66. Kat #2
Frowning at the table, she ran a finger over its smooth surface. “She didn’t know unseelie men don’t use a contraceptive like our men do, and she found herself pregnant, with her lover back in the Underworld.”
I clasped my hands in my lap to keep them still. Pregnant? The Night Queen had left that part out of her story. But, again if her daughter had been violated, I could understand her not wanting to dwell on the idea.
Sura hadn’t explicitly said her sister wasn’t attacked.
I clung to every word, the exact turn of phrase and cast my mind back to that conversation with the queen.
Somewhere, growing between the cracks, was the truth.
“Our mother wasn’t pleased.” She scoffed.
“An unseelie in the line of succession? Not acceptable. She locked her away and tried to persuade her to get rid of the baby. In secret, I helped my sister, while she pretended to consider our mother’s demands.
I even took her the scrying mirror with its frame of crows and spears.
How my sister didn’t know what it was when she first found it, I never understood.
The Morrigan’s sons rule the Underworld, and those are her symbols.
Of course it was going to form a connection to that place. ”
The goddess of death and war. I fought a shudder at the idea of getting caught up with her or her sons.
“They used it to plan her escape. The night before the new moon when the veil wore as thin as gossamer and a storm made the night dark and loud—the perfect cover. But our mother had enchanted the river to keep him out. Everyone thinks it’s unseelie fae in general, to keep the palace safe, but it’s actually one specific unseelie to keep her and what belongs to her safe. ”
Of course, it would benefit her to have everyone believe she’d acted to protect all the palace’s inhabitants.
I frowned as I realised—she never crossed that river, though I’d seen her wistfully looking out over the city. Was she afraid of him? Was that what kept her bound to the palace?
“My sister was heavily pregnant by that point—a couple of months from giving birth. She tried to run, but…” Frowning, she shook her head.
“I discovered later our mother had been feeding her mugwort to get rid of the child. That together with the stress of the escape must’ve brought on her labour early.
I can still hear her screams. She broke two of my fingers from squeezing so tight through the pain.
I didn’t dare visit a healer—they’d have told the queen.
” When she lifted her hand, her third and fourth fingers were the slightest bit crooked.
“I did what I could to get Nyx to the bridge, but she told me to keep out of sight—she’d take those last steps alone.” Her head bowed, but not before I caught the gleam of unshed tears. “She was protecting me. If the queen found out I’d helped her…” She shook her head.
I slotted everything the princess said between the queen’s words. They fitted. So far.
“It was a battle for her to cross that bridge. Every step.” Her voice cracked.
I saw her fighting when she was halfway across. A battle for her own will.
The queen’s version, that he’d enchanted her, had made it sound like the unseelie was magically manipulating her into crossing the bridge, but… couldn’t enchantment be love, or at least infatuation? And couldn’t the battle be to enact her own will rather than succumbing to the queen’s?
The hairs on my forearms rose with the possibility.
“But she was fierce. For all her sweetness, Nyx would crush me in the training ring every fucking time.” Sura smiled, but it was a brittle thing like spun sugar.
“With her lover waiting on the other side and rain lashing down, she made it halfway, and that was when I knew she was going to reach him and they would escape and all would be well.” Her smile broke into bitter splinters and a tear escaped down her cheek. “I was wrong.”
She dashed the tear away along with any softness, scowling.
“Someone fired upon her. Someone from the palace. A black arrow with white fletchings. She stumbled but kept going. I tried to get to her, to shield her or pull her back into cover or carry her to him—I still don’t know what I planned to do.
But she used her gift to push me back. All I could do was watch as with a fucking arrow in her chest, she kept going .
Lightning flashed and a second arrow struck her. She didn’t stop.”
My heart pounded. I could see it. The long arc of the bridge, its lack of handrails, the storm breaking overhead. Below, the river would be swollen from the rain, crashing through the ravine.
The princess’s bowed figure pressing on, one foot after the other as she clutched her round belly.
Gripping my glass, I held my breath.
“I couldn’t get to her,” Sura went on. “But from my hiding place, I could follow its trajectory back to a figure on the royal balcony. A figure I knew well, even in the rain and dark, one whose black arrows had white fletchings. Our mother. As lightning cracked the sky, I watched her fire the third arrow. The one that stopped her.”
Goosebumps chased over my skin as another tear slid down her cheek.
“I turned just in time to see her topple off the bridge.” She wiped away the tear and frowned like she was angry it had escaped. “Whatever story the queen told you, understand that she is the one who killed my sister. No one else.”
I sank back in my chair and clutched my head, which buzzed with two radically different versions of the story. The implications if this was true…
“You believe me, don’t you?” She raised her eyebrows. “You know I can’t lie.”
“With fae it’s hard to know what to believe. You speak of vague words, but I note you never said that he didn’t rape your sister.”
The way she clenched her jaw and swallowed made my own throat thick with grief. It wasn’t a conversation I would ever wish to have about my own sister, and I felt sick to ask, but… if she was manipulating me and the truth as much as her mother had, I needed to know.
Eventually, she shook her head. “That unseelie man didn’t harm my sister in any way, including assaulting her. He loved her and she loved him. When she fell, he tried to throw himself into the river after her, but of course, thanks to Mother’s enchantment, he couldn’t. Does that satisfy you?”
I drained my glass, trying to wash away my empathy. Wrong, perhaps, but practical.
“Why did you tell me all that? When your mother told me her version, she had her own agenda for doing so. What’s yours?”
“My mother is not what Bastian believes her to be. That story is the best illustration I have. She killed her own daughter to ensure she couldn’t escape her control or bring an unseelie child into the world as her heir.
Her own daughter .” The intensity of her gaze was enough to silence me for long moments.
“Why do you think I tried to take the throne? If she can do that, she isn’t fit to hold so many lives in the palm of her hand. ”
“Why wait so long to stage your coup? That had to be almost twenty years later?”
Her jaw twitched. “I was pregnant. With my daughter on the way, I knew I could secure the Moon Throne with myself and an heir. And… although she’s not unseelie, I couldn’t risk the queen deciding she wasn’t good enough for the line of succession.”
Everything about this felt unsafe. I had a feeling the queen would consider merely knowing this story some form of treason.
“Did you tell Bastian?”
She huffed, looking away. “No. He isn’t ready to hear it. He’d find some way to disbelieve me. Accuse me of using some spell or illusion that showed me lying to him.” She rolled her eyes. “Anything, however unlikely, to make it so his queen is what he believes.”
My throat tightened. I’d picked up on things about the queen that had made me uncomfortable, but this story? It was a lot to take in, and I wasn’t even as invested in the Night Queen as Bastian was.
He needed her to be this great queen, because if she wasn’t, what had he spent all these years loyal to? What had he killed his father for?
I rubbed my throat, though my necklace was far from it. “If you want me to convince him to betray the queen, I’m afraid this has been a wasted afternoon.” That had to be what she was driving towards.
She gave a stiff smile and poured herself another glass of wine. “That’s not why I brought you here, but I understand. I hear you have a sister of your own—a queen, no less. Tell me about her.”
I delayed answering by taking a long sip of water, but I couldn’t see any danger in giving her a few of the public details about Avice.
She seemed satisfied with that and asked me a few questions about her adventures and gift, but nothing that seemed probing.
No doubt she wanted to remind me of my sister while the tragedy of hers was still fresh in my mind.
It was hours before she dismissed me, and I left in shackles, thankful for a lifetime of hiding my feelings. I would certainly need it next time I faced the Night Queen.
Assuming I lived that long.