8. breakfast

Bare feet padded slowly against the cold surface of ice.

The silk train of a long, white dress dragged against the ice as she walked. All eyes were on her, all filled with that mixture of fear and respect, the mixture that gave all the power that one could ever need.

Eira had spent eighteen years drilling that look into the eyes of ice fae and her soldiers. They filled up the entire room made completely of ice tinted a bluish white, except for where they parted at the very middle to give space for their Queen to walk.

And so she walked. She walked elegantly and pridefully, hands clasped at her waist. Her silver crown of diamonds and sapphires twinkled in the eyes of the ice fae as she stepped up the few steps made of ice at the front of the room, to the higher section of flooring where her ice throne sat. Her wings, large and white with light blue tips, twirled on the floor behind her as she turned in front of her throne, blank eyes staring straight ahead as she took a slow seat.

Behind her sauntered Praen, her young servant of sorts who had taken a liking to the Queen and worked his way up through the ice peasantry to become her highest ranking servant, always at her side. He was a tall, thin young man with silky blonde hair that parted in the middle, bangs swooping on either side of his face. Though he was svelte, his shoulders were broad and strong under his white tunic that skirted at thick black stockings revealing muscular calves. All the girls in the kingdom fawned over him, and he reveled in their lustrous endeavors, but he always held a special adoration for Eira in his heart.

He walked, hands folded at his lower back, his bright lips set in a smirk over his sharp jaw. His eyes were a dark blue that looked nearly black under the shadow of his thick eyelashes. His hooded lids closed and opened again as he eyed the peasants who stared at Eira and him with fear. He came up and stood to the side of her, taking a few steps back to make sure his Queen had the full spotlight.

The entire room was dead silent. Not one fae spoke, or move, or even twitched their white wings. Rows and rows of blue and white eyes of all different shades trained on their Queen. They waited with their breaths held and backs straight.

Her platinum blonde hair rested at her bosom as she slowly lifted her chin, pale blue eyes with trails of white filled with nothing but pure evil. Her lips stayed pursed for a few moments, her wings sitting erect as everyone in the room anticipated and feared her words.

Then came that ringing voice echoing off the walls of the ice castle, that voice which spoke nothing but hatred and murder. "As your Queen, I am to always inform you of my plans for action. Honesty and integrity is what holds a fortress upright."

Children fae hid behind their parents at the sound of Queen Eira's voice. There was a bit of nervous shifting, but the room fell silent again.

"So here are my plans," she continued, voice eerily calm and slowly spoken. Her words that came next brought a wave of fear and sadness over the ice fae whom wanted nothing but peace and unity but could not achieve such a thing under a tyrant like her. Queen Eira opened her lips, and out came her hissing voice declaring, "We will find the other fae who are holding the girl ransom. We will find them, and we will kill every single one of them."

Restrained gasps fell over the crowd, and even her most brutal of soldiers all looked to the Queen with wide eyes of disbelief. She had been slowly snuffing out other races of fae for years with her ethnocentric violence, but they never expected the day that she would demand them all to be killed.

Yet, there were some faces in the crown who mirrored Praen's evil sneer. They were mostly the grandfathers who had lived through the age where inter-power breeding was unacceptable and were sour they lost that war a century before. Now history was repeating itself with interspecific breeding, and those grandfathers passed their prejudices to their offspring.

There were a few ice fae missing from the crowd, and those were the ones who had served in King Nikolaus' army during the war. They were absent because they were either killed or sentenced to the icy dungeons below the castle where even fae whose veins ran with ice could not withstand the cold.

The Queen looked over to Praen whose dark eyes twinkled, his blonde bangs shadowing one side of his face as they reveled in their gluttonous power. Eira turned back to the crowd and raised her chin, everyone holding their breath as she spoke again.

"And when every last non-ice fae is dead, especially that pathetic fire scoundrel, I want the half-breed's head served to me on a silver platter."

♔

The small fae cottage smelt divinely of bacon when Nyx opened her eyes the next morning.

Rubbing her puffy eyes with her fists, the girl groaned and rose from the small bed in the tiny corner of a guest room, shuffling her bare feet against the wooden floor as she allowed the smell to lead her. As she entered through the door of the room and into the main room of the cottage which looked like it served as both a kitchen and sitting area, she saw Catori with her back turned to her, kneeling down in front of the fireplace where she was frying bacon in a black pan sitting over the fire. The girl's stomach audibly growled.

