All things considered, Autumn didn’t mind living in a land bordering the kingdom of a Dark Wizard King. Most of the time. It was the sort of thing that you just eventually got used to. ‘Oh, have you heard that all of the sheep in the south pasture have been eaten by evil spirits? I hope the farmers don’t raise their prices again, I was hoping to cook some lamb for the pot roast…’ That sort of thing. People just couldn’t live in fear all of the time, and the Dark King had been part of the decor for a thousand years, after all.
But just because she could tolerate his existence, that didn’t mean that she wanted to be married to the man. Or eaten, or used in a dark magic ritual, or whatever it was that he did.
“You must see this as a betrayal,” said her mother as she fussed uselessly with the fastening of her cloak. She kept opening and closing the brooch at her daughter’s throat as if the exact fold of the woollen cloth could change anything about what would happen next.
They were assembled on the edge of the woods, shivering in the wind. All of her belongings had been packed, most of it discarded. She wouldn’t need much where she was going. In a few minutes, a knight would appear and take her into the dark recesses of the trees. From there on they would allegedly make their way to the Wizard King’s castle, and then supposedly she would get to meet him. Or the knight would quickly and quietly slice her throat a few miles into the woods and bring up her heart for his master to eat. There was no way to know, really.
“Of course not,” she deadpanned. “All the little girls dream of being sacrificed to the Evil Wizard King.”
“All the smart little girls know that it’s a possibility, at least,” snapped back her mother. “Instead of daydreaming about algebra.”
“Geometry,” she muttered. “I daydream about geometry and I make beautiful sewing patterns.”
“Yes,” sighed the queen, suddenly deflating. “And we could have found you a nice husband just on the strength of that skill. But I’ve not chosen you for the Wizard King for your sewing patterns, child. And I’ve not chosen you because you’re an obedient, demure little thing. I’ve chosen you because you’re a handful.”
“Wow. Thank you, mother.”
Far away, the rustle of an approaching carriage could be heard coming from the woods. Interesting, as there wasn’t even any road for a carriage to drive along. At least, it might have been interesting if Autumn cared, about any of this, at all. The queen grabbed her cloak tighter and spoke with urgency.
“No, listen to me, my daughter. You are the most willful woman I’ve ever met. We hired a bard for your birthday, and you bit him.”
“He knows what he did,” she hissed, wondering where her mother was going with this.
“We taught you embroidery, and you used the needles to stab the scullery maid.”
“She was an assassin sent to kill you!”
“We showed you poetry, and you turned to mathematics instead.”
“I studied both!,” she felt compelled to point out. She knew what the poetry was for, it wasn’t like she’d just ignored it altogether.
“My point,” continued her mother, “is that you have never listened to anyone in your life and you will not listen to the Wizard King now.”
Autumn felt her eyebrows raise in surprise. “You want me to die faster? Is that what you want? I thought the whole point — ostensibly — was for me to cajole him into a marriage.”
“You will die regardless,” retorted her mother, brutal as she’d always been. “Whether you secure the marriage or not, whether now or in ten years. The bastard has killed my husband, and he will kill my daughter. It can’t be avoided, and I won’t feed you some hogwash about how your sacrifice will save the rest of your people. You already know all of that. What I’m telling you now, instead, is that when your death is inevitable, you don’t have to go easy. Give him hell. And secure the marriage before he kills you, if you can.”
The rustling grew louder. Any minute now, the ferns and the tree trunks would part to reveal a road that hadn’t previously existed, and the evil king’s carriage would emerge like a ghost from the mist. Her mother lowered her voice.
“Understand that your father failed, ten years ago. I am under significant pressure from the other kingdoms to make up for that failure in any way possible. But if I am going to send anyone into a rat’s nest, then I will send a viper. Remember what I told you before. Do not give in to him.”
Autumn nodded. Her mother was referring to the only other conversation that they’d had on the subject of her sacrifice to the Evil King after it had been announced. The old woman had slipped into her bedroom after dusk to whisper urgently at her, as if the only real conversation one could have with her daughter had to be hidden in the dead of night, away from prying ears.
