Chapter Thirty-Three
HOLDING A REVEL AFTER RISHAUD’S ATTACK WOULD be gauche.
So, she and Malachi took a different route to announce their news to his court.
Malachi dispatched couriers carrying letters embossed with his royal seal to the cardinal bloodlines.
As for the servants, who tended to spread gossip even swifter, Kadeesha made sure she informed her mother of her impending nuptials and the babe in front of the servants who were delivering Yashira’s morning tea.
Yashira’s gleeful squeal that her daughter would be a high queen after all, and her grandchild would be heir to a mighty throne, was surely heard in every corner of the realm.
Kadeesha waited until the servants had departed and the door shut behind them before she trampled on Yashira’s joy.
“The marriage won’t be real or last very long,” she told her mother before she got carried away.
The teacup Yashira had been raising to her lips clinked against the table she sat at. “What do you mean?” Kadeesha couldn’t decide if she pitied her mother’s exasperation, was worried about her mother’s sanity thinking this was anything but a sham, or was just thoroughly annoyed.
“Obviously, this isn’t some fairy-tale pairing,” she said as she took a seat across from Yashira.
“Nor do I intend to stay chained to Malachi as his bloody wife. I’ve always had the same goal since I let myself be brought here.
We may have struck a bargain that leaves the Aether Kingdom out of his desires to install himself as high king, but the babe I will now continue to bear changes things significantly.
Malachi and I will never not be at odds going forward.
The point of our marriage is to convince the vassal monarchs to defect from Rishaud and support Malachi and me as their recognized high king and queen, with our babe of dual royal blood as the exalted, Celestials-blessed heir to Malachi’s envisioned Seven Kingdoms.”
“Exactly!”
“But, Mother, I don’t want that future for myself.
I only want to rule my own ancestral court.
I don’t want to be some powermad despot who rids Nimani of Rishaud simply to duplicate—or expand—his tyranny.
And I don’t want any child I bear to be raised as an heir to a throne erected atop brutal tyranny and savagery.
“Consider this,” she continued. “Malachi didn’t once stop to consider the hemorrhaging of fae lives or how to staunch any tide of death.
All he wants, all he can ultimately see, is his quest for revenge and power.
He believes the way to ensure the continued sovereignty of his own kingdom is to crush others beneath his heel.
Therefore, once he and I have used this impending marriage and child to procure the vassal monarchs’ backing so Malachi’s invasion is short-lived, and once Rishaud is dead, Malachi must then be …
taken care of as well, as I’d always planned. ”
The horror on Yashira’s face was evident. “But—”
“If I must bring a child into this world, I will do so under the right conditions,” Kadeesha finished emphatically.
Yashira’s eyes narrowed from horror to calculation. Silently she picked up her tea and sipped it. “I see,” she finally said after swallowing.
Kadeesha raised a dubious brow. “Do you?” Her mother’s apparent acceptance came too easily.
Yashira nodded staidly. “Yes. And that goes for many, many things, actually. For one, it is quite interesting that you sit before me and declare you are intent on murdering the father of your child and your newly betrothed and yet you are unable to use that precise word.”
Kadeesha laughed. Her mother was persistent, like a hound with a bone. “Is that what you’re hedging your bets on? That I’ll reverse course due to some misplaced sentimentality?”
Instead of becoming ruffled by her daughter’s amusement, Yashira looked Kadeesha over with the sort of voracious gleam that might shine from a kongamato’s gaze when it detected the nearby scent of its prey.
“No, dear daughter. But I believe Malachi is a more formidable adversary than you give him credit for being. He is not Rishaud, who is as despicable as they come, and whom it might have been quite easy to exchange marriage vows with and then pivot to taking his head. Malachi is a more complex male—you so easily forget that he did ultimately accept your plan to reduce bloodshed, for instance. And you also forget about the Markings.”