Catori's ears twitched as they picked up the sound of Nyx's hungry stomach, glancing over to where the blonde stood in the doorway, hand resting over her tummy as her golden brown eyes focused longingly on the frying bacon. The fae chuckled, her iridescent wings protectively tightening against herself as she leaned closer to the firepit, careful to not burn her hand on the hot pan. "There's plenty enough for you, Nyx," she laughed warmly as she used a metal rod to turn the pieces of bacon over.

Dazed from her hunger, since she had not eaten since Erlin attempted to feed her upon their first meeting, the girl only chewed on her lip and watched Catori flip the bacon. A figure appearing from a doorway across the large room averted Nyx's famished eyes.

It was Caspian striding into the room from what Nyx assumed was probably their bedroom, buttoning up the chest of his silver shirt that had criss-crosses lining the outer hem of the arms. His sea green eyes radiated from his umber skin and the width of his nose flared as he smiled at Nyx once he saw her. "Morning, Nyx," his deep voice reverberated. He glanced over at Catori who was now piling the bacon onto a wooden plate. "You should come around more often. Catori never cooks like this for me."

Standing from her kneeling position, her tawny skin appearing more orange due to the heat of the fire, Catori rolled her eyes at Caspian as she set the plate of bacon down on the table. Turning to the counter beside the firepit which was covered in different vegetable and herbs, she picked up a wooden bowl filled to the top with peeled boiled eggs that were steaming hot, setting them down beside the bacon. And Nyx almost fainted from her hunger when she watched Catori pick up another wooden platter which was covered in yellow and white cheeses cut in triangular blocks, surrounded by a cluster of purple grapes and fresh strawberries and raspberries, all gleaming with dewy drops of water, signaling they had just been picked and washed.

Lastly, Catori set a wooden, oval-shaped plate of half a loaf of brown bread and a cup of butter down on the table, then a butter knife down beside it. Then came three metal mugs of freshly squeezed orange juice and three empty wooden plates, and the fae stood back and viewed her table of breakfast which was of an exuberance that Nyx had never before seen.

The girl felt like a dog having to restrain her mouth from drooling and from her feet sprinting to the table so she could devour every last bite of the food. She glanced nervously between Catori who smiled proudly at the table and Caspian who was already taking a seat at one side and grabbing a piece of bacon. Nyx swore her knees almost buckled when he heard the crunch of the fae biting into the fried bacon.

Catori then also sat down at the head of the table to the girl's right, taking her cup of orange juice first and taking a sip. There were three cups and three plates set out, the third ones sitting in front of the chair only a few feet right ahead of Nyx. Although she was starving, she didn't want to assume that the plate was for her. Perhaps it was for one of their fae friends she hadn't met yet.

Catori reached to the platter of cheese and berries, plucking a grape from its chord and popping it into her mouth. Chewing, she glanced over to Nyx, her black eyebrows sewing together upon seeing that the girl was just standing there, staring dazedly at all the food. Smiling amusedly, the fae inhaled and spoke, "Nyx, you do know I made this breakfast for you? Please, have a seat, my dear."

The girl's golden eyes flickered to the fae and widened excitedly. She glanced back to the food and to the fae questioningly, breaking out into a smile of relief when Catori permissively nodded towards her. The girl wasted no time in plopping down in the wooden chair, immediately grabbing a piece of bacon and crunching it down within one second. Next, she grabbed a boiled egg and bit into it, keeping herself from moaning in delight as she used her other hand to break off a chunk of yellow cheese from the platter.

Caspian and Catori exchanged shocked and amused glances as the girl scarfed down the food, grabbing a handful of raspberries and shoving them into her mouth.

"Slow down, dear, you'll give yourself a stomachache," Catori urged the girl, holding back her laughter as she placed her warm hand on the girl's forearm.

Nyx swallowed down the last bit of the unchewed raspberries, glancing over to Catori bashfully. "S-sorry," she mumbled from between the bits of egg in her mouth.

Caspian and Catori only smiled and chuckled, shaking their heads humorously. "No worries," Catori told her softly, watching as the girl picked up her cup of orange juice and purposely sipped on it slowly. She glanced up to the piece of moss still sticking to the corner of the girl's pale forehead, surprised that she hadn't torn that one off as well. "Let's see how your wound is doing."

