Ever Thine, Ever Mine: Part 1
After weeks of feeling as though the universe has been conspiring against me, here is the first part of my Secret Santa story for the wonderful @bleulily who requested “A fantasy royalty AU, preferably with either fae or elves. If the letters trope could fit in there, I would be the happiest. Lady Rose has an important role of some kind..”
So, without further ado, here is a story about chance meetings and missed opportunities, of two ancient souls bound together over the course of 200 years from the ballrooms of Belgravia to the battlefields of northern France and beyond. True love will always find a way, even if you do have to wait a while.
(Oh and, to be continued)
Since the earliest years of his childhood, the boy had been enraptured by his father’s stories of the firstborn beings, the children of the stars who had walked the earth for millennia and beyond. They were the wisest and fairest of all living creatures, their warriors had fought beside some of history’s most legendary figures, kings and queens of old sought their counsel and their healers could cure even the most deadly of injuries and ailments.
But then mankind became selfish, greedy and somewhat fearful of those whom they had once looked upon as friends. They were hunted down and enslaved, and the very gifts they’d willingly shared used against them in the most terrible of ways.
Those who survived went into hiding, never to be seen again by those who had betrayed them. Centuries went by, their race became nothing but a myth and the stories of their great deeds spun into folklore.
These were the very tales that the boy had grown up with and that had captured his imagination. His brothers didn’t believe, dismissing the stories as nothing more than childish fairytales…
But he did, and tonight was the night that he would look upon the face of an Elf at last.
He waits until the house falls silent when he knows that there’s no chance of him being disturbed and sent straight back to bed. He dresses hastily and thrusts his feet into his boots before creeping down the stairs, through the kitchens and out into the night.
It’s bitterly cold and the freezing wind bites at his exposed skin, his teeth chattering as he runs down the garden path towards the woodlands at the bottom. He knows that he’ll catch a chill, but it will all be worth it when he finally, finally gets his wish.
The boy stops when she reaches the trees, hesitating for the first time since he devised his plan. He glances over his shoulder, just long enough to make sure that he hasn’t been followed before stepping into the darkness. He keeps his footsteps light and his breathing steady as he inches his way forward. Eventually, the boy reaches the edge of a meadow and crouches down behind a bush, watching and waiting for what seems like an eternity.
They walk barefoot through the grass, each of them dressed in thin gossamer gowns of silver-grey despite the subzero temperatures and carrying the very light of the stars in their hands. This, the boy realises, is some kind of sacred ritual, a prayer to the old gods that was never meant to be witnessed by mankind. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled at the sight of them swirling and twirling about the clearing in a perfectly choreographed dance. He feels their energy coursing through his veins, awakening an ancient and powerful magic from somewhere deep in his heart.
He’ll understand one day but for now, he’s content to stay here in this moment, the memory of which will bring him comfort during even the darkest of his days.
The years went by and the boy grew into a handsome youth though clearly different from his brothers and not only in appearance. The elder three had their father’s deep brown eyes, yet his were the colour of a cloudless sky and he shared none of his mother’s features at all. There were whispers of course, for there would always be those who took joy in spreading malicious gossip around their village with the most popular theory being that his mother had been unfaithful to her husband and that he was the bastard son of an inferior merchant from the north. Like any great lady, however, she kept her head held high and refused to let the gossips get the better of her. It was an idyllic childhood, for the most part, growing up in a grand house by the sea on Ireland’s wild Atlantic coast, riding horses on the beach and flirting with pretty girls from the village…
But that all changed the day his father passed away.
Lying on his deathbed, Edward told his youngest son the truth about his mother, a woman not of their world but who had bewitched him body and soul. He wasn’t proud of his indiscretion, but the child born from it had given he and his wife so much joy and happiness nonetheless. Armed with this newfound knowledge, it would have been easy for the boy to leave in search of his mother and her people, but so full of love and respect for the woman who had raised him as her own was he that he decided to stay and work the land as his father and his father before him had done.
