#Also I ship Aurora with a Backbone and some Guts (hi philip you're a nice boy)

[eternalstrigoii]

Unsullied Waters

Borra (Maleficent: Mistress of Evil) x Desert Warrior Dark Fey Reader

         You saw it in him during the Revel most of all.

The tension in his shoulders, the hard set of his jaw. He wanted to be out there on the Moors. The Moor-Folk were small, fragile things – you, yourself, had seen them many times. You’d snatched them in bags from the shoulders of poachers, swept them from jars bounced away on surging vines. Released them in the trees only to circle back and bloody your claws. As loyal, as devoted, as he was to your kind above all, Borra was fond of those creatures. They could hardly defend themselves.

Conall didn’t want him to provoke war.

While it was the larger truth, that wasn’t what you did when you went to the moors with him. He was protecting them. Someone had to. Your kind were few and far between; you heard stories about the faerie, or the witch, that used to live there. The things she’d done, the admirable justice she sought.

If protecting your people cost mortal life, then it was a price for which only the humans were to blame.

You touched his shoulder between his wing and his armor. Your fingers curled, pressing in.

You were all warriors in some form. There was no weakness in providing for the man who led you. Who took you to his bed and mated you. Often.

Borra let out a low growl of frustration. He refused to let his gaze drift toward Conall, though some part of you knew their increasing friction was as much the source of his doubled rage as the increase in poaching.

You ran your hands deliberately down his back before you stepped away.

He made no move to stop you. He never did. He liked to watch you, just as you enjoyed being watched. Sometimes you felt his fury heat the air between you, as though the weight of his amber gaze alone would give the others wide berth from you, for it was him you belonged to and no other.

As though you would ever let him forget.

As though you were ever without a partner for long.

If anyone but Conall opposed the way Borra took hold of you, the way his talons bit deliciously into the rock-like texture of your flesh, they kept it to themselves. You called to him with the sway of your hips, demanded his attention. If you didn’t want him to claim you like the hawk seizes prey, you would have openly opposed.

His thumb talon brushed your jaw as your head fell back into his shoulder. Your wings splayed, fitting comfortably against his. The ease at which your bodies slotted together was no small pleasure, well beyond that of his clothed hips against yours; the caress of his claws along the hem of your trousers.

He snarled your name against the leaf of your ear. His touch lingered so near where you quivered.

Your hand, tangled in his hair, sought to guide his mouth to your throat.

The beat of his wings folded yours like a shield, as though you needed to be reminded that departure was not an intermission.

    By the time you landed at his nest, he had already unfastened the chest-plate of your armor. His large, warm hands caressed your skin from the pronunciation of your collarbone to the swell of your hips.

He groaned; your sharp teeth found purchase at the junction between his neck and shoulder, and you tugged lightly at his trapped flesh. He nearly tore the waist of your pants as he opened them, palming your breast as the other settled between your thighs.

You stumbled, the both of you, clumsy with fixation. He parted you, caressing along the seam of your liquid heat. Your knees buckled only for his to agree when the straw edge of his nest-bed finally brushed your feet.

“Borra,” you gasped against his ear.

Your wings unfurled. He flung your chest plate to the floor.

Your hands fell from his hair. You’d undone the shoulder plate of his armor so often that his leather responded to your persistence. The moment it fell, you aided him in removing the last of the clothes left between you.

Sometimes you forced him to wait. Your lips traced a path down his chest, over the hardness of his stomach. You undid the waist of his trousers with deliberate care, gave them permission to slip further down his hips so you might rest your hands there. So the scrape of his talons on your scalp and the buck of his hips was never too much to prevent you from watching him.

You loved to watch him. Eyes half-lidded. Lips parted around his groan.

You loved to watch almost as much as you loved to shower his hips and thighs with marks of your own. The ones on his shoulders and his neck were possessive; those were just for you. And he always let you do them.

A low moan passed between your parted lips.

Your mate’s touch lingered well after you’d joined. His body fit so well against yours; you fit your arm along his where he ensnared your waist, never allowing himself to fully part from you. You were equals – when you fought together, when you sparred, when you mated.

“More,” you keened, and his hand closed over yours where you clutched his bed’s feather-down lining.

He made another low, animal sound.

His hips shifted, boosting yours. You spread your legs around him, allowing him to press closer from above. Your enthusiastic cries encouraged him.

The knot of pleasure at your center unwound abruptly.

His hips stuttered. A low snarl of pleasure punctuated the final snap of his hips, burying him inside you. As delightful the throb of pleasure between you, once was rarely enough. You rolled your hips against him, not stifling the sounds you made at his response.

You both would not rejoin them.

          “You love him?” Udo asked you after she departed with Conall.

Maleficent. Protector of the moors. Alive. Powerful. She who allowed her people to be slaughtered in the name of her human pet.

You almost laughed. “I’ll die for him.”

He inclined his head toward you, and as terribly as you thought he must’ve wanted to keep his feelings to himself, he was disappointed with your response. Of course he was; he tended fledglings. He was a warrior, but he had no heart for war. “Try not to.”

        “I want you at my side where you belong.”

You ignored the creeping tendrils of pleasure that spread through your skin like cactus flower. You smiled sidelong, assuming it would be in passing – but, no, he’d joined you at one of the desert’s high points, the filtered sun doing little to fully warm your skin.

“It’s my honor, Borra.” You nodded, and the serious set of his mouth softened some.

“During battle and after, Suren. I want you at my side where you belong.” He looked out over the sandy plain. The only flecks of green were spiny aloe, and some part of you recalled, in your youth, massaging its slick, malleable contents into the iron burns on his side.

“I’ve always been there.” Your voice lowered. “I always will be.”

He smirked, and you did nothing to resist your impulses. You scaled the sheer cliff face to be closer to him, unable to cut him off him before he teased, “I don’t want you running off with some forest-dweller once we’ve reclaimed the moors.”

You kissed him. Hard. Your fingers laced in his hair, your tongue parted the seam of his lips.

His arm encircled your waist, mouth hungry for yours.

You ran your hand up his chest, gripped the armor fastened to his shoulder. A dull throb of need settled between your thighs, and you nearly crawled onto his in search of satisfaction.

“I will always,” you said on a breath, only for him to reclaim your mouth again. He dug his talons into your hips. You moaned, and he caught your lower lip between his sharp teeth. “always be yours.”

“I love you,” he whispered, just for you, and the warmth that saturated his voice ensured that no amount of hesitation on his part to meet your gaze left you with no concern for its sincerity.

“As I love you. More than there are stars in the skies.” You kissed him again, far more gently. “Blades of grass on the plains.” Again. “More than rain joins with the tide.” And once more. “And the wind beneath my wings.”

The sound he made reminded you of a jungle cat’s purr. His hands traced your back, and you rested your forehead against his. Your horns bunted without meaning to, but then he shifted, doing it again with intent.

“You’ll fly with me over the moors again. With the sun on your back, this time.”

“Something tells me you’ll be more interested in my back and the ground before long,” you teased.

“Mm. We’ll have all the moors.” His hands crept higher. “I’ll take you in the treetops. In the mountains. On the shore.”

You could almost imagine sand giving way beneath your fingers. “In the water?” you whispered, keeping nothing of your desire to yourself.

“Wherever you want. Whenever you want. The moors will be ours,” he kissed you, too lightly. You wanted more. “And we will do whatever we please.”

“Protect the moor-folk,” you muttered, kissing him again. “Keep the humans at bay.”

“Claim the skies again,” he whispered, and his talons in your hips suddenly dragged you flush against him. He dove from the cliff-face with you in his arms.

Your wings spread out beneath you on instinct. You laughed, coasting high over your territory, clinging to him.

His wings curled around yours. He guided you to fold, your bodies shifting so you were astride him and he coasted on his back. You encircled his neck with your arms, your body spread along his.

The mountains and the treetops and the shore, the water and the desert and the tundra and the moors.

        “Conall wanted peace. And they filled him with iron.”

War paint, cool and smooth on your skin. The elders, working in vain to heal. Every throb of your pulse, a new reminder of what you’re fighting for.