As Nyx held the cup up to her mouth and drank it carefully, she felt Catori lean towards her, nimble fingertips touching her forehead as she slowly peeled the piece of moss off.

"There," Catori whispered as she wiped a few grassy remains of moss from the girl's forehead. "It's all healed."

Nyx's eyebrowes crunched in shock as she set her cup down, licking the juice from her lips. "It is?" she questioned, bringing her own hand up to her forehead and feeling around for a wound, but there was none. There was no hint of pain, no scab, and not even an indention of a scar.

"Catori is the best doctor around," Caspian declared as he chewed a piece of bread from the loaf, smiling up at Catori with a twinkle in his eyes.

The ends of Catori's jet black hair wisped around her lower back as she shook her head. "Abitha is the one who grows the moss for me. There just needs to be someone to tend to these kinds of things, since there are no more healing fae."

Nyx remembered what Catori had told her the evening before, about how her father was the last of the healing fae. Suddenly, it was as if everything came crashing down on her at once—the reason she was there in the first place. A sickness grew in her stomach and made her want to throw her half-eaten egg onto the ground, but she was smart enough to know she needed to eat until she was full no matter how much the situation made her sick.

Then, right as she stuffed the bottom half of the egg into her mouth as Caspian and Catori exchanged more glances upon the vague mentioning of her father, the front door to their cottage swung open with a squeak.

All three of their heads turned to who stood in the doorway, which was none other than the gnome-like Erlin, his hair spiked up and his small wings fluttering snow flurries from its feathers as he stepped inside without invitation. "It's as cold as the Ice Queen's heart out there!" he exclaimed as he closed the door, stomping over to the table and grabbing a piece of bacon, chomping into it.

"It would have been more polite to ask, you know," Catori gently scolded him, tilting her head with a tight smile.

"To barge in or to eat our food?" Caspian grumbled, shaking his head as he spread butter onto his piece of bread.

"Sorry," Erlin mumbled as he grabbed a whole triangle of white cheese and bit into it. He then tried to speak even through the food in his mouth: "Al sent me."

Caspian lifted his head at the mention of her name. "Why, what does she want?" he asked apprehensively as the feathers of his navy blue wings rose, which Nyx picked up on. She assumed that the fire fae probably had everyone constantly doing this or that, with how bossy and commanding her aura was. Caspian, seemingly being her right-hand man, probably wanted at least one morning to himself and his wife.

Scarfing down the block of cheese, Erlin leaned over the table and reached for the bowl of boiled eggs, his short arms insufficient to do so. Caspian rubbed his bald head stressfully with his hand as Erlin nearly knocked over the plate of bread, so Nyx reached forward and picked up the bowl of eggs, carefully handing it to the scruffy fae.

"Thank ya," Erlin told her as he began taking boiled eggs from the bowl and placing them in his brown leather satchel.

"Alright, alright, that's enough!" Caspian barked when Erlin had stored his sixth egg. He yanked the bowl from the small fae's hands. "Get back to doing your job and not stealing our food before I twist your ears into your eyes."

Erlin blushed as he scurried back towards the door, looking between Caspian and Catori apologetically. "Nyx, Al wants me to take you to see her," the fae finally answered Caspian's question of why Al sent him.

Nyx froze as she bit into a piece of buttered bread, eyes wide in fear at the thought of Alastair wanting to talk to her. Their first meeting had told the girl that she was a ball of fiery—in a both literal and figurative sense—rage.

She glanced over to Catori who was already looking at her, silently asking with her golden eyes if she should go. She was surprised that Catori was so quick to read her mind, nodding her head downwards in assurance. "Don't keep her waiting," she urged the girl. She then reached to the platter of cheese and berries and picked up a handful of raspberries, handing them over to Nyx. "And bring these to her. They're her favorite."

Nyx cupped her hands and let Catori pour the berries into them. Standing from her seat, she twisted her waist around and tucked the berries into the large pocket of her tan cloak, fingers shaking with nervousness.

"Don't worry, Nyx," Caspian spoke as he also stood up from the table, downing the last of his orange juice and setting the cup down. "Al really isn't all that bad. She's just...a little rough around the edges." He leaned forward and patted the girl's shoulder in a fatherly sense, giving her a small smile with his dark lips.

Nodding, Nyx pulled the hood of her cloak over her head and took a deep breath, reluctantly following Erlin out the front door.