Fairy Queens: Books 5-7 Read online

  “I have no memory of the clanlands,” Ash said.

  Neither did Cinder. “She’s right, though. They are our people.”

  Ash gestured to the small table, which Cinder now noticed held a bowl of fruit and bread. “Hurry and eat, Cinder. It’s probably a bad idea to keep a goddess queen waiting.”

  Wearing a green dress of her own design, Cinder stepped into the throne room with her mother and grandmother at her sides. Nelay sat on her throne with her son, Denar, next to her. Cinder let out a silent sigh of relief to see the young man looking healthy. He even winked at her. She tried to smile, but her mouth didn’t seem to be working properly. She wiped her sweaty palms on her dress and eased into the room, scanning faces for any clue as to why the goddess had summoned her. The majority of people present were guild leaders; the rest were soldiers, many of whom were injured.

  At the front of the group, just to the right of the dais, stood Darsam with a handful of children who so resembled him they had to be his siblings. Behind Nelay were Bahar and Maran. Next to the queen stood a man whose tattoos named him as Bahar’s heir, which meant he was Darsam’s oldest brother and future lord of Arcina.

  Darsam gave Cinder a reassuring smile. Reminding herself that she had saved them all, she lifted her chin and walked straight toward the throne, her gaze straying neither to the left or right. When she finally stopped, she became aware of an ache in her chest, a burning tightness. But she made no outward sign.

  The goddess rose to her feet. “Cinder, daughter of Ash, who is daughter of Storm, it is because of you that we were prepared for this insurrection. That we survived it. You saved my life, and my son’s life. My husband tells me I must offer you a boon. So I shall. Name anything you want up to a lordship over one of my cities, and it shall be yours.”

  Cinder blinked in shock. She turned slowly to face her mother and grandmother. She had everything she wanted. They were free. She was free. But then Cinder thought back to the other companions—and the women who would replace them.

  She turned back to the goddess. “I want slavery abolished and brothels outlawed.”

  Beside the dais, Darsam broke into a proud grin.

  Nelay considered Cinder. “To what end? No one will hire those of clannish descent. No one wants them here.”

  “Then let them go back to the clanlands, if they wish,” Cinder said. “Back to their homes and families.”

  The queen considered her. “Those like you, who are half clannish and half Idaran, have not been well received by the clannish.”

  It hadn’t occurred to Cinder that she could be hated for her Idaran blood just as much in the clanlands as she was for her clannish blood in Idara. “I—I don’t know, Goddess,” she stuttered.

  Nelay sat back in her throne, fingers trapping. “So you would orchestrate their freedom and then abandon them?”

  Cinder’s jaw worked.

  “How is that her responsibility?” Storm asked suddenly.

  Nelay’s burning stare fell on Cinder’s grandmother. “We have been fighting to pass this law for two decades.” For once, Storm fell silent. The goddess’s gaze went back to Cinder and softened a little. “If I pass this law, there will be repercussions. Are you willing to deal with them?”

  This would mean she could not return to the clanlands. Cinder glanced at Darsam, and in that moment she realized she did not want to leave him. Not yet, anyway. She turned at her grandmother.

  The older woman looked crestfallen, even devastated. “She’s right, Cinder. The clans hate Idarans. Many of the half-breeds” —Storm winced at the word— “might not even be welcome. And to be honest, maybe I don’t want to go back to the people who abandoned me after I gave my life to save them.”

  Is that what Cinder would be to the clanspeople? A half-breed? When she dropped her head and caught sight of her dress, an idea came to her. “Let them work for me. Making my designs.”

  “Who would wear the designs of a one-time slave?” a woman hissed from the crowd. “I for one—” She cut off abruptly as her hair started to smoke.

  Cinder decided she almost liked this queen. “If the goddess wears them, and her priestesses, will not Idara love them?” she said.

  A slow smile spread across the queen’s face. “I believe they will.” She raised an eyebrow. “So, you will see your people are taken care of?”

  Cinder nodded. “I will.”

