Chapter 17
seventeen
Somehow, I was standing still.
I came to, certain that I’d passed out for minutes, maybe hours, but I was still right where I had been standing, in the Chamber of the Council, and Maera was beside me, holding me up by the arm. Holding most of my weight with ease. Her eyes wide, as terrified as I was.
“You’re okay,” she told me, though her voice was weak, just a whisper. “You’re okay, Nilah. Breathe.”
I would have laughed if I could. Breathe, she said.
But I did.
I did exactly that—I breathed while the members of the Council sitting at least five feet over our heads whispered among one another. Maera let me go and I stood on my own. Somehow my legs held me.
There’s your truth, Nilah. There’s your fucking truth, the ugly voices in my head kept repeating, just like before.
And Maera said, “But the Unseelie Court. They slaughtered the king and queen, all of their children.”
Slaughtered—what a horrible word. What a horrible image it conjured in my mind, of people slaughtered for real. Blood and body pieces and screams.
Just like in that throne room in the Midnight Court.
“There is still hope,” said the Council members, one or the other.
My eyes were stuck on the ley line, the light that moved in circles near our feet.
“The stars have whispered to us of a descendent of the royal bloodline who is worthy of the Unseelie throne. Who will be accepted as its legitimate ruler.”
Pause.
Impossible not to look up at Udah, her pointy chin raised and her yellow eyes never blinking.
“It is up to you to find them and give them back their throne.”
“I’m sorry—what?!” Because she couldn’t have possibly meant me, but…
“You.” Udah raised her voice. “All of you who’ve inherited thrones—it is up to you to find the Unseelie heir and bring them to the Unseelie throne.
Only then will we be safe, and the curse reversed.
” She leaned forward, hands against her tabletop that I couldn’t even see from down here. “Now—before we’re doomed for real.”
I shook my head at least a hundred times, and I still wasn’t able to think clearly.
“I-I-I was by the Unseelie border a couple of weeks ago. They…they have these things—morevkai all around their walls.” These people had to know what those were.
They had to know that I couldn’t just waltz up to their kingdom and tell them the legitimate hair needed to take the throne for us all to be saved. Who would even believe me?
“The people have forgotten treaties of the old. We’ve felt the magic. It can be undone,” said the man sitting at Udah’s right. “You alone couldn’t do it, but the three of you who remain.”
The three of us. Lyall, Rune—and me.
“No. No, no, you can’t be serious. Lyall cannot be trusted—you don’t know what he’s like.” He’d ordered Rune to stab me right there in front of everyone, and he laughed about it. “He-he plans to rule all four kingdoms by himself!”
“Then he must not be allowed,” said one or the other. “He must be stopped if he is a threat.”
“He is! And he can’t just be stopped—we’d have to kill him to stop him.” They really didn’t know Lyall if they thought a conversation was going to cut it with him.
“No!” said Udah, so quickly, so loudly, I had to take a step back. Even Maera grabbed my hand again and squeezed, as if she needed the reassurance herself. “No death. There is no other heir to the Seelie throne except for the new king. He must remain alive—do you understand?”
Fuck me sideways.
“And the Unseelie heir? Where are they? Who are they?” Maera asked, as if she really thought this was normal. As if she really thought this was doable.
Silence.
I looked up.
“We don’t know.”
The funny part? I wasn’t surprised in the least. “You don’t know?” Even my voice didn’t waver.
“No. But whoever they are, wherever they are, they are alive. So long as the four of you are alive, there is hope,” Udah said, with a deep nod, and for a second there, I was sure she pitied me. But of course, it could have been my imagination. She was too far, too high.
“How long?” Maera whispered.
“It would take years for the damage to become irreversible. Possibly over a decade.”
Fuck, the relief was instant. That was good, wasn’t it? That mean over ten more years. One could do a lot in ten years.
“But…” Balor said, and all eyes turned to him.
“The ley lines have been restless. The gates have been harder to keep closed for over three summers now. The rot might be the end of Verenthia from Verenthia, but if I had to guess?” Balor looked around at his colleagues for a moment.
“We only have another summer until we no longer have full control over them.”
Again, that silence, and everyone was suddenly looking down, thinking.
“Meaning?” I asked because I was the only one who didn’t know.
“Meaning the gates with the other realms will open,” Maera said.
“And what happens when the gates open?” Because I’d opened another gate, technically. I’d come through here on a ley line.
Maera’s bright eyes darkened with fear. “Very bad things. Anyone in the universe would have access to our realm, and we would have no means to stop it.”
“Wait, wait, hold on a minute—just how big is the universe, and what else is out there?” But perhaps even more importantly—did I even want to know?!
Maera opened her mouth but said nothing, only shook her head.
“There is a reason why the stars ordered these gates to remain closed at all times.” Udah’s voice made chills rush down the length of me. “There is a reason why we were created to keep them closed. If they open, it will be the end of us.”
Those words. Those last four words echoed in the Chamber a million times, and while they did, they seemed to have paralyzed each and every one of us.
“Thank you for your time, Council,” Maera suddenly said with a deep nod, pulling me out of my trance.
“No, no—I have more questions,” I said because I couldn’t just leave yet. What they told me here—it was insane. What they were asking me to do was completely absurd!
Find a lost heir?
Sit on a fucking fae throne?!
No. Just no.
“We’ve answered all that we can answer, and now we urge you to begin your search. Tomorrow,” said Udah with her chin up and her voice crystal clear.
“But I don’t—”
“We will get to it, Mistress Udah. We won’t let Verenthia down.”
We, Maera said, like she spoke for me as well.
“Maera, wait.” But she’d already grabbed me by the arm and was pulling me back. “I can’t—I can’t just stay here forever. You have to understand—I have a family on Earth! My whole life is there!”
Another man stood up—his name I didn’t know. He leaned forward as if to see me better, then said, “Then why did you use the ley lines to come back?”
The shock of hearing those words fried my vocal cords, and I found, as Maera dragged me farther back, that I couldn’t make a single sound.
I knew the answer to that question. Of course, I did—I was here because of Rune.
Maera pulled me one last time, hard. Doors fell closed right in front of my face, the sound of them echoing in my head.
I was so screwed.