I woke up to the crackling of wood and the smell of something meaty cooking. My stomach growled. Apparently I'd been out long enough for my body to develop hunger. I stood to head towards the food, which I assumed was nearly ready. As I stood, I was surprised to find that my body did not complain, despite how it had taken a beating today.
Oh yes. Arion had knocked me out to fix my headache, and the healing spell had probably extended to my aching muscles. While I was grateful for not feeling that, I was not so grateful about being knocked out. It unsettled me. I would have to draw a boundary there.
I walked out, and there he was, pulling meat of some kind off from over the fire. I decided not to ask. "Perfect timing," the prince commented, smiling warmly at me. "I was just going to wake you up if you weren't already awake."
I decided then that I wasn't going to chew his head off. I was simply going to set a personal space rule. "Speaking of which, please don't do that again. I appreciate you getting rid of my headache, I really, really do. Just." I bit my lip. "No more making me go to sleep as a bonus, okay? It makes me uncomfortable."
He glanced away. "Oh. My apologies." I was stunned. I hadn't ever expected him to apologize. A little mind-blown, I listened as he continued. "The magic works best that way, but I will consult you beforehand." Arion swung his head up to me, and said, "I won't do it again."
My breath did something funny. Like it sort of stopped because in the evening light the man was gorgeous and he had the cutest puppy-eye-look thing in his eye and dammit that wasn't fair. After a moment of grappling for something that resembled proper in-and-out inhalation, I rolled my eyes and smirked. "No need to go over the top. Just give me the food and don't do it again and all will be good in my book about this thing."
I sat next to the fire, across from him. His presence in my space made my skin tingle. Whenever he stalked around the fire, poking and prodding at it and monitoring the meat, the moment he got close to me it was like static electricity started crawling all over me. It reminded me of how nice contact had been with him during our dance.
The energy that seemed to cackle between us, I attempted to funnel from my stomach to the fire, my eyes gazing intently into the flames. It felt like a tango, romantic but striving for domination at the same time. My mind conjured an image of us dancing: fiery, passionate, a little too much pushing to be considered romantic or intimate. It burned in my mind, and evidently I channeled so much into the fire that the flames burst forth powerfully.
Arion shouted, and my attention snapped. We both scrambled away until the fire calmed to its original size. "Shit! Sorry!" I cried, as the prince stared at our heavily charcoaled dinner.
"Well," he said, "No help for it now. Dinner will be very well done." Arion carefully extricated the food from the fire and began to cut it into manageable portions. Once properly portioned, he passed me a conjured plate laden with meat and what looked to be something salady. I stared at the greens suspiciously. "They're perfectly edible and if you try them you'll find they're tasty. Faerie greens last forever and always taste sweet."
I glanced up at him and then down at my plate. "Yeah, but I've never been much of a salad girl…"
"Just try them," Arion said, with no lack of amusement.
I pinched a leaf, and brought it to my mouth. "If these are any less than what you say they are, you'll pay," I stated. With that, I bit into the stuff. It wasn't like salad greens at all. Lettuce paled in comparison. Hell, apples paled in comparison. It was sweet, but it wasn't gross sweet either. It wasn't like anything I had tasted. I took another bite.
"See?" Arion said smugly, nibbling at his food. I saw him hiding a pleased little smirk between bites.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're so smart about food. Good for you," I snarkily replied, biting into another leaf with less hesitation. After demolishing the greens, I turned to the meat, and bit into it. "Hey, and this might have been delicious, if I hadn't charred it for you." I complemented him. It took me a moment to realize that it had fallen out of my mouth.
He chuckled lightly. "Speaking of which, what was that about?" he queried lightly.
"Nothing," I said quickly. "Just. Thinking burny things." I blurted the words out, and realized how much like a rube I sounded. "Yeah," I added lamely. Attempt to make things sound cool failed. Gold star, Grace, I thought. I needed a good slap on the back of the head to get my senses back in order. Loser, I told myself.
