For those of you who said you’d like to see Claire and I’s TSC Next-Gen Fanfic, That Which is Precious and Lost, be reformatted and brought over here onto Tumblr, you’re in luck, as we’re going to be doing just that! Much like Secrets of Blackthorn Hall did, we’ve decided we’re going to post one chapter per week for the next year — which works out well, since there’s exactly 52 chapters and exactly 52 weeks in the year!
All the odd chapters, which were written by yours truly, will be posted here on my account, @julescarstairs , whilst all of the even chapters, written by @tsc-reader , will be posted over on her account! For your convenience, however, as we post the chapters I will link them to this masterlist, so you don’t have to go searching. If you do get lost, however, every post should be findable under the #twipal tag! See below for the masterlist as it grows!
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Eleanor Blackthorn-Carstairs seldom ever found her home empty— at least, not without a note on the kitchen bench, or a text from her Mom or Dad letting her know they were going out. But when she returned to Blackthorn Hall from patrol, she found the vast home dark and so silent you could hear a pin drop, and there was not a single text on her phone. Maybe some teenagers her age wouldn't mind their parents stepping out without saying anything. Maybe some would savour the quiet ambiance: the faint chirping of crickets out the window, or the hum of wind as it blew past the curtains... but this was not a comfortable sort of quiet. And Eleanor's parents never stepped out without letting her know.
"Mom?" Ellie called, wiping her feet on the doormat (an old housewarming gift from Aunt Dru, marked with the letters “ENTER, IF YOU DARE") just inside the Hall's large doors. Her voice reverberated off the walls, leaving only her own echo to offer a reply. After that, there was only silence again. "Mom, Dad. I'm home!"
Eleanor strained her ears, listening for a hint of her parents presence anywhere. Still nothing. Only silence and darkness welcomed her home. Not a single candle nor light was lit in the house, it seemed — not even the kitchen was lit, and there was no light upstairs, or under the doors. Strange.
In the shadows surrounding Eleanor now, she could see the eerie old manor home her parents had been greeted with when they first arrived to fix it up years ago, long before she was born: the one that had been haunted by a restless ghost. She could only navigate the halls by the infrequent moonlight coming in through the windows. Eleanor stopped dead at the foot of the stairs, tipping her head back to look up at the landing above.
She forced herself to laugh, but it sounded more nervous than she'd intended it to. "Listen, if you're trying to freak me out, it's... well, it's working," she admitted meekly, but her voice didn't lower. "You can come out now!"
Maybe Eleanor Blackthorn-Carstairs had been overthinking that night. Perhaps it had only been an oversight on her parents' behalf. Perhaps it had been something urgent that they needed to leave quickly for. But even then, they would have told her. They would have brought her along if it was urgent. They wouldn't leave her alone in the house in pitch darkness with not so much as a text telling her where they had gone.
Would they?
Indeed, perhaps Eleanor Blackthorn-Carstairs could have been overthinking that night, if not for the fact that her father's gorgeous paintings that adorned the walls of the main foyer had been absolutely mutilated. Eleanor sucked in a gasp, and staggered back against the wall behind her. Paintings of her mother had their eyes gouged out — one even had a clean slice right down the centre of her body - and family portraits had been slashed with ‘X’ shapes across each face. Even the smaller portraits of Eleanor herself, as a baby, had been sliced at the neck, leaving her looking like her little head had been severed from her shoulders. The implications behind each tarnished painting were enough to make the back of Ellie's throat taste sour.
Something was very wrong.
"Dad!" Eleanor tried to shout, but it came out as more of a cry, and hurried down the hall to where her Father's studio was located. If he wasn't upstairs— if he was anywhere — he would be in his art studio. Her mother might even be there, too, watching him paint. As Eleanor drew closer to the room, as her trembling hand gripped the doorknob, she found herself hesitating. Her heart was pounding so heavily in her chest that it hurt. Her head felt insanely light as her mind raced. What if she saw something beyond the door she didn't like? What if they were in there, but they were...
No. She couldn't afford to think like that. Couldn't afford to hesitate. She threw open the door to her Father's studio, and nearly doubled over as her chest lurched with pure distilled horror.
Before her was the image of her nightmares.
To say the studio was a mess would be an understatement: an unfinished painting was wedged partway through a window, the canvas torn where shards of glass cut into it. An easel lay snapped on the ground, a small craft table in the corner broken clean in half. The small paintings that hung on the walls here had been mutilated violently, too, and Eleanor's childhood drawings were torn to shreds under her feet. She couldn't even imagine how livid her Dad would be if he found the studio in the state that she did.
Paint had been upturned; there were smears of a dark colour, like blue, on the floor. There were stains splattered up the wall. But those looked humble in comparison to the handprints on the walls, on the floors. Ellie's blood ran cold — so cold that she shivered.
