Chapter 5 #2
Biting back a sigh, Lorelei lowered herself into a respectful curtsey.
Her mother’s latest consort, Lord Reynard, might be depressingly tedious, but he was also quite harmless.
All she need do was make a bit of polite small talk and share a public embrace, and she would have everything needed for her plan.
Unfortunately, before she could rise from her curtsey, a different male voice rang out across the field and proved that she had been far too rash in more than one of today’s assumptions.
“Dear sister.” Lorelei could hear the repulsive smirk in that voice even before the last of her falling leaves dissolved to show it on an all-too-familiar fae nobleman’s perfectly handsome—and viciously untrustworthy—face. “How kind of you, for once, to deign to join us in our festivities.”
Fuck. What was Reynard’s son Oberon doing here, wearing the Crown of Autumn as host? Things hadn’t changed this much since she’d last visited Efaelen, had they?
The Golden Beacon’s voice rumbled behind her, pitched too low for anyone else to hear but vibrating through her bones. “I wasn’t aware you had a brother, Your Majesty.”
“I do not,” she gritted, pulling herself together.
… But she had misunderstood the trees’ earlier warning of an enemy lurking nearby.
Lorelei beamed her most glorious smile across the field at the loathsome son of her mother’s consort.
Their parents might currently be entangled, but Oberon certainly hadn’t used that fraternal form of address the last time she’d been forced to interact with him, nearly six years earlier.
Back then, he’d made a slithering attempt to seduce her by trickery and thus attain a queen of his own to match his father’s accomplishment.
If only Oberon had chosen to follow his father’s example in any other ways—from Reynard’s occasional acts of real, if whimsical, kindness to the simple courtesy Reynard extended to even the lowest fae—Lorelei might not have bothered to humiliate him quite so soundly for it in front of the assembled court.
She couldn’t believe her mother had allowed him to wear the Crown of Autumn for such an important cultural event … but she would not let him think it gave her any pain to see it.
“How sweet to see my mother is indulging you so, Lord Oberon,” she cooed across the field of fae that lay between them. “You must have been wonderfully well-behaved ever since she finally allowed you back into her court.”
Lorelei might have been too busy to visit Efaelen during the last few years of increasing turmoil in the mortal realm, but she still had her own sources in that court—and she hadn’t missed any of the gossip when her mother had risked her consort’s sorrow by exiling Oberon for an unheard-of four full seasons following a series of unforgivable public exploits.
Lorelei thoroughly enjoyed the fury that flashed across his expression at the reminder of his past punishment. Did he not understand how many far more competent villains she had squashed beneath her heels to win her own throne in the first place?
Rapidly revising her plans for the next few days, she said, “What delightful serendipity it is that we stopped by in time for this rare and momentous occasion. I should have hated to miss the sight of you looking so very … well … exceptional in a crown! But we are, I’m afraid, only passing through on our way to—”
“‘Passing through’?” Slowly, tauntingly, Oberon raised a familiar sheet of pale pink notepaper that he must have been hiding, until now, within the sumptuous folds of his robes.
“My, my, our former princess. What a way to describe taking on our people’s most sacred challenge!
Perhaps you’ve forgotten even more than I’d realized in all your years of running away to play house with the mortals. ”
Lorelei was no longer a princess but a queen—and it was only the thought of her own kingdom, and the people there who relied upon her, that saved her now.
They would all suffer along with her if she murdered the son of her mother’s consort in public, especially while he wore one of Efaelen’s most ancient symbols of authority.
With an effort, she kept her voice as sweet as honey and batted her eyelashes at him. “Goodness, dear, you really must be bored if you’ve had to turn to reading other people’s private correspondence for your amusement!”
“On the contrary. After Queen Morgana was called away on an urgent matter, I was named her proxy. Thus, it is my duty to open missives addressed to her … at least when they are clearly labeled ‘urgent.’” Oberon smiled back with unmistakable, hateful triumph.
“Don’t worry, Sister. Despite the lateness of your plea, I will be more than delighted to accept you and your”—he flicked a disdainful glance at Gerard’s silent, looming figure—“mortal into this year’s Tournament of Leaves, just as you begged in your letter.
I see here that you swore to complete it with honor—and never fear, you are just in time to enter. ”
With a decisive nod, he gestured for the assembled fae to rise back to their feet and clear the battlefield for combat.
Lorelei swallowed hard. Option after option tumbled frantically through her mind—but she discarded them, one by one, with sickly inevitability.
A public oath could never be withdrawn in the fae realm … not without losing her entrance to Efaelen forevermore.
“Tournament of Leaves, Your Majesty?” Gerard asked quietly, his breath brushing against Lorelei’s hair.
She shook her head—a quick, jerky movement—in answer but didn’t dare shift her gaze from Oberon’s victorious figure as fae hurried to follow his commands. On one side of the field, a handful of healers gathered by the tent that was prepared to store any necessary bodies along the way.
One or two combatants were killed in these games every year, it was true.
But when Lorelei had come up with her brilliant plan, she’d done so with the understanding that neither her mother nor Reynard would allow any such fate to befall either her or her tournament partner.
She might have been discarded from the line of Efaelen’s royal succession, traded away to Balravia like a royal chess piece; her mother might barely even remember her most of the time, their early attachment lost long ago; but both of those judges would have scrupulously honored Lorelei’s dual relationships to Efaelen, both by blood and by vital political alliance.
Entering the tournament with Gerard as her partner, today, was meant to be a mere simulation of peril to prove that they could fight together as allies, not an actual exercise in mortal danger …
But from the smirk on Oberon’s face, Lorelei knew that the rules of combat had just shifted.
He must have been waiting all these years for such a perfect opportunity for revenge.
“Players, assemble!” Bells jangled in glorious accompaniment to his command, and Oberon raised his robed arms high, the Crown of Autumn glowing upon his head like a victorious taunt. “It is time for the games to begin!”