A prophecy for two, p.1
A Prophecy for Two, page 1
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A Prophecy for Two
By K.L. Noone
Published by JMS Books LLC
Visit jms-books.com for more information.
Copyright 2023 K.L. Noone
ISBN 9781685506285
Cover Design: Helene Boppert
Image(s) used with permission.
All rights reserved.
WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review. This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in the United States of America.
* * * *
For everyone who helped this become real, the first time around—and for everyone falling in love with Oliver and Tir for the first time.
* * * *
A Prophecy for Two
By K.L. Noone
Chapter 1: The Quest
Chapter 2: A Dream
Chapter 3: Preparations
Chapter 4: Departure
Chapter 5: Obstacles
Chapter 6: Heartbreak
Chapter 7: Hope
Chapter 8: Rescue
Chapter 9: Recovery
Chapter 10: Happy Endings
Epilogue: Beginnings
The Physician and the Fairy Lord
Six Months On: Tir’s Story
Chapter 1: The Quest
Fairy-companions weren’t unheard of, in the small northern speck of kingdom that was Bellemare. Unusual, but not unheard of.
They were rare. Associated with princes and epic deeds and times of need. Legendary, even.
Oliver couldn’t remember a time without his.
To be fair, technically he could; he’d been fourteen years old when Tirian had turned up at the palace for the afternoon session, looking almost like any other finely-dressed twelve-year-old boy, entering quietly alongside every other person arriving for an open audience with their queen. The difference, of course, had been that for those huge storm-grey eyes everything human was new.
The difference had been that Tir wasn’t and never would be human.
That wasn’t a fair thought, and Oliver felt a bit guilty about it. He mostly didn’t think about it; none of the family did, much. Not after fifteen years.
Some days, like today, he remembered. He wanted to turn, to glance back at Tir. Instead he lifted a hand, waved at his people, his kingdom, his responsibilities.
Tir, a half-step behind him, was being a tactful compromise. Tirian was not, by blood, part of the royal family, hence the step into Ollie’s shadow; he’d been very much adopted, though, and had become familiar to everyone, over the years. The people of Bellemare would have worried if their favorite luck-charm hadn’t been on the dais. Everyone liked Tir, possibly more than they liked their actual crown prince, who tripped over words and his own too-large feet.
The sun beat down. Ollie did not squint, because crown princes didn’t. Today’s elegant shoes weren’t quite big enough. He hadn’t wanted to complain.
His mother, seemingly unbothered by thick autumn sun and layers of rustling russet-leaf robes, offered the next proclamation—a land-gift, a new title—with flawless calm. A queen to her bones, steady and strong. Oliver’s youngest sibling, on her other side, radiated charm, because that was Cedric: born knowing how to adore and be adored, harmless as dandelion fluff.
Ollie took a breath, let it out. Nodded at assembled barons and village representatives and small children. Aimed for royal dignity; felt the self-consciousness scratch at his throat.
Too big. Too clumsy, a fraud in green velvet. The Heir’s coronet sat heavy on his hair.
He liked being outside, amid gilded sun and autumn grass. That helped. He’d rather have a sketchbook and a pencil and a spot from which to document the scene, as opposed to being part of it.
He felt Tir move, an infinitesimal shift of weight. Feather-light fingertips brushed Oliver’s arm, and lifted, leaving a reminder. Tirian was here, and would be here, without judgement. No matter how badly Oliver wanted to bolt.
His mother did the announcement about work on the new harbor. Assorted merchants and shipwrights cheered.
Tir had always been at Ollie’s side for audiences. For other moments, so many, formal and less so, from hunts to banquets to lessons to late-night tavern stumblings. No one questioned his presence.
