Chapter Twelve #4
Zyr leaned forward, tapping at the page of the book that waited, open. Both pages were densely covered in runes that Declan only vaguely recognized from some of Aisling’s more obscure texts, and even then, not ones he could read.
“Can you give us the cliffnotes?” Antonio asked.
“If Faerie chooses humans to play Summer, then, by pre-convergence reckoning, humans are seelie. A human has never sat on the Council. But a King of Oak and Queen of Holly once took the throne, ruling over all fae. They claimed to hold the throne for both courts, as had never been done before. Of course, they were killed within a century. The start of a very bloody age.”
The world went quiet. Small. A human ruling beside an unseelie. The pair claiming to embody both courts, with Faerie’s blessing as Summer and Winter embodied.
It made sense. Too many things made sense in the most terrible way.
Infants sent prematurely to the voids and stars if they took after the wrong parent.
And, bloody hell, if all fae were like his family, with two of every three their mothers ilk, what did that say for families like Everil’s, a kelpie mother and nereid father, and a string of lost babes.
“How much time passed between their deaths and the convergence?” He sounded very far off, even to his own ears, his eyes a bit wide, unblinking, on the beithir.
“You see the shape of it, pup. Not long. A few hundred years and several monarchs who rose and fell in quick succession. The unseelie gained true ascendence, with Winter following Winter and no Summer in between. And humanity became a force on both sides of the veil.”
“Wild Hunts weren’t the most popular, I presume.”
He sounded bitter. He was bitter. After all, it was the sluagh, the hounds of that long abandoned ritual, who still carried its stain. A mindless act of indiscriminate brutality, it was whispered. And the hounds seeking the souls of any in its path.
Monsters. The things under the bed.
“Quite the opposite.” And Zyr? Grim. “Faerie grows unpredictable when Protocol is no longer respected. Though humans gained power, they were dinner as often as they were guests.”
“Shit,” Antonio murmured. Declan couldn’t help but agree.
“Would it soften the blow to know that fae, too, were on the menu? Seelie and unseelie alike of all ages. When the courts fell, the newly dubbed ‘life aligned’ argued the convergence protected humans and fae alike. No more Wild Hunts, sentient dinner platters, or unseemly honor duels.”
“Wouldn’t want to spill any blood,” Declan murmured. “Not with two ‘life aligned’ Monarchs on the throne, claiming to protect us all.”
“Precisely.” Zyr’s voice was low. Quiet. And Declan swore that the storm of his gaze had quieted, turned to mournful rain. “The Monarchs are experts at killing without ever drawing a knife.”
Distantly, he was aware of Antonio asking a question and Zyr offering an explanation. The sacrifice implicit in the Wild Hunt. The purpose of an honor duel.
Fascinating stuff, if one weren’t in the midst of stomach-churning realizations.
Aisling had the genealogies of many old fae families. She’d gifted one such to Declan’s father shortly after they married.
Declan’s great-grandmother had three siblings. Seven nieces and nephews. More cousins. Two children of her own and a third on the way, when the convergence occurred. After the blood dried and the floors were scrubbed clean, only she, and Declan’s soon-to-be-born grandfather, remained of the family.
Declan himself had two cousins, one of them the sluagh he’d spoken to Antonio of. Out of all of the whole of that tree, the only sluagh left of Declan’s ancestors were himself and Siobahn.
“Murderpunk?”
He looked to Antonio, his fierce, sunbaked rust-and-leather bond. The bond he’d choose, again and again, immortality be damned to the voids.
He wasn’t close enough to hear Antonio’s heartbeat. The pounding in his ears must have been his own.
“How infuriating it must have been, to have your whole Court deemed replaceable,” was his answer, still distant.
Zyr, silent, across from them. “To know Faerie gloried in mortals and unseelie, and you, yourself, there just for the dull equinox rites. To be a pretty, soft seelie, able only to grow flowers or warm hearths, and realize you were not built with the knives your counterparts have. That the Winter Court could theoretically stand, even if the seelie were wiped clean from existence, so long as there were mortals about.”