She dropped to her knees beside two of the prints on the ground, and tentatively put her left hand over one of them. Eleanor had always marvelled at how hers and her mother's hands had been the same size and shape— but now the thought only made her feel sicker as her hand fit perfectly over the handprint on the ground. Looking over at the other print in her dizzy haze of panic, Ellie noticed it was slightly larger, longer fingered: one of her father's hands. Whatever had happened in here, they had been together. Of course. She withdrew her hand, and it came away wet. Not a thin kind of wet, like watercolour, but not a thick kind of wet, like oil paint. It was an in between, sticky sensation.
Like blood. Another wave of nausea roiled over Eleanor, sending her head spinning further, as she raised her hand to the moonlight. Bright red. Eleanor almost choked as a guttural sound tore from her throat, partway between a cry and a scream. She got to her feet and ran back up the hall so quickly she almost staggered. She clambered up the stairs to where her parents' room was.
She threw that door open — so harshly it almost fell off the hinges — and found that the bedroom, too, was in shambles. The bedsheets were ripped from the bed, the bedside drawers pulled out of their cabinet. Her parents' personal belongings were strewn across the room. The wallpaper was torn to shreds, and barely clung to the plaster. To her dismay, her mother's family ring laid on the ground under the windowsill.
Ellie sobbed into her fist as she sank against the door frame. Her mind was still racing, with all the worst-case scenarios. There was a pillow, still intact, at her feet. Eleanor sank down on her knees without thinking and swept it up, hugging it close to her chest. She gripped it so tightly in her trembling hands that her fingertips hurt. She inhaled its scent, an odd mixture of cloves, soap and rosewater. It was the smell of home: of her parents, of her rocks. Of her sanity. And she clung to that scent, let it clear her head, as she wiped the tears from her eyes. Now was not the time for weeping. She had to try and make sense of the situation. She kept the pillow hugged close to her, occasionally burying her nose in it, as she pondered what to do next.
Focus, she told herself. She carried the pillow from the bedroom, and drew the door shut behind her. She paced the halls, up and down, back and forth, until an idea finally came to her. She hadn't tried calling them. She hadn't gotten calls from them, but that didn't mean she couldn't try ringing out. It was worth a shot, anyway.
Eleanor drew her phone from her pocket, and dialled her mother's number, lifting the phone to her ear. "Please, Mom," she whispered int the silence. "Please, pick up.."
But it was no use: Eleanor was only greeted by a loud, screeching static noise that pierced her eardrum and made her teeth grind painfully against each other. She cursed, and used all her energy to not fling her phone out the window beside her. It was a weird noise, one that she didn't think phones were capable of making, but she didn't have time to dwell on that. Maybe her Dad would answer, Ellie thought, and dialled her father's number. That, too, was futile: she was only greeted with ear-piercing static once again. Hugging the pillow close, Ellie sobbed.
Where are you? She asked inside her mind, staring out the nearest window. What happened? Are you even alive?
Her frantic thoughts were quickly interrupted at a loud thump downstairs. Tears forgotten, Eleanor scrambled for the landing, stopping herself short. She watched, silently, as a silhouetted figure crept about the halls below. They seemed to be staring up at the tarnished portraits, with their back to where Ellie stood. Admiring their handiwork, she thought bitterly. Cold, sharp rage built up inside her as she slid down the handrail of the stairs. She threw herself at the figure in the hall, drawing Cortana from its sheath on her back as she did. The figure turned, and —
"Ellie!" A feminine voice shrieked as the figure scrambled back into the moonlight, revealing her face. "Ellie! It's me! I'm safe!"
Eleanor's shoulders slumped with relief as she staggered to a standstill. “By the Angel, LJ,” she wrapped her 15-year-old cousin in a tight hug, her breath coming out in a woosh. “You shouldn't creep in like this.”
Livia (commonly referred to as her cousins as LJ, or Livvy Junior) wrapped her wiry arms around Eleanor, clinging to her for a moment. She could feel Livia trembling under her arms, and the sensation only made dread unfurl in Ellie’s stomach. “I didn't know what else to do,” LJ admitted, before pushing herself away. “Or where else to go. I was looking for Uncle Jules, but all the lights were out. I didn't know if him and Aunt Emma had been attacked too, so…”
"Too?" There it was. Exactly what Eleanor had been fearing. She rocked back on her heels as a wave of nausea sent her into a head-spin. “Uncle Kit? Uncle Ty? They're—"
"Missing," LJ's hands shook as she gripped Eleanor's. Ellie listened intently as LJ recounted the events of her evening, her panic levels only rising with each new, frightening detail. Her family's apartment on Baker Street had been trashed, too, and Uncle Ty and Uncle Kit were nowhere to be found. No sooner had LJ finished, Elli's phone rang out into the silence. Eleanor scrambled for her phone, and her heart only grew heavier as she saw the name on the phone: her older cousin, Arrius.
She answered. "Ari. Thank the Angel—"
"Eleanor, something's terribly wrong," Ari said before Ellie could finish.
