Chapter 28
twenty-eight
I’d done this before. Plenty of times. I’d prepared to potentially meet my end since the day I agreed to join Helid through the Aetherway. I’d packed my bags and made my peace with death, and I’d done all that I needed to do to survive. To get here.
Yet this time, something felt different.
Maybe it was the marble cube that used to be Vair. I couldn’t put it aside, couldn’t stand not being in contact with it, and I wasn’t sure if it was only because I felt like I was betraying his memory or because of whatever kind of magic had been in the marble.
Or maybe it’s because I knew for a fact that I was going to run into Lyall soon.
We might be too late to save the Unseelie heir, too—and that wasn’t even the worst thing.
Even if Lyall hadn’t made it to him yet, there was no guarantee that we could defeat him because we couldn’t.
Killing Lyall was out of the question, and that just made seeing a clean end to this mess in my mind impossible.
But the carriage took us forward.
Raja had insisted that we ride in one of the heavier protected carriages of the palace, with thick bars that had been painted over with silver and black to match the design of the walls, as if the designer had hoped to fool people into thinking they weren’t there.
Four big black horses were carrying us steadily, and three soldiers were sitting outside, too.
I was sure Raja had handpicked them herself.
I was sure they could fight the same as a small army if it came to it, though it wouldn’t.
We were still in the Midnight Court, and from what Rune had told me so far, the people were mostly curious about him, not opposed to him being chosen king.
There had been those inside the palace—advisors and generals and the like—who’d tried to find ways to rule his claim of the throne illegal, but he said Raja had taken care of them.
He trusted her just as much as he trusted himself.
There had been witnesses—thank God—who’d seen Rune kill King Helem with their own eyes, and that came before any laws people could make up about bastard offspring ruling kingdoms.
So, yes, the Midnight fae weren’t a threat, but the Unseelie ones would be.
“There will be morvekai guarding the front gates,” Maera said, possibly an hour into our journey. The seats were wide and made of soft cushions and velvets, but the three of us still managed to look like we were sitting on needles all the same.
“Yep. Right by the ruined wall,” I said, the memory fresh in my mind.
“They’ve broken the law. I haven’t been able to find out why Helem didn’t intervene. Or the Seelies,” Rune said. “Nobody seems to know anything about the relationship between those in power at the Unseelie Court and my father.”
My father. The way he said it sounded so empty.
Incredible how feelings gave meaning to a word and could take it away just as easily.
“If I were to guess,” said Maera, who sat alone across from us, and looked out the barred window of the door on her right.
“I would say a deal. I would say he had hopes of taking control of the Unseelie army, too. King Helem was notorious for his politics. He trapped enemies and forced them to become allies. At least from what I’ve heard in The Vale. ”
“That’s not politics,” Rune said. “That’s abuse of power.”
“Which the fae are known to do,” Maera countered.
“Things might change at any time, though,” Rune said, but he didn’t exactly sound like he believed his own words.
“We need a plan,” I said, because it didn’t really matter what King Helem did when he was alive, did it? “Lyall is smart. He’s powerful. There will most likely be a fight.”
“There will. Even if we find the heir before him, he is likely to follow us,” Maera said.
“And we cannot kill him,” Rune said, sending shivers down my back.
Not just because he was right, but because, for a second there, the fact was such a fucking inconvenience. For a second, it seemed so easy to just kill Lyall and be done with it—and when the hell had I gotten so comfortable with the idea of somebody dying? With the idea of killing someone?
“We won’t. But we will need to distract him,” I reluctantly said. “We can do that with illusions.” I looked at Rune, and he knew whom I meant already. “Where is she?”
Hessa had been Lyall’s lover once, and then when he’d grown tired of her, she’d fallen in love with Helid, his uncle.
The man who’d come to Earth to find me, convince me to come save Lyall—but he’d never really intended to let me wake him up.
Helid had been part of the Broken Crown, a group of fae who’d planned to stop Lyall from trying to take over. They’d failed.
Now it was our turn, and Hessa could help. She’d created the perfect illusion of me dying at Rune’s hand at the feast, and Lyall had believed it. The sound of his laughter that night still rang in my ears any time I thought of it.