Udo. Conall. Shrike. Borra.

Your people. Your family. Your freedom. Your future.

It’s for you he waits. When you join him in the biting, bitter cold, his eyes lock with yours, and, together, you dive.

                  “Withdraw! Withdraw!”

What have they done?

You dove.

Poplar fleece is highly flammable. You know this. You’ve set it afire with sparks from stones and watched how quickly it burned.

This was iron. Gunpowder. Something else. The iron would be lethal on its own, like this – explosive and devastating. This evaporates your people. They join with the red clouds. Nothing of them falls into the water.

Shrike called for a divide. You stayed with him, at his side. Your wings are larger, louder. Your heart beats hard. Finally, you felt fear in the nerves of your fingertips.

You were beside him when you broke the castle wall.

More red clouds explode.

Your wings curled around you. You wove through them, biting back the urge to inhale. Borra surged ahead, grabbed someone, threw them from a height. There are so many of them, too many to think of.

Your best advantage is in the air, but the air is filled with iron bombs.

You swooped like an eagle, driving a man into the ground. Another fell with a sharp swipe of your wing across his neck.

They broke an axe across your horns.

You slammed your foot into one of their iron chest plates. The momentary sting at its collision with your flesh went almost entirely unnoticed; there were others, and you hadn’t the time. It wasn’t the first, and it wouldn’t be the last.

Borra circled high over the melee. Every so often, when you were afforded the chance, your eyes lifted from your opponents to find him in the skies.

It steeled you.

The talon at the apex of your wing tore into the neck of a man who’d dared come at you with a sword. You trapped another’s helmet between your horns and flung him into the palace’s stone façade.

Your people had the upper hand. He’d be on the ground with you if you didn’t. You knew this – you knew him. These fools looked at him, at you, and saw only your size. Your strength.

They knew not what a skilled mind he had. How well he’d learned from his violent youth. They knew not that your touch lingered on the mark iron left on his lips, the scald from their net on his sides. They couldn’t understand that your violence stemmed as much from love as it did from hate – and the roots you ripped from the ground grew thorns as well as flowers when you cast them over the walls of their fortress into the sea.

You wore marks of your own, lashed around your ankles and your wrists.

You, too, had been caught before. Several times. They had even tried to bring you to justice.

You killed then as you did now. Your enemy cared nothing of the life they took, nor did you for theirs.

Their blood dampened your hair. Decorated your arms to the elbow. And still, you flew. The beat of your wings threw them on their backs. The scrape of your talons rent trenches in their armor, and you spun – one sailed through a window, the other into the apex of the roof. You turned before the turret even impaled him.

When she arrived, you did nothing. It was no cause for your concern. She destroyed their weapons by the dozen, then the hundred; more of their men fell to Maleficent’s power than had to the collective of you.

You did nothing until you saw her, as you dropped another man from a great height, with her child-queen cowering before her.

Move, you thought. The bastard queen cocked her crossbow. Locked an arrow.

And Maleficent, the fool, gave her life for that child.

Idiot. A step to the left or a step to the right would’ve been sufficient – it wasn’t as if an arrow’s course could change after it had been fired!

And he thought she could save you.

The child-queen threw herself to the ground, crying out her agony. She touched the ashes that had become of her mother – gently, lovingly, as though she might be able to somehow gather them back together, and a part of you remembered when you were a child like her. The bite of iron into your flesh. The quick snap of Borra’s talons through the woven cords. Grabbing your raw wrist. Your brother lay dying in the thicket with an iron arrow in his heart. You, too, screamed that way once.

It had taken only the two of you to slaughter many men. And, as the queen’s guard appeared, the child leapt to her feet. She had no wings on which to catch herself, no mother to prevent her fall.

And yet, they couldn’t reach her before she threw herself over the edge of the fractured balcony with the dread queen clutching her arms.

You dove at the same time.

Ulstead’s mortal child-queen was not your people. She, and her mother, were strangers. Catalysts. The boiling point of a long-awaited conflict and nothing more.

And yet, it was your feet that slammed into the chest plate of the queen’s armor. Your arms that ensnared the child-queen, and your wings that beat so forcefully that the armored tyrant had no control over the propulsion of her fall.

Aurora screamed and flung her arms around your neck.

You flew, expecting arrows, presuming the battle rekindled once the queen’s men cocked their crossbows. You surged high, carrying the girl away from the heart of battle. It was the only sensible thing, preserving those who would defend you.

Those tender hands wove their way into your hair, the child’s trembling body pressed close as though you were ample surrogate for her fallen mother. “Thank you,” she whispered into your shoulder.

You flew her to the edge of the palace’s roof, where you meant to set her. She did not let go of you, and you thought, at first, that it was only because she was afraid.

It was because of the Phoenix that rose to greet you.

The beat of her wings easily overwhelmed yours. You landed, with the child, for your own protection. You held the child against you, shielding her against the wind’s force. You crouched, defensive – of yourself, of the sudden fragility of your wings at the beat of hers (they shuddered and buckled; you had to fold them for your own protection).

They held one another’s gaze much too long.

She let go of you, then, the fearless child-queen. She stood, balanced precariously on the sloped roof’s edge, and held out her hands.

If she’d wanted to be carried, you could’ve done that.

But, no. Her phoenix mother gathered her, and they descended, together, in the shifting black cloud of her mist.

You followed the roof to its apex. You couldn’t see his face, but you knew he saw you, so you dove.

He hadn’t let you kill her.

The bastard queen of Ulstead was wrapped in thorny vines, fighting her confinement. Your head perked curiously.

He and Shrike hugged the palace as they flew. His fingers were curled, guiding the blooming vines while they bounced and tossed the queen until she landed in the dirt at the palace steps.

And was promptly changed into livestock.

You took that as encouragement that she would be eaten, and joined with their descent.

The tension twisted inside of you fell when you were able to study him with your feet planted. From behind, while he spoke to her, he bore no wounds. Several of his feathers had been scalded by their bombs, but they would preen away in time.

“Borra,” Maleficent addressed your mate, and you knew you were not the only one with her full attention. “It’s time to come home.”

Home.

The air left your chest.

The nest was home, of course, in a sensible and practical way. It was your point of origin, your safety, home to your people as nowhere else in the world would allow.

But your home – all of yours – was in the skies. And the true Moor-Queen invited you to join her out of hiding. In the air. As you all so deeply wanted.

Though he said nothing to her, and her daughter called her away before long, when he turned, Shrike and Ini burst into cheers. You didn’t contain your smile – though it fell, somewhat, as you watched his face.

His wings reached out ahead of him to guide you, and you let them, your own folding until they were as near to flush against your back as they would get. You rested your hands on his chest, attention momentarily diverted by the sight of a new wound on his arm, and a cut on his throat that gave you real pause.

“Will you keep your word?”

He rested his hands on your back, and the warmth of his skin radiated within you. The sky. The wind. The treetops. The mountains. Every day of your future would be an act of defiance, a rallying cry to your people nearly destroyed.

“You are my home, Borra,” you whispered. “I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth.”

              That night, there was a revel. There was no moon, and the palace grounds were still. The villagers were in hiding, the prince and his new wife in their bed. Even Maleficent and her raven had departed with her once-captive people, and, perhaps, to replace what was left of the essence of their fallen.

Yours would never receive the honor. No matter what Maleficent did, whatever they returned as would not be what they were. More Dark Fey lost to mortal slaughter.

But for every one you’d lost, you’d taken ten. And, at least for then, it was enough.

You bathed in the river until your armor ran clean.

You danced with Udo. With Ini and Shrike. The drums beat hard in Conall’s memory. A song for every one of your fallen. The old, mortal king watched from his balcony.

You were both exhausted when he caught your hand, but you danced anyway. For Conall. For your fallen. For the children Udo had gone to fetch, for the families newly shattered and the ones whose loss would finally mend. You danced for each other, and for yourselves, and for the future laid bare before you. You were wounded, as was he, wounds that pulled and pulsed as you moved, stung with every bead of sweat on your skin.