He could quite happily have gone on like this for the rest of his days, finding a wife and settling down but word soon spread beyond the confines of their little village that an unnatural child walked among them and whose mother had consorted with the devil.
They came for them in the middle of the night, armed and dangerous and with murder on their minds.
That was the night that he ran and never looked back, not even as the grand house by the sea on Ireland’s wild Atlantic coast burned to the ground.
The boy never stopped running, not for days or weeks, months or even years and the next thing he knew, two hundred years had passed by in the blink of an eye but not a moment went by where he didn’t think about the family he’d left behind and the sacrifices they’d made for him. The last thing he’d said to his mother was that he promised to make something of himself, to go on with his life and to do wonderful things with the gift that he’d been given. As the years went on, however, the gift of time had started to feel more of a curse and his fear of letting people in led to crippling loneliness that almost drove him to the brink of madness.
But then an invitation arrived and changed the course of his very long life forever.
It wouldn’t have been a complete lie to say that he was the son of some very wealthy people, a great family with lands and titles, but British high society was very different to that of the long lost Irish clans. He’d left home with nothing but his beloved horse and the shirt on his back, yet somehow he’d managed to transform himself into a gentleman. It was all an act of course, but it meant that it was easy to flit from great house to great house, living off the good graces of others with few or no questions asked. He taught himself about art and history, ensured that he was well read and formed an opinion on politics, writing letters and selling stories to newspapers and other publications in order to make a meagre living. He was handsome, charming and a divine dancer which naturally made him a fine match in the eyes of every mother of daughters from Dorset to Dundee. He would never marry though, for it would be unfair to love someone so wholeheartedly whilst all the while knowing that whether by illness or the passage of time they would be so cruelly taken from him. That didn’t stop him from enjoying himself though, just as any young man would though he never once led any of them astray or filled them with false hope. Just as it had done with his mother all those years ago, the rumour mill began to churn with theories ranging from his having a wife and three delightful children back in Dublin to him preferring the company of other men.
Of course, the truth would be more shocking and scandalous than all of those combined were it ever to come out.
Shortly before Christmas, an invitation arrived from the Marquis of Flintshire requesting his presence at a ball in celebration of his daughter’s birthday. He wasn’t familiar with the MacClares, but all he managed to find out is that they were an English family with a Welsh title and lands in Scotland. There were two sons and a daughter, Rose, whom they’d no doubt fling at him the moment he set foot inside their house.
Still, it would be rude not to go.
The ball is the same as any other, the rooms stuffy and overcrowded with people whom he doesn’t really have much care for and, to be honest, he’s beginning to ask himself why he keeps on doing this. It was fine for a time, but the charade is beginning to lose its appeal.
He accepts a glass of wine from a passing footman and makes his way through the house, occasionally stopping to make polite conversation and offering his opinion on anything from the weather to the health of the King and the Prince Regent’s politics. It’s all so terribly mundane and monotonous that he’ll stay long enough so as not to be seen as impolite before leaving. He’s unsure where he’ll go, just as long as it’s somewhere quiet where he can sit in a chair by the fire with a book and some decent whiskey.
Fate, however, seems to have a different plan.
Alone at last, he stands in a corner surveying the room and there, at the edge of the dance floor, is the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen in his very long life. She wore a gown of the softest blue, a delicate coronet of silver in her dark hair and a smile brighter than the sun on a midsummer day. Her pale skin glows in the candlelight and, when she finally looks at him with eyes the colour of rain, that same deep and powerful magic he’d felt in the meadow all those years ago stirs up inside him and he knows that he is lost.
He smiles at her and her response is a pretty blush as she averts her gaze. The faces are largely the same at these sorts of gatherings with the guests being regular attendees of most social gatherings about town. Hers, however, is not one that he recognises and when he asks around, nobody else seems to know who she is either.
