“I miss him, and you’re right, it’s not about sex,” Tràth said and then sighed. “I can give him time.” A half-smile tilted a corner of his mouth. “I’m good with time.”
“Meanwhile, stay busy. You can go back to drugs and orgies, but I guess those things weren’t helping anymore?”
“As my father rather pointedly said, my life is frivolous. Without Douglas, none of the usual recreations mean anything.”
“Then find a pursuit that does mean something, even without him. Come to the library with me and search for runes about temporal lore. Begin a record of your efforts. You are the only known temporal faerie. Your knowledge and experience should be recorded and made available to others. We can talk to the Keepers. They will know which scholars you should work with.”
“Thank you,” Tràth said. “But that’s where Douglas works. The bond…”
“It would be intense. I get that. When Eilidh’s unhappy with me, being in the same
kingdom
is too much, much less the same
building
.”
Tràth chuckled. “It’s good to talk to someone who understands.”
“So will you head back to Caledonia? We’re planning to be in the Halls of Mist for another two weeks, but Eilidh would be thrilled to return sooner. She thinks I’m insane to keep Maiya out of the nursery. Come stay with us at Canton Dreich. We’d love to spend time with you, and I can help you get started. I’m sure the Keepers will send anyone we need to work with us.”
Tràth picked up his glass and drank deeply. “Perhaps that’s a good idea,” he said.
“Good,” Munro said. “In fact, why don’t you and I leave tonight? I’m sure your father and Eilidh will want to return as soon as possible after the dinner tomorrow night. They’re only staying because Eilidh is worried I’ll ruin Maiya with my Jaffa Cakes and play clothes.” He couldn’t help but grin, but then he turned serious again. “We all want to be there for you.” The two men stood, and Munro clapped his hand on Tràth’s shoulder.
“Thank you,” Tràth said. “But I think I’ll stay another night. Queen Eilidh has invited me to dinner, and I should go, assuming she hasn’t already made other plans for the princess’ escort. It’s time I started taking on duties befitting a Prince of Caledonia.”
Munro walked him out of the Druid Hall and said goodbye. As he watched Prince Tràth make his way to the Caledonian Hall, he reflected that Tràth had come around a lot faster and more easily than he had expected. He couldn’t shake the sense that it had been perhaps too easy.
Tràth floated in the blissful mist of
gahn-seh
smoke. Petroc’s voice teased at his awareness, sounding urgent but distant. Sleep invited the prince back into its embrace. For some reason, Tràth’s annoying attendant refused to let him rest. He really should get rid of the boy, find someone older, more responsible, more accustomed to the proper way to treat a prince. But Petroc had lovely grey eyes. They reminded Tràth of…
Reality threatened to intrude, but Tràth let the smoke carry the danger away. He understood, somewhere in his consciousness, something painful and impossible lurked, waiting for him to wake from his stupor. Maybe he never would. He longed to float for eternity in warmth and comfort.
Someone slapped him. Hard. The pain shocked him into some level of awareness. When he opened his eyes, his father’s face was about two inches from his own. “He’s awake,” Griogair said. He turned to the attendant. “Get Queen Eilidh.”
“Pardon, Your Highness?”
“Now!” Griogair shouted. He pulled Tràth unceremoniously from his bed and propped him up on a seat near his dressing room. He gave instructions to someone else, but Tràth couldn’t understand what he said, not, at least, until hands touched him, removing his robes and fitting him with formal attire. Griogair watched his son in despair, and Tràth could barely stand the shame of it. “You
will
attend, as you promised when you returned to us, claiming you wanted to take on proper responsibilities. You assured my mate you would do this for her. For Caledonia.”
More alert, but still strongly under the influence of the smoke, Tràth shrugged. He should care. His father was right. Even as attendants combed his hair and arranged his clothing, he wanted nothing more than to crawl back into bed. He couldn’t tell his father the truth. His heart was broken and he was too much of a coward to die for his druid. Better his father think him a worthless waste of royal seed than to know he was moping like an adolescent over a romantic humiliation.
Griogair snapped his fingers. “This won’t do,” he said to someone. “Find another mantle.” Footfalls pounded around the room as faerie servants danced to the older prince’s demands.
