The Fae King's Ruin

The Princess, The King, and the Advent

The very next day, after a night Res would remember for the rest of his life for a multitude of reasons (one of them being nursing a massive hangover and a hundred-degree fever afterward), Avery brought Aislin to Locke Village for her very first training ever.

He could tell she was nervous as she kept fidgeting with her iron manacles and her eyes kept going distant whenever they lapsed into silence. Avery let her be with her thoughts, choosing instead to honor his promise to her that he would wait until she was ready to share whatever it is that bothered her and continued to walk through the portal he conjured up for the both of them.

When they entered the village, he led her straight to the woods at the opposite end of the square, ignoring the trail and leading her past the Wells to where the Burning Pyre once stood. Where there used to be just a wide circle of barren land around the wooden pyre, flowers and grass had now started to grow. Standing in the middle of that circle, they were met by Ella, Laurie, Zachary, and Peia Solaris.

Her amethyst eyes sparkling, Ella met them halfway and grinned as he and Aislin bowed. “Ready to kick some asses, Princess Aislin?”

Aislin weakly smiled. “Not really,” she admitted. “I still don’t think this is a great idea.”

Ella waved her worry away. “You’ll be fine. And you’ve got Zachary as your practice dummy.” She winked conspiratorially at Aislin. “Make of that what you will. All I’m saying is you have a free pass to take all your anger out at him.”

“Hey!” the Fallen in question protested. “That’s not fair. I was a good little angel and behaved the whole week.” Beside him, the beatific woman shook her head and planted her face into her hand.

Laurie smiled at Aislin and Avery, coming up beside Ella and wrapping his arms around her shoulder. “Ella will be keeping the rest of us safe, and we’re already so far out the village that you can’t hurt them. The only thing we need to do left is take those manacles off so you can show us what you got.”

Scared, midnight-blue eyes looked up at Avery. He kissed her cheek. “I’ll be right here,” he murmured to her, wishing he could do more than just stand a few feet away from her. “I believe in you.”

When Aislin nodded, he took a step back and let Laurie take the iron wristbands off with a handheld automatic saw that must have been one of the Chief’s new inventions just for this purpose. He watched with anxiety as he carefully welded off the manacles one after the other. Once all of them were off, he quickly took several steps back and let Ella create the force field that once protected them from Aislin’s powers.

***

Aislin knew that her arms were shaking, but all she could feel was the sudden rush of her magic coursing through her freely. She shivered and her knees threatened to buckle as she was hit by the full force of raw magical energy that she had been suppressing all her life.

Fear shot through her as she felt her magic rise along with it, and before Aislin knew it, a shockwave burst forth from her center in one giant arc.

The shockwave was like a magical catharsis. As soon as it left Aislin, it was like a huge load was taken off her shoulders. In some part of her mind that was not overtaken by the sheer magnitude of the power within her, she remembered Aelthrys telling her once that it was imperative she calmed herself.

She also remembered thinking how terrible it was as advice to a panicking twenty-year-old surrounded by most of the Unseelie court’s nobles who’ve arrived just to judge whether Aislin could be taught to master her powers or if the only solution was to silence it forever. But she could think of nothing else to halt the magic that threatened for another shockwave of relief.

That was when the wind picked up and the mighty trees surrounding Locke Village started to groan in protest. It was so fast that it nearly took Aislin off of her feet. She screamed as she felt a hurricane form so low to the ground with her standing in the eye of the storm. Aislin squeezed her eyes shut, wishing for the blackness to consume her power as it did her vision. Within seconds, everything stopped and quieted.

There was a stillness that surrounded Aislin. There was no wind that blew past. No sound came from the forest. She couldn’t even hear her own self breathing. She decided to c***k an eye open and saw stars.

No, they weren’t stars. Aislin saw galaxies swirling around her, orbiting her as if she was the center of the universe. Awed, she reached out, trying to ascertain to herself if they were real or just conjured up. The galaxies shied away just before she could touch them. Aislin laughed to herself, unable to figure out what she had done.