You tried not to think about how he washed the war paint from it. The cold, gushing river had been the only impediment to the act, for you both waded on its shallow banks, your thumbs and claws smearing with each caress.

You left for the moors at dawn. With him. There was no more need for talking. Only the beat of your wings. The kiss of the cool mist.

You slept, together, high in the peaks, on an outcropping where the bright sun warmed your skin. You wore no armor, though not because it had been pried away by eager hands.

You had both waited so long to feel the sun, to feel the kiss of the wind passing through your feathers, that it consumed the whole first day of peace. That, and sleep. Blessed, restful, dreamless sleep.

             “I like you,” the raven Diaval said. Not that he had much business doing so. But you had fallen into a comfortable rhythm in the days after your war; the brooks and streams in the moors were for your drinking water and the homes of the beings who lived there. The water elsewhere, for washing and bathing. Which you and the bird had a tendency to both do early in the morning. He was not a mortal man even when he wasn’t a bird, and the sight of you elicited no unwelcome responses of any sort. He had been curious, at first, as to whether or not the fine cracks in your skin caused you pain.

“They’re decorative,” you’d joked, deadpan.

He laughed. His time with Maleficent was not all subservient.

“You’re good company. Are all fey like that? Dark fey, anyway?”

“Your mate isn’t the only one separated from mankind,” you replied. You ducked your head, and the rush of cold water through your tangled hair made you stifle a gasp. Pleasure and discomfort. The sensation never got old.

His cheeks flushed brightly. “Maleficent isn’t….”

You stared at him much the same way you joked. “Are you arguing with a fey what our courtship looks like?”

“Courtship?” he practically choked on the word.

“You preen her. You sleep near her. You’re nearly her constant companion, and it’s her nest you return to when the sun falls. You think you’re her servant.” You managed to pull your talons through one of the long-fought knots in your hair, and a brand-new sense of pride filled you. Look at you! Maybe you’d even give yourself hair like your child-queen one day. (Your smirk grew.) “She’s taught you well. I had to train Borra to lie still under me.”

“Oh!” Such delicate sensibilities for a wild creature!

“Did you think it was always my wings scraping the dirt, raven?” you grinned. “Oh, I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten – you’ve not once thought about my wings. Not when you’re so busy with hers.”

He splashed you. And, like a child, you splashed back.

Peace was beautiful.

You washed your clothes and dressed while they were wet. The radiant heat of your body would warm them in time. Udo and his charges were already navigating their new space, as you did from the earth.

You knew this place already, parts of it like the lines of your hand.

You’d just never seen it so teeming.

The willow sprites who’d been bothering you for days about the state of your hair descended on you again in a rush, and you stopped abruptly with a sigh. “For the last time, I will not let you toy with my hair. I’m very sorry, I understand how much that must distress you.”

They all spoke at once, in a flurry, voices overlapping one another. You caught bits and pieces – so pretty, so soft, like corn silk, no, like sweetgrass, and the corners of your mouth twitched.

“Tell you what, if you can find a comb capable of withstanding the job, I’ll let you brush it out. My only condition is that you mustn’t ask for one.” Skies knew Udo would give one to them gladly, then you’d be forced to endure their picking.

They agreed in high, excited chorus, dispelling from you as quickly as they’d come.

Borra laughed from the trees above. “Going soft already?”

“Udo won’t break my trust if he knows what’s good for him.” Your eyes lifted.

It should’ve been impossible for him to look any better. He wore his armor still, just as you did – you were still protectors of the moor-folk, after all – but the sunlight made his skin glint like quartz embedded in a canyon’s wall. You’d noticed it in yourself, of course, as had Diaval – and it had been one of the few times in your brief friendship that the raven quieted down.

His head quirked, and his smile spread past your own. “I don’t know. You’d look nice with your hair braided, sweetgrass.”

You hit him with your wing.

He laughed and leapt from the low branches to join you on the earth. He took your hand almost reflexively, just as you drew closer. You were about to ask him, quietly, if he felt the same as you did – if it was still nearly impossible to separate the advantages of the land from the fantastical scenery. It was on the tip of your tongue when something, somewhere, some tiny voice cried out only to be joined by what sounded like a hundred others.

You frowned. It would have to wait.

You both ran until you found them on the banks of the little brook, scores of little flower-people and dragonfly-people and They of the Dandelion Bodies. Groups of them gathered where several had fallen, and fear hit you suddenly, making your wings stir.

Borra gave you his back, his thoughts much the same. Were you under attack? Was it iron powder, launched in burning casings from the sky?

“Where are your healers?” you asked, far more gently than you felt.

You didn’t understand them all. Some of their dialects were lost in the din of the others, not that you would have understood the languages you did not speak. They were a buzzing in your head, and you couldn’t resist shushing them with a wave of your hand. “Please. Not all at once. I wasn’t asking a question, I was telling you to get them.”

Dozens immediately took the cue, surging for the skies.

One of the little dragonfly people lay still in the arms of another. They made high, squeaky sounds at their fallen companion, tiny, bright-shelled hands touching their face.

“May I?” you offered your flat, open palms.

They assisted in lifting their fallen so you could cradle them.

Your thumb traced their chest. Iron burned, but the iron powder you’d faced caused your people to incinerate. If it was iron, especially in the lungs, would they not have already suffocated?

“He’s very warm,” you said to Borra and Borra alone.

“As though burned?” He hadn’t yet turned toward you, ever the tactical mind. If they had all fallen here, something must be wrong. But you heard no men in the trees, you smelled no gunpowder. Only a faint sweetness that gave you pause. You looked to the other little ones, offering a hand, and you sniffed them.

“…no. No, something is wrong.”

The fallen smelled sweet, but not too sweet. Like fruit…and ash? Your nose twitched, and you rubbed it on your forearm.

“Tell me,” you said to one of the little mud men lingering at the fringes, concerned but unharmed. “Are there fruits that could poison you here? Is it possible something’s turned?”

What are you saying? A being in the trees asked in a wisp-like voice.

“They smell sweet and strange, like ash and berries. Like…” As soon as you said it, you paused.

Borra finished for you, his voice hardly above a growl. “Rowan.”

You’d never smelled it firsthand. Frankly, you’d almost thought it was a children’s tale meant to soothe them when iron wasn’t available, rowan berries in your pockets to protect you from the fey. If only Conall could tell you.

The little creature in your palms grew still.

For a moment afterward, you stared. Their lovely, jewel-toned body became limp, slowly at first, and when the gentle tremor of their pulse abated, your eyes rose.

Borra shared your horror, though not as quietly.

“Do you see?!” he bellowed.

The other little creatures who’d gathered around you looked to one another with open fear. Some of them, the other dragonfly people, quietly wept.

“Do you see what becomes of trusting your enemy?!”

One of the muck-men swooned. Your heart clenched, and you looked to all the others around you. One of the dandelion children had flushed cheeks, and the thought came to you suddenly.

“The river.”

The river between the kingdoms. Between Ulstead and the Moors.

“They’ve poisoned the river!” you cried.

But your audience was already ailing.

Those of them that went had already begun to succumb. Those who stayed farther inland bore no ill effect; they rushed to the aid of the others, and you called to the gaggle of petal-sprites who were smart enough to bathe in the mists, “Fetch our healers! Tell them! We must do whatever we can!”

“I’ll fetch Queen Aurora!” someone cried.

You knew Borra would protest. You looked to him, and the fear that yielded so fast to fury redoubled.

His face was flush. His eyes, glassy. He stumbled, and rested a hand on one of the tree-men.

“Borra!”

You leapt over the ones who could not get out of your way quickly enough.

Your mate went to his knees. His arm folded around his middle, a sound of pain leaving him that you only rarely heard. “Let them.” He swallowed, and you were afraid that he was struggling to breathe, but, no, he dropped his head when the dizziness became too much to handle. “Send for our elders. Take our children to the nest.” Protect them.

“Go,” you said to whatever decided to call for Aurora. You wrapped your arms around him for support, allowing him to release the tree-creature. “Bring her, and  her mortal healers! Now!”

“Make them tend you,” he rasped. He’d gone earlier in the morning than you had, and you’d nearly gone with him then, but you’d gotten caught up in chasing off Pinto.