  The queen eyed her shrewdly. “Then you may start by deciding what is to be done with the slave owners.” At the wave of her hand, several guards came into the room. Between them were Zura, Magian, Farush, and Farood. Cinder’s breath caught. She’d never wanted to see this woman or her daughters or her lackeys again.

  “I have been told,” Nelay went on, “that there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of men and women who own slaves throughout Idara. What would you do with them?”

  Cinder let out a long exhale and turned to Darsam. “Were they part of the uprising?”

  He shook his head. “Not that we can find.”

  “Kill them.” Ash’s voice shook with fury. “Take them down to that horrible cellar and beat every inch of them. Then let them starve.”

  Zura stomped her foot. “I treated my slaves far better than most masters. I was firm yet fair.”

  “You manipulated and used us,” Ash growled, “to make yourself wealthy and important. You know you used us and that what you did was wrong.”

  “But not illegal,” Zura said through clenched teeth.

  “Just because it was legal, doesn’t mean it was moral,” Ash responded.

  “Shall I kill them?” Nelay asked, flames dancing across her fingers. “Reduce them to ash?”

  Zura’s mouth came open. “My queen, my goddess! Surely you don’t mean to kill every slave owner in all of Idara.”

  “I’ve killed many people for less.”

  Zura licked her lips and slowly lowered to her knees. Magian was a beat behind her. Then Farush and Farood. “I beg you, Goddess,” Zura said.

  Nelay shrugged. “Don’t beg me. I’m not the one who will decide.” She nodded toward Cinder. “She will.”

  Zura’s face went pale and she turned to Cinder. “Please.”

  Cinder’s gaze went back to the queen. She knew the older woman was testing her to see what she would do. And she knew if she killed her former master and her lackeys, slave owners throughout Idara would rise up to defend themselves. More lives would be lost. More slaves killed.

  “I won’t kill you,” Cinder said.

  Relief washed across Zura’s face.

  “No!” Ash cried. “You can’t. After all she’s done to our family!”

  “Hatred begets hatred, Mother. If this is ever to end, someone has to offer forgiveness.” Cinder turned back to her former mistress and held up a finger. “I won’t kill you . . . if you donate your fortune and the House of Night to right the wrongs you have done.”

  Zura clutched her throat. “What?”

  “The freed slaves will need somewhere to go,” Cinder said. “Somewhere large with plenty of bedrooms. And money to invest in cloth.”

  Zura sagged on her heels. “All of it?”

  “Save the clothes on your backs,” Cinder replied in a flash of anger.

  Zura looked like she might throw up, but then she glanced at the queen and nodded. “Of course. I would be happy to donate to the cause.”

  Nelay waved to a handful of guards. “Go and secure the house. Make sure no one goes in or out until Cinder arrives to take an accounting.”

  Zura rose shakily to her feet and turned to go.

  “Are you forgetting something?” Cinder asked coldly. Zura turned to look at her with a blank look on her face. “I said you could keep your clothes. Not your jewelry.”

  Zura hesitated before taking off her jewels and setting them on the floor. Magian followed suit.

  “Now you may go.” Cinder said.

  The woman and her entourage left without another word. Cinder watched them go, surpr
ised to feel her anger disappear. She hoped she would never have to see Zura again, or her thugs.

  Nelay turned to Bahar and Maran. “See that Cinder has whatever she needs.” The goddess rose to her feet. “Well, Denar, I think your visit with your cousins is over.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, his gaze fixed on Cinder. “I’d like to stay.”

  Nelay rolled her eyes. “She’s too old for you.” She leaned closer to her son. “And I think she’s spoken for.”

  Denar shot Darsam a look of mock disgust. “You have all the fun in Arcina.”

  Darsam grinned at his cousin.

  Nelay stood from the throne and walked down the aisle, tendrils of fire uncurling from her back. “Come along, Son. Our chariot is waiting.”

  Denar trailed reluctantly behind her. “You’re not just flying home?” he asked hopefully.

  The queen chuckled. “Someone has to make sure you aren’t sidetracked into another adventure.”