"You're telling me."
"Are they gone too? Your parents?"
"Yes," Eleanor briefly recounted hers and LJ’s experiences. "What about Uncle Mark? Aunt Cristina?"
It was the same story again. Arrius and Celeste's parents were missing, including Uncle K. But not only that — their youngest cousins, twins Oberon and Lucas, had arrived at Ari and Celeste's family's apartment in New York as they spoke on the phone: Aunt Dru and Uncle Ash were missing, too.
You guys haven’t met the TWIPAL love interests yet (I promise I’ll be introducing them soon) but if anyone is going to be subject to the one bed trope, it’s going to be Zepheanor. I can feel it in my bones. Just Eleanor Blackthorn-Carstairs and her silly little faerie Gatekeeper who can’t name or explain why she captivates him so much, but embraces the feeling wholeheartedly anyway.
(@tsc-reader you with me on this one? 🥹😭💗 I feel like they own this trope and it hasn’t even happened yet)
The silence that followed when Oberon finished reading the message from the Seelie Queen was thick and loud. He watched as Celeste's hair shifted from its usual midnight blue colour to navy, almost black, mirroring her thunderous expression — although, to call her expression thunderous seemed to be an understatement. Her fingers clenched the back of the sofa she stood behind with such tenacity that her knuckles were white. “Ten days.” She lifted her chin, suddenly, her voice coarse. Whilst Oberon saw very little of his Uncle Kieran, Celeste almost looked identical to him with that look of dark fury on her face. “Ten Days in whose time? Ten days in Faerie? Or ten days in the mortal world? For one, ten days anywhere is too long for the Unseelie Court to be without a leader."
As if on cue, a grey acorn fell through the window, another message from the Unseelie Court. A muscle jumped in Celeste's jaw as she saw it, but otherwise no one else took much notice of the new message.
"Sounds like a loophole," LJ said bitterly, and her dark eyes followed Eleanor as she got up and began to pace up and the wall of the living space of Blackthorn Hall. Her face, in the dim light, was as white as a sheet. Oberon's frown deepened, and he exchanged a look with Luc. His twin brother looked just as worried as he felt.
LJ raised a good point. The Queen was being worryingly unclear — but, Oberon thought, if she really wanted the Sage Scripts so badly she wouldn't be in any great hurry to bring harm to their parents. Wouldn't she? But then again, if his Grandmother was anything, she was certainly impatient.
“Maybe she hasn't decided yet," LJ went on, speaking her mind. She looked around at each of them individually, crossing her arms over her chest. "Maybe she'll just decide it's been ten days tomorrow, knowing her. This is all just one big game to her."
"She can't," Arrius's solemn voice came from the corner. He had been so quiet that Oberon had almost forgotten he was there. Oberon looked over and saw that Ari had his head cocked to the side as he read the spines of a few books on a nearby shelf. He then turned to look at Oberon, as if sensing his gaze on him. "Decide when it's been ten days, mean. The Queen may be conniving, even cruel, but she can't lie."
Luc and Oberon both nodded their heads in agreement with Ari's words. “You're right that time passes differently in Faerie," Oberon added, moving over and sitting of the arm of the sofa that LJ was sitting on. LJ reached up and touched Oberon's wing gently. If anyone else had done it, he would have given them out for it. But LJ was family. For that reason, he didn't mind.
Oberon went on, “But she can't go back on her word. She won't make any moves — if she does make any — until ten days, somewhere, has passed."
Out of nowhere, Ellie's fist collided sideways with the wall beside her, hard enough to crack the plaster. "The longer we stand here talking about how little time we have, the more time we're wasting," Her voice was thin, but determined. Everyone stopped, staring at Eleanor with wide eyes at her blunt words. Oberon had always known his cousin Ellie to be quite cheerful, and calm in times of stress. But this was different. The absence of her parents was clearly taking a toll on her — as it was on all of them. She pushed her hands through her hair, stopping when they were flat on the back of her head. Her elbows pushed out wide. "Our parents are imprisoned in Faerie. The main goal is to get them back. I know we all want to go over on a rescue mission to Faerie and kick the Queen's ass — well, at least I do —" she paused briefly to take a deep breath. "But she's not a fool. She'll be even madder if she finds us trying to break out our parents behind her back. Who knows what she'd do then. So, we need to find the Scripts. Go along with her wishes. At least for now."
“Good question. Father never spoke of such Scripts.” Ari touched his chin thoughtfully, his eyebrows furrowing.
“But Father is very young for a Faerie. He might not have ever been told of them," Celeste countered, finally releasing the sofa and letting her arms fall slack. White streaks began to appear in her hair as she flexed her fingers apprehensively. "As such, we need to take the Queen's word for it. If she knows that the Sage Scripts are somewhere in the Faerie Lands, then we need to treat it like a lead of some sort."