“She’s hiding out in the Mercove with Merenith,” Rune said. “I haven’t heard from her in a few days, but she refuses to come to the Midnight Court.”
“Can we find her? Can we send word?”
He nodded. “The soldiers will when they drop us off.”
That was certainly a relief. “We’re going to need all the help we can get.” And something told me that was still not going to be enough.
“What happens when we find the heir?” Maera asked after a moment. “How are we going to simply…take down the people in charge now?”
The question raised the tension in the air so quickly it could have been funny.
“What if we don’t?” I wondered. “The thrones know who the legitimate heir is. The Unseelie one won’t be any different. You said it locked itself down when the royal family was killed, right?” I asked Rune. Just like the Ice Palace.
“Yes. Nobody has been able to get through the doors in years.”
“But it will open for the heir. The throne will probably come out, too, the way it does. We will be there as witnesses—why wouldn’t that work?
” The way it looked in my mind, it was easy—take the heir to the throne room, knock on the door, have him or her sit on the throne chair, and it’s game over. Verenthia will live.
Except Rune flinched, and Maera said, “It won’t be so simple. The ones in charge control the army, and the people who are left. Remember what I told you before, Nilah?”
“About the werewolves who took Thornevale, yes.” The same ones who’d convinced her whole pack to sell her to the sorcerers, even though she had always been the alpha.
Maera nodded. “They had power because they had the numbers. It will be the same with the Unseelies. All they have to do is get rid of the heir, either banish or kill them—it doesn’t matter.
Nobody will question it.” There was a heaviness to her voice just now, and a dark look flashed in her eyes, like the memories of her past had caught up with her in the present.
I could only imagine how she felt, having been left to die in a sorcerer’s cage by her own people.
It occurred to me how incredibly strong she was because she never once hated them for it.
Now that I thought about it, I’d been to Thornevale, and I’d seen her with her people—if anything, she respected them just as much as they did her.
She didn’t resent them or hold grudges when she could have for what they did.
Nobody would blame her. I sure as hell wouldn’t.
Funny enough, what Raja said once at her dinner table made sense to me now—you’re good when you can be bad but choose to be good anyway. Everything was always a choice, and Maera had made hers.
“Nobody’s left in the Unseelie Court to rebel anymore.
They’ve killed off a lot of their own population, all those who opposed the original usurpers, the ones who killed the royals, as well as those who opposed the others who came after.
We knew this long ago when I was still in the Seelie Court.
” Rune’s eyes were focused ahead, but he was lost in his own thoughts.
“I asked Lyall once what he thought of it. He smiled and told me not to worry. Said he would take care of it once he was king.” A smile of his own stretched his lips, and it wasn’t pleasant. “Now I know how he planned to do it.”
As he spoke, I could actually see Lyall smiling the way he did when he thought he knew all the secrets and held all the cards. Ugh.
“Where will we start our search, though? Do we know exactly where the moonstone place is? And how big is the Unseelie Court exactly?”
“Almost as big as the Midnight Court. Slightly bigger than the Seelie,” Rune said. “And the settlement is inside the palace walls, according to Raja. She’s sent me a visual of the moonstone fountain. I think with her guidance, I can find it.”
I had no doubt about that. The way they communicated wasn’t foreign to me—I’d actually been able to communicate with Rune the same way before Maera scratched me—or at least hear his voice in my head. If Raja would guide him, and she knew where the moon’s eye was, we’d find it.
“It will not be enough to simply bring the heir to the throne,” Maera said.
“We must also kill the ones in charge,” said Rune, and there went my stomach again, spiraling out of control. “If they’re the ones who’ve made the morvekai, they will die with them.”
“And…if we can’t?” Because I had seen those creatures with my own eyes. They were enough to scare me shitless without even considering having to fight against people who were powerful enough to actually make them in the first place.
“We die trying, I guess.” Maera shrugged. “At least that way we don’t see the end coming.”
“We’ll be okay,” Rune said, leaning back on the seat as he put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him. “We’re not going anywhere. This realm isn’t going anywhere, either.”
I clung to those words like they were my lifeline for a while.
And then I noticed how Maera was looking at me. At our joined hands. At the way Rune held me close.