Chapter 30
VALANCE
I sat on the chair opposite the Fomorian at Kormac’s insistence. I’d tried to sit on the floor, away from them, to keep myself small. Yet here I was, too close to the red-eyed fae.
I drank hot mead from a dented tankard. The fire licked at my cold flesh. But I couldn’t fully enjoy being inside, not with her scrutinizing eyes picking me apart.
“I should cut your fucking head off,” Róisín said. “Before I lose mine.”
“No one has to know we were here,” Kormac replied.
“This isn’t happening. The seelie prince is not in my fucking house. Shit. I can’t do this.”
“Please…” Kormac whispered. “We need your help. We need horses. We need supplies. I’m sorry to come here and put this on you. But we have no one else.”
“What happened to this old woman?”
“I told you, she can’t help us now.”
“Convenient.”
“Frustrating,” I said.
She gulped her mead. “You look like him. Kind of. Very different but also similar.”
“Who?” I wondered.
“Your brother.”
They’d mentioned him earlier. “What were you saying about him?” I looked to Kormac, who sat cross-legged on the floor with the black cat curled up in his lap.
Róisín sneered.
Kormac waivered.
This is where he died. The river running past this house holding his blood.
“Tell me,” I whispered.
“We don’t have to tell you anything,” Róisín responded. “You don’t deserve to hear our voices, to be in the presence of this amazing man. This is unfair. Kormac deserves better.”
“I know he does,” I said quickly.
“Oh? You care about him?” She laughed. “Obviously. Magic.” She huffed and gulped more of her drink.
Not just magic…
“At least one prince shows a tiny piece of a soul, even if it’s fake,” she added.
Not fake…
Tears filled the corners of my eyes. What could they possibly say to hurt me even more than I already did?
I missed Daire so much. I wanted him to ride in on his horse, sweep away the scum, make everything better.
Punish those who’d done me wrong—his family, those who’d sworn to follow us and now followed the enemy.
But he was dead. And would he really stand up for my honor? Was I painting him with vibrant colors he didn’t deserve?
No! He deserved the colors. He was my brother. He loved me, cared for me. He was supposed to be king, to never leave me with that burden. Him and my sister. Yet they’d gone and left me with that damn father of ours. Left me to this nightmare.
“What did he do?” Those hot, angry tears rolled free. “Tell me.”
A heavy sigh passed Róisín’s lips. “You really don’t know?”
I wiped at the streams on my cheeks. “No. Enlighten me on his murder.”
She looked to Kormac. “You should tell him.”
“I…” The human looked at me with heavy eyes, sorrow running down our connection. Sorrow for what? “I don’t want to hurt him.”
“It’s best he knows.”
“I don’t want to hurt him, Róisín.”
“Why? He deserves all the hurt.”
I ignored her comment, eyes darting between them. “Talk. Now.” A shift in tone. “Please.”
The Fomorian crossed one leg over another. “Be interesting to see how you take this.”
I waited, eyes on my human companion. My skin still sang with the memory of his touch, my lips hungry for another kiss.
But something dark was coming.
Kormac licked his lips, scratched at his beard.
“I had another best friend. Leanna. She was amazing, a warm and clever fae. She’d have made a better leader than Lasair, but she lacked that certain force a leader needs.
Lasair has it by the ton. Leanna wanted to work slowly, to take back Autumn completely.
Make the Autumn court unseelie again. A lot of folk thought that weak, the ramblings of a pregnant woman.
But I thought it was smart. Build a strong base first, then start to spread out. ”
I kept quiet, listened, felt the grief radiating from him.
“She didn’t plan on getting with child, but she was so happy.”
“Gods…” Róisín whispered.
Kormac rubbed his temples, his eyes closing. “The day Prince Daire and his entourage stormed up the river, we ran out to fight him. To protect Riverleaf.”
I held my breath.
“He ran past here,” Róisín said when Kormac hesitated. “Spared my home, though I didn’t believe for long. I knew he’d be back. I guess he wanted the village first. Some said he’d heard Lasair hid there.”
“So we ran out to meet him,” Kormac spoke again.
“They were on horseback, in elven armor, and had much better weapons. We didn’t care.
We weren’t going down without a fight. I was scared and angry, and I tried to stop Leanna from coming.
But you couldn’t stop her. When she set her mind to something, she never let up until she saw it through.
Like hounds with bones… When hounds lived. ”
Faerie lost its hounds to terrible sickness. No amount of trying saved a single hound life.
“Are you okay?” Róisín asked. “Take a break.”
Kormac’s pain ricocheted inside me. Unending. A raw, open wound exposed to salt.
“I’m okay,” he said. A deep, shaky breath.