Oberon nodded his head in agreement, but he couldn't keep his attention on the conversation. He found his attention falling back on Eleanor again and again, worriedly. Now she was absentmindedly cradling Cortana, in its scabbard, in her arms, her eyes fixed on a photo in a shattered frame on a cabinet to the side of the room. A family photo, Oberon realised with a pang. That was why Ellie was so agitated, here. It was her home, where she had grown up, where her parents had been only hours before, but it was in shambles. Like a nightmare. It was a sight enough to make anyone uneasy.
Still, it only made an odd throb of guilt course through him, seeing Ellie and the others so down and out. A nagging sensation in the pit of his stomach was telling him that there was something more he could have done, something to prevent all of this from happening.
"Don't, brother," Lue said, his hand reaching up to touch Oberon's shoulder, squeezing firmly. He was faintly aware of LJ’s hand on his wing, still, and her eyes on him. "Don't blame yourself. You couldn't have helped this. We need to look forward, not back."
Oberon reached up and putting his hand over Luc's, but didn't speak. He only squeezed his brother's hand gratefully. He didn't want to put his own concerns on Luc's shoulders. He could see in the set of his twin's jaw, the twitch of his fingers, and the workings of his jaw how much this whole situation was already challenging his temperament. Oberon needed to keep his own panic in check — or at least look like he was doing that, so Luc would stay calm, too.
Ari had collected a number of old looking tomes from the bookshelves in the living space, and dropped them on the short table in the middle of the room. He dusted his hands off on his jeans. "These are all the books I could find here that might have some intel on Faerie Folklore," he peered over at Eleanor, curiously. "Why would Aunt Emma and Uncle Julian even have this many books of this variety?"
Ellie crossed the room and bent down in front of the books, reading their spines. She shrugged her shoulders. "When Mom and Dad were fixing up this place, my Mom found heaps of old stuff. If I were guessing, maybe these books were part of that— hey, wait a second," she suddenly pulled out a thick book bound in green leather from the pile, her long fingers curling around it. The books on top tumbled off and scattered across the table with a thump. "My parents used to read this to me when I was litle. What's this doing in the pile?"
"One should never overlook the storybooks," LJ said, gently nudging Eleanor with her foot from where she sat. She smiled a little.
"Remember? It was Uncle Tavvy's storybook that lead our parents to what the Guardian was doing all those years ago. There might be something in that book suggesting stuff about the Sage Scripts."
"Exactly," Ari looked gratified that somebody had caught on to his line of thinking. He reached out and ruffled LJ’s hair. "And most Faerie Tales are just messages disguised to look like Childrens' stories."
"My childhood will be ruined if this book leads us to those damned Scripts," Eleanor muttered, and flopped down onto the sofa beside LJ. She sighed loudly. "Alright, let's get on with the book hunt, then. See what we can find."
Nobody protested. Oberon and Luc both moved to pick up a book, and Celeste returned from her position by the window to obtain one, too.
Oberon snuck a glance at the thin piece of parchment between her fingers. Unable to help his curiosity, he leant over to Celeste, leaning an elbow on one of his knees. "Any news on the Court?"
Celeste sighed, shook her head. "Nothing new."
At that, Eleanor looked as though an idea had sparked in her mind, but before she could speak it, a cold gust of wind blew about the room, winking out the candles in the room that they had lit to keep the room illuminated. Objects in the hall outside the room rattled, as though someone were shaking them. All six of them, at once, were on their feet, and reaching for their weapons: Ellie had unsheathed Cortana, Luc and Oberon's hands had gone to Heosphoros and Phaesphoros, LJ brandished a dagger, and both Celeste and Ari gripped butterfly knives in both of their hands.
"Show yourself!" Luc commanded, his voice rising, "If you've come for us, too, then face us like you mean it! We aren't afraid of you...!”
Luc's words were quickly forgotten when a translucent figure coalesced in the middle of the room. She seemed to glow like she was lit from within, her white gown rippling in a nonexistent breeze.
“Is that any way to talk to the only Aunt who can help you right now?" The ghost crossed her arms, her Blackthorn blue eyes pinning Luc in place. Luc sheepishly sheathed his sword, murmuring an apology. Everyone else put away their weapons, as well. Oberon looked around and found everybody looking at the new face in the room with the same expressions: a mixture of bewilderment and relief.
"Aunt Livvy!" LJ's voice was a soft whisper of relief as she shoved her dagger back through her belt. Indeed, their Aunt Livvy stood in the room, looking over at each of them with a worried look on her eyes. At the sight of her, relief spread through Oberon's body, like a cold shower of water washing over his skin.
Judging by the determined set of her jaw, Aunt Livvy came as the bearer of some very important information.
