“Besides,” Nicole interrupted my thoughts, her face concerned, “there’s a possibility that if you tell the truth, people will be out for blood.  Your mother was put to death for what she did, so they’ll want someone else to take their anger out on – a scapegoat.  You, most likely.  People will blame you even if there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it.  I still think you stand the best chance of fixing this, if anyone can, so if you end up telling them and they kill you in response?  The elf nation really would be doomed.”

I leaned back in my chair and folded my arms across my chest.  “Would they be entirely wrong?  I never thought she might have done something like that.  I underestimated her, and I should have known better.  I should have realized how desperate she’d be.”  Mother hadn’t understood what she’d done.  The secret of the true power of the crown had been closely guarded, extremely so, such that only the reigning monarch and the next heir ever knew.  Until now, anyway, when I’d let Nicole in on the truth.  Mother thought she’d just ruined my moment, let out her frustrations and anger, but if she’d known what the crown really was?

 Well, that was why the secret was so closely held.  If people knew what the crown actually represented to elves, people like my mother might try to take it hostage to get whatever they wanted – the throne itself, even – because by taking the crown hostage, they’d essentially be taking the elven race hostage.  Enemies could have come to try to destroy it in order to destroy us.  It had made sense to keep the truth about the crown a deep secret.  Unfortunately, though, someone had managed to damage the crown entirely unaware of the consequences.  It was a regret I would hold for the rest of my life – that I hadn’t anticipated what she would do or guarded the crown more closely myself.  It was always carefully cared for, due to its heirloom status, but I was the only one alive at the coronation who knew the true value of that crown – and knew how carefully it should have been guarded.

“Eh, I was there.”  Nicole shrugged.  “I saw what she did.  She took advantage of the ceremony, of how you would have to move during it, to grab it.  Unless you’d anticipated that she would actually try to snatch the thing itself, there’s no way you could have prevented it.”

Mother had always been a schemer, though.  And a desperate schemer could resort to desperate measures – which I’d known.  I should have anticipated something.  Maybe not that, exactly, but something.

“Kaleen.”  Nicole reached out to squeeze my forearm.  “What’s done is done.  We can’t undo it.  We can try to make life for elves as good as possible while trying to find a solution.  Telling them – telling them won’t achieve that.  Not all of them, anyway.  Tell a handful you trust who can help you try to find a solution.  But let everyone else live out their lives in peace, unaware of all this.  It’s the kindest thing for them.”

I frowned, broodingly.  “We used to live 500-600 years.  Now those of us who still have magic in our veins will probably be lucky to live half that, and new elves even less.  People will notice something has changed.”

Nicole shrugged.  “Sure, some will.  Fine, let’s put it this way – for now, don’t tell anyone except for those who can specifically help.  Otherwise, we keep quiet, let people live their lives.  If people start questioning too much, noticing the problems and demanding answers, then we reconsider and decide whether or not to say anything then.  Maybe we will eventually.  But maybe we’ll find a solution first so it won’t even be necessary.”

I gave her as much of a smile as I could muster.  “You would have been a proper advisor, if the monarchy wasn’t about to expire.”

“I’ll always be there for you,” she responded instantly.  “In an official role or not.  Don’t give up yet, Kaleen.  I know it seems almost impossible, but I refuse to believe there’s no hope.  I can’t give up, even if the answer doesn’t seem obvious.  We’ll talk to anyone with magic, anyone with ideas, surely someone knows something.  Somewhere out there is an answer – and we will find it.”

Seeing the determination in her eyes, I couldn’t help but feel it spark some in myself.  She was right.  We wouldn’t give up.  Until the day I died, I would keep trying to find a way to bring back elf magic and save my race.

In a few years, I might not be queen anymore, but that wouldn’t affect my true role as protector of my people.  I would always seek to serve my people even if I was just a simple elf like the rest of them, magic fading and age starting to catch up with me.