No one would, of course. Queen Eleuthenia’d made his position as another family member entirely clear years ago, and in any case, people did tend to treat fairies with some respect, or fear, or a healthy mingling of both. Tir had, from very early on, simply quietly been wherever Oliver was, not drawing attention but plainly not going to be shooed away or made to leave the crown prince alone. The general conclusion, offered by hastily-summoned historians and flustered scholars in University robes, was that it would be unwise to offend a fairy-visitor, and anyway Tir hadn’t done much aside from be present, and anyway it was possibly an honor, because the princes and princesses who’d had fairy-companions tended to be memorable.
Oliver did not want to be memorable. Oliver mostly wanted to be left alone, to exhale, to keep the world rumbling on just the way it was. No epic deeds. No heroics.
And no epic deeds had been required, not yet. And he and Tir were friends, and Tir wouldn’t leave Oliver alone for a public audience. That was also entirely clear.
Tir did the little whisper-touch again, checking on him. Oliver’s mother glanced at them both, and away. He couldn’t read her expression.
He wanted to turn around and say I’m all right, because he was, mostly; he’d distracted himself by thinking about Tir. About the mystery. While Tir had been worrying about him, in turn.
Tir did a fair amount of that. But Oliver had never really minded. Used to it.
He liked his life with that moon-slim shadow at his side, the dark elegant contrast to Ollie’s own rumpled-sunbeam height. He liked them being friends, a constant promise, reliable.
He’d always liked that, even growing up, even if Tir had always been the one who resembled a storybook version of a Crown Prince, a daydream out of illustrated romances; much more so than Oliver, anyway. Ollie was resigned to not being the pretty one. He knew he himself generally looked as if the person in the mirror had been made by someone who’d heard about blond-haired muscular heroes but hadn’t got all the rough-hewn edges smoothed out. Tirian, on the other hand, had managed to appear polished and put-together even the morning after the last Spring Festival and all the honeyed mead. Tir could show up at a formal audience barefoot and shirtless and yawning, black hair falling out of a tangled knot and into sleepy smoke-and-silver eyes, and would still make everyone else feel instantly overdressed. Some sort of magic. Fairy gifts. Unfair ones.
Ollie really wasn’t envious, though. Tir was his best friend. Besides, he’d once seen his fairy purchase what’d looked like the entire contents of a bookshop, scoop the book-mountain into adoring but clearly inadequate arms, and proceed to drop every single volume onto normally graceful fairy-feet.
Tir liked novels more, but they both liked history. Precedent hadn’t helped, though, as far as figuring out why Tir was here. Aside from the obvious purposes of reading all the books in existence and providing a distraction when Ollie got uncomfortable during a public occasion, of course.
Tir, of course, probably knew. Whatever purpose he’d been sent to fulfil.
Oliver did not. No one knew. That was the other unanswered question of his life. Why him, why now. Why Tir.
The last prince with a fairy-companion had lived just over three hundred years ago, outside anyone’s lifetime but recent enough to be well-documented in Bellemare’s history books, and they’d fought as brothers-in-arms to hold the country together during the Great Civil War. They’d been heroes; statues sat atop civic monuments and observed the horizon benevolently.
Oliver had always liked that story. About heroes. About heroes together. Companions. He did not personally want to face a war, but something in him stirred at the idea of loyalty, of friendship, of that bond. He liked the idea of that.
Tir had said once that his people told that story, too. He’d paused after he’d said so; they’d been thirteen and fifteen years old respectively, doing some reading for their history tutor, sitting in one of the window-seats in the palace’s private library. Ollie had said, “Is your version different?” and Tir had laughed, finger in the book to mark his place, gaze going out past rain to the closest visible statue. “Of course it is. Or not entirely. In some ways.”
Oliver had said, “Not helpful, you know,” and Tir had laughed more and deflected with, “We’re supposed to be looking up actual historical fact, not legend; help me find out more about the reasons for that baron’s defection,” and Ollie had given in and gone back to research.