Aislin… Aislin…

She turned to follow the sound, but she couldn’t see where it came from. It sounded far away even if Aislin was vaguely sure she never moved once from that spot in the middle of that eerie clearing. Had she traveled to another realm and it was another voice calling her? Did she manage to open up a portal?

Aislin…

Closing her eyes again, she tried picturing Avery at the exact spot where he had been only minutes ago. Aislin tried to focus on the sound of her name being called over and over again, feeling her powers slowly respond to her, tugging at her center, before she felt urgent hands wrapped around both of her arms, shaking her.

When she blinked her eyes open, she was back in the clearing and the others were all staring at her with varying degrees of shock. One, in particular, bore into her like the noon-day sun.

“Avery,” she breathed, stepping away from his grasp. “What happened?”

It took Aislin a while to realize that there were tears in his eyes as he sniffed and said, “You tell me! I just watched you summon a storm and go into a trance.”

A trance. So she didn’t travel or summon a portal as she thought. Behind Avery, Ella approached, hands still poised in front of her and Aislin realized that there was a bubble that surrounded her and separated her from Avery.

“How are you feeling, Aislin?” the Queen of All Magic asked, sounding more than a little awed.

She frowned, taking a moment to assess herself. Truth be told, Aislin felt like she was having an out-of-body experience. Her magic spiked at random times, just keeping her lucid enough to follow her reality and her train of thought. Her gaze dropped to her wrists, realizing that this was the longest time that she had her manacles off. Someone always snapped the iron bands on her the moment the initial catharsis showed signs of dying down and Aislin wondered if this calm she was feeling now would have happened as well if Aelthrys and her brother waited long enough to ask her what she was feeling.

The grasp Aislin had on her control was tenuous, but she started to shake with tears as she realized it wasn’t impossible to fully quell them.

She sobbed, both from the fear and joy of finally being able to see herself one day being free of the iron manacles and knew as she looked up at the Mistress’ expression that she understood what Aislin felt.

Ella put a hand on Avery’s shoulder, the force field surrounding Aislin melting away. “Let her rest up in the cabin for a while, then we’ll discuss what to do.” Her amethyst gaze shifted to Aislin. “Do you trust yourself enough to go into the village without the iron?”

Aislin knew what she was asking. Could she stop herself from accidentally wiping off the charming village from the magical maps? She thought about it long and hard before shaking her head.

“Not right now,” she muttered, feeling the exhaustion weighing on her. 

Ella nodded in understanding and looked to her mate. He produced iron bracelets that were more fashionable than the prisoner-like design of her old ones. There were even diamonds embedded into the metal in an alternating design and Aislin knew just from whom, exactly, the diamonds came from.

“Hopefully, these will be more tolerable than the ones you were using. And we don’t have to solder these on and off for you,” the Queen’s mate kindly explained. “There is a latch here and you only have to press this tiny slot so the locking mechanism release. Go try them on.”

Aislin hesitantly took the bracelets from him and ran her fingers over the diamonds. She looked up at Avery, tears threatening to fall from her eyes all over again. 

“They don’t make me look like a slave anymore.”

Avery cried, and even the Queen looked away as she blinked back her tears. Aislin put the bracelets on, feeling her powers go quiet all over again, and started to slowly smile at Laurie.

“Thank you so much for this wonderful gift,” Aislin said bowing her head. “I won’t ever forget it.”

Gray eyes crinkled up at her as he smiled. “I hope that someday I don’t ever have to see you wear it.”

***

As soon as Aislin was sound asleep and recovering from using her magic for the first time freely, Avery left to meet with Ella and the others at the Locke family home. All the while, the events from earlier kept playing in his mind’s eye over and over again.

He had never seen anything like it. Aislin was like a bomb that detonated before his eyes and watching her inside that bubble of force, trapped and alone, was nothing short of a mesmerizing horror that he could not stop. 

The power she had was unique. An even, perfect mix that resounded with her Fae and Celestial bloodline. The burst of her magic caused the ground to shake and the trees to actually splinter in some places, one that Avery quickly healed just so Aislin had no aftermath to see and feel guilty about. The dry storm and her bloodcurdling scream were no joke either. He wanted to run to Aislin for fear that she might not survive the way her magic was siphoning itself to ease the strain on her reserves. And when she stilled, when all he could see were the whites of her eyes as she slipped into a trance, he felt cold fear slip down his spine.

