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onewhoturns) wrote2018-09-30 09:47 pm
[Dishonored: fae AU] Iron & Gold: 1. The Queen (emsider) 1/3*
Story Title: Iron & Gold
Chapter Title: The Queen
Chapter Part: 1/3
Story Part: 2/?
Pairing: eventual Emily/Outsider (emsider)
Word count: 1530
Rating: PG (higher rating later chapters)
Summary: Ever since she was a child Emily had been cautioned: beware the fae. She’d heard the typical warnings – faerie rings, wishing wells, mysterious lights in the darkness. But they were just cautionary tales... [A Dishonored fae AU]
start here (prelude), next part (1-2)
Ever since she was a child Emily had been cautioned: beware the fae. She’d heard the typical warnings -- faerie rings, wishing wells, mysterious lights in the darkness. But they were just cautionary tales, names of people she’d never met, stories about a land where things were so beautiful they would drive men mad. She’d never known a family that thought itself to have a changeling. She’d never spotted a brownie dusting up the corners of the castle. No faerie-gifted musicians or craftsmen had ever taken work in the royal palace.
When she was ten - when her mother was murdered - things changed. Years later Emily struggled to remember that day-- those months. People grabbing her, pulling her away as she screamed for her mother, watching glassy eyes that stared unblinkingly to the sky, fingers digging into her shoulders as she shrieked and wailed. Some time - days? weeks? - locked up in a room with only masked jailers to bring her sustenance. Losing herself in daydreams of how her mother was fine, and how she’d have every guard and soldier and knight in the kingdom looking for her daughter, how Corvo would come for her. Every time she heard swords clashing she’d imagine it was him, on the warpath to come rescue her. But it never was. Then she’d been moved.
She’d been kept… somewhere. Somewhere dark and smoky and filled with bawdy laughter, abrasive voices, and sounds that were something between pain and pleasure. Later she’d learned the truth of it: five months, sequestered in a brothel. She’d stopped waiting for rescue, started to attempt escape. Every time, she was caught. At first they merely chastised her, locked her back up in her little room, withheld supper, put out the fire in her hearth, left her in the cold and the dark. But once some time had passed, they grew bolder. She hated to remember it. She’d been born a princess, well-loved, coddled, never having felt the sting of skin on skin, the bruising thwap as gaudy jewelry added weight to a scolding. She’d learned to lie, to hide, to steal, and fake docility when she could. Wide brown eyes had shown fear enough to know how to ape it. And if she stared at the floor they wouldn’t see when anger flared in her gaze.
Then he had come. Corvo Attano. Her father. The man who’d sired the Bastard Princess. He’d been changed, hardened by whatever had kept him away for nearly half a year, but he’d held her and she’d been strong for him, never crying, not once, not until she was safe in the tavern on the wrong side of the river. Plague ran rampant in the streets while she obediently took her dose of elixir with the rest of the loyalist conspiracy, sitting through boring lessons that nevertheless were a relief after months of loneliness. She had friends again - though later she’d realize most weren’t true friends, just adults who’d tolerate her until they could take power in her name. The same as those who’d taken her the first time, who’d killed her mother. Only this time they tried to kill her father. One day he was there, celebrating a victory over the usurpers, and then he’d stumbled away and she’d been shuffled into a waiting carriage, weak and sick to her stomach, feeling far too frail for a ten year old. Years later she wondered if she’d just imagined the screams under the clop of hooves as she’d been driven away, delirious, Callista’s face pale and pinched and arms wrapped too tight around her -- if the blood on Havelock’s hands was just a specter.
Surely, compared to humans, the fae could be no worse.
