1st Draft Fridays - A Fistful of Air: Book #5, Chronicles of Marsdenfel

Year 240 of the Bynding - Grehafen - spring

A/N: I've mucked up the years a bit in this first draft. I'll be reviewing that.

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Darnell waits until spring, when even the bones have healed. When it's obvious which women are expecting and which aren't.

He waits, and then he makes clear he hasn't forgiven or forgotten what Evonalé did, curing someone with linashor tea without his permission. He even waits until she's with my husband, before he has the Shadow strike—my husband, not my daughter.

My husband, a prophet, who was known to the faeries as one of them.

My husband, my consort, whose only crime was to wed the elves' high queen and to care for her illegitimate daughter as if she was his own.

If Darnell is willing to kill him, who will be next? How soon before he wipes out all older than us? All our ages?

How soon before secrets of Marsdenfel are lost because we're all destroyed?

That, more than the fact that Tully's ability to hear the Bynd means she should have my throne, means I start sharing those secrets to the magic of Onlé, of Berthen.

My daughter, I share what I can, but her magic is not like theirs. Hers isn't even like mine, and I'm able to knot far too little knowledge in her magic before it starts feeling...unsteady, almost like a faery's. Aidan's magic didn't do this, but maybe that was a consequence of frequency or intensity.

Maybe it's something unique to human magic, or what I'm doing is an elven thing. Magic is magic, but all the kinds have nuances of difference in how ours works and what can be done with it. That's why faeries are particularly susceptible to the Shadow.

The Shadow is a strange thing, the consequence of an experiment gone wrong, generations ago. It's easiest to think of as a parasite, one that is particularly fond of magic—though that doesn't explain how it can be controlled by magic—and faeries.

Why faeries? Faery magic is innately unstable, where anyone stable is conscripted for employment by their ruling body, the Association for the Magically Creative, which is essentially an insane asylum. That's how prevalent insanity is, among that kind.

It might be assumed that the Shadow likes faeries for that reason. Their magic would be easier for a parasite to consume. The way Gaylen dies—oh so fast—is consistent with that.

But someone told me once, long ago, that the Shadow was created by faeries.

Enslavement magic can warp persons until they're anything but, as my half-brother's gryphons demonstrate. They were people once, and the ones in his favor are allowed to be people while they're off duty.

Maybe the Shadow isn't a thing at all.

Maybe it was once a person.