You see, my glamour manifested itself much earlier than that of my many cousins. And it was harnessed by emotion, not instinct. As you can imagine, a toddler certainly has enough emotion to rattle the windows…. Coupled with the magic was, well… rearing me was trying for my mother, to say the least.
My mother, you should know, is the sister of the Autumn King. I grew up alongside his heirs, but without the knowledge of who my own father was. However, for a time, it seemed fortunate I was a bastard born. Of royal blood, I was too distant from the throne to be a threat, yet received all the comforts the princes and princesses had.
I was definitely a likable playmate for my cousins—more so than their own siblings. Power plays were part of their early education, and I was the perfect candidate for their practice. They used to try to win my favor, my alliance, once it was proven I was gifted.
Those gifts, however, as they only continued to grow, soon turned me into an enemy to all—regardless of the fact I wasn’t a direct descent to the king. Or old enough to control the glamour. The older courtiers would often drop subtle hints about wanting me to be in power, to disrupt the lineage. This terrified my mother, who still only suspected why she bore a more powerful child than her brother.
So, when I was only fifty years old, still growing into my ears, we left court. An old estate at the edge of the realm, one that had been gifted to her centuries ago, became our refuge. We lived there many decades, undisturbed, by any but the servants she trusted. It was during this time we learned the extent of my glamour—and why I was so powerful.
You see, you and I, Acantha, are the same. We are half breeds, fae that belong only to the border lands because of our blood. And that makes us incredibly valuable, in spite of what we are told by polite society. My mother never divulged to any other than me that my father was a lord of the Summer Court, because she didn’t want to be cast out by her family. It is one thing, as you know, to be bastard born… another to be a half breed.
The danger now, however, was that I wasn’t just a half breed, but capable of unthinkable greatness. I, as a child, had no desire for such things. And my mother was more concerned with my safety than putting me on her brother’s throne. Others wouldn’t feel that way. I would be a threat, an asset, a curiosity. She didn’t want me to do more than live for myself.
But, the truth came out soon enough.
I was just passed my first century, and itching to be free of the estate. I missed the court we had left, the magnificent halls we had once graced. To say I was a spoiled brat would have been an understatement—I may have been sheltered, but my sheltering had given me an ego, a sense of elite that replaced my once groveling demeanor. No more was the faeling that cowed before his cousins. By then, I recalled the seeds planted in my mind of usurping my king, and thought I was worthy of such a feat.
So when our first visitors in fifty year graced our meek manor, I was very put out when my mother sent me away to my rooms. It was my cousin, the second oldest prince, who visited. Being denied a visit made me impetuous. I not only stormed out of my mother’s sight upon her dismissal, but trashed my rooms.
A brilliant plan came to me, eventually. I was quite talented with transformation by then, and I favored the shape of a barn owl. Autumnal courtiers often shapeshift, but into woodland creatures such as deer, squirrels, or foxes. A barn owl, and other birds, are more prevalent in Summer. My mother wasn’t surprised that that was the form I most often took. I was only forbidden to share this talent with the servants.
So I transformed, with plans to spy on the guest.
Flying from window to window, I eventually found my cousin Oakley and my mother talking in a study. I perched at the windowsill, and listened to my cousin share gossip of the court with my mother. He asked where I was, and she informed him, to my utter shock, that I had been taken severally ill a few years before and died.
I was a fool. I thought she was selfishly denying my chance to re-enter society. It would be years before I understood how the lie had been told to protect me from Oakley and his kin. All I felt was the injustice of my situation.
Without thought, I flew through an open window into the study. Lighting upon my mother’s piano, I quickly caught the attention of the room’s inhabitants. Conversation was forgotten, as my cousin jumped to his feet. He offered his assistance to his noble aunt, offering to remove the bird from her sight.
Before he could cross the room to me, however, I let a talon fall upon the keys. My mother, across the way, was frozen. Her eyes were wide, pleading with me not to go on. I locked my wide yellow eyes upon her and played the next note in the melody.
A silent ‘No,’ was mouthed in my direction.
Paying her no heed, I launched into the song. It was slow going with talons, but it was clear that I was playing the melody my mother composed for the Autumn court many years ago.