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The Kingdom of Bellemare nestled right at the edge of the Northern Wild; beyond the vaguely understood line hovered the fairy realms and magic and perilous enchantment. Occasionally periwinkle-furred foxes or small swooping firebirds flitted into Bellemare’s tall grass and forests; most crops grew permanently full and lush, the land tended to be happily fertile, and their trade with more southern realms reflected both the wealth and the indefinable glinting ethereal edge to homespun lace and shawls and sugar-berries. They weren’t a large kingdom—Oliver knew most of the attendees at today’s gathering by name, at least in passing—but most people lived fairly well.
That prosperity was a gift of sharing borders with magic. Or a complication.
In general Bellemare’s people regarded magic with a sort of grimly resigned humor: power might level mountains, which could be good or bad. Everyone knew those tales. Some of them were true.
Even these days, most villages had at least one wise man or a woman who could suggest where to best dig that new well or a smith with a surprisingly delicate hand. Stories of warriors with uncanny grace, or trackers who could follow the wind, or someone’s great-great-aunt once-removed being able to make roses bloom midwinter, grew as common as grass but less believable. Most people’d never seen a proper fairy, though.
Or they hadn’t. Until Tirian.
Everyone in Bellemare knew Tir was a fairy. They’d known since he’d arrived. He’d said as much, though he’d also said he couldn’t say much more.
Oliver shifted his feet in too-tight shoes, a gesture hopefully unnoticed. His mother and Tir would never show any hint of discomfort, even if they felt any.
His mother had moved on to a discussion of irrigation and canals. Cedric, on her other side, seemed to be trying to flirt with half the crowd. The crowd did not mind, and adored their youngest prince with vast adoration, often physical. Cedric hopped in and out of beds without discrimination and with good humor, and knew perfectly well that he would be too impatient and easily distracted to make a good king; he’d said as much, laughing, content with a spot on the Small Council and the ability to read the gossiping pulse of the kingdom. When they’d been growing up Ollie’d vaguely liked and mostly tolerated his youngest sibling with the distant fondness of the eight years between them; he’d been somewhat surprised to discover that they were friends these days.
This accounted for three-fifths of the royal horde, including Tir. Neither of Oliver’s sisters was present, off having their own lives, probably not with unfortunate footwear. Eleanora Margretta, happily married to the second son of the King and Queen of Stratsburg-to-the-East, was making herself generally indispensable and beloved in terms of civic improvements and enlargement of grammar-schools and ladies’ rights; Em was a year younger than Oliver, and he missed her, but she wouldn’t bother to come back for a simple seasonal address. Both Em and Lou—Louisa Georgiana, who’d cheerfully rejected the idea of any court betrothal whatsoever and was studying at the great physician-school in Al-Masi, far down South—would be back for Midwinter, anyway, he thought, and this thought cheered him up until he remembered that he was still standing on a dais in front of the castle with hundreds of eyes evaluating his fitness to be Crown Prince.
They were friendly eyes, though. He really did know most of them. Bellemare had never been an expansive kingdom, and the people tended to stay and not leave, proud of their home, mildly anxious about northern winds, used to the occasional pink moon or hail that turned out to be pearls. The entire land was small enough to ride across in a week, and they hadn’t had any real conflict since the Civil War, and did not maintain any standing militia except the amiable Home Guard.
That wasn’t much of a problem. Nobody particularly wanted to invade a country that shared uneasy borders with Fairyland. One or two of the older histories made cryptic mention of stones devouring enemy armies in the night.
Tir, despite being a wild Northern fairy, probably wouldn’t devour anyone. Or enchant rocks to devour anyone. Most likely not, anyway.
The address was winding down. The sun had heated the coronet atop Oliver’s head; he wanted to shove it off. He wanted shade, and a lack of expectations on his shoulders, and some casual corner of a tavern with a mug of ale and his sketchbook and Tir alternately reading a new novel and making jokes about Ollie’s boots getting in the way.