“I have time,” you whispered, though you didn’t know how much. “I’ll take you to her—”

“No.” His grip on you was still tight. “We can’t trust them. Trust the girl if you must, but not the others.” The pain in his stomach made him flinch, and you lowered beside him, folding his body in your wing.

“I won’t let you die,” you whispered. Fevered sweat had already broken out on his brow, and you wiped it away gently. Your stomach growled, though you’d eaten not long ago.

You brought him closer to the trees, into the dampness of the moss. You were slow with him, gentle, pretending you didn’t feel the flush of heat creep up your skin, the increasing unrest in your stomach.

“Tell Diaval to find some,” you offered to whatever was near you. Your head began to spin. “The berries or the wood.” You laid down beside him, facing him. Just briefly. Just so you could gather the strength to get back to your nest.

There was a buzzing. Faeries. Something. And pain twisted inside of you suddenly. You drew your knees into your stomach and moaned at the nausea that overtook you.

       You were both sick in waves, fever and pain alternating with violent illness. You tasted blood in your mouth when whatever you had inside of you rose to join the leaves. You were weak. Trembling. Your people never left your side. Were it not for Maleficent’s strange abilities, you knew they would have retreated to the nest across the sea with the both of you in tow.

They would have rekindled their desire for war.

The pain intensified, for you, not long after the dawning of the second day. The cramps in your stomach spread, and you lay there, writhing against Borra while he tried so vainly to comfort you despite the shaking of his hands and the fever that engulfed you both.

Your thighs were slick.

You struggled to right yourself enough to take measure of the blood. When you moved, your head spun so severely that you couldn’t find the strength to call for Ini, though she trained to heal alongside the elders. You sunk against Borra with a cold shiver, and pressed your face into his throat.

“I won’t let you die,” he rasped, arms folding around you.

Your insides seized so suddenly, so sharply, that you whimpered. Your fingers curled to fists against his stomach and his side.

“Suren, I will not let you die.”

You trembled, sweating, panting softly with the strain of your body’s rejection.

“Promise me,” you whispered.

“I promise,” he said without thought.

“Promise me you will not die.”

You supposed if he was not also bleeding, he would be quicker to recover. You presumed if anyone was to die from poisoning, it would be you with the way you soaked in the river, the strange desire you had to mingle your hot skin with the cold.

“I promise.” He drew your head to his, the bump of your horns a familiar comfort. You were shaking, sweat-soaked and weak. All the same, he kissed you softly, his hand on your cheek and the blood-soaked sweetness of rowan berries on both your breath.

           You awoke with ice on your belly, and sighed with relief.

Borra slept beside you, wings folded. The poisoned fever had left his face and, largely, also yours. He used one of his arms for a pillow, curled beneath him, and you allowed your weak muscles the satisfaction of rolling over onto your other side.

“Careful,” Udo murmured, steadying you. “There is still some left to pass.”

“Thank you, old friend.” You patted the tundra fey’s icy hands, only to pause abruptly. Udo was tending you?

“Did Ini--?” Fall ill? Did the poison spread inland?

“Ini remains with the river-small. They’ve suffered the hardest.”

You nodded. Of course. But you still didn’t understand. “The elders?”

Udo did not meet your gaze. Cool water ran over your skin where the ice melted, which he was doing his best to preserve.

“The king’s men stand guard along the river. They’ve plucked whatever berries remained from it; it’s in all of our best interest to wait until well after their remnants wash into the sea.”

“How long will that be?”

He met your eyes, then, and you hated that he had. A profound loss weighed upon him, and you struggled to sit up. You were still tired, still weak, but nowhere nearly as sick as you had been. “They killed our children.”

“Only one,” he replied.

The anger in your heart returned the way wildfire engulfed dry plains. You propped yourself on your palms, your teeth set.

“Borra will want vengeance.”

He nodded, solemn.

“Could anything be done?”

“No.” He looked to you, and the gravity of his gaze made you afraid. You heard your heart pounding dully in your ears as you searched his face.

“Suren,” he said, gentle and so very patient.

The way he said your name was enough. You knew before the words even left him, though he rested his hand over yours, cold fingers curled gently around them as though he knew you could have violently beat the earth. “You carried a child.”

You fought denial as violently as you fought understanding. “Carried?” you repeated, the violence in your voice unmistakable.

“Poison killed your fledgling. It died inside of you.”

You threw back the cover that had been laid over you, but your clothes had been replaced, the blood cleaned from you and the areas around you. You tried to struggle for your feet, but Udo’s grasp on your shoulder was gentle and steadying. “You need to lie still.”

“I need an audience with the queen,” you whispered, no lacking measure of ferocity in your voice. Borra would not want vengeance, he would seek it.

“Then I will have her summoned.”

“Udo!” you hissed. He knew why you wanted to leave the nest to do it!

The straw beside you rustled.

Udo remained where he was, perpetually composed.

Borra’s eyes opened, and fell partially closed once more. He shifted, reaching to draw you back into the safety of his arms. “You feel better.”

No. You felt worse. Your hatred consumed you. You thought, just once, and only half-heartedly, about flying over Ulstead, stealing children from the sky and drowning them in the river. Retribution for the child you had lost. One you hadn’t even known about, but, you realized much too late, that you would’ve welcomed.

A life of peace on the moors. Your mate and your baby. Protecting them, loving them, watching your child grow to fly alongside Maleficent. Another life stolen by humans!

He heard your silence, and it awoke him fully. He held your wrist, listened to the fierce pounding of your heart, and slowly – so slowly; you hated knowing that he was ill beside you and yet still rose to join you – shifted until he was seated at your side.

“What’s wrong?” he whispered, just to you, as though he couldn’t see Udo beside you.

You grit your teeth and closed your eyes.

You could do nothing with your hatred. Nothing but let it consume you.

You shook your head. Please don’t tell him. Please don’t say anything. I will when he’s recovered. But you couldn’t bring yourself to speak those words, nor would you ever be able to say the ones you knew you’d have to.

Udo told him.

Hot tears raced down your face. Your fledgling. Your baby. His baby. A child you made together, borne from love. Survived the war only to be killed while still in your belly.

Borra surged to his feet.

You followed him. Despite Udo’s protests, despite the dull throbbing that immediately took hold of your waist without ice to dull the pain, you caught your mate by the wrist. “You’re ill, Borra, please. Please, wait until you’ve recovered.”

He moved so quickly you almost believed he already had. The hateful twist of his mouth didn’t match the way he gathered you, pressing you close to him. “Our child,” he hissed, war-monger once more, “Our child! They murdered our child!”

“And if you retaliate now, I’ll also lose you!”

You were bleeding. You felt it, and Borra, for all his desire for bloodshed, had no intention of shedding yours. He radiated fury even as he gathered you, returning to the nest with you in his arms. He lay you down near Udo, who rested the ice on your waist.

“Borra,” you begged. You begged him. You let him see you lying prone, your legs pressed together as though that would stop it from coming. “Please. Stay with me. Stay with me until I can join you. Will you do that much?”

He was silent, talons curled into his fists. How easily he could have flown to Ulstead and begun another war, all while you lied there on your back like his ornamental wife.

“I deserve to share in our retribution!”

“I know you do.”

He didn’t fly.

When he left you, it was on foot. Into the Moors, into their forests. You waited to hear him, hear the rush of his powerful wings cutting through the trees as soon as he was out of sight, but the sound never came.

         Queen Aurora had a unique position, which she was intimately aware of. Not only was she the primary ruler of two kingdoms, having bequeathed something akin to democracy upon the third, but her husband and mother had the tendency to clash over that which should and should not be her problem – including issues that belonged to both kingdoms and were of the more life-threatening nature.

Rather, Philip had hoped to keep as much of the rowan-berry incident from his wife as possible, in the name of allowing her the freedom of joy and peace and believing their people were preserving the treaty that their love secured at the cost of countless lives.

Maleficent, however, did not answer to a boy of his age, size, or mortality, and told her daughter the truth in full. If not for justice, than because it was Aurora’s kingdom of origin, and she had every right to attend the funerals of her people.

