Chapter 16 #2
“We’ve felt your magic,” he continued.
“You’ve become our own, too—explain this to us, Alpha.
How can it be?” Another woman, this one on the other side of the room, and she must have been on the shorter side because she’d reached out and had grabbed the edges of the table in front of her, and she was pulling herself up as far as she could to see me better.
“She saved my life when my pack sold me to the sorcerers. My wolf scratched her before we knew who she was. The moon magic took, but she did not die,” Maera said, her voice unwavering. “She did not shift, either.”
“Of course, she didn’t shift. The stars never created a wolf soul to bind to hers,” said one of the men, and he looked pissed off when he pushed his hood off, though I wasn’t sure if it was because of me.
“She shouldn’t have been touched with moon magic at all.
Her path was going to be different.” He wasn’t even pissed off at Maera—he just seemed angry in general.
“Yet here she is.” The woman who’d first spoken pushed down her hood, too.
They did not look as old as I expected. There were elderly people here in The Vale, but most of these people were young, in their thirties or forties, if I had to guess. Though I had no clue how werewolves aged, only that they weren’t immortal.
“Wearing the face of a queen, no less.”
“The same queen who lives inside her…”
“Only her magic, Jor. Not the actual Veyra.”
“Ah, but a fae is her magic. We all know this…”
They spoke one after the other, often before the last had finished the sentence, and I kept my mouth shut despite the urge to tell them again that I was me, that I was always going to be me, that I didn’t fucking ask to be part of whatever the hell this was.
None of this was my choice. I’d been forced into this dance and now I was stuck.
I’d been home with my family, and my only concern had been how to get back here because Verenthia had me now.
Not because of a queen, but because of a king.
If Rune was in the Midnight Kingdom still. If nothing had happened. As far as Maera knew, nothing had, but I was never going to allow myself to trust fae again, no matter what.
“Nilah, breathe,” she whispered from my side, as if she heard the chaos in my head.
But before I could tell her that air wasn’t going to help solve my problems right now, I realized that the Council members had all fallen silent.
They had all sat down, too, had pulled off their hoods as they watched me.
All those eyes, so fucking intense and yellow and alert on me that I was sweating before I realized it.
Say something, I urged myself because the silence, the weight of their judgment weighed heavy on my shoulders.
“I was banished by the old Midnight King, taken from the Midnight Palace back to my home on Earth,” I said, my voice small and shaking, but it was the words that counted, I told myself.
“I couldn’t get through the Aetherway because of the mark King Helem put on me when he banished me.
I couldn’t use the Aetherway as a source of power to help myself to come back, but I could the ley lines.
So, I did.” And I have no regrets, I thought but didn’t say.
“My mark is gone now. I am no longer banished. So, punish me as you see fit.” I will not be staying here to see it through. This, too, I didn’t say.
The Council members looked at one another for a moment.
One of the men to my right said, “Punish?”
“The stars have no desire to punish the Ice Queen,” said the woman—that first one who’d spoken, who looked more confused now than in the beginning.
And my stomach turned.
“I’m n—”
A hand around my wrist, squeezing tightly. I looked down at it, then at Maera’s wide eyes. All that she was thinking was written in the color of them clearly for me to read.
Claim your title. Claim your throne. That’s what she’d told me before we came in here.
I swallowed hard, the words I’m not the Ice Queen dying on my tongue.
“If anything, we’re glad that you made it back as soon as you did. The curse has consumed so much of the land already. Our days are numbered as it is,” the woman said.
I looked up at her, certain that I’d heard her wrong.
“Excuse me?” I asked before I could help myself. “I…I’m afraid I don’t understand.” And a look at Maera said she didn’t, either.
Silence in the Chamber.
The council members looked at one another.
“Do you really not remember anything?” they said. Not sure which as my thoughts were rioting in my head just now, and I couldn’t bring myself to focus properly.
“No, I don’t. I told you, I’m Nilah Dune, and I have my memories of my life—nothing else. I don’t remember anything I haven’t lived.” That I even had to say this was so fucking absurd to me, yet these people were more confused by it. Like what I was saying made no sense to them at all.
“Do you know why the soul of the Ice Queen has merged with yours?”