He didn’t know what she saw while in that trance, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to find out. Avery had a niggling suspicion that if he had not shaken her as he did, she would have probably been in that trance for a very long time.

Avery pushed open the door where he was greeted by everyone that was already gathered by the fire. Xaero was also there, and he shook his head when the General’s gaze slipped past his shoulder.

“She is asleep,” he told them. “I don’t think we’ll make it to Alfheim tonight.”

“Then stay at the cabin,” Ebenezer said, handing him a cup and a saucer with his favorite tea before he had even sat down on the armchair. “You know you are both welcome to stay any time you like.”

Avery nodded his thanks. Ella turned to him, a hand on her chin as she stood by the fire. “What do you think?” she asked, and Avery understood without her explaining.

“Fae,” he said in confirmation. “But made different with the Celestial aspects of it.”

Zachary and Peia Solaris nodded. “I’m not sure if we could call it Fae and Celestial, even,” the Commander commented, leaning on his elbows. “The Princess has different powers entirely.”

“But that trance was purely Celestial,” Peia Solaris said, a contemplative look on her face. “Trances could only go either one of two ways: perhaps it is that she was seeing something like a vision, or she was in between worlds.”

Ella’s eyes shifted to Zachary’s. “Like how you called me into the Dream Realm?”

The Commander shook his head slowly. “The Dream Realm IS a world in a way. Solaris said she might be ‘in between’ them.” He turned to his golden kin. “Are you thinking what I am thinking?”

“Can you think a little louder?” Xaero drawled from his chair, twirling a knife in his hands. “Some of us want to know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Peia Solaris smirked at Zachary. “He is referring to a very rare ability amongst our people,” she said, each word sounding like a song from her lips. “I have only encountered one of its kind, but the child died young from an unrelated disease. It’s called worldwalking. If we are right and the Princess Aislin does possess its gift, then she can access worlds that we never even knew existed. She’d have the secrets of the universes at the tip of her fingers. She can create and erase planets and galaxies should she choose to.”

Avery swallowed hard and felt fear for his fiancée’s life lance through him. How could it be that one person could have so much power the way she did? His eyes shifted to the Queen, but she was already lost in thought. He knew how Ella desired to bring all magical life to a world where they did not have to hide. She had been researching all about it for years before the war put a pause on her plans.

So, what if Aislin was the answer to her problems all along? What if Aislin could create an entire planet for her to make Ella’s dreams come true of a world where she could be free?

But that was Ella. What if the others, whom he already knew disapproved of her plans to relocate, thought Aislin was a threat to their agendas? Better yet, what if they still distrusted Aislin so thoroughly even after the Mistress herself had welcomed her to their circle, and decided to kill her and claim they were acting in the defense of the Council?

For whatever reason it was, Avery knew this kind of power would make Aislin a target. It would endanger her probably for the rest of her life.

“This stays between us,” he said to them, leaving no room for argument in his voice that even Ella looked startled by him. But Avery stared them all down. “We don’t know for sure what it is she saw while in that trance and I want no word of this leaving this room. We might not have enemies that we know of, we might be living in an age of peace, but I am not risking my future wife’s life for some speculation.”

Xaero coc*ked a brow. “What if it wasn’t speculation? What if she really is a worldwalker?”

“Then once she feels up to a little field trip, we’ll go world-hopping,” he sneered.

Ella crossed her arms. “We will not say a word,” she promised. “But if she does possess this gift, Avery, we will need safety measures.”

His eyes narrowed. “Like what? Never taking off her bracelets?”

Her lips pinched into a hard line. “Of course not, and I don’t know what yet. But we’ll think of something. And this changes nothing. Aislin still needs to train.”

Avery nodded and reluctantly sipped on his tea. There was nothing he could do about it yet and Aislin indeed needed to train. As far as he was concerned, this ability she might have wasn’t even a big deal. He just hoped that other people would find it the same and keep Aislin safe in the process.