Aurora did not take it well.

Funerals for the moor people had taken days, as though the tomb-bloom field hadn’t been replenished to an extent after the Battle of Ulstead. Her people, to their credit, hesitated to leave her on her throne of flowering redbud, though all were tired and none ceased to mourn.

But it was her right, as queen, to do her own mourning in private, so she had sent them all home. With the exception of her godmother.

“This is all my fault.” Aurora folded yet another kerchief into a thoroughly-soaked ball.

“No, it wasn’t,” Diaval had taken over comforting her in the last short while. “You’ve got no control over what people do. You can lead them, and you can punish them…but they have t’ want peace. We’re gonna have to teach them what good can come from bein’ good to us.”

Still, she sobbed, folded over in place. She doubtfully would have noticed anyone approaching had it not been Maleficent’s touch to her shoulder in warning.

“This is what you’re protecting?!”

Aurora abruptly sat upright, though it was not to her Borra spoke.

“You look better,” Maleficent quipped.

“Protector of the Moors!” He showed his teeth. “What have you protected since this child came along, besides yourself?!”

A bright coil of green swirled around her staff. Diaval sprung to his feet.

“Her father hunts you and you fight; the moment the child is yours, you leave your people to fend for themselves. You’ve done nothing to protect them since you appointed a human for their queen.”

“Are you finished?” Few words were ever so clearly spoken as a threat.

Borra’s wings flared. “I’ve protected them from Ulstead’s poachers. I agreed to peace. They set poison on our doorstep, and you expect – what? For us to bow and take it?”

“After all you’ve lost, Borra, are you so eager to return to war?”

Maleficent’s composure was thin. The hatred that burned anew in him was unmistakable. She had seen it in the nest, and she had seen it on the battlefield. Though she understood his reasons, all the progress he’d made in Conall’s honor had become new, violent opposition. One she would not allow.

“You know nothing of loss! This poison – this poison your peace was supposed to prevent – murdered my child.” In the passing of a heart’s beat, all of his rage, all of his hatred, became raw pain. It was not hers to see, let alone her child-queen, yet it laid bare for them both. “I demand justice.”

“You’ll get it,” Aurora responded.

Maleficent secured her grip on Aurora’s shoulder, but the young queen shook her head, her trembling curls and flushed cheeks painting her ever more the picture of innocence – all the more naïve.

“I promise. Whoever’s responsible, we’ll bring them---” to justice, she’d intended to say.

“You’ll bring them,” he cut her off in a low, half-animal snarl, “to me.”

        You were a warrior, the same as him.

He had been chosen to lead your people; in everything else, you were equals.

You did not seethe.

Your mourning was as violent as the moor-people’s was sedate. They returned to their homes. They wept.

You ripped the earth open with your bare claws. You screamed.

         “You get three days. Bring justice to your people in three days--”

“Use caution with your threats.” The coil of green mist had grown thicker around Maleficent’s staff; the green of her eyes brightened.

“--Or they will not be your people anymore.”

Aurora swallowed. She shook her head again, more vehemently. “…You wouldn’t do that.”

“Where I come from, our leaders are chosen, not given to us. I give you three days to prove to your people that you are capable, or they will choose a leader of their own.”

“Sorry,” Diaval interrupted, “did you…happen t’ ask the people of the moors who they were gonna pick?” If they were unhappy with Aurora for a queen, there was a good chance everyone would have known about it.

He snarled. For a moment, he considered going after the raven like the mortal he so looked.

“I will,” Aurora replied. The girl was smarter than she looked, braver than those who loved her believed her to be. “I swear on the Moors. I’ll find them. You’ll get justice, I promise.”

Beside her, Maleficent seethed.

Your mate tired of his fury remaining contained. You were right, though he would never say so aloud; he needed the days to recover and to plan. He needed days for you to recover, so you would not be deprived of the vengeance you deserved.

The tightness in Aurora’s chest did nothing to alleviate when he departed. “Godmother?”

Diaval held the girl’s shoulders.

Maleficent chose her words particularly carefully.

“Borra is a capable leader who led a successful campaign.” Successful depended upon the standards one held it to; there were great casualties, but there had been great casualties on both sides. “The folk of the Moors are not war-like people. They’ll be of no practical use. When he offers them protection…it would not be conditional upon their ability to join him when he breaks peace.”

Aurora didn’t understand what about that would be significant. She shook her head slightly, her delicate brows furrowed.

“If he breaks peace, he will not bring danger upon the Moors. He will deliver vengeance to Ulstead just as they betrayed us.”

She truly, physically, could not imagine what that would mean. She had no heart for violence, no penchant for cruelty. Truthfully, she still thought differently of Borra – and the other Dark Fey, no matter their ways or from whence they’d come. So far, there had been no hostility on their part. They obeyed peace.

“I don’t believe that.”

“You should,” Diaval pressed.

The young queen shook her head. She hadn’t watched you, or Borra, take human lives. She hadn’t seen the way you fought as Maleficent had. Even if she had, his reasons were good – Aurora believed deep in her heart that, while violence could stem from love, the beauty of it would always overwhelm the pain.

She balled her soaked kerchiefs and lifted her skirts, stepping neatly from her dais.

“Aurora!” her godmother warned.

“Trust me,” was all she said. She had fought so hard and so long for both her kingdoms – she would not allow herself to be manipulated again. This time, the child-queen intended to be her own hero, to whatever extent she was capable.

This time, the child-queen intended to be yours.

Udo left you when you’d calmed.

You’d torn the earth apart. You’d ripped thorny branches from the ground and built awful spires well above the tress. It was nothing but wasted energy, and had done nothing to cleanse you, or to alleviate your pain, or calm the bleeding, and so you’d let your friend tend you once more and insist upon your rest, and he had left to give you time to grieve peacefully.

A task you were not suited for. Not in the slightest.

You should have known.

You should have been more careful. You should have watched the moons.

What would it have been like, if you’d known? If you’d told him when you realized you hadn’t bled? You were at peace – the thought of your mate’s hands on your belly, his laughter, his joy, would you have believed in the fairytale then? Gathering your shed down and building up a small cradle for the life that was to come – wouldn’t that have been far worse cruelty than this? The expectation of hope before hope was lost?

His return brought you from your thoughts. You adjusted, reaching for him, glad when he gathered you into his arms and folded his wings around the both of you.

“I’m so sorry,” you whispered.

“It’s not your fault.” He traced your cheek with the pad of his thumb. “Never your fault.”

“I should’ve known—”

“They should’ve obeyed.” His voice was hard, suddenly, and you curled into him, taking more comfort in his anger than you wanted to admit. “They’ll pay for it. That, I promise.”

His arms around you were familiar and secure, but the part of you that burned was pain enshrouded in hatred. Like this, when you could do nothing, you wanted to stoke the fire for as long as possible, so you took one of his hands and settled it low on your stomach. “Would it’ve been good news?”

It was rare that you felt him breathe out his tension altogether, but he did. He moved closer to you, fingers tracing the plain of your flesh, and his arms around you softened. “Thought about asking if you wanted one. The night we lay together in the peaks.”

Your heart shattered. You didn’t think anything worse could have been said.

“It was almost real, you and I settled down like this.” His face was pressed into your hair and you felt the graze of his lips against the leaf of your ear. “Thought you would’ve killed me.”

“I could’ve been convinced.” You would’ve made him make love to you to prove he wanted it. Kiss as much of your body as he could. He’d done it before, leave you trembling before he’d even joined with you, kissing your ribs, your hips, your thighs, your knees. You would’ve held him when he kissed your belly until you both understood the choice you made, and then you would’ve given him your heart and your body and held his hands in the down and the straw while he made love to you, whether or not you had already been with child.

You knew what was behind the familiar warmth of your hatred, but you did nothing about it until you felt his quivered breath – until you knew he was trying not to weep into your hair.

Then, you wept.

You laid there together, wrapped in one another as you always had, but his arm covered your chest as though he had to protect you, and his hand rested where you’d left it, and your fingers were laced with his there, and you clutched him, and you cried in horrible, body-wracking, ugly sobs that twisted the knife of pain inside of you until you felt truly, and thoroughly, wrong.