“When we met them at a shallow part of the river, they overwhelmed us quickly. They were a wave of strength we couldn’t handle.
The men and women bound us with ropes, beat us, didn’t kill us like I thought they would.
All while Daire watched from his horse. I watched him right back, his attention on Leanna. ”
My blood ran cooler.
“I saw his eyes on the swell of her belly,” Kormac continued, “her white dress wet and clinging to her from the rain. Gods, the rain was so heavy that day.” Another pause. “He dismounted his horse, clicked his fingers, and nodded at Leanna. She was dragged and dumped at his feet.”
More ice in my veins…
Tears were now forming in the human’s eyes.
“Kormac…” I said.
“He told them to hold her down. They did, laughing as she struggled.” Kormac’s olive skin turned an ashen color.
I looked to Róisín, who watched me. She looked away, catching stray tears.
Kormac looked ready to vomit. “Prince Daire stabbed her in the stomach over and over again. We couldn’t do anything but watch, listen to her screams, see the blood…
” He swallowed, tears now free to flow. “I had to hear that piece of shit, that monster, laugh as he butchered her and her unborn child.”
I slid off the chair as it hit me. The sheer horror of it became a physical response, a shift of agonizing proportions. The image of my brother, with all of his faults, cracking and crumbling.
Never children…
My hands were planted on the floor, my back arched. Ready to vomit myself. “No… He didn’t…”
“He did, Valance, and he was proud.”
No… Not my brother. No. That’s barbaric.
“Danu…” I breathed.
“No gods were there that day,” Róisín added.
“And that wasn’t the last of it,” Kormac continued with this horrible onslaught.
“Daire and his retinue found children hiding near the village, scared out of their minds.” He sighed, his pain a series of shudders down our bond.
“Playing in the rain, fishing, and looking for frogs. They didn’t make it back to the village in time, captured by those vile fae.
” Another deep, mournful sigh. “They never should’ve been out there.
” He shook his head. “Your brother executed all six of them. They were no older than nine.”
By Danu. This… This couldn’t be… Not Daire… He wouldn’t do that to children or to a pregnant woman. Never.
But he did…
“Help came,” Kormac said. “Lasair and others—shadow sorcerers, soldiers, humans. They cut down your brother and his group.”
“As they deserved,” Róisín added.
“I’m sorry, Valance,” Kormac said. He came to me, kneeling by my side. Stroked my back when I should be comforting him against this memory.
My world was spinning. Upside down and breaking apart. Everything I’d ever known left behind in dust, fresh pain hurting me as a dozen blades in my guts.
“No…” I said softly. “Don’t ever be sorry. I’m sorry. I… I can never… I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it,” Róisín snapped. “We’re not liars.”
“I didn’t say you were. I’m trying to… No. I don’t want to understand his actions.” I pushed myself up, getting to my knees. Kormac’s hand rested on my thigh. “I’m glad he’s dead.”
The ice in my veins had become a glacier. Hardening, weighty. Another shift inside me.
“You are?” Róisín questioned.
“I hate him.”
“You do?”
Yes. As easy that… “There are many bad things in this world. Many of them are seen as bad from one perspective, a good intention from the other. But some acts of evil are simply that. Evil.”
“You wouldn’t have killed a pregnant enemy in a fight?” Róisín again. “Even a child?”
My stomach roiled. “I would never do that. That is despicable.”
“Don’t tell me the cursed prince has compassion for his enemies.”
“Róisín…” Kormac said.
I faced the Fomorian. “I don’t care what you think.
I know my own heart. I would not harm a child, unborn or otherwise.
My heart is broken now. For good. I thought I knew my family, especially Daire.
I thought we shared the same principles when it came to harming children. But how wrong I have been.”
“Just like that?” she wondered.
So much loss. So much change. “Yes, just like that. I’m exhausted from the unpeeling of my family, from discovering their rotten truths. This is the final strike. I’m done.”
I had no tears for Daire now, only disgust. Years of love and looking up to him undone. A loose thread pulled, my brother disappearing. Gone from my soul.
Whatever I’d done in my life, the cruelty I’d inflicted on others, I’d done it with a sense of duty. Of righting a wrong, of punishing the wicked. Doing that to an unborn child—
“Burn, brother,” I said.
And then, a tidal wave of grief broke through the glacier I’d tried to hide in. A violent retch brought up the contents of my stomach, followed by wailing my pain into the floorboards.
“I’m sorry for everything!” I screamed. “I’m sorry I hurt you! I’m sorry for Daire! I’m so fucking sorry!”
My voice rattled the house, tore at my lungs.
Everything was dead…
…reborn with Kormac.
A becoming in the north.
A dark caress.
A new me.
Waiting to be claimed…