Declan shook, his soft laughter devoid of any humor.
He could see it. Understand it, even, which was worse.
“Yes,” Zyr confirmed. Short and succinct. “And all of it premised on an error. Humans aren’t seelie. That’s a fae convenience at best. To Faerie, there are three anchors. Four, if you count the Gates. Unseelie and humans sustain it. Seelie maintain it. And the Gates define the borders.”
“Humans are an anchor for Faerie,” Antonio murmured, all skepticism.
“Your bond is a sluagh,” Zyr said flatly, but not like the word was a curse. “The very heart of that Wild Hunt. A ritual long ended, leaving Faerie starving. Our realm is maintained by sacrifice.”
“Sex. Blood. Spilled life, either way.” See? Declan could make sense, of a sort.
“Fae, even unseelie, are stagnant. We’re of Faerie. And while it can feed on itself to some limited degree, it’s not enough. One can only survive for so long by consuming their own flesh.”
Antonio squeezed Declan’s hand, who gentled his own cling in turn. Who took a breath and steadied it on the grounding heat of Antonio’s affection and that spark of respect. Of liking.
“Could you see a properly-raised seelie sacrificing sex on an altar? Or blood, to honor something other than their own pride or House?”
He thought of Nimai. That smug smile. The way Everil faded beside him, seeming to become less as Nimai grew to be more.
Declan offered Antonio a slim, small smile, easing back against him, leaning close, hand turned palm up. Nearly holding, fingers not quite threaded together. But only just.
“There is some sense to be made,” Declan continued, finding center in Antonio's nearness and support. “Humans as an anchor. If humans and fae weren’t tied to one another somehow, why would there be Hollow or other sensitive humans? Voids, why would they have the ability to bond to us?”
“Yeah. It makes sense,” Antonio admitted, returning Declan’s smile with one of his own. “Doesn’t mean I like being Faerie food.”
“You aren’t. You’re a Hollow. Indigestible.” The beithir was smiling. It was an uncomfortable expression to see.
“Sounds about right.”
“I wouldn’t sacrifice you even if you were digestible,” Declan reassured him, falling back on his own ridiculousness in hopes of another smile. “Groups are only fun if everyone is on board.”
That did it. Antonio grinned again, a flash of teeth to match Declan’s. Both of them unsettled. Finding comfort in humor. Each other. And being eaten by Faerie sounded…
“Your face just did something, Murderpunk. Share with the class?”
Stars, the fondness there.
“Why does Faerie need sacrifice?” Declan looked at Zyr, nudging Antonio once more with his knee. Fingers, warm to cool, threaded, then, and no nails to dig in. “Things feed to live. Faerie isn’t collapsing around us. It’s not as if a sacrifice means a new baby fae takes form from the voids.”
“We didn’t use to fight for the barest scrap of space.” Zyr’s armrest became little but shreds of leather and stuffing as Declan spoke, the wood frame creaking. He didn’t appear to mind, gaze distant. “Without the recognition, life spilled in acknowledgment, Faerie dwindles.”
That was…
“But that’s…” He needed to finish his bloody thoughts. But everyone led to another, even more uncomfortable revelation.
“Faerie is shrinking?” Antonio asked, with a gratifying level of horror.
“I believe so. Before the convergence, it was as big as it needed to be. Now–”
“Now,” Declan interjected, “fae will pay in blood for the chance at an allotment.”
His blood.
“Precisely.”
“I’m not entirely sure how to process the weight behind that right now,” Declan admitted, words slow and careful.
He breathed. Antonio squeezed his hand. “If what you’re saying is true, we’re all in quite a bit of trouble, should the Council succeed in what they’ve threatened in their anti-human pushes. ”
How could he, one unseelie, and Antonio, his mortal Hollow bond, hope to change anything? Declan needed to. Antonio had bound his soul to Declan’s on that need. Been dragged into danger by fae after fae, and now faced something worse than Calloway for it.
Dead infants. Families wiped near clean. Histories long ago erased.
And at the center of it all, somehow, impossibly, Declan and those closest to him. All of them staring into the voids, whether they knew it or not.