Aurora of the Moors saw you. Aurora of the Moors bore witness to your pain. She saw glimpses of your face, twisted in agony; the tears you shed behind the veil of your mate’s wing. She saw the dreadful spires that were already beginning to crumble, thinning into thorny vines that eventually sunk back into the moss with little more than scars upon the earth where they’d emerged. The child turned princess turned queen had walked freely, stopped freely, released a quiet breath, and neither of you heard her.

Nor did you hear her turn and run back into the forest with her skirts raised, running barefoot for Ulstead.

Hurrying to bring justice without concern for the price she might pay.

       Aurora was the people’s queen.

No guards left their posts at the river. No men with armor came barging into homes. At first, no one who answered their door realized that it was the queen who’d come to them, her dress dirty and feet bare, cheeks still damp with tears and a leaf dangling somewhere unreachable in her hair.

“Hello,” she said, to each and every person she spoke to. “Do you know anything about who might’ve placed rowan in the river?”

She sat with people, at their tables. Refused their food, though out of practicality rather than hesitation. She implored them – men, women, children, families of all of the above. If you know something, please, please let it be known. People I care for have been harmed. Faeries died. Please, help me bring their killers to justice. I won’t harm anyone, but they have to be caught.

There were people whose only motivation for not throwing her out was the fact that she was queen.

The parish priest begged her to turn away from them, and it was she who left of her own volition. A group of schoolchildren made jokes that earned them a stern and quite legal reprimanding. If you’d known the lengths that Aurora of Ulstead – Aurora of the Moors – went to for you, perhaps you wouldn’t have doubted her.

The girl walked until her feet began to bleed. Nearly talked herself hoarse.

Her husband found her in the village square with the tea merchant, where she’d paused for a good cry. She ached for the people of the moors, you and Borra most of all, and she ached physically. He gathered her into yet another warm, secure embrace, and she practically fell into him. These were not the happy marriage-days she’d been hoping for.

“Where have you been?” he asked, gentle and so full of love.

She told him.

Philip had known about the funerals, but everything after – Borra, the bargain she’d made for her kingdom, disobeying Maleficent, watching you mourn and deciding to canvas the village herself – he hardly knew what to do with it. In his defense, it was a lot for one boy who’d been raised in a castle to unpack all at once.

“Come home.” He rubbed circles in the backs of her palms. “We have three days.”

“I have three days,” she reminded him. “I am queen, it’s my responsibility.”

“And I am your husband. I won’t leave you to do this alone.”

She thought of you again, as she had between every house, and every moment she spent with the parish priest. (She would not tell Philip that she’d yelled at the man that men like him were the reason people in the village were cowards enough to murder babies, but she had, and you would’ve been proud of her child-fury.)

“Will you hate me,” she whispered, “if I let them seek justice of their own?”

He paused. He was a good boy, gentle and loving, but he often felt he understood the gravity of the situation more keenly than she did – as though the child-queen did not know what she proposed.

“What are you saying?”

“If I can’t find their child’s killer in three days, I will tell the guard to stand down.” She lifted her eyes, doing her best to square shoulders and face the man she loved. “I’ll let them into Ulstead. I won’t allow innocent people to be harmed—”

“Aurora—”

“—but I can’t sit by and let nothing happen. Philip, your mother went unpunished.”

“My mother is a goat!”

“And she killed them! She killed innocent people, my people and theirs! He’s right – I’ve done nothing to protect the Moors. It’s not Maleficent’s duty to care for me and the moor-folk and whatever else comes! I am queen, Philip!” You would have been even more proud of her then, the backbone she seemed to grow without the donning of a corset. “Capable leaders don’t allow their people to suffer.”

“You’re backing one man’s grudge against an entire kingdom.” He tried to close the distance between them, but Aurora of the Moors was Maleficent’s daughter, and she withdrew her hands from grasping range. She straightened, and, though her lips were pressed in a perpetual pout, she almost seemed to grit her teeth.

“I am backing the protector of my people in his time of loss. I know you’d do the same for Percival.”

Philip loved his wife, truly, but he couldn’t hide his irritation. “I’ve known Percival all my life. You don’t know this man, and you don’t know his people—”

“Do you know his name?”

Philip stopped. Every time he thought he had the advantage, Aurora thought of something that ripped the rug right out from under him.

“Would you know him by sight? Would you call him by his name? Even if he is a stranger to you,” and to me, “does that keep you from respect?”

Of course he knew him. Knew of him. The fey that could have killed Percival, the fey he’d held at the point of his father’s sword. The one he’d thrown down his sword for. A leader, he could believe, but he would have been lying to say he had given any of the newcomers much consideration.

It wasn’t exactly as though he’d had time.

“Tell me his name and I’ll wait for you.” He has no excuse not to, I’ve just said it.

Philip stared at her, and whatever reservations he’d had about Aurora’s plan unraveled. “Borra,” he repeated, careful to pronounce it as she did.

Aurora breathed deeply in what felt like the first time in a very long time. She straightened, her head back and hands clenched at her sides. “I trust him, Philip. I trust them all. They won’t break peace. Not if I help them.”

“Well,” King John emerged from the stables with a procession of horses – Aurora’s white and Philip’s plain one, as well as one of his own. “Then I suppose we’d best get to work.”

“Father, what are you—?”

Aurora grinned and rushed to him, throwing her arms around the good King’s neck. She hugged him as she hugged Diaval, and paused to ensure her cheeks had been properly dried before calmly, easily, lifting herself onto her horse without the help of shoes or a footman.

Philip stared at her, and the love in his heart only grew.

“Come on, we’ve got almost the whole village!” She snapped her reigns but once, and only softly, and yet her horse knew her well. She rode off into the heart of Ulstead on her brilliant steed, dirt-stained pink dress flowing along its flanks.

“Good choice in wife,” King John quipped, though he was not as quick in mounting.

                 Shrike was furious. Ini backed her call for retaliation. You heard them, you heard their war cries, and you heard Borra’s silence.

“I want to bury my child,” you murmured to Udo.

He nodded. You supposed he had been waiting for you to regain your strength. He gave you little more than a bundle of bloodied cloth and down, nothing of substance, and yet you took it to the spot where Conall had been slaughtered.

So much of your people’s blood soaked this land. Though nearly all of your fallen died in the Battle of Ulstead, the moors had already seen Conall’s, Borra’s, Maleficent’s, and yours. And your child’s.

Were you right to include her?

You dug your hole in the earth by hand. Thought of encircling it with river stones. The ones that looked like eggs, from the banks of the brooks and the streams in the moors that had gone without pollution – round and speckled and wholly unsullied.

If she’d never come, if you’d never met her, you and your mate would have remained in the nest. You would have noticed that you had not bled (you told yourself), and your people would’ve thrown a grand celebration. They chose Borra for one of their leaders, they would celebrate his child like no other.

Conall would’ve loved to know you were with child. Your eyes stung with tears at the thought; in this fantasy world you created for yourself, he came to you and Borra after the announcement, when your mate’s hand still lingered on your belly. He would have told you, though your child deserved the freedom of flight over the trees, that you could find peace in your love for them. And, in this fantasy where nothing was as it would’ve been, you thought you could have. Curled in the cool dark of your nest, nursing your baby. All of you, so warm. The soft down of their baby-feathers under your fingers, under Borra’s. How easily you would’ve sunk into each other. How comfortable a cradle his wings would’ve made. How beautiful he would’ve looked, carrying your child in the crook of his arm – how fiercely he would have loved them.

You felt him before he joined you. You made no attempt to wipe your tears away.

He helped you dig a shallow hole, a little grave that rent your chest more severely than it should’ve.

“Suren.” Finally, he spoke. “Look at me.”

You did. Kneeling in the dirt, crying. What sort of warrior had you become?

“I told them to stand down.”

You closed your eyes and buried your face in your filthy palms. Fresh sobs wracked you, though, at first, the tangle of your emotions left you unsure why. He had no right – you needed justice. But he was right; you couldn’t endure more death. Not his. Not yours. Especially none of your friends.

