The Fae King's Ruin

The Princess and the Preparation

Aislin had Ola call her cousin, discarding the papers she’d brought to breakfast with Avery on her desk. Her reports and correspondences had to wait for now as there were more important matters she had to attend to. 

She paced as she waited for Aelthrys, searching her brain for all she knew of the Council of Magic but found that department quite lacking. The Unseelie never bothered with the Council of Magic, as far as she knew, since they’d been poised to see Aislin’s people as the enemy for the longest time.

It did not sit well with her that she would be fighting a hell of a lot of bias from whoever held positions within the Council when Aislin’s people had also been subject to injustices at their hand. But she would be very ridiculous indeed if she turned a seat down.

This could be her chance to become known for something else after she marries Avery. A chance to do something more than what her position as Queen of the Faes could allow.

Aelthrys didn’t bother knocking, shoving her door open instead as Ola frowned at him from behind. Aislin nodded to her in thanks, before she closed the door and turned to her cousin’s silver-cored black eyes scanned her up and down, his chest rising and falling rapidly. As if he’d run here in a haste.

“I’m fine,” she assured him, a bit put out by his worrying. “If you keep going like this and thinking that every time I need you something wrong has happened to me, you’d die very early.”

He rolled his eyes. Running both hands through his cropped silver hair and sighed heavily. “I was in the middle of dealing with something,” he said. “What is it that you needed me for?”

Aislin sat on the edge of her bed, fiddling with her iron manacles. “I have been offered a seat on the Council of Magic,” she told him, her voice hushed as she looked up at her cousin’s stunned face. “There’s a meeting tomorrow that I have been invited to attend.”

“You must go!” Aelthrys exclaimed, pulling up her desk chair and sitting directly across from her. “This is important, Aislin.”

“I know that, cousin, I’m not stupid.” She sighed sharply. “What do you know about the Council?”

Aelthrys frowned, sitting back on the chair and stretching his legs out from under him. “I know the Mistress Ella serves as head of the Council,” he murmured. “And there are seats for the main magical races of the realm. There are the werewolves, the merpeople, the orcs, the vampires. The Children of Light, the inverse of the Fallen who’d been once our allies, also has a seat on the Council. Then there’s who they call the Keepers, who are mainly unreliable seers unless they’ve been trained very well. And then the Forges. They are uncharacteristically smart and hold quite possibly every knowledge ever known to every race. I’m afraid I don’t know who represents them on the Council, however.”

At his apologetic tone, Aislin shook her head. “That’s quite all right. Avery had asked Sir Res to teach me all about them this afternoon. Hopefully.”

She didn’t know if Avery had managed to get his Hand to tutor her and supposed she’d know when the time came. Aelthrys raised a brow at that but didn’t comment on it any further.

“It’s good that your betrothed cares about you coming to that meeting prepared. An advantage to him as well, since he’d be doubly represented on the Council.”

Aislin frowned. “I won’t be there to further his agendas, Aelthrys. I have ideas of my own I want to champion as well.”

He gave her a look that told her she was stupid, a look only he could give and not receive any backlash from her. “Whatever plan he might have for the future of the Fae race, that concerns you too. I guarantee you’d find yourself championing his cause as well as he would champion yours. You’re both Fae. It’s bound to happen.”

She frowned. “Then isn’t it a bit redundant?” she asked. “Avery and I come from the same race. And as soon as the Treaty is signed and comes into effect, we wouldn’t even be part of two different courts. Why would the Queen offer me a seat?”

She looked to Aelthrys who was deep in thought and staring off into space. “You spent time with her,” Aislin said. “What’s she like?”

“Vicious,” he said immediately. “She antagonized Drakos at every turn and never intended to escape your brother’s clutches alive. I knew that. If she had it her way, the moment she set sights on you and your brother during the festival, she might have broke free of her chains and brought the whole castle down with her.”

Aislin shuddered at that. Not because she could have died at the hands of the woman she would be meeting tomorrow, but because that said woman had been broken enough by her brother to want that kind of revenge. 

She looked down at her manacled wrists. The iron bits that rendered her Celestial power useless unless she removed them.

“Would she win?” she asked out of curiosity. “Power to power, would she win against me?”

Aelthrys blinked at her but said, “She has centuries on you. Of course, she’d win. But none of all this explains why she’d invite you to her court in the first place.”

Aislin thought about that, chewing on her lip as she did so. Without knowing anything about the Queen other than she was ‘vicious’ as Aelthrys said, it was near impossible to discern why she was doing this. 

But she did know Avery, at least to a deeper degree than she did the Queen. Was it possible that this could be his doing? Could he have asked the Queen to grant her the seat?

She raised the same questions to Aelthrys who shrugged and said, “Possibly.” Then he looked at her, his intense eyes boring into hers. “Look. The ‘why’ does not matter right now, Aislin. Being on their Council is a huge deal either way. When the King’s Hand comes by and teaches you all about it, listen. Absorb as much as you can. You have always been a bright student.”