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One minute, Celeste and her brother and cousins were in her New York apartment, stepping over bloody shards of glass and stew that had been upturned on the floor, and the next they were all gathering in Blackthorn Hall’s Lounge — Ari, herself, Oberon, Luc, Eleanor and Livia — to try and puzzle together what was happening. Where all of their parents had gone. There were so many people hurrying about the room, gathering chairs and paper and pens, that Celeste felt quite overwhelmed. But at the same time, it all felt distant. Like it was all happening at a distance: like Celeste was in the eye of a storm that was raging on around her. She could see and feel the tension of her cousins and brother around her like it was electricity sizzling and crackling in the air between them all, but it felt very far away at the same time. She couldn't see the situation in front of her, not right now.
Her mind was still back at the apartment. She couldn't stop seeing horrid images of what could have happened to her parents. Bloody images of her parents hurt and burnt and bruised, being dragged away by whoever had taken them. The images had been made only worse when an acorn had dropped into her hands upon their arrival in London: a letter from the Courts. Celeste had opened it frantically, with fierce hope that it was her father, King Kieran, but found to her own despair that it was not him. It was General Winter. She had skimmed the letter with shaking hands.
"Young Mistress Celeste,
We hate to bombard you with such letters at this hour, but we demand that you return your Father King Kieran to the Courts at once. He has been absent for some time and did not announce his departure nor a time for his return. The court is growing quite unsettled. I, General Winter, understand how scarce and precious your time with King Kieran is. But unfortunately his priorities must lie with the Court, lest it falls into disarray. A message in response announcing when we should expect the King's return would be appreciated at large.
Yours, on behalf of the Unseelie Court,
General Winter.”
Whoever was targeting them had gone so far as to take her Father — the King of the Unseelie Court — and leave an entire kingdom without a leader. And now Celeste was expected to clean up the pieces, being the "only biological child" of the King.
No, Celeste wasn't in the eye of a storm. She was in the eye of a tornado, and the world was spinning frantically around her, too quickly for her to keep up with. Everything was spinning, spinning quickly and violently — so violently that her stomach heaved. Celeste hardly recalled staggering to the nearest window and shoving it open. She was only faintly aware of her family calling her name as she knelt on the window seat, gripping the windowsil, and leant outside into the open air. She inhaled deeply through her nose, despite the tightness of her throat, and took in the smell of dirt and trees and rain on the wind as it caressed her face. She let it anchor her to her senses. She swallowed bile, grimacing at the taste of it on the back of her tongue.
Celeste felt a solid hand come down on the centre of her back, gently, bracing her. "Celly.” It was Arrius, her older brother. Her shoulders tensed are the sound of his voice, but Ari didn't move away. Some distant part of Celeste was grateful for that. He drew gentle circles on her back, a soothing sensation. "Los vamos a encontrar. lo prometo."
It was something the two of them had learnt from their Mother: to speak Spanish. Arrius often only spoke like that when he was trying to comfort her, because he knew she didn't like being made a fuss out of.
It only really worked when the people around them didn't speak the language— which included now. "I know we'll find them," Celeste murmured, looking over her shoulder at her brother. Arrius's expression was soft — concerned, but soft. He leant forward to listen to her, his eyelids fluttering slightly closed as the outside breeze brushed across his cheeks. Despite her mood, Celeste couldn't help but smile a bit to herself. The two of them were always more content in nature, with the wind on their faces and the sun on their skin. "But," Celeste went on, her brief moment of tenderness dissolving in despair. She leant her shoulder against Ari's. "What if we don't find them in the way we want to?”
"We can't afford to think like that. None of us can. But, as long as we work fast, we should get them back before any more tragedy can happen," Ari pat Celeste's back once more, and his hand remained there — a steadying weight — for a moment. When Celeste nodded her head once, he stepped back, dropping his hand. She clambered back from the window, but left it open, so the breeze blew through the room lightly as they worked. She swung her legs over the edge of the window seat, and tipped her head back to really look at her brother.
She watched as he glanced over at the others, who were in hushed conversation over the table, and saw his face tighten as his eyes flickered to each face at the table. For a single, agonising moment, Celeste could see what their mother meant when she said Arrius sometimes looked uncannily like their Dad, Mark. The thought made her throat ache again, so she turned her attention to her cousins. Luc, white hair tousled as though he'd scrubbed his hands through it, was jotting down notes on a piece of paper, and Eleanor was looking over his shoulder, pointing and murmuring as well. Or she had been, until she looked up and met Celeste's gaze. Ellie offered her a comforting smile, and took their moment of eye contact as an invitation to come over. She crouched down in front of Celeste and took her hands gently.
"I'm just as scared as you are right now," she said quietly, her blonde ponytail falling over her shoulder as she tipped her head to the side. “We all are, I think. But really, you don't have to worry about what we're going to think if you show that you're not okay. If it's any consolation, I threw up on our way here, but LJ didn't judge me for it."
“Gross, Ellie," Ari simply said, crossing his arms.
Eleanor pulled a face at him.
Celeste smiled at Eleanor, but she didn't really feel it. Ellies smile didn't seem to reach her eyes, either, but Celeste couldn't blame her. They all had to hold each other up right now: they couldn't expect just one person to hold the fort in this mess. Still, she appreciated both Ari and Eleanor's efforts to try and cheer her up.