My heart didn’t beat. I didn’t breathe, didn’t blink, didn’t think. In the second that followed those words, I could swear that I did not exist at all.
“I don’t,” I then said, and somehow the words came out of me. “I…I met the Chronicler. I met the Seer of Shadows who foresaw the Ice Queen’s end. The reason why was locked in the man who killed her, by his father.”
“Rune Kalygorn, the new Midnight King.” My heart shook when the woman said his name. I looked up at her—he’s okay. He’s still king. These people would have known if he’d been overthrown or if something had happened to him. These people would have known.
“The queen slayer,” said a man with long hair framing his square face.
“The queen savior,” said the woman next to him, skin as dark as his, eyes so yellow I was tempted to believe they were fake.
“Yes,” I choked, and I didn’t understand why it was so hard to speak these words out loud, but I did it anyway.
“He killed the queen when he was six. And he saved my life countless times. But like I said, I was banished by his father seconds before he died. I haven’t seen or spoken to him yet, so I don’t know.
” I shook my head. “I don’t know anything.
” I stepped forward, looked up at each and every one of them. “Do you?”
They do. They did know—otherwise I wouldn’t have been here.
They really had come together tonight because of me—and not because I’d used the ley lines.
“We do,” said the first woman. “We’ve received visions throughout the day, ever since the stars called for our gathering. We are knitted with the ley lines of our world, the veins of the stars of our creation.”
“A royal is not meant to rule forever. The stars have said it plainly since creation, though the scriptures have conveniently been lost through the centuries by the fae who stand to benefit from ignoring their commandments,” one of the women said.
From down here, they looked almost the same because all I really saw with clarity from the light of the ley line on the floor was their eyes. Identical.
“Fae kings and queens have ruled for decades and centuries more than they ought, and the stars have allowed it—until their greed became the rot of the land. Until power became more important than life,” a male voice said before another picked up to finish.
“Then the stars said no more.”
Another heartbeat of perfect silence.
“Queen Oreya of the Seelie Court took the life of her husband, King Trogen, the very day she found she was pregnant with his son.”
It was like a knife buried deep into my gut all of the sudden. The face of the Seelie Queen was in the center of my mind, her golden eyes and that smile, those words she said to me once.
And then I saw Helid with the same clarity, moments away from death, face covered by a dirty beard, a wound on him that was also cursed to open and bleed for exactly one hour every day.
A curse no doubt put on him by his sister. His sister.
The same woman who’d killed Lyall’s father while Lyall was still in her womb.
My God, what the hell kind of a monster was she? Because now I felt bad for Lyall, and that didn’t sit well with me at all.
“His death marked the beginning of the curse,” said one of the Council members, but I was too lost in my own head to even care who spoke. Too lost in the words Helid had said to me before dying—my sister has set the curse in motion.
He’d known.
Helid had known the truth.
“But that was only the beginning, indeed. Royals know that their sins cost more to Verenthia than any other. It comes with the power Verenthia gives them to rule over its people. But when they disobey the rules, when they stay in power for longer than they ought, and when they abandon their responsibilities as royals…”
“The stars have no choice but to intervene.” Shivers ran down my skin. “With prophecies. With clear signs. To test. To watch. To measure,” the woman continued. “The Ice Queen’s end was foreseen, and she made the wrong choices in the face of it. She tried to postpone the inevitable for a long time.”
“Then she finally made the right choice,” said another man.
“It wasn’t right by any means, Balor,” said the first woman from two seats down. “But it did bring hope.”
“The Midnight King didn’t, though. He never chose right, not even at the end,” said that man—Balor. “He stayed in power for almost two centuries. Killed seven of his own sons to ensure that he would never be threatened, under the guise of a deal with the Ice Queen.”
This time I gasped, and they all heard it. “What?” Because he did not just say seven of his own sons. No way.
“The deal with the Ice Queen. She gave him control over her army and resources, and he killed any male son born by him so she would never be threatened,” said a woman, and it felt like the floor was suddenly sucking at my feet, trying to pull me under.
The word monster came to mind, but it just didn’t fit. Not with the face of that man and not with my own.
The face of the Ice Queen.