne took the boot and examined the torn sole. “Do you care to tell the tale?”
“My parents hid me at the fae court until now. To protect me from a curse set on my head at my infant betrothal.”
Rhianne’s eyes bulged. “So the story of the Matchweaver’s curse is true?”
And every human seemed to know the story. Every human except the one the curse had affected most. Nice. “I suppose. My parents betrothed me without asking the Witch, and she wasn’t best pleased.”