“Thank you, Eleanor," she whispered, squeezing Ellie’s hands.
“Guys!" The library erupted with sound as Oberon rose from a crouch by a window just down from where Ari and Celeste were. His wings — large and black, like his father's — ruffled apprehensively as he lifted an acorn into the light. "It’s a letter from Faerie.”
LJ joined Celeste as she hurried over to Oberon. "You said you got a message from Faerie before, right? Asking about Uncle Kieran. Maybe this is a letter saying they found him? Or he came back?"
"Doubtful," Celeste looked at LJ with what she hoped was mild disappointment — only a fraction of the pain she really felt. "It's probably only General Winter again, demanding that my Father returns to the court." LJ looked a bit disheartened, and Celeste simply shared her grim look, before looking back at Oberon—
Who was reading the message. Celeste was about to protest, say that it could be confidential business of the Unseelie Court, but stopped short when Oberon lifted his head and frowned at her, at all of them.
“It’s not," he said. "General Winter. It isn't him."
"Well, who is it then?" Celeste demanded through her teeth. Her heart was pounding. Could LJ be right? What if it was her Father? Hope ignited Celeste's soul as she reached out to take the letter from him. Oberon turned, lifting the message out of Celeste's reach.
"Oberon, I swear on the Angel—“
"It's from the Seelie Queen," he said quietly as they all surrounded him. Luc had come to stand by his twin brother's shoulder, and was wearing an identical frown. It would have been funny if not for the tension of the situation.
"The Seelie Queen?" LJ did not sound pleased. "What could she have to do with any of this?"
Celeste's gaze shifted out of focus as her mind whirred. Suddenly everything began to make sense, like two puzzle pieces clicking together in her mind. She drew in a gasp, covering her mouth with her hand. Judging by the dawning look on Eleanor's face, and the way Arrius, beside her, had touched her shoulder, they, too, had come to the same conclusion as Celeste had.
“A lot," Oberon spoke the exact revelation that had crossed Celeste's mind. "Because she's the one who took our parents.”
~~~~~
@tsc-reader
**Note from the Author: Please keep in mind that these early chapters are from over 2 years ago, and have been left unedited/revised for authenticity purposes (save for one continuity error in this chapter that I fixed up.) the length and quality of the writing in these chapters will continue to improve from here as we get more settled in with the narrative. Enjoy!***
She wasn't even aware that she'd started screaming until she felt a pair of strong arms wrap around her. Her mind in a frenzied haze, she began to push, unseeing, away from them, crying out in protest. Manic thoughts, one after the other, riddled her mind: Aunt Livvy was gone without a trace. Where had she gone? She was in pain. The only reason she could have vanished like that was because something had gone wrong. Something had happened to her Dad. Her parents. This was bad. Very bad. She needed to find them. She needed to save them. They were in trouble.
“Let me go!" She screamed, but the arms only gripped her tighter. She fought harder, pounding her fists feebly against the back of the person who was holding onto her. Tears, big and hot, were dripping down her cheeks. They only made her more agitated. "Let go of me! Let-go—" she tried to pull away, tried to run, but it was no use. The more she tried to pull away, the stronger Eleanor's grip got.
“LJ," Ellie's hand braced the back of her head, pulling her close and whispering in her ear. "LJ, Breathe. Breathe. Breathe with me, okay?"
"But my parents!" LJ did not want to just breathe. She had stopped screaming, but her voice was still coming out in a thin cry. Her throat felt scraped raw, made worse by her frantic gasping and sobbing. She gripped Ellie's shoulders tightly, forcefully enough that she heard her cousin let out a low grunt. "My Dad. He's in trouble. The Queen is hurting them. I need —I need to go to them.”
"Shh," Eleanor simply whispered quietly, and pressed the side of her head against LJ’s. She rocked her gently, her arms still holding her fast. LJ supposed it was Eleanor's maternal instinct talking. "We are going to find them. All of them. And we're going to save them. I promise. But we can't do anything like that right now. So, I need you to breathe with me, okay?"
How could she be so calm? So sure? Her parents were being tortured some place they couldn't reach. All their parents were. Possibly being driven mad by their own imprisonment. Being hassled by white noise, tormented by their deepest fears, sickened by cold iron. They could be dying, and here they were, standing around waiting for Christmas to come. They were wasting time. They needed to do something. Now.