I would find a way to save them.  I had to.

~~~~

Approximately 81 years ago

I watched the casket slowly be lowered into the ground and closed my eyes briefly, a single tear falling.  Nicole had been my greatest help and strongest supporter since all this started, but now she’d fallen prey to what was plaguing us all – fast approaching mortality.  She wasn’t the only one.  In the last hundred years, elves had started dying much faster than previously.  Already I was seeing the effects of our curse, a curse which was eating away at our very existence.  In another hundred years, would any elves exist at all?  I couldn’t even be sure.

As the gravediggers started to shovel in the dirt on top of the casket, I turned slowly and left.  It wasn’t just grief that slowed my movements – I was feeling the effects of age, too.  Already I was aged, my joints starting to ache, my hair slowly lightening, and wrinkles starting to appear.  Before all of this had happened, I’d still be considered fairly young – the beginning of my prime years, in fact.  I was a lucky one, though – because I’d had more magic in me initially than most elves, my decline was slower.  I might even live another hundred years.

Maybe I’d be one of the last elves to die.

On that cheery note, I climbed into the back of my car and sighed deeply.  “Let’s go home.”

Charles started up the car and glanced at me in the rearview mirror as he did.  “I’m sorry, milady.  I know you and her were close.”

He was one of the few who still insisted on referring to me as if I were still royalty or nobility, still a person of importance.  He was also one of the few who knew the truth.

I moved past his words to focus on the only thing that my life had centered around for over a hundred years now.  “Any news?”

“I received word back from Ophelia,” he responded.  “She said she was able to get in contact with a unicorn.”

Unicorns were one of the few potential resources that we had yet to reach out to – mostly because they theoretically didn’t exist anymore.  They’d disappeared a while back and finding one was next to impossible.

But we’d tried talking to witches, both light and dark; dragons; fairies; demons; angels; merfolk; nightwings – really, anything and everything.  Unicorns were our last real hope of finding an answer.

“And?”  I tried to keep the hope out of my voice, afraid the answer wouldn’t be what I wanted to hear.

It was, indeed, not.  “The unicorn said that reestablishing the magic could, in theory, be done, but to do so, she must have access to where the magic originated.”

I sighed and slumped back in my seat.  “And if it originated on another world, that is impossible.  It’s not like we can travel between planets or anything to find a bit of it and bring it back.”

Charles gave me as comforting a look as he could manage while still driving.  “At least it’s theoretically possible – aren’t there any records explaining where our people originated?  How they came to be?  Travel to other planets has never really been a thing, even with magic, so there had to have been some exception.”

“I’ve looked.”  I tried not to sound as tired as I felt.  “I’ve spent hours upon hours searching Rosen Library for a clue, only to find nothing.”  Rosen Library was the oldest and largest supernatural library in existence.  Its records were more comprehensive than anything else to be found on earth and if there was even the slightest mention of where elves originated anywhere, it would be there.  “Then I’ve paid researchers to do it, for years, without success.  For all we know, it was just a legend passed down through the royal line and actually isn’t true at all.”

Except for the part about our magic genuinely starting to fade as soon as the crown – and link to our magic – was broken.  That part was true enough.  It made me think the story that came with the crown was true, too.

Charles pulled up in front of my house and got out to open the door for me.  I was still wealthy, by most human standards, but the riches of the elven royalty had been dwindling lower and lower over the years as I poured everything I could into trying to find an answer.  Without success, I might add.  I didn’t regret using the money to attempt to solve this problem, though.  It seemed only appropriate that the wealth achieved from years of my family serving as monarchs would be used to try to save the elves.  Even if I ultimately wasn’t successful.

I should probably start thinking of a career, I thought to myself as Charles followed me inside the house.  The money wouldn’t last forever, and it probably wouldn’t last through the rest of my life.  At least it should be easy enough to start to use my goldsmithing skills, I’d just need to warm up a bit.  And hope that my aging body could keep up with the skills required for such a career.

“Did Ophelia ask the unicorn if there might be any other solutions?  Anything temporary, even?”  The unicorn was the closest thing we had come to a positive answer in decades.  I wanted to believe that there was some way to still make it work.

Charles shook his head.  “According to Ophelia, the unicorn said she couldn’t make magic for us from nothing, so the only solution is to find the original magic and reestablish the link.  Which she could do only if she was able to physically access the source.”

I sighed.  “Well, something else to add to our list, I suppose.  See if we can’t find another source, maybe.  I don’t know.”  I was running out of ideas, to be honest.  Without Nicole here anymore to keep pushing for new thoughts, I wondered if I was going to run into the final dead end on this quest sooner rather than later.

“I’ll let the others know.”  Charles hesitated.  “I know we talked about letting the rest of the elves know and never came to a consensus that it would be a good idea, but for what it’s worth, I think keeping quiet is still best.  Elves know we live shorter lives and have less magic than we used to, and they’ve adjusted accordingly.  They’re still living happily right now.  If they learned there is no hope – or that we’re still trying to create some but haven’t found it yet – well, that might change.”

I nodded, feeling more tired than I wanted to admit.  Whether it was age or discouragement, I couldn’t tell.  “Silence seems to be the best policy here.  I just hope – ”  I stopped, unwilling to finish, but Charles knew what I meant.

I hoped that there would be a solution that actually worked and that we could find before it was too late.  Before the last of the elves died.