“Don’t let him touch you until your wedding night,” had been the brunt of her advice.
“Are we really still pretending that a marriage is going to happen?,” she’d spat, bruised and tired already at the thought of two months of trials and the reward of a certain death.
“You are about to enter a land where magic is real, and it has rules,” cautioned her mother. “And one of the core rules of magic is that it works with what you give it. We are not pretending to the universe that a wedding will happen. We are telling it so.”
“Right. And as with any proper wedding, I have to go into it a proper maiden.”
“You haven’t been a proper maiden since you were eighteen,” retorted her mother, and Autumn felt her cheeks burn. The queen hadn’t been meant to know about the cook’s son. Or the viscount’s cousin. Or the knight(s).
“We are far past questions of propriety,” she continued. “This is a matter of magic. Consumption is a powerful act. Once you eat of his land, you will belong to it. There’s nothing we can do about that. You’ll be there for two months, and you have to feed yourself. But once you eat of him, you’ll belong to him, too. And you can’t allow that to happen before you’ve secured the wedding.”
“Right. Because…?”
“Because it involves a contract; and a contract signed on lands where the magic is alive and words become reality…” she trailed off and raised her eyebrows meaningfully.
“… It will make his word unbreakable,” she breathed in realization. “You want me to make him swear us protection, out loud and on paper, during a sacred ceremony. While standing in a castle made out of magic. Shit. Okay.”
“Yes. And then I want you to seal the whole thing with the oldest, most powerful ritual at your disposal. I am not asking as your mother; I am asking as your queen. I want you to lure the Wizard King into a vow and to put the seal of your own body on it. Can you do that?”
“Fuck if I know,” she’d told her mother honestly, mind reeling. “None of the other girls ever managed. But I can try.”
The fact that she might not even get the opportunity, or that she might not get a choice in the matter, was such a clear evidence that neither of them had felt the need to point it out.
Her sisters had a different idea about things. The day after she promised her mother that she wouldn’t spread her legs for the Wizard King until he’d wedded her in front of her whole family and kingdom, Summer and Winter cornered her in the music room.
“You have to fuck him the first chance you get,” was their piece of advice.
It was a matter of magic, they claimed, because all everyone ever wanted to talk about was magic. That, and sex. To be entirely honest, Autumn didn’t even know if the Evil King was even fuckable in the first place. He’d been alive for a thousand years! Maybe he wasn’t even human anymore, by now. Or he was really old.
In any case, Summer and Winter’s argument was that if the Evil Wizard King was about to stake a claim on her, then her only option was to cut him off at the knees and stake a claim first. It was a bold move, she had to admit. Like biting a cat that was about to bite you and then watching it try to process what had just happened. She might have agreed with them, if it hadn’t been for the promise she’d just made her mother.
Still, it was an option to keep in the back pocket. Autumn liked having options. ‘Don’t die’ was an obvious one. ‘Stay a maiden’ might or might not be doable. ‘Fuck the guy on his own evil wizard throne to make a point’ was terribly un-subtle, but at least she was reasonably sure that he wouldn’t see it coming.
As she stood on the edge of the forest waiting for her ride into hell to come and pick her up, Autumn reflected that this was probably not in any way, shape, or form what her mother meant when she said ‘give the Dark King a hard time’. She tried to keep in an hysterical chuckle.
Hands in hands with Summer and Winter, she wished that their eldest sister, Spring, were here to say goodbye too. But she’d only recently given birth, and her husband (some chump of a duke) thought it too dangerous to bring their child near the forest. Never mind that the spirits hadn’t been seen for months. Never mind that she could have left the baby at home for a few minutes. Never mind that she would never see Autumn again, and that her child would never have the chance to meet his aunt now.
Never mind that Autumn was almost certainly going to die. But at least she would die with her head held high, after having given her best shot at securing a wedding vow out of the most evil man on the planet.
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