Oakley watched in silent fascination for a moment. Or perhaps it was horror. The he hissed:
‘Summer scum! They dare spy on a lady of Autumn!’
He drew his sword, and in a ruffle of feathers, I sprung off the piano. My hoot of panic rang through the room, drowning out the last of the piano’s strain. The swinging sword, singing in it’s own metallic way through the air, smashed the keys I had just stood upon.
My mother cried out for Oakley to stop, as I flew to a stag’s mounted head above some shelves. Perching there I watched my cousin spin around and seek me out. Mother, running between the shelves and her nephew demanded again that he stop.
‘Summer dares to cross our borders, dares to spy upon you! I will have their blood!’
‘Oakley, please! On my soul, I implore you to leave the creature be. It is not as it seems.’
Oakley, brutish as he was, did stop the swing of his sword, to hear my mother out. She, however, looked as if she’d rather run herself through with that blade than admit who I really was. I could practically see her trying to formulate a lie in her mind—but nothing was coming out her. Or perhaps she was finally tired of hiding the truth from everyone.
Either way, she gestured for me to come down.
Feeling as though I had won a victory, I did so with bravado. I summersaulted halfway through the air, mid transformation, before landing at my cousin’s feet, once more high-fae in appearance. Oakley backed away though. The thump of appreciation or camaraderie I had anticipated did not come. There was only a sneer of disdain, of disgust.
‘Felix… you live.’
I bowed to my cousin, finding the tip of a sword at my chin before I could straighten.
‘A half-blood,’ he purred, reminding me that this cousin also took to shape shifting—into a mountain lion, ‘We suspected, but didn’t dare dishonor your mother with such lies.’
Turning, he spit in my mother’s direction, ‘Father will be pleased to know he now has reason to behead his whore of a sister.’
As shocked as I was by his reaction, surprised as I was to find my mother had been right to fear the court’s reaction to my heritage, this disrespect to Mother grounded me. It heated my anger. The feeling was a strong flame of autumn ruby and summer sapphire. It twisted and turned around my heart, burning it to ash like the log of a fire.
The flames poured from my finger tips in an uncontrollable wreck, that I cared not to reign over. I simply let it destroy.
Prince Oakley never stood a chance.
Mother alone, her lullaby voice the cooling water that quenched the flames, called me back to my senses. She was unharmed, though much of the study smoldered around the charred corpse of my cousin. My own horror, for having so quickly lost my temper, for having taken a life, left me a shell.
The music my mother was renowned for eventually wrung out the woe within my soul, restoring me. Or most of me—for the boy I was, was gone. It was replaced with a man that finally understood why I had been raised in fear. Why I could never return to court unless I was able to play the part of an autumn lord.
Acantha, you must understand: that is our curse and gift, we noble fae of half-blood. We are the most powerful fae of all, because two courts call to us. Two seasons are at our disposal to wield. All we need do is master our emotions, and the rest is ours for the taking.
I haven’t taken, yet.
Once my mother explained that the noble blood of two courts was why I must hide, and why I was so powerful, the training I had only half heartedly endured before became my life. I lived and breathed autumn and summer for years. Decades. But I also learned how to conceal one half of me. Though my glamour was the of two seasons, I could make it look as though only one resided within. It was hard work, and painful—like denying one of my hands, so I could use the other.
But I did that for my mother. She had protected me. I could and would make the sacrifice so she could rejoin her family.
The Autumn Court never knew what became of Oakley. At least not the truth. A clumsy servant dropping coals was to blame for the fire. And when I mastered the art of hiding my summer half, we were welcomed back to the king’s halls.
More years passed as I played the part of advisor to the heirs of the throne, and the king himself. I was a court favorite, all the while a wolf in sheep’s skin. It was when I finally awoke and understood how tired I too had become of hiding my real self away, that I made a choice. A choice to begin a new court—a court for those forced to the border lands, without a place to belong, without submerging part of their identity. A court for those between.
And I ask, Acantha, if you will join me in this dream. I ask that you leave Winter and help me create the Between Court.
I cannot do it without one of Spring and Winter.”
O.M.G. I LOVE It! I absolutely love his telling of the story! And the backstory of what you have already written. 😉
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