The Fairy King and his Cursed Queen ✔

3 | FAIR TRADE

"You wear a lovely smile." The amused lilt of her voice reached me like gentle wind-chimes floating in the breeze. "Always smile when I ask you to. Do you understand?"

"Yes, my queen. But—but how can I smile now?" Blood covered every inch of the battlefield. I hated it. Hated every bit of it.

But she was different.

"Saying such things will upset Manoj. This is glorious. It is only human death."

She shoved her hands into the dirt and closed her eyes.

Finally, she breathed out. "Lovely. He is pleased. Now. You must enchant them now. Some still draw breath yet."

The authority in her voice meant this was no request. I wanted to refuse, set my mouth to. What I saw of the fading day was horrid. It wasn't like the stories I'd heard in passing as a boy. It was filled with moans of anguish and despair.

"Can we make them fairies?" From where did these foolish words come?

If memory served, I could say with all certainty, that was the start of my fairy queen's disapproval of me.

"We do this for Manoj. That was what I was created for." Disgust dripped from her words. "Do you prefer the humans to us? Even after all they'd done to you?"

It was the hate in her gaze that had me shaking my head, assuring her, "I loathe them as well but—"

"Good. Now to your work!"

Manoj was still only a story to me at that time—I had never met him for myself. I only knew that he gave the fairy queen the power of life and healing. I found that fortunate, because in her heart, it was death which fascinated her.

A balling of my fist formed a lance. She guided me to tamper it until it could reach any distance.

The fairy queen's power of healing would only breed more life, even if she were to slaughter an entire village, a city of bounty would spring up the year following. All that she did brought more, and so...she stopped doing anything. Instead, she funneled her curiosity for death and destruction through me.

And I served her well.

I served her until I could stomach it no more.

The day I stood on the battlefield with her, collecting the souls to bring back to feed Manoj and decided I could do this no longer, she collected a soldier, the biggest and meanest one.

No one would believe that there were once two fairy kings. She bestowed that title to him. And she used it to taunt me, nearly as much as her savoring his body in plain view for all to see—for me to see.

She was baiting me, manipulating me, challenging me to fight for my title.

And it worked.

The fairy king II met a brutal end. It had been awful...because I'd enjoyed it.

Upon discovering him impaled on the hill at twilight, the fairy queen knelt.

She had no words of spite or malice. Grief. This was her first taste of it. It weighed her down, but she picked her head up to regard me in sorrow.

"Cease to smile," she ordered.

But try as I might, I could not.

Instead, I leaned in and told her, "I will smile forever more, remembering this day."

And I had.

Now, centuries later as I watched the gnome squeeze the new fairy queen in its grip, I'd smiled at the start as well.