Arion clearly wanted to push the matter more, but he pursed his lips and continued to eat. I wanted to say something, though I had no clue how to fill the space. I could word vomit until the awkwardness goes away, I mentally supplied snarkily. It would make this less awkward by making a whole new awkward situation. What is wrong with you? Internally I was losing my mind.
Finally, I put my plate on the grass. I'd lost my appetite. I pulled my legs close, and began rocking back and forth to stave off the uncomfortable urge to say something.
I was grateful when he broke the silence first. "Grace, come with me," he said. He offered a hand to help me up, like a proper gentleman. Maybe it was the fact that I was going stir crazy, maybe it was that Arion had managed to not make me want to kick him for a solid half hour or so, but I took the hand and allowed him to help me up. "Follow me." Arion tugged at my hand, holding it lightly. He was giving me the option to pull away. I allowed my hand to stay there. It was nice, having this much control. I could stop this at any time. It seemed that having the choice made all the difference. Having been met with no resistance, his grip tightened slightly and he began to tug me out of the clearing.
The man guided me through the twilight-lit woods. As we got further in, little blue spirits appeared in front of us, lighting our way with a cobalt glow as things got darker. Arion followed their path. "What are they?" I asked softly, not wanting to disturb the beautiful puffs and cause them to leave.
"Will o' the wisps," Arion replied firmly. "Fae that guide those that follow them to their fate or their doom. Either way, it's fate, though," he said thoughtfully.
"So why are we following them?" I still spoke quietly, though he'd spoken in a normal volume. It seemed wrong to not whisper around the delicate-looking creatures.
He grinned. "For me, they lead to our destination. They know not to trick a prince." Arion sounded so confident.
"But couldn't they be working for your brother?" I demanded, a little louder with the severity of my question.
"No," Arion replied, with absolute certainty. "Wisps stay out of politics. They are merely the hands of fate. They point us to our next destination, and nothing else. They're useful like that."
I nodded, though it all seemed a little fishy to me. Nothing could be completely neutral. Faeries were odd, though, and I supposed that if they were real, anything was possible.
I stumbled behind Arion, keeping up as his pace increased. Glancing to the side, I saw another path of Wisps, and wondered if it was here I had a choice. Technically free from the barrier of Arion's will, I could run again and not be stopped. I bit my lip, and then turned back to stare at Arion's back. We would be safer in numbers, and Arion and I had an understanding now. I turned my head back to that would-be path. The Wisps were gone. I had made my choice. It was almost comforting. Almost.
We ran through the woods, until we arrived in another clearing, though this one had no sky above it. Tall, old trees hid the sky, though the moonlight trickled through the branches. In the center was a circle of mushrooms. This was a nugget of lore familiar to me. "A faerie ring…" I breathed in wonder.
Arion nodded. "Yes. This is where we need to be." Gently, he pulled me towards and into the circle. "Don't step on any mushrooms," he warned gently, and so I watched my feet carefully as I stepped inside.
He seemed to pause thoughtfully, and gazed at me. "What?" I asked at last.
"Do you trust me?" Arion's eyes bored into me with his intensity. It made my spine shiver.
However his question brought a lot of questions to mind. Did I trust him? I couldn't really be sure. There were a lot of reasons to not trust him. There were a lot of reasons why I should trust him. I weighed them, and decided that Arion, in his current incarnation was trustworthy. I took a deep breath, and decided to take a chance. What the hell, I was already here, right?
"Yes." He seemed surprised by my answer, but quickly hid the emotion behind a level mask.
"Good. I'm going to need to just trust me." He reached into a pouch on his belt, and pulled a handful of something out of his bag. "Once I start, I cannot stop. Just follow my lead," he said, with a cheeky wink.
"Okay," I said, crossing my arms. "So get started," I sassed in response, trying to show I was aloof of his charms.