Aelthrys left with very little fanfare, going back to whatever issue or some other that he was dealing with before she made him come running. Her maids came and went, delivering her tea and asking her what else she might need but Aislin could only request a dress for her to wear tomorrow. She laid in bed, thinking of Avery, the Council, and the Queen of All Magic, and slowly slipped back into the mindset that there might be a ploy against her that was afoot.

At exactly two in the afternoon (she knew because she had a watch now), a knock came at her door. Aislin stood, brushing her dress down and checking her hair in the mirror before she opened the door and was greeted by the Hand’s smiling face. His cheeks were tinged with a slight gold, blue eyes alight with something that might have been amusement at her expense. He wore a fine jacket that matched his eyes, his hands clasped behind his back as he bowed.

“Hello, Princess Aislin,” he greeted pleasantly. “Ready for your lessons?”

She nervously nodded. “Sir Res,” she murmured. “Let me just get my pen and—”

“There will be no need for that,” Res interrupted, a corner of his smile quirking higher. “Everything will be provided for you. Follow me, please.”

And so Aislin did, closing her bedroom door behind her with a firm ‘click’. Sir Res kept a respectful distance from her as they walked, leading her down a flight of stairs until they reached the main landing. She looked around, realizing that they were near the Silver Hall.

Did he plan on teaching her about the Council of Magic there? That space seemed awfully large for a class with just one student. But she was wrong when only a few moments later, she was led a different corridor and the strong scent of orange blossoms floated up to her.

“Where are we going?” she asked, her head spinning as she also identified freesias.

“I have arranged for you to learn in an environment I wished my instructors thought to use when I was a student.” He smirked over his shoulder, showing a perfect set of white teeth. “It’s a beautiful day. One shouldn’t waste it inside a palace made of diamonds.”

He pushed a set of doors open and gallantly let her through first. Beyond them, she stepped inside a large garden, protected by a dome that trapped heat inside the greenhouse. It was humid, but not uncomfortable, especially with this many scents of flowers and blooms reaching her where she stood. 

Aislin couldn’t help but grin at the butterflies that fluttered past her, a bird’s mating call sounding not too far away. Vines of enchanted snapdragons tried to nip at her as she walked past, unable to contain her giggling.

“Behave,” Sir Res admonished the snapdragons, before saying to her, “Avery has a friend from this witching village in Salem. These snapdragons were a gift from him. Along with those flirty dahlias.”

Aislin turned and indeed saw the pink, yellow, and orange flowers simpering as Sir Res walked past. She giggled. 

“They seem to have taken a liking to you.”

He glanced at the flowers as he arranged a set of books that were sitting on top of a glass garden table. A tea service sat on a trolley nearby, smoke coming out of the tea pot’s spout.

“I come here often to get a few minutes of solitude from running the kingdom on the King’s behalf.” He chuckled. “This part of the palace is very out of the way, at least when you’re always desperately trying to be seen, so they dahlias and the snapdragons don’t see that many people coming in here.”

Aislin gingerly sat on one of the glass chairs. Not glass, she realized after a few minutes, but diamond as well like the rest of the palace. They were cushioned at least, which was a relief.

“I thought we’d start off with pictures,” he said pulling out photographs from an envelope as he sat opposite her. “Avery told me that you’ve been offered a seat on the Council. Congratulations.”

She knew her smile was brittle as she said, “Thank you, Sir Res.”

“Please call me Res. The ‘Sir’ bit is what I reserve for my, er, lady friends.”

Aislin choked on a laugh, blushing at the crude implication. “Good to know,” she mumbled, before sitting up and gesturing to the photos. “Teach away.”

Res held up a photograph of a female with slender features, a golden tan that Aislin instantly admired, corn-colored hair to her shoulders, wide-set blue eyes, a pert nose, and full lips. She supposed she was beautiful, but somehow Aislin couldn’t see herself being friends with this person.

“The way I’ll be teaching you about the Council members entails a few bits of juicy gossip as well, because I do believe that you need to know the dirty, dirty stuff to really know your footing with someone.” He tapped a long finger on the photograph. “This is Anaïs. Representative of the Keepers. She’s cuckoo if you ask me, and Avery once said that she tried to seduce the Mistress’ mate, so make of that what you will. Her visions are very powerful, however, much like the rest of her kin, compared to the Children of Light who also have the gift of prophecy to some degree.”

Aislin took the picture from Res. “You don’t like her much,” she observed. “What did she do?”

“Oh, nothing really. None of the other Council members like her too. You’ll understand why soon enough.” Res gave her a quick grin before moving on to a picture of a male with blood-red eyes, skin paler than hers, and hair as dark as the night that fell down his back. “This is the Vampire King, Caeldon. He’s a close friend of the Mistress, mated with an heir already born to him. He’s decent if a little intimidating to be in a room with. Avery’s good friends with him too, so he’ll probably put you under a microscope when you meet him.”

They continued like this for a couple of hours. Res was incredibly knowledgeable with the Council and she was grateful for the kind of education he gave her about them. It probably was not the kind that Avery had in mind for her, but it was useful nonetheless. And talking with Res was much like talking to one of her gossipy friends back in Cetha. That calmed her down more than anything else.

She looked at the photographs one last time, Res having given them for her to study as she pleased and felt curiosity now more than fear of what awaited her tomorrow.