  “Haven’t I earned my own name?” Denar asked.

  Nelay gave him a reproachful glance. “You will carry the name of my father until you earn your second name. Such is the way of the tribesmen, your father’s people.”

  “I saved the girl,” Denar protested.

  “I hardly think sneaking off after your cousin’s rescue party and nearly getting yourself killed earns you anything,” Nelay said.

  With a dramatic sigh, Denar paused before Cinder, then took her hand and kissed it with a flourish. “Farewell, lovely lady! If ever again you should find yourself in need of rescuing, skip the bumbling mess that is my cousin and come straight to my competent arms.” Despite herself, Cinder found a smile turning the corners of her mouth.

  Denar shot a triumphant look at Darsam. “Make sure she keeps that smile on. It was a lot of working coaxing it out.” Whistling, Denar headed off after his mother.

  Cinder turned to watch him go. “That boy is going to be trouble,” she murmured to Darsam as he came to her side.

  “He already is.” There was laughter in Darsam’s voice. “But it’s never a dull moment when he’s around.” Darsam turned to Cinder with a determined expression. “I will assist you.”

  She blinked at him. “How?”

  “Same way I’ve always done—helping those who need it.” When she didn’t answer, his gaze dropped uncertainly. “That is, if you want my help.”

  Storm rolled her eyes. “Is there any way to get rid of him?”

  Cinder glared at her grandmother, who threw her hands in the air and hurried off.

  Darsam stepped a little closer. “Well?”

  Cinder reached out to take his hand. “I would be honored.”

  The next few months were a whirlwind of activity. All of the clannish and Luathan slaves did not receive their freedom at once. Rather, they were collected from their owners and taken to a makeshift city of tents, where they could take one of three options: work for Cinder, work in the Luminash mines, or secure passage back to their homelands. Most took the passage. But many of the half-breeds stayed on—younger people who, like Cinder, could not remember their ties to their homes.

  Darsam was always by her side, helping her, counseling her, protecting her. Slowly, Storm began to soften towards him. Ash began spending more and more time with Ashar, who was quiet and kind and one of the smartest people Cinder had ever met.

  Within a year, all the slaves were free, and Cinder had a thriving business in Idara. One day as she sat in one of her shops, working on her accounts, she looked up to see her grandmother walk through the doorway. “I have said yes,” Storm declared.

  Cinder blinked at her. “What?”

  Her grandmother only patted her granddaughter’s head and said, “But that doesn’t mean you have to.”

  She left the room as abruptly as she’d come. Cinder stared after her in bewilderment as Darsam came inside and leaned against one of the tent poles. She went back to struggling over the numbers. “Do you know what this is all about?” she asked him.

  “Remember when your grandmother said I was an Idaran and couldn’t be trusted?”

  Cinder nodded.

  “Well, I pestered her enough that she finally made me a deal. If I proved myself loyal for a year, I could marry you.” Cinder felt her cheeks turn hot. “She’s a little untrusting of men—understandably,” Darsam continued. “And Idarans.”

  Cinder pressed her hands to her cheeks. “Marry you?”

  He came to kneel beside her desk. “You have the choice. Go back to clanlands. Or stay. With me.” She stared at him openmouthed. “We can make our home in the Adrack,” he said. “You would love it. And my family there . . . they would love you.” He took her hands in his. “Cinder, Nelay listens to you. Idara needs you to be a part of things. I need you.”

  “Darsam, I don’t think I could deny you anything.” She leaned forward, and two lips, two bodies, two hearts melded into one.

  Loved this?

  Keep reading for the next book in the Fairy Queens Series,

  Daughter of Winter.

  Of Sand and Storm is a dark story—it deals with slavery and sex trafficking. A part of me wants to apologize for this—for exposing such darkness to the light. But even today, there are people hidden in those shadows. If no one ever turns to look, help will never come. So I ask that you look. See them—those forced to give up the right to their own bodies. I ask that you be someone’s Darsam.

  To learn how you can help, visit the Abolitionists, a group who works to free children from sex trafficking: http://ourrescue.org/.

