Spilt Milk

Sevastian was born to a wealthy and loving couple in an upstate New York suburb, the seventh and youngest child.  Though he wanted for nothing, and though his parents were kind, there was always a restlessness in his soul.  Even as a child, something in him knew something, remembered something, wanted something more than what he had.

When he was nine years old, a distant uncle came to visit for Christmas.  He would tell stories by the fireplace night after night, tales of maidens and dragons; tales of elegant, deceitful nobles, thieves and commoners, pirates and rebels.  The more Sevastian listened, the more he became convinced they were not simply stories – but the truth of a world he had never seen, but could feel.

His uncle left a few days after New Years.  As he was packing to go, Sevastian went and sat in his car, saying nothing.  His uncle did not usher him away.  In the pandemonium, he was overlooked, and when his uncle drove away, he went with him.

Soon thereafter, on a night filled with stars, his Chrysalis came for him, sweeping him off his feet and into the land that he had always known about, deep in himself.

His uncle, an Eshu adventurer, served as his mentor for a year and a half.  They traveled far and wide together, and Sevastian was a quick learner.  The way of the fae; the courts; riding and archery and especially swordsplay – he picked them up as though he had always known.  And, of course, in some ways he had.  At the end of his fostering he was Sained in the Kingdom of Apples, coming into his own as a Sidhe of House Scathach.  His name he found in a dream, and it was a grand name: Maelduine Brevalaer.

An Ailil Baron took him under his wing, then.  He became a squire for the Baron, and though life was more regimented now, he had many friends among the other childlings, and the days were happy.  The Ailil had a small protégé of his own – another Ailil, a childling by the name of Magdalena de Castro d’Oro – and while they were never friends, she was a sweet child, and good for a prank now and again.

In his eleventh year, he and Magdalena attended their first Samhain ball.  Alas, little Magdalena was younger than the other childlings, smaller, and their spurned her as a child.  So it was that she spent much of the ball alone and dejected until the Baron eventually urged Maelduine to ask her to dance.  Grudgingly, out of respect for his mentor, he agreed, and while the other Sidhe childlings whirled with one another in growing consciousness of their budding Wilder selves, Maelduine became stuck with a girl that was still very obviously a childling.  They danced that night, she standing on his feet, he looking for a way out.

Two years after that, he left for his first true quest.  It was then that he first established his primacy on the battlefield.  All Scathach were brilliant warriors, but he more so than most.  In the space of a year – his thirteenth year, at that – he accomplished more than many hope to accomplish in a lifetime.  When he returned triumphant, he bore the heads of no less than four mighty nocnista, the thanks of a dozen courts Unseelie and Seelie, and an enchanted blade named Arc’hantael.  The Duchess herself recognized his deeds, and it was the Duke’s blade that knighted him.

Yet when he returned to the court of his mentor the Baron, he was met with an odd silence.  There was no respect for his battle prowess, no admiration for his deeds.  The invitations to the balls all seemed to evaporate in the mail, and every conversation he joined seemed to drift apart within a few moments.  For the first time, he tasted the bitterness of rejection.

He had grown into his own as Wilder, but so had everyone else.  And where his House had never mattered before as Childling, it now made all the difference in the world.  They were Sidhe, true Sidhe; he was…Scathach.

At the Samhain ball of his fourteenth year, it was his turn to stand alone, hiding the hurt of rejection behind a mask of haughty indifference.  Half a hundred couples whirled on the dance floor, resplendent in their House colors; half a hundred couples, while he stood by the wall – until Magdalena came to him.

Little Magdalena, who he had once danced with when no other would dance with her, now returned the favor, only she was little no longer.  A Dame in her own right, a Wilder and an up-and-coming member of the Unseelie court, she was both the hope and fear of her elders.  Scintillating, exotic and lovely, she set half a hundred couples eagerly gossiping that night when she sank into a curtsey before the new knight, bearing his deadly blade.

They danced, and from that dance came an invitation to the abandoned tower.  From a night of stargazing in the abandoned tower grew a friendship as secret and tender as the spring – and from that, over the course of nine weeks, love.

But this is not a tale of love and happy endings, and this tale is only beginning.  For Magdalena had already been promised to another – a Fiona Baron whom they called Donavin mac Cumhal, whose interest in Magdalena gave their master, the Ailil Baron, political sway over him.

The pact, already struck, would be consummated on the night of Beltaine: six months away.  Maelduine left the day Magdalena told him, hell-bent on conquering a nocnista they swore was unconquerable – a deed great enough, surely, to win him a Barony, and equal footing with the Ailil and Fiona both.  Then, he said to Magdalena, he could ask for her hand in honorable marriage, and they could be together for all time without fear of anyone telling them otherwise.

It was a search and chase that took six months, and the final battle was a grueling ordeal that began with the sun still high in the sky, lasted through the night, and into the morning, noon, and afternoon.  Finally, in the early evening’s light, the nocnista fell, and Maelduine spurred homeward – but he had a hundred miles left to go, and the sun was already setting.  By the time he returned, the Fiona had already taken Magdalena into his bed, and though Maelduine stood beneath their window and screamed her name for hours, it changed nothing.  What could’ve, should’ve, and would’ve been wasn’t – and in a bitter rage, Maelduine threw the evidence of his deed into the river, and his hope for a barony sank with it.

The morning after, he crept into the Fiona’s chambers.  There, the young lovers examined their lot.  Where any other may have given up and grown bitter, or perhaps even forgotten, eventually, the depth of their love – they picked themselves up and planned for the future.  They would have their revenge, one way or another.  The Baron would die for allowing this to happen, and so would the Fiona.  But her availability, her marriageability, was now as much as weapon as anything else, and it had to be preserved at any cost.

And so he swore an oath to her that morning.  If he could not be her lord and husband, then he would be her knight.  He would stay by her side forever, never to love another woman, never to abandon her, and never, ever to betray her.  If he ever breaks this oath, then he would have forgotten himself and, in forgetting himself, would forever forget his fae nature.

So it is that to this day, through all her trials and triumphs, he has ever remained by her side: always faithful, never straying, always deadly, never forgetting.