He gathered you close. You were unhappy, of that you were sure. Not with him. Never with him. He thought too far ahead; if the odds weren’t in your favor, then what else could be done?

“Whatever happens,” he said into your hair, “it’ll be you and I. On our own.”

“I hate them!” you cried, and the way your voice scraped on your sobs made your stomach twist. “They’ll pay! I want them to pay!”

Still, he held you while you cried and you left dirt-streaks on his shoulder and then his chest. He held you until you pressed your cheek into his neck and wept to him alone I want our baby.

You felt the strength of his heart against your chest. Even when he was silent, he spoke so loudly. His hands rested on your arms, drawing you closer. His body against yours steadied you. You clung to him as you never had, needing him more than you ever thought.

Carefully, silently, he gathered you. He brought you close to the bundle you intended to bury, and he pressed his jaw against your temple.

He wouldn’t do it alone.

You were not the only one crying, though you had fallen apart to shudders and sobs. Your hands trembled when you gathered one end, his steady on the other, and you placed your bundle of blood-soaked down gently into its earthen cradle. It didn’t require both of you to smooth the dirt back over, but together you did. You patted it, pressed it, as though its damp softness might give you some clue as to what their skin may have felt like, whether they would have felt like a new center of warmth as they grew.

He plucked a feather from his wing and placed it, gently, in the earth. You did the same, though a part of you wished you had buried it with them. Given them something of you in return – regardless of how much they’d already taken.

“Are you in pain?” he murmured.

Yes. Yes, you were. Your heart had never felt like this. You never thought yourself capable. Damn Maleficent. Damn her daughter. Damn them all, all but him, for encouraging this fantasy.

You shook your head. But you couldn’t ask him to plan with you like this.

“Let’s get you clean.” His arm slid beneath your knees, and you tried, in part, to withdraw.

He was surprised. He let you.

“I’m so sorry,” you repeated, vehemently. “I’m stealing all of this from you. Your mourning, your plans—”

He opened his mouth and closed it again. He looked tired, you thought, and the thought became a realization. Oh, yes, you had stolen his mourning. Only recently did you all mourn for Conall and now…

“My plan is to clean you up in the brook and take you home, and we will see if you feel better in the morning.”

It was unfair. Your people called for war. They were right. He should’ve backed them.

But that was what he did.

He carried you to one of the quiet, gently-bubbling streams. He washed your hands, your arms, and lightly brushed the dirt off his. Your back never left his shoulder when he covered his hands with cool water and soothed your face. You thought, faintly, how you must look. Sniveling and weak.

But there was no shame in taking care of you. Not for him. He washed your tears away patiently, soothing the persistent fire in your cheeks. He kept doing it until you did little but lay there and let him preen your massive wings, his chin on your shoulder, the caress of his talons through your plumage painfully familiar.

“I love you,” he repeated, though how long it had been since you last said it out loud you’d lost track of. “I want you to tell me if you want to stay.”

“No,” you whispered, immediately. “Do you not want me?”

“Never. I’ll always want you. By my side, where you belong.” He stroked your feathers, coaxing the dead ones to drift off along the banks of the bubbling stream.

“I’ve always been there,” you repeated. “I always will be.”

He kissed you. Softly, and only once. And though you knew he must’ve known, you had the strangest feeling that, this time, he hoped you wouldn’t follow.

           Things got a little more official once King John was involved.

It became a formal inquest. Surrender to the crown or face justice.

Everyone believed justice involved death on the moors.

Suddenly, every pie-maker who’d harbored lingering hostility toward them, every tradesman and merchant to profit from a faerie’s suffering, arrived at the castle with evidence of their crimes and begged the young king and queen – and King John – for forgiveness.

Philip issued more citations for petty crimes, and Aurora had more poachers jailed, than either knew what to do with.

It was a start.

         The silence between you grew overwhelming.

You wanted to withdraw only to push yourself closer. Borra drew himself closer to you only to withdraw. You were in distinctly separate realms of thought, you knew, and it made you wring your hands in frustration.

Were you planning revenge, or were you planning surrender?

“You’re doing better this morning.” And yet, he watched you like you were crystal. As though a tumble from a momentarily unsafe hand would leave pieces of you scattered across the desert.

“I want to know of our plans.”

He twitched his shoulder. He’d never stopped wearing his armor, save for the first day you rested and the days you’d both been sick. You knew him too well to pretend he didn’t have a plan, and he knew you too well to propose you do anything he felt you might be uncertain.

“It’s been three days. I know you’ve done something, and I need you to tell me what it is.”

You thought he was about to lie to you, to insist there had been no plan. Instead, he sighed, and it came with a low hum of irritation.

“I’ve called it off.”

“What was it?”

For a moment, he deliberately did not meet your eyes. The night before was the first night either of you had slept moderately well, and as much as you would’ve liked to justify it with the restlessness that followed bedridden illness, you knew shared grief played far too great a part. He was still tired. He was in no state to plan. Whatever it was, you were glad he had – there was no use in rushing to the slaughter for a second time.

He smiled, and the wryness in the corners of his lips soothed the sting on the edges of your broken heart. “Hadn’t gotten that far. Did a little bit of yelling at the queen, made it her problem. After that…” He rested his arm over his knee, remaining seated across from you. “Couldn’t exactly figure out how to make sure anyone was unarmed, considering they’re not gonna come to us.”

He had thought of something, but it had only been fragments. He’d considered a slaughter, and the relief of it sagged your wings. “I wasn’t impeding you?”

“No.” His thumb-claw found the mark on his lower lip, traced it like he had to remind himself of how it was earned. “You’re always right beside me. You never slow me down.”

You moved your breakfast aside to stroke what was left of the cut on his cheek. He’d healed well  – the burn on his neck was gone, though the wound on his arm lingered, likely to be another scar.

“I don’t want war,” you admitted, finally, sinking to the ground beside him. “Justice, yes, but…not that way. No more of our people should be sacrificed.” Not even, you thought ruefully, hatefully, theirs.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out,” he admitted, dropping his hand so it brushed through your hair.

You sighed, and you gazed into his half-lidded eyes, and he half-smiled at you again.

You built up to war the last time. You would have justice again.

You thought. Until his eyes widened, hardened, and he snarled your name as he threw his body over yours. “Suren!”

A bolt flew past your horns. Past his, embedding deep within the trunk of a non-living tree.

Of course, your plans were decided for you.

You looked to Borra quickly – as long as he was safe, it was his place to command. He knew this land, he’d fought in the field of tomb-bloom flowers after the queen’s guard stripped it bare. It wasn’t the most dishonorable thing a human had ever done, attack in such a sacred place, but at least they had given you an excuse.

He glanced back to you. One man, both of you. It was hardly fair.

Your mate tore the roots from the very earth before your mortal foe had the chance to fire his crossbow again. It was torn from his hands, wrapped thickly in foliage just as he was. Borra drew him up between the branches in a blooming spider’s web, and your claws pricked. You yearned for vengeance.

“Was it you?” he snarled. “Are you the coward who put rowan in the water?”

The vines constricted him. You watched his skin flush, heard the small sounds of pain he made as his trapped limbs squeezed.

You could have cut him open like a rabbit. Swift with your claws, from his belly to his brain. It would’ve been so easy, and it would’ve been nothing you hadn’t done before. You approached him, came to stand before where the branches were most taut.

“Why?”

The man choked. He stared at you with nothing but hate, burning in him just as it raged inside you even then. You should do it. You should end him.

“What did you imagine you’d accomplish? It’s the river between Ulstead and the moors. It has falls, it leads into the sea. You succeeded by chance – and only then in the murder of faeries as big as my hand.” You paused, though why you weren’t entirely certain. “And I was with child, until you poisoned them inside me. That is what you killed. Sprites and a baby.”

The branches grew so tight you thought Borra might tear him apart before you’d finished. He was smothering, pricked by a thousand different thorns, when your child-queen came running. “Wait! Wait!”

“No one else waited,” you called. “No one else hesitated, why should we?”