Someone else entered the room. Tràth turned toward the entry arch and was mortified when, through bleary eyes, he recognised the pity on Eilidh’s face. He could handle his father’s anger, even disappointment, but the pity crushed him. “Griogair, my love,” she said. “Would you and your attendants give me a moment with Tràth, please?”
Tràth recognised that his father wanted to argue but wouldn’t. He leaned forward and spoke softly to his son. “I swear to you,” he said, “if you upset or embarrass her in any way, I will see you stripped of your titles and your holdings. You will spend the next thousand years working in some desolate swamp harvesting frog piss one drop at a time.”
“I understand,” Tràth said. What he didn’t say was that he’d rather be in that desolate swamp right now. Anywhere would be better than here, where he could feel Douglas’ every emotion. When Tràth stayed in Caledonia and the portal separated them, he hadn’t been subjected to the dizzying array of unbridled human emotions. Here, Douglas’ seething shame and constant turmoil only abated when the druid lost himself in rapture with the Stone or sexual release. Even when he slept, the druid's mind was in perpetual tumult. If only Tràth had refused the call to the Halls of Mist, none of this would have happened. If only he’d not acted so impulsively in Douglas’ chamber. If only he’d paid more attention, he might have had some inkling of Douglas’ true feelings.
Eilidh sat across from him, strikingly beautiful in her ultramarine gown. Its black mink trim complimented the pure white shade of her hair. “My poor Tràth,” she said. “Quinton thought you were doing all right.” She smiled. “You fooled him completely.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Tràth said. “I meant what I said to him, but I suppose good intentions matter little.” He met her eyes. “I am crushed to have disappointed you.”
“I can clear your mind. Would you like me to?”
The haze had lifted somewhat, but the effects of the drug still cocooned him from the worst of what waited. “Yes,” he said. He deserved the pain that would soon come at her hands, but he despised the self-pity in the sentiment.
When she touched his temple, his mind became unhampered in an instant. Before the pain of his memories burst with full force, a gentle presence soothed him. Eilidh used a delicate touch as she calmed his thoughts. The darkness of his self-loathing receded.
“Humans,” she said, “are turbulent creatures. I know this well. Although young by fae reckoning, Quinton possesses a maturity the other men of his Hall lack.” She smiled. “I understand what you’re enduring. Douglas is barely even an adult by their standards. I can’t imagine what the mayhem of his immature mind must be like for you to endure.” Tràth fought an irrational desire to defend his druid.
Eilidh went on. “I didn’t speak to you of this before because I thought you and Douglas were…well, I shouldn’t have assumed. You seemed to be coping.”
“Speak to me of what?” Tràth asked.
“When Quinton and I were first finding our way together, I inadvertently discovered that I could block our connection.”
“What?” Tràth’s attention snapped to Eilidh.
“At the time, Quinton was furious with me. I couldn’t bear his anger. So, I shut the door between us. My mentor, Elder Oron, warned me not to do so again, and he helped me bring the barrier down. While that mental fortification remained in place, I remember I had some understanding that Quinton lived and our connection was alive, but I had no sense of where he was or how he felt.” She smiled. “Would you consider me disloyal to him if I said something in the discovery was bliss?”
Tràth shook his head, sudden hope rising where he thought none might exist. “You’re saying I could dampen our connection without releasing the bond?”
“No,” she said thoughtfully. “I’m saying
I
could. My magic is of the mind, while yours is of time. Who can say if what worked for me will work for you?”
“But you will teach me how you managed it?”
“Before I promise to try, I will give you the same warning Elder Oron gave me. Our people
need
them. I do not fully understand why we can bond with these Druid Lords, but it is not a gift to be thrown away lightly. Oron warned me that the longer I shielded myself from the bond, the more difficult it would be to restore the connection later.”
The solution was perfect. Elegant, even. Tràth could deal with his own sense of loss if only he did not have the constant humiliation of experiencing Douglas’ fraught emotions washing over him. “What if shutting off my connection to him undoes the healing effect of the bond? What if I begin to go insane?” Tràth looked away from her, not able to bear the gentleness in her eyes.