Yashira was smug enough in her assertion that Kadeesha ground her teeth. “Funny you admit Rishaud is reprehensible now but you backed Father’s aim to marry me off to him such a short time ago,” she reminded Yashira, lest that was something she had forgotten.
Her mother, of course, waved Kadeesha off.
“How many times are we going to revisit an affair that we have moved beyond? As I told you before, I had every confidence you could take care of yourself. You are smart and cunning and more ruthless than you sometimes care to admit. Likely, Rishaud would’ve been a cooling corpse mere days after your marriage.
And then you, dear daughter, would have effectively been high queen of the Six Kingdoms in more significant ways than a title bestowed by marriage. ”
Kadeesha almost shook her head, but didn’t bother expending the energy. Her mother’s blind ambition for her daughter—and thus her own position—never wavered.
In similar fashion, neither did Kadeesha’s frustration with that ambition. “I do not appreciate being treated like a pawn on your war board,” Kadeesha told her mother for the umpteenth time. At this point, she was beginning to sound like a defective message rune that’d been cast with warped magic.
“Anybody with any amount of influence or power among the fae courts is a playing piece on a war board,” her mother volleyed. “It is better to be the queen who is shifted around than an actual pawn. At least then you retain a modicum of autonomy.”
“But I don’t want a modicum of anything. I want the whole thing.”
“Then don’t be na?ve and understand that the game is being played whether you like it or not,” Yashira snapped.
“Or, if you dislike being a manipulated queen, then the answer, daughter, is to become the war board’s maker yourself.
Malachi may have some untenable qualities in your opinion, but he aims to become game master.
And right now, he’s the one with the resources to make that happen—and you can’t.
No”—she said, cutting off Kadeesha’s protest—“he is more powerful than you in all aspects … right now.
“However, if you truly side with him—not this false ally role you seem to cherish—then you’ll become that very thing too when he succeeds.
Instead, you keep regarding him as an adversary, meaning the future that awaits you—and the child you grow—will forever leave you a mere piece on someone else’s board.
And make no mistake,” Yashira added primly, “if you’ve decided to bear a child who would be the heir to the Apollyon Court, then you are plunging yourself, and them, even deeper into the game of kings and queens—with or without Malachi around.
Because no matter what you think, that child belongs to this court as well.
If you kill Malachi and remove him from the equation, then you cannot retreat behind Aether Kingdom lines and concern yourself with only Aether Court business.
You and the child will remain embroiled in intra-court politics of the Apollyonfolk regardless of what you desire, and then you’ll have no choice but to become the ruthless, savage, perhaps even brutal tyrant to keep the child safe.
That and you will remain a piece for others to deal with, and not one who fully controls herself and the entire board. ”
Yashira took a breath, then noted one more thing.
“There is also the consideration you overlook of the fact that your babe will mature and come to have both questions and opinions about their mother murdering their father. You can explain your reasons, but there is no guarantee they’ll be well received. ”
With that, she sat there and gave her daughter a pointed look.
Kadeesha bit the inside of her cheek, her mind churning over Yashira’s points and grasping for solid rebuttals.
Except they eluded her, and—shit. As Yashira had noted, she’d proposed using the pregnancy, she’d made the choice to keep the child in lieu of a devastating death toll.
Thinking of her history lessons as a stripling, one thing was always apparent: When fae courts went to war, an utter cataclysm was what was almost always left behind in its wake.
Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d been too hasty and dreadfully shortsighted in proposing to use the pregnancy as she and Malachi were now doing.
Had she maneuvered herself into a corner that made Yashira’s assertion unavoidable about what, who, she’d have to become in order to be a mother who protected her child?
The likely answer left her stomach unsettled.
“When did you become so smart about the ways of court?” Kadeesha finally asked.
“The moment I knew that I’d have to kill to maintain my—and my child’s—place in Sylas’s court.” Then Yashira took another sip of tea, leaving Kadeesha to her whirling thoughts.