“Because he wasn’t alone!”

You hated that your fury wasn’t strong enough to endure that sort of blow. You recoiled in disgust.

“King John,” she was panting, “asked around! He spoke to many of Queen Ingreth’s friends – they were trying to provoke more violence. Their men were afraid to go into the moors, so they came to the bridge…and they threw in the rowan from the churchyard! They never thought they’d kill anyone, they thought it would all wash to sea!”

“I don’t care what they thought, they did!”

“And they’ll pay for it!” Aurora’s eyes were so large, so wet, so doe-like. “Suren, please. Please. Let me bring them all to justice. Let me do it. I don’t want you blamed.”

You made a sharp, disgusted sound.

“They’ll kill you when they find out. You know they will. And Borra.” She swallowed. You thought it was in response to your mate’s summoned gaze, but obvious guilt crossed her features. “They know it was you killing poachers rather than Maleficent. They don’t like you very much anyhow.”

So there was no good reason not to kill one more.

“Please,” The girl was braver than you thought, even taking small, ginger steps toward you. “No more blood should be shed. Not yours, Borra’s, or your baby’s.”

Your eyes snapped to her face, your sharp teeth bared.

But she came to you as she went to her godmother. She wet her soft lips and let the quiver in her breath be seen. “I am so sorry. I know that’s not enough, I know I should’ve done more to protect you, and I will. I promise. It’s my duty as your queen to take care of my people, and I swear to you – specifically to you, by name, Suren of the Desert, that I will never let humans harm another faerie, or Dark Faerie, or anyone else. But,” she touched her soft fingers to yours and you nearly recoiled. “I need you to let him down. I need you to trust me.”

Borra watched you. She hadn’t asked him, despite the curl of his fingers betraying that he commanded the branches and not you.

“If you betray me, Aurora of Ulstead,” you whispered, just to her, “you will know the pain I’ve suffered.”

She was not afraid of you when she should’ve been. She looked up at you, and she held your hand in both of hers, and you met her wide, spring-green eyes.

“I promise.”

Borra let him down.

You wondered if she knew the bargain she’d just made, the future she’d placed in jeopardy, but you knew by the set of her jaw and the way she inhaled as she drew herself up to her full diminutive height that she did, and it was a cost she was willing to wager.

Foolish girl. Admirable, but very foolish.

You were starting to like her.

The man, even without his crossbow, took a sharp, lurching step from between the trees – and found himself with the point of Philip’s sword pressed against his throat.

“I wouldn’t,” the boy-king said with the sort of theatric fluff that you hadn’t seen since Borra was a boy his age.

“What does your godmother think of the bargains you make, Aurora of Ulstead?”

“Aurora of the Moors,” she corrected, “and I hope she trusts me with them.”

After all Maleficent had done for this child – the lives cost protecting her, the exile her guardianship placed her in – you were confident that she did.

                There was always a guard along the river, with their backs to the moors. They were well-paid, so as to discourage corruption, and the men were always the same.

They knew the difference in the beat of your wings from Queen Aurora’s faerie godmother.

You landed on the balcony first. Ducked your horns beneath the doorframe, and stepped onto a pad of carpet that your toes sunk into like moss.

You made a face and stepped over it to join her at her bedside.

“You came!” Aurora exclaimed.

Her face was always rosy, you’d realized after a time (after a time of fussing over whether the heat of your skin was too much for the child, before you made the effort to stop referring to her that way). Her large, doe-eyes were bright, and her golden curls hung like apple blossoms around her face.

“You asked us to.”

Borra landed on the balcony, and you strongly suspected he had done a loop in search of Aurora’s husband, who ought to have been there. You both watched him duck his head, and respond to the carpet with disgust as you had.

“I’ll have it moved,” Aurora said.

He gave her a sound of acknowledgement.

“I have something very important to ask,” she slipped her hand into yours and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I hope you’ll say yes. Both of you.”

You glanced to one another. No sooner had he settled his hand on your back then a door you assumed went further into the palace (with its inconceivably narrow halls) swung open, and King John ushered Young King Phillip in.

Carrying things.

Carrying babies.

Two of them.

“They’ve arrived!” King John exclaimed, and you did your best to hide your surprise that he seemed so very….fond of you. “Philip tells me you’re both well-respected warriors.”

You nodded, your brows furrowed.

“In that case, I intend to return the favor – you may not be able to wield iron, but you can certainly use bronze!”

“Dad,” Philip stage-whispered.

“John,” Aurora said fondly.

“Bit ahead of myself,” the jolly old man said, and gestured enthusiastically to the group of you. “Go on, continue.”

“Borra,” Aurora summoned your attention, “Suren. You are both exceptional warriors, and your presence on the moors is one of the reasons we’ve kept peace.”

“So it’s with no measure of uncertainty,” Philip continued, moving closer to his wife (as well as the both of you), “we’d like to ask you both to be our children’s godparents.”

You looked at one of the squirming, swaddled bundles, and offered your hands.

The boy-prince (who you’d made no such promises about) passed the child you desired to you with a smile.

It was very human. It had a little, flushed face, very pink, and no claws, horns, or sharp teeth.

“It’s going to be hard to take care of,” Borra murmured.

You nodded, and Aurora bubbled with laughter. “Oh, no! No, you don’t have to raise them! Not unless something were to happen to us.”

“A curse,” Philip offered, “or a war.”

“We would never wage war with you,” you reminded him.

“Not with you,” Aurora beamed. She rested her hand on whatever part of the bundle your arms weren’t currently encasing. “With other humans, probably.”

“We would not let other humans go to war with you,” Borra amended.  He’d gathered the other child from its father and held it, carefully, in the cradle of his arms.

You had to look twice. The first sight was pleasant; the second rekindled the warmth of your longing, and you glanced down at the child in your arms. “You have an advantage, little thing. You’ll be older.”

“And there are two.”

Philip looked at you both in confusion. Aurora lit up. You didn’t think her face could get any brighter, but, somehow…

“We plan to return to the nest we came from for the winter,” you told her, “but when we return in the spring…they’ll be much bigger, won’t they?”

You thought she might spring up from bed, so you lowered beside her. You placed her baby in her arms and kissed her temple.

“Do you mean it?” she gushed, “Really?”

You nodded, the corners of your lips rising. “This will be the first month. We wanted to be sure.”

“You will definitely need armor,” King John added from well across the room.

Borra placed the second child back into Philip’s arms, and the sight of him tucking the edge of their blanket over the fold of their cocoon made your heart squeeze. “Your godmother already knows of our plans.”

“As she does of ours,” Philip replied. “We needed Maleficent’s blessing.”

Their customs were strange, but if it was a blessing they desired…

You leaned in close to the child in Aurora’s arms, and whispered to them, “May you grow strong and always be healthy.”

“And you,” Borra said to the other, his voice low and fond, “And know peace.”

“Both of you,” you agreed.

They weren’t particularly magical blessings, as far as other fey’s gifts were concerned, but Aurora beamed at you as though you’d given her everything she could’ve ever wanted. “I’m so glad.”

“And I’m for you.” You squeezed her hand once more before you stood, and you turned to the old king with new interest. “You spoke of armor. Why? Do you believe we’ll be at war?”

“Well, not with any urgency, but you both live a long time, don’t you? Can’t hurt to be prepared. Better protection than leather, should you ever need it. And – oh, swords! And shields! And your children will need lessons in using them.”

You would need lessons in using them, but if it was to be an exchange of gifts, well. Borra joined you, sighing from the depths of his chest. “I hope they’ll never need them.”

You laid your head on his shoulder, and your fingers linked ever so slyly with his. He knew what you were doing and brought his hand to settle over your stomach. The radiant warmth of his palm soaked into your skin. “They are warriors. And if it’s peace they’re to preserve, there’s no harm in teaching them.”

“Them?” he repeated.

“I’ve been with child for the last two springs.”

He feigned fond exasperation as he stared at you, though his fingers traced the plain of your belly with the utmost love. “Remind me next time to wait until summer.”

“Harvest,” you teased.

He grinned, the points of his sharp teeth glinting in the morning of a new day.