CHAPTER 21

Prince of the Wood.

The Woodcutter looked at the place the mansion, the Vanishing House, had once stood.

The Gentleman had wanted the Wood.

There had been someone else there, too. The Woodcutter searched his mind, but the memory of her was fading. All he could remember was scarlet red and a hand upon his arm, but then even that was gone.

The face of the Gentleman remained.

It took a mighty magic to construct such a home…and the dust. So much pixie dust…

The powdered magic had always been a problem. To humans, it was irresistible. The Woodcutter rubbed his forehead, still unbalanced. He and the fae were creatures of the natural elements—wind and fire, earth and water. But when faerie magic was stolen, it became wild, and the chaos of siphoned pixie dust clashed with the order of his way.

One hundred centuries ago, twelve tribes of humans first tasted the wild power of faerie magic and hungered to make it their own. A terrible battle between the two worlds occurred. Mankind did not win.

And so the Twelve Kingdoms were established. The fae knew that humans were creatures of both the light and the dark, existing in careful balance between the two forces. They decreed that as long as half the Twelve Kingdoms swore to live peacefully, the fae would not annihilate the race of man.

Twelve faerie rulers were placed upon those twelve thrones. It was sworn that the blood of the Kingdoms’ rulers must always run blue.

But a remarkable discovery was made.

Love.

The Faerie King Stephan, harsh and cold, had looked upon the crowd as he rode through the Seventh Kingdom’s capital that first day.

As he looked, his eyes fell upon the daughter of the village baker.

She was neither plain nor pretty, but next to her, the whole world faded to nothing. In the flutter of three beats of his heart, the King, who had withstood the battlefields and brutalities of war, was conquered.

So he met his red-blooded queen.

Such discoveries of true love occurred across the land, in every kingdom. Unwittingly, a bridge of harmony and peace was built between the two worlds. True love conquered the draw of wild magic. Human hearts ceased their greed. It cemented each kingdom’s place in the treaty because two rulers, united in love, longed for nothing more than to spend the rest of their days content in one another’s company.

But the day came when the Faerie King Stephan and his queen gave birth to a son. His tiny, mortal body, an unnatural vessel for the power of the fae, sang out with wild magic as strongly as if he had stolen it from his faerie cousins. The King and the Queen watched in horror as he grew, biding their time, knowing that they would one day have to make that terrible decision to end their child’s life for the sake of the world.

The child grew to be a young man, and though the wild magic still surrounded him with intoxicating glamour, his parents could not bring themselves to kill him, for his heart was kind and his intentions pure.

On the eve of his sixteenth birthday, the King and Queen held a ball for their son. Standing on the dance floor, a young woman curtsied before the Prince. The stories said that time stood still as the two gazed upon one another and that the heavens smiled as their lips touched. The power of true love’s first kiss transformed the wild magic in the Prince’s veins to the ordered elemental magic of the purest of fae. The treaty’s requirement for a blue-blooded faerie upon the throne was fulfilled, and the Prince ruled with wisdom and grace till the end of his days.

But over the years, heirs began to marry for strategic might and not love. The blue blood thinned to red as the memory of the treaty faded into legend. The fae were seen once more as mere animals with powers that should be owned and controlled. The day came when six of the Kingdoms united to claim that which they thought could be taken.

Driven back, mankind was reminded by the faerie that all legends were based in truth.

From this second terrible battle came the first Woodcutter, whose memory was as old as the trees. The borders were redrawn so that the Twelve Kingdoms intersected in the Woodcutter’s Wood. The Woodcutter was to be an ambassador between the mortal and immortal worlds. He pledged to remember the treaty, pledged to remind the Twelve Kingdoms of their obligations. He was to be a protector that ensured never more than half the Kingdoms thirsted for power, for if that balance ever tipped and seven Kingdoms turned to the dark hunger, there was nothing he, nor any Woodcutter, could do to stave off the massacre.

In the Vanishing House, the Woodcutter had counted six Princes. Six Princes of six Kingdoms. There had been so much dust, more than anything that would come freely given. The blood of the Gentleman had run blue, but with enough magic, any human could turn for a while.

A cold chill crept up the Woodcutter’s back as Snow White’s words came back to him about the pixies being harvested in a moving castle.

Pixies touching the ground…

There are things human ears should never have to hear.

There was an urgency to his footfalls as he continued on his way.