  The horizon was a brilliant orange when Elice slipped out of her cave wearing only a white linen underdress. The crystallized snow felt rough under her bare feet as she ran through her forest of ice sculptures. Before her was an ice tree that, when the wind was just right, became a wind organ. There were animals, too, all with prismatic features. An owl was startled to flight from its high perch by two reindeer, antlers locked and mouths open.

  Breathless and hungry as she always was after the darkness, Elice left the forest behind and paused where ice met black ocean. The light grew brighter until she had to squint. But she didn’t look away, not until a ball of gold peeked over the horizon. She grinned and stretched her bare arms toward the pale sky, letting her skin soak in the sun she hadn’t seen in six months. It caressed her as she breathed it in, tasting sunshine that spread through her body and chased away the shadows that plagued her.

  The wind picked up, tugging playfully against her hair, thick and so dark it was almost black. She could have stayed that way forever, but there wasn’t much time left to find food for Picca, her injured seal. From inside one of her trees, Elice retrieved the belt she’d weighted with stones. She secured it around her waist and then opened herself up to winter—like pulling open a window to a storm of ice and snow. She tugged on a trickle of that power.

  Shaping the ice as it flowed from her hands, she quickly encased her head in a clear bubble, which she sealed against the skin of her shoulders. She formed flippers on her hands and feet, picked a spot between the circular ice floes that littered the water, and jumped into the ocean. The weight of the belt pulled her down to where sea plants shifted with the current. Inside her bubble of air, Elice took in the shafts of light piercing the water’s rippled surface and then refracting below. It was like being inside a giant, one-dimensional prism. Before her, the ice floes of the Winter Queendom stretched on in an almost minty green. Behind her was the small peninsula she shared with her family, the ice palace built beyond the shore and tucked into the steep mountains.

  Unlike the unending silence of the queendom, the ocean was alive with sound—the chucks, whistles, chirps, and booms of seals and whales. Here, life flourished in a way it never would above. Careful to make sure her ice bubble didn’t separate from the skin of her shoulders and allow the air to escape, Elice swam up to a small octopus, killed it with a shock of cold, and stuffed it into a large leather bag trailing from her belt.
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  After tying off the string, she looked up and came face to face with an enormous walrus, its tusks the size of a two-handed sword. Elice tensed and opened the window to winter a little wider, forming an ice spear in one hand. But the walrus simply twitched its whiskers and swam curiously around her. Then, as if it had lost interest, the creature moved away, its tusks ripping at the mollusks embedded on the rocky sea floor.

  Elice exhaled in relief. Swimming away from the walrus, she searched for more prey. In the distance, she could make out a silverfish wriggling in the space where an ice spear stabbed down from a floe into the ocean. The fish’s mouth busily worked free whatever food it had found. Spear still in hand, Elice moved smoothly toward the fish. But she hesitated before swimming over a boulder covered in sharp-edged mollusks and a hundred different water plants.

  On the other side, the sea bed dropped off sharply, leading to open water. In the distance, the water was red with krill. A dozen too-thin leopard seals hunted the swarm. Though Elice had the magic of winter at her fingertips, she wouldn’t dare come near a group of seals that were twice her size. Besides, hunger had made the seals even more aggressive than usual. There were other dangers too—the orca that hunted the seals and ruled the open waters.

  Still, she didn’t have much time, and the silverfish was the only other prey she’d seen. Steeling herself, Elice left the shelter of the shallow water and pushed toward the silverfish—a somewhat misleading name, as it was actually a salmon pink. The creature only turned silver after it died.

  Elice had just gathered some of her power when something exploded above her. A dozen large-eyed seal pups plunged into the water, tails frantically pumping. Elice didn’t wait to see what had panicked them; waiting could mean death in the queendom. She swam hard for the shore. In her peripheral vision, she saw a polar bear diving into the water after one of the pups. It opened its huge mouth full of sharp teeth and snagged the baby seal. Blood curled through the water, and Elice pivoted and kicked out. Even she dared not face a hungry polar bear.