Those were jokes, because Tir always neatly stepped over or out of the way of Ollie’s limbs. This morning, dressed up in blue silk and clinging trousers, dark hair pulled back, he’d looked flawless. Ollie had somehow got honey on his own sleeve, at breakfast, and had had to change.
He wriggled his toes surreptitiously. His shoes did not give way.
Everyone did know Tir was a fairy, but for a fairy he didn’t do anything astonishing. Finding a lost kitten or two, a gift for languages, mysteriously always in the kitchen when blueberry pie appeared. The most magic he’d done had been healing Cedric’s broken arm, at the age of fourteen; it’d been a bad break, while they’d been out on a ride, and a sudden storm had descended with thunder.
They’d been far from any assistance, too far, no good options. Oliver had tried not to panic, seeing blood and bone, frantically fumbling for a solution. Tir had glanced at him, and then had dropped to both knees amid rain and mud, at the youngest prince’s side. Had put both hands into the blood and fracture, had shut his eyes, and had murmured words in a language Oliver didn’t know. The bone had knit; the flesh had closed.
Cedric, half-conscious through pain, and Oliver, shocked, had both been wordless. Tir had sat back, shoved wet hair out of his eyes, and said, “Ow.”
He hadn’t been bleeding, but he held his own arm as if it hurt, though after a second he’d said he was fine, and got up. The rain had cleansed the drops of Cedric’s blood from his hands, falling into puddles.
After a moment or two, aside from the red on Cedric’s shirt, no one would’ve known anything had happened at all. Entirely normal.
Tir had been quieter that evening, subdued, looking at Ollie and then glancing away. A nameless emotion had twisted in Oliver’s chest; he’d come over, after supper, and said, “Hey, you okay?” and Tir had looked surprised. Oliver had said, “Come on, astronomy tower and ginger beer, there’s supposed to be some sort of shooting-star shower tonight?” and that’d been normal too, because he wanted Tir to know that: to know that magic or not, they were friends and Oliver would never be afraid of him.
That’d been the most impressive feat so far. Tir might’ve been thoroughly human, except for the slim tall otherworldly grace and occasional weather-sense. He got lost in books and did not know how to do laundry and left hair-ties in the library and Oliver’s room and wherever else he’d been that day. He was as familiar as the stones in the palace walls, and as reliably present. As he was now.
And perhaps it was a good omen, gossip had suggested, to have a fairy around. Good luck. Assistance for whatever Oliver, the heir, might need. A blessing, even if he was practically hardly a fairy at all; and the baker, laughing, had thrown a berry-filled pie out to Tir from the window as she’d said it. He’d caught it adroitly and grinned.
Whatever Tir was or wasn’t, he was Oliver’s best friend. That was true. That had been true for fifteen years.
In the present, under autumn sun, Oliver’s mother finished the last proclamations regarding the state of the land and the opening of the Historical Society Museum, and announced, “All right, now we’re having the party,” and invited all assembled subjects, brewers and barons and gardeners and marchionesses, to the feast spread out on the palace’s Great Lawn.
Ollie exhaled. And tugged the coronet off his head.
Tir took the step forward now, hand on Oliver’s shoulder. His eyes were warm, in the way that silver silk could be warm: soft, compassionate, beautiful. His hair had stayed flawless, long and smooth as ink against pale skin. “I imagine we’re skipping the official party. Strawberry wine and impromptu musical performances at the Queen’s Cups?”
“Absolutely yes,” Oliver agreed wholeheartedly. The tavern would be quieter, with most people here; he could relax, lean against Tir, do some sketches, talk his fairy into a musical performance if someone had a guitar. Tir liked to sing, a fairy-stereotype truth about which the family teased him mercilessly; but then they all performed, song and harp and lute, a musical royal horde, so that was just one more voice in the melodious din. Ollie generally avoided any solo performances, but did not mind joining in a family concert, or getting tipsy and singing an old Scarlet Hood ballad with his brother and Tir and several enthusiastic tavern-friends: shields, of a sort. “Just let me change shoes.”
