Chapter 29 #2
She stopped, looking suddenly achingly fragile and nothing like the indomitable figure Lorelei had known all her life.
“It took me years to fully come back to myself. And when I did…” She moistened her lips.
“When I did, the scar ran so deep, I didn’t dare reopen it.
The land had mourned with me in my grief and fallen into endless cold rain, misery, and hardship.
The court erupted into chaos and turned bloody knives upon itself in answer.
It took all I had, once I finally recovered, to wrest Efaelen into order and bring it back to health.
That was why I couldn’t risk allowing you too close again on any of those rare, precious visits when I was able to see you.
Human lives are so unbearably short.” Tears glittered in Morgana’s ancient eyes.
“The first time I lost you, I almost shattered everything I had sworn to protect. I couldn’t allow myself to risk that again. ”
Lorelei’s stomach lurched. It was unbearable—unjust!
—to navigate this terrible conversation here, of all places, with no solid ground to stand on and no allies or lover nearby to support her.
Conflicting emotions rocked through her like warring armies, and she fought to keep her balance in the morass of shifting silver.
Her mother had loved her and truly grieved her loss. Her mother still loved her, apparently. And yet …
Lorelei forced a wry smile instead of a sob. “So you chose the needs of your court over the needs of your daughter not once but twice, after all. I see.”
Morgana’s mouth dropped open. “I was in pain! If you understood how much I’d suffered—how much any mother would suffer—”
“Do you think I didn’t?” Lorelei’s laugh was shrill.
“I was a child when you sent me into a court where I was universally loathed—and then, when I finally saw you again, you didn’t even offer me comfort or reassurance.
Instead, you made it perfectly clear to me and everyone else that I’d lost not only my first home but also the only parent who had ever loved me. ”
Her mother rocked back as if she’d been physically struck.
“You still don’t understand,” she whispered.
“I had to—as queens, we both have to make impossible decisions all the time. You must have learned that for yourself by now! Do you imagine I wanted to lose the only child I’ve ever been lucky enough to birth?
Sylvana showed me: If I were selfish enough to keep you with me, every fae in the mortal realm would have paid the price in blood!
Even here in Efaelen, we would have suffered and faded, in the end, from the loss of that vital connection with the mortal realm.
Would you have chosen any differently, as an adult? ”
Lorelei breathed deeply, taking the time to think through her words before she spoke.
She wasn’t a child anymore to take instructions—or to vent her tumultuous emotions without care.
“As queens, we do have to make painful, impossible choices,” she finally agreed.
“That is why I made the choice I did today and broke my vow. Believe me, it wasn’t what I wanted, either. ”
“No?” Morgana’s voice trembled like a leaf in cold wind.
“No.” Lorelei swallowed hard. “If I’d seen any other way to save us both … but I didn’t. So I would make that same choice again without regret.”
Her mother’s eyebrows arched in reproach. “You know I can’t set foot in the mortal realm.”
“Nor can I step into the fae realm from now on.” Lorelei didn’t lower her gaze. She refused to pretend to any shame over her actions. “That’s why you chose this space for our meeting.”
Morgana waved off her words impatiently. “This once, yes. But—”
“It won’t disappear, will it?” There was a part—a large part—of Lorelei that wanted to step back from this tentative brink and shield herself in self-defensive distance before she could be hurt again.
But that was exactly what her mother had done to her all those years ago … and Lorelei had no desire to repeat the example.
She wasn’t ready to lower all of her shields.
Not yet; perhaps not ever. The lessons she’d learned across her life were real.
But she had recently realized that not all of her shields were necessary …
and she had loved her mother enough as a child to risk a single step forward now—if Morgana did the same.
“We can meet again like this,” Lorelei said.
“We can even try to do it on a regular basis, to come to know each other once again … but only if you finally let down your guard. If you want me in your life, then treat me as someone you care about. Respect me and my choices—and ensure that Oberon’s attempt to murder me and my consort receives the punishment it truly deserves. ”
Lifting her chin, she looked at Morgana with all the haughtiness of the powerful queen her mother—for better or for worse—had made her, not the child who had simply yearned for her parents’ love.
“I have my own eyes in your court, as you do in mine. I will find out if you decide once again to choose the comfort of others over my and my consort’s safety. ”
Ire flared in Morgana’s eyes. The immortal Queen of Efaelen was not often spoken to in such a manner …
but she held her tongue for a long moment.
Finally, she let out a carefully controlled breath, like a gently unfurling bud.
“Oberon has been a challenge to my patience since I first met him. I’ve granted him as much leniency as I could for Reynard’s sake …
but until now, I never understood how far he was willing to go.
He will not overcome this offense. I swear it. ”
Lorelei lifted a single brow, mantling her own power around her. “And if Reynard protests again? Weeps and swears to Oberon’s true remorse?”
The small, wry smile that twisted Morgana’s lips told a bitter story in itself. “Unlike you, apparently, I chose a consort who would never claim too much territory in my heart. It seemed the safest choice.”
… After your father, the sentence finished silently between them.
Lorelei lowered her head in a slow nod of understanding.
They had both reacted in their own ways to her father’s betrayal, hadn’t they?
She might never forgive all of her mother’s choices, but for the first time in decades, she could glimpse the possibility of a true relationship between them as adults, based not in either of their own queendoms but in this permeable, shifting middle space.
“Very well,” she said. “You know how to reach me with a message.”
Morgana inclined her own head gravely. “I won’t capture you without warning again.”
Twenty years ago, Lorelei would have flown into her mother’s arms for a final tight embrace before they parted. Today, she only said, “Until next time,” as she felt the silver walls of aether turn pliant to her will at last.
As she landed in her own warm stables, Bluebell looked up at her with a pleased, welcoming chirp, his golden fur shadowed in the darkness and his massive beak still bloody from his latest meal. Stepping towards the gryphon, she felt a lightness in her chest that she hadn’t known in years.
Perhaps she hadn’t lost quite all of her first home or family.
Even as she had that thought, though, she realized that the mirror-box in its silk reticule, still hanging from her belt, was vibrating—and with such intense agitation, she could only imagine it must have been trying to alert her the whole time she’d been trapped and unreachable in the aether.
With a muffled groan, she snatched it out of the reticule and flipped the box open, pressing her side against Bluebell’s big, leonine form for strength.
Even his familiar warmth and the affectionate nuzzle of his feathered head against her shoulder couldn’t comfort her as she took in Ailana’s grim expression in the mirror.
“Lorelei! Finally,” Ailana breathed. “Come quickly. We may already be too late to save him.”