Except she couldn't breathe. LJ clawed at Eleanor's jacket, so deeply that her fingertips hurt, as she sucked in a gasp. It was near impossible to breathe against her heart pounding forcefully against her sternum. "Ellie, I can't—"
"You can. I know you can. Look at me," Eleanor's voice trembled, but was still laced with that same familiar, steely determination unique to her alone. Ellie gently held the sides of LJ’s face with shaky hands, forcing her to look up into her cousin's blue-green eyes. "Let's do it together, okay? Let's breathe together." LJ forced herself to nod, and focused all her attention on Eleanor. She mirrored Ellie's breaths, breathing in and out, slowly, just as she did. In and out, in and out, in and out. She wasn't sure how long they were breathing in harmony with one another before LJ’s heart was no longer shattering her rib cage, and her mind no longer a mess of frantic, unconfined thoughts. She still felt tense all over, like a rubber band pulled thin, but it was manageable for now.
She took one last deep breath, before stepping back on tired legs. "Thank you," she whispered.
Looking around, she noticed that Eleanor had drawn her into the corner of a room, shielding her from the rest of their cousins. Ellie rubbed LJ's arms and smiled grimly down at her. "Don't mention it. I needed it, too," she paused for a moment, as if taking her time thinking about what she was going to say next. When she spoke again, her words carried a tone of finality. "Uncle Ty is very strong. And Uncle Kit. Our whole family is. They've been through a whole lot, and we gotta remember that. We need to have faith that they'll be able to stay strong until we can rescue them. Otherwise we'll go to pieces before they do.”
LJ nodded, but before she could say anything more, Ellie had turned on her heel and returned back to where their other cousins were deep in conversation regarding the next steps to take. LJ followed, knowing Eleanor wasn't dismissing her, only anxious to move forward.
Arrius was looking at Celeste with an indignant expression, but Celeste seemed not to notice, and instead hurried over and wrapped LJ in a quick, brief hug. The gesture took LJ by surprise, seeing as Celeste wasn't big on physical contact. She murmured sympathetically as she squeezed her, and she let go before LJ could even hug back. "So, we have a plan," Celeste said, her hands on her hips.
"Great," Eleanor crossed her arms. “So what's the plan? We go snap the Queen's neck, get our parents, and then run like bats out of hell?"
"I wish," Luc muttered, and Oberon elbowed him.
Ari selectively ignored Eleanor and Luc's comments, and outlined the plan. Everyone pitched in their thoughts and opinions, and — after a few small bumps in the road, such as Celeste insisting she travelled alone — they all came to an agreement: Ari, LJ and Eleanor would go in search of Ari and Celeste's Great Aunt Nene to see if she knew anything of the Sage Scripts, whilst Celeste, Oberon and Luc would go search the Unseelie Court for information.
As they all gathered their things to leave, LJ found her hand moving to the Blackthorn locket looped around her neck. She gripped it in her hand, letting the sensation of the cool metal on her palm sharpen her mind, and temper the hot panic she had been feeling into cold, hard determination.
Yes, she was going to get her Dads back, she thought decidedly. She was going to save them — no matter what it took.
***
Faerie was deceptively beautiful.
As Eleanor and LJ followed Ari down a path through a forest of evergreen trees, LJ couldn't help but think that she was walking through something straight out of Alice in Wonderland: all the colours were saturated, almost impossibly intense. The green was so bold, the red so deep, the cobblestones underfoot so refined, the sounds so soft and sweet, that it hardly felt real at all. Probably, she contemplated, because it wasn't. Maybe none of it was real at all. After all, LJ could not be fooled by Faerie's beauty: she knew that somewhere in this place, her family was being held. Being harmed. Being tortured. It took all the energy she had to not run off in search of them at every little sound — a snap of a twig underfoot, a pixie fluttering overhead from one tree to the next.
The hardest thing LJ had done that day was pass by a revel. The minute she saw it in the distance — a blur of movement and colour - her mind had gone to one question: were her parents there? She felt irresistibly drawn to the revel, but not for the conventional reasons. She didn't want to be lost in the music, in the dancing, in the food— she wanted to save what she had lost, not get lost herself. She cared not for the festivities. Not in the slightest. All she wanted was for this nightmare to be over.
It had only been Eleanor's hand, firm, on LJ’s wrist that had stopped her from racing towards the revel. "Don't even think about it," Ellie had hissed, though her expression was pinched with concern, not anger. "You know it's only a trap. We aren't even in Seelie Lands."
Much to her own dismay, LJ knew Eleanor was right. They were in the lands of the Wild Fey, a region unclaimed by either Courts. None of their parents could be held there, because the Queen would have no power to detain them. And so they had continued on, into the thick of the forest. Eleanor didn't release LJ’s wrist until the music of the revel was completely out of earshot.
“Nene's cottage should be just up ahead," Ari looked over his shoulder at Eleanor and LJ, before ducking under a low hanging tree branch. "Hopefully she's home," he murmured, almost as an afterthought. Hopefully indeed, LJ thought bitterly. Otherwise the whole plan would have been a waste of time.
Soon enough, the trio emerged into a meadow which housed a small, humble cottage. LJ heard Eleanor, beside her, draw in a quiet gasp as she looked around at the meadow, at the brightly coloured flowers, at the sweet little box shape of the white-painted house, at the blue skies and golden sun overhead. She watched Ellie's fingers twitch as she grasped at the strap of Cortana's scabbard. LJ wondered if her cousin was itching for pencils and paints, or if she — like herself — was simply deeply uncomfortable with the location being so harmlessly beautiful.