“
If
we are successful, and I cannot promise we will be, and
if
the closure of the connection pains you, then we will reverse the process and restore the bond. I know from my own experience it’s easily done. You will be no worse off than you are right now. I will devote a portion of my energies to soothing your mind, if necessary. You will need to stay close to me, but I am strong enough to offer some aid. Over time, you will grow stronger. Already you control time in ways you couldn’t before. I saw you stop time to catch Maiya. It was an incredible moment to witness. You will master the flows of time…in time.”
Her generosity overwhelmed Tràth. He didn’t trust himself to speak, so he only nodded. No one had ever taken such care of him. Why did this young queen possess the power to make him feel like a child?
She smiled and stood. “Now. Come to the dinner. I cannot excuse your absence at this point without insulting Princess Imena. After she retires to her Hall, we will return to Caledonia. I will do my best to teach you. If we fail, we will enlist the help of my own mentors.”
“I don’t deserve your kindness, Eilidh,” Tràth said. He rarely called her by her name, despite her insistence that he should.
“Of course you do,” she said, touching his cheek. “I am not your mother, yet you are my son.”
Tràth took her hand and kissed the back of it. “I wish you had been. If my mother had possessed even a sliver of your grace, I would be a different person.”
Eilidh tilted her head in a modest acknowledgement. “We’re already late,” she said. “The princess will be annoyed, no doubt. I will send Tolin to escort her and take the first drink with her. Then, you will dine beside her. Smile and be pleasant, and the ordeal will be over soon.”
“Thank you,” he said. “I will do my best to entertain her well.”
“I’ll speak to your father. You don’t need to worry about frog piss,” she said with a chuckle. “As long as I am queen, you have a place in Caledonia.”
He bowed as she left and made haste as the attendants returned to finish preparing him for dinner. Thoughts of the future suddenly seemed less bleak. The comfort may have come from whatever astral trick Eilidh had done to soothe him. Perhaps the moment the evening was over, his sense of ease would disappear. Still, time thrummed clearly in his mind, as it always did when he was sober. That alone gave him reason to hope.
∞
Imena held herself perfectly still as her attendant painted sparkling black dots around her eyes. She wore a silver gown that covered her wine-coloured skin from the neck down, exposing only her hands, on which she wore several black rings. Her sandals were decorated with the same black metal as her jewellery. After the attendant finished with his painting brush, he began to place diamonds into the complex pattern.
The dinner would, of course, likely be tedious. Since word of her mother’s waning health had gotten out, an array of princes, lords, conclave elders, and their sons had attempted to initiate courtship. But Caledonia was an important kingdom. At least, it had become so when Queen Eilidh took a Druid Lord as her mate. The Keepers and even the Stone itself recognised the druids’ power as that of the ancient draoidh sorcerers. Imena’s mother, Queen Naima, couldn’t deny the influence in the Halls of Mist was shifting. Under Naima’s rule, the kingdom of Zalia held itself separate from other kingdoms, but Imena’s instincts told her she should entertain potential alliances. She had been the one who spread the rumour, and like ants to a drop of honey, powerful suitors came running. None from among the Druid Hall, but that, perhaps, would be expecting too much.
The one spot of interest that evening, other than her first opportunity to meet a human druid, was her escort, Prince Tràth. Rumours of his madness abounded. Some painted him as a drooling lunatic, while others indicated merely a flair for dramatic eccentricity. In this, at least, he promised to be more interesting than others she’d entertained of late.
The attendant finished his work with the jewels and tidied her jet black hair, arranging the ringlets around her face. He stepped aside so Imena could examine her reflection in the tall mirror. Her chamber in the Caledonian Hall was elegant but plain. She much preferred the impressive grandeur of her homeland’s architecture, but her recent travels to other kingdoms and Halls had exposed her to a dizzying array of horrible fashions.
“Is it time yet?” she asked.
“The hour has passed, Princess,” her attendant said. “Prince Tràth is late.”
“How surprisingly rude,” she said. She couldn’t deny her curiosity about the prince. How mad was he?
“Indeed.” Footfalls sounded in an outer chamber, and her attendant left her admiring her reflection.
He returned a moment later. “One called Tolin is waiting in our reception room, Princess,” he said, his voice low.