His expression became serious, and then he began to sprinkle what he'd pulled out of his bag along the edges of the circle, on top of the mushrooms. "Spirits of the circle," he intoned, in a near monotone. "We offer you bone to give you strength." I stared harder at the stuff in his hands, and realized it was off white.
He then conjured a ball of water in his hands, and poured it onto the mushrooms. The bone meal faded into the ground as he did so. "We offer you water to quench your thirst." I stared as the mushrooms started to grow and glow gold.
Finally, he pulled out a knife, and pricked his thumb and dropped a single ruby drop onto a mushroom. He turned to me, and held out a hand. Knowing what he wanted, I grimaced and then quickly threw my hand into his. As the knife approached, I closed my eyes, allowing the painful prick to happen and then quickly pulling it away once the pressure stopped. I opened my eyes in time to see him drop my blood onto another mushroom. "And we offer our blood to feed you."
Arion stood, and put his knife away. He took my hands into his, this time without asking. He raised our cut hands up in the air. "In return for these gifts, we ask of you a boon"
From the glowing mushrooms, three figures rose. They were cloaked in gold, and their faces were indistinct, black blobs. I could feel the power radiating off of them. "What ask you, princeling and half-child?" Their voices were neither masculine nor feminine, neither low nor high.
I stared at Arion. What were we asking for? What had I just consented to so he could contact these strange Fae for a boon? I was worried that perhaps I had stumbled into a trick.
"I need you to contact Mama Thistle," Arion said. "I need you to sneak into the Faerie Keep and tell her the dancer is here."
The creatures bowed, and slunk around the edge, until they shrunk and faded from view. I stared at Arion patiently, wondering what the need for all this pageantry was if they just needed to send a message. "What –"
He quickly pressed a finger to my lips and I took that as my cue to shut up. I glared at him disapprovingly. Arion gave me a sympathetic look.
We waited in the glowing circle, until the figures returned, crawling back into existence. "We have told her. She says step out quickly."
"We thank you, great ones," Arion said politely. The spirits nodded, and disappeared. Once they did so, the mushrooms glow began to fade.
Arion lowered our hands, and lead us outside the circle with evident haste. "So what was that?" I asked, as soon as I stepped out of the ring.
He shook his head and smiled. "The mushroom spirits are…" He searched for the words. When he couldn't seem to find them, the prince went for a different tactic. "Mushrooms have strong magic, as they show characteristics of both life and death, but the spirits that form in their rings are not all there. They're all a bit odd."
"So there's a reason why shrooms mess humans up so much?" I asked.
He snorted. "Perhaps." Arion's voice was nice when it was filled with laugher. I grinned at him.
"So you use the all-powerful mushroom spirits as messengers after that ritual?" I arched my eyebrows, really unimpressed.
"They cannot be insulted," he replied with a shrug.
"Or what?" I asked.
"Or they'll make you a pretty little crater in the ground by destroying the circle," ground out a croaking voice. I turned, to see Thistle standing in the circle, looking just as much like an ancient bag lady with a staff as I remembered her.
"Oh. Cool." I said flatly.
"Help me out, children," the woman commanded. Arion leapt to her side. I stood there with my arms crossed. "Well? Are you just going to stand there?"
"Maybe," I said. I owed this woman nothing.
"Girl," Thistle growled, her accent tripping thickly along her tongue. "Help me or I will make you a crater." She waited patiently, thought her eyes bored into me. Arion looked ready to kill me for my insubordination. At last she shook her head and chuckled. "You're stubborn, girl. It's good. Annoying, but good." She sighed. "Grace, I'm twenty times your age. I need a little assistance. Aid a witch too old to see past her nose."
I rolled my eyes. So dramatic, I thought, stepping to her other side. Arion and I held her elbows, and guided her out of the ring. Once extricated, she hobbled over to a stump and perched on it.
"So we've got Thistle, what next?" I asked of the pair of them.
"Now we strategize," Thistle stated, her ancient voice ringing with pleasure.