He desperately wants to introduce himself to her, but every other man in the room seems to have had the same idea. She and the two other astonishingly beautiful women whom he presumes to be her sisters are rarely off the dancefloor and even in the brief moments that they are, they’re engaged in conversation with handsome young bachelors undoubtedly more eligible than he could ever be.
Finally he gets his moment, but as he cuts his way across the room having plucked up the courage to ask her for a dance, Lady Rose MacLare appears before him.
“I believe your name is next on my dance card, Sir,” she says boldly.
He doesn’t recall ever asking her for a dance (or anyone else for that matter), but it would be considered rude to snub the daughter of his host and the birthday girl herself. He quickly looks up over her shoulder, noticing that the one woman he actually had wanted to dance with has already found herself another partner and realises that his moment has passed.
“I’m supposed to be the prize tonight yet your eyes have been fixed elsewhere since the moment you walked through those doors,” says Rose as he escorts her out onto the dancefloor. “Beautiful, isn’t she? All of the sisters are and considered royalty among our people. Did you know that her father fought beside King Arthur at the battle of Baden Hill? Her mother has Fae blood of course, a granddaughter of Queen Titania herself, but nobody really cares for that anymore.”
“I don’t follow, my lady.”
“I know who you are. Or rather, what you are,” she says. “You’re older than you look, late twenties to the eye though I’d say somewhere around three-hundred, give or take a few years. It’s not a condition or an illness but rather a mere coincidence of birth. I’ve been longing to meet you, Tom Branson, though I’m not entirely sure that’s your real name.”
He’s stunned into silence, wondering how on earth this girl has managed to unearth his deepest darkest secret. He wants to lie about it, to tell her that he has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about, but there’s a look in her eyes that makes him want to trust her.
“How did you know?” He asks quietly, spinning her around so that they move further away from the other dancers.
“I see all that once was and all that will be,” Rose tells him. “You were abandoned on your father’s doorstep in the middle of a storm with nothing, not even a name. Your father tried to hide the truth from you, but he couldn’t help but share the stories and you ended up having the same fascination that led him to your real mother.”
Tom shakes his head. “With respect, Lady Rose, my real mother raised me as her own. She gave her life to save mine and I’ll forever be in her debt. Another woman may have given birth to me, but I’ve no desire to find out who she is or was.”
Rose smiles at him. “As you wish,” she replies. “But she was there that night, the night you ran down to the meadow during the winter solstice… and so was I.”
“Isn’t it? Like you, I’m much older than I look. Even older than you in fact. My father is one of the firstborn, my mother human,” she tells him. “We’re not immortal, we just age much slower than the average man or woman. There aren’t many like you and I but there are even less of the firstborn for reasons I’m sure I don’t need to explain.”
“People don’t accept things that don’t fit into their narrow view of the world,”he replies, trying to banish the image of the burning house and the sound of the screams from his mind. “My father always told me that was the reason why the Elves disappeared in the first place.”
“They didn’t disappear,” Rose tells him. “They’re just harder to find. There are five great firstborn families left in this country of which my fathers is one of them. We’ve been searching for as many of our kind as we can find, both pure and half-blood… you needn’t be alone, not anymore.”
“Yes, you are. I can see it in your eyes,” she replies. “Everyone needs at least one friend, especially ancient souls like us.”
He ponders her offer for a moment, quickly realising that perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have a few close companions who understood his peculiar existence. He wouldn’t need to lie, to pretend to be something that he wasn’t and perhaps he could even find the answers to questions he’d been asking for so very long.
One of which seems more important than any other at this particular moment.
“Then, as a friend, would you tell me her name?”
Rose shakes her head and smiles at him somewhat mischievously. “No… that you have to figure out for yourself. And you will, one day, you just need to have patience and give it time. I know, I’ve seen it.”
“Oh, believe me,” Tom replies. “Time is the one thing I have in abundance… and I’d wait forever if I had to.”