"Arrius," a soft, lilted voice called, and all three children looked up to see a fair headed woman standing just outside the front door of the cottage. Nene. It had to be: she had the same fair hair as her Uncle Mark. Relief made LJ's shoulders relax a fraction.
"What brings you here? Miach didn't say you were coming for a visit." Nene stepped down from her porch, meeting Ari and the others halfway. She glanced curiously at both LJ and Eleanor, but said nothing to them directly.
Ar's expression grew apprehensive, even a little sorrowful, as he looked down at his Great Aunt. LJ couldn't help but notice the staggering difference in height.
Nobody knew where Ari got his height from, but it certainly wasn't Nene.
"Our parents are being held captive by the Seelie Queen, Nene. We need your help," he said lowly, and immediately upon the mention of the Queen, Nene looked around anxiously at the meadow.
“The walls have ears, Arrius. Let us speak more of this inside." She grabbed her great-nephew's wrist. She then gestured for LJ and Ellie to follow. “Come along."
Once inside, Ari continued to explain their whole situation as they all sat down at a small table. The whole house was remarkably small, LJ thought. Even LJ and Eleanor, who were at least a head shorter than Ari each, had to duck their heads as they passed under the doorframe. LJ giggled quietly as the three of them forced their limbs in impossible angles to sit down. Nene came around, providing each of them with a fittingly small cup of tea.
When Ari finished his explanation, Nene was frowning deeply down at the cup of tea in her own hands. "The Sage Scripts," she murmured, her eyes dancing around the room as she thought. "I’ve heard of them, but they haven't been spoken of in the Court in centuries."
"We got that impression," Eleanor said, ignoring the mildly irritated look that it earned her from Ari.
"Yes, but that is because they were hidden long ago, and the location they were hidden has long since been destroyed," Nene went on, lifting her chin. Her thumbs caressed her teacup. "They are unreachable at this point in time."
LJ’s heart sank. "What do you mean?" She demanded before she had time to think. Nausea roiled through her. If the Scripts were destroyed, inaccessible, then they couldn't fulfil the wishes of the Queen. They couldn't win. "If the place they're hidden in is destroyed, then doesn't that make reaching them easier?"
Nene shook her head. "It is in ruins. The Scripts, by now, have possibly become part of the lands. A fossil among the dirt under our feet. The location that the Sage Scripts were hidden has been long forgotten. If cannot be found on a map of Faerie. Its destruction lead it to vanish without a trace."
"So they were hidden hundreds of years ago, but do you know when the location was destroyed?" Ari asked.
Nene's expression was troubled as she placed her teacup down. She looked at each of them individually. "I will confide in you what I know, but you must not exploit me as your source of information," she whispered, sitting down across from the three of them at the table. Ari, LJ and Eleanor all leant forward eagerly to listen. "One of my fellow Wild Fey discovered the location only a decade or two ago, but when they tried to enter, it collapsed, and disappeared. I cannot tell you where the structure was, or what it was, but I can tell you its fall was only recently."
"Well.” Eleanor frowned. She was fondling with a bracelet on her left wrist, that looked to be made of sea glass. The shimmering hues of the glass reflected back on her chin when she propped it up in her palm. "The Scripts can't be gone, because the Queen is certain they're somewhere in the lands. She's willing to bet all of our parents lives on them being somewhere. That's a huge gamble for something that apparently can't be obtained."
Nene, despite her ethereal nature, looked wryly at Eleanor. “You are clearly unfamiliar with the nature of the Queen's dealings."
LJ’s eyes stung. She didn't want to believe anything she was hearing right now, but faeries could not lie. So Nene couldn't be misguiding them. In fact, she spoke more straightforwardly than any of the Fair Folk LJ had ever met. But there had to be a way. Something they could do. She was still hung up on Nene's words from before.
"They are unreachable at this point in time."
At this point in time.
What about another point in time? A different one? An idea struck LJ, so suddenly that her heart almost leapt out of her chest. It was like a lightbulb had switched on over the top of her head, and in its light, it illuminated a memory from only a few weeks before— a memory of an odd device her Father was working on, a small round thing that she had been told not to touch unless he told her she could.
Still, LJ had watched him for hours as he brought his creation to life, and her Dad even invited her over to watch more closely, and explain certain mechanics. Then she had asked what, exactly, the little round thing did, and when her Father told her, she had been stunned into silence for quite some time.
LJ had thought it impossible then. But now, it might be their only chance at salvation.
"Guys," LJ said, interrupting the terse rhythm of conversation that Eleanor, Ari and Nene had been swinging through. All three pairs of blue eyes peered over at her, each equally curious. She couldn't help the grin that spread across her face. “I think I have an idea."