But when she’d finally been reunited with her father - when Havelock was dead, when the bodies of the former conspiracy were burned - she’d suddenly been well again. And he’d been even more insistent about protecting her from all things. Including - perhaps especially - faeries. Every door had iron nails or bars, as did her bedroom windows. She didn’t even remember which side was the proper side for stockings that were only ever worn inside out. Every meal was salted, every pocket filled with herbs or berries, bells sewn onto her slippers. She wore an adder stone on a cord around her neck. Her childhood outings were all closely chaperoned, if she was even allowed to leave the castle. The vast majority of her time was spent kicking her heels against a throne far too big for a child as Corvo conducted most of her business for her with the help of a council of lords, or - the highlight of her days - training. Her father promised she would never be helpless again. And if it took hours of physical conditioning, of swordplay and grappling and free-running and endless tests on outwitting a foe, she rarely complained.
By the time she was fifteen, then sixteen, she’d mastered the art of being a rebellious teenager. The bells left her slippers, became a bracelet that she slipped off regularly. She’d learned the best time to sneak out of her rooms, the best routes to avoid night guards, and the best way to manipulate her father into leaving her alone long enough for her to slip away. If she got caught, she’d learned early how to fake shame and obedience. Steadily she grew more and more confident-- more and more reckless. Soon she could walk the ramparts of the castle, ducking out of guard patrol paths in the nick of time, slipping into the guards’ barracks, swapping soldiers’ gear with their fellows’ until they tittered about mischievous fae themselves. It made Emily grin, until her father took to salting every entrance to her room. Eventually she stopped her mischief. It was too much of a hassle, carefully sweeping the lines of salt back into place after each outing.
Suitors clamored after her hand. She was charming, sociable (if perhaps a bit eccentric). She was witty and sharp and had all manner of noble sons and daughters eating out of the palm of her hand. All too aware of the baggage her mother’s impropriety had carried (she knew some conservatives still called her the Bastard Princess behind her back) she never took beaux. For all her giggles and batted eyelashes, she was exceptionally chaste.
The coronation - far later than most nobles found appropriate - came the week after her seventeenth birthday, and then came her first royal progress. If her procession of hosts found any of her faerie-warding habits odd, they didn’t dare mention it. If a couple rowan berries tumbled from her pockets, they followed her example in ignoring it, and were soon swept up by some light but engaging conversation. A few observant young ladies in the kingdom even took to wearing stones around their necks as well; if the Queen wore it, it was in fashion.
Yet for all her father’s insistence and warnings, she only found herself more curious about the fae than ever. In each city they visited, at every fiefdom, she found herself making subtle inquiries of the locals, of the legends, if there was any truth in them. She learned of exiled witches, of magic ponds, of bowers full of otherworldly songs, of missing children and forest revels and ill-made bargains that left half-cursed townsfolk in their wake. For the first time in her life, she met people who’d borne true witness to faerie magic. The man who could weave the finest fabrics in the kingdom even as his blood dyed every yard in a rainbow of colors. The well that could cure any disease of its townsfolk, in the village where a child disappeared every seven seasons. The Duke who’d died alone in his estate, surrounded by gold that turned to dust as it crossed the threshold, gorged on shimmering fruit and wine that whispered sweet music.
She shivered delightedly at every eerie story, even as Corvo frowned and shot worried glances her way. Time after time she reassured him that she was safe, that he’d taught her well, that she took every possible precaution and had spent hours crafting words that might extricate her from any fae encounter. She’d turn out her pockets, jingle her bracelet, lift the adder stone from her neck-- anything to remind him that he’d done his due diligence, she was more equipped to handle the fae than any seventeen - and soon eighteen - year old needed to be.
The final stop of the royal progress was, at Corvo’s order, held at the Boyle estate not far from the royal palace. As long as Emily could remember, he’d held a grudge against the ladies Boyle. And burdening them with the expense of hosting the progress was the perfect way to backhandedly honor the old family. On Emily’s end of things, the Boyle estate was perfect: right on the edge of the forest, full of ramparts and shadowy corners she might be able to sneak away to (if she was careful), and the Boyle’s were wealthy enough that the final night, the night of her eighteenth birthday, was sure to be a affair to remember.
She was entirely too correct.