Chapter 5 #2
An unpleasant feeling twisted my stomach. The Underfae, afraid of me? The only people who should be afraid of me—the only ones I wanted to be afraid of me—were the Noble Fae.
Not that Oriana could fear me in this state. Pride gave me the strength to struggle to my feet, though my legs were shaking, and I seized my anger like a blade. “You should have come talk to me if it bothered you that much. And what do you mean, not me?”
Disdain crossed her face. “Foolish girl. The Shards’ gift is wasted on you.” My jaw dropped at the stinging words, but she continued speaking before I could defend myself. “It was obvious as soon as you started staggering around. Seeing visions, were you?”
“Seeing—” I broke off, realization spearing through me. “Someone from Illusion House was there?”
It hadn’t been vertigo. It had been magic. Someone had tried to kill me.
“You couldn’t tell,” Oriana said, sounding disbelieving. “The magic of the body, and you still couldn’t tell someone was there.”
My face grew hot with humiliation. “Did you see them?”
“No, but I will not aid Blood House any further. The only reason you live is because Earth House will not be used as anyone’s sword. We remain neutral.”
There was that word again, sharp as a slap. “Neutral,” I spat, clenching my fists tightly.
“Yes, neutral.”
I took her in—all blond beauty, all poise.
The lauded Princess Oriana, known for her composure and unflinching commitment to the traditions of Earth House.
I’d seen this woman kill, though, her vines tunneling into a criminal at King Osric’s behest. I’d seen firsthand her ruthlessness and willingness to cheat to achieve her ends.
She had no right to speak of neutrality.
“You didn’t fight against Osric,” I said, voice trembling from how deeply I despised her. “You won’t fight any new tyrant who takes his place. Do you fight for anything but your own skin, I wonder?”
She sucked in a breath. The blow had struck true. “I cannot expect you to understand the deep history of the Fae, nor Earth’s role in it. You may call me a coward—”
“Oh, so you were listening earlier.”
“—but you are a mere child , full of a child’s passions.
” Her lip curled in a sneer, revealing the even white of her teeth.
“You imagine yourself righteous. You imagine yourself just. So you will seat another king on the throne and hand him your trust and the well-being of your people, as if a new king can ever be the answer to everything.”
To everything? No, but it was an answer to something.
Drustan and Hector hadn’t earned my loyalty yet, but at least I was in the room, having those conversations.
At least I was weighing options, trying to make the best choice—not just for me, but for all the faeries and humans who suffered down here.
“What else would you have me do? Let another Osric seize power?” I shook my head.
“I suppose you would accept that gladly so long as you remain safe.”
Spots of pink burned on Oriana’s cheeks. It was gratifying to see her flushed with anger, her eyes full of something besides cold disdain. “Someone must look upon history impartially—”
A nasty laugh came out of me. “Save the speech. I’ve heard it before.
” She’d been full of speeches like this, which Lara and Alodie had dutifully repeated as if passing on sacred truths.
Princess Oriana, great and noble leader of the great and noble Earth House, always standing apart. Better than the rest.
Caedo quivered against my throat, the metal vibrating in a reflection of my tumultuous emotions. I had a sudden vision of driving the blade into Oriana’s flesh and watching her blood spill for a cause at last. My cause.
I shoved away the disturbing fantasy, unsure if it was Caedo’s or mine.
Oriana clenched her skirts like she was imagining strangling me. “If only you could ask Princess Cordelia what comes of coveting thrones,” she said. “Or any of the thousands of faeries she sacrificed for that cause.”
“They chose to risk death for their principles.”
She scoffed. “Do you think the servants truly had a choice?”
“I had a choice last night.” I’d killed Osric because it was the right thing to do—not because Drustan or anyone else had told me to.
Her words were burrowing into me, though. I’d been a servant, yes, but I’d also had a magical dagger, new Blood powers, and immunity to Osric’s wards. The Underfae of Blood House hadn’t had anything like that when Princess Cordelia had decided she would never bow.
“The princess tried to help her people escape,” I said, shoving aside the doubts. “It wasn’t her fault Osric knew about the secret back entrance.”
“She gambled,” Oriana said flatly. “She gambled with her people’s lives, and she lost. I will not.”
“You gambled with Lara’s.”
Oriana flinched. “You have no right to speak about my daughter.”
It was sometimes hard to believe this woman had birthed Lara.
Lara took more after her father, with her hooded brown eyes, black hair, and olive-toned skin, but I saw echoes of her in Oriana.
In the delicate arch of their eyebrows and their matching noses, in the roundness of their faces and their generous figures.
There was nothing of Lara in Oriana’s heart, though.
“Is she your daughter?” I asked, throat thick. “Because last night she wasn’t. You renounced her in front of the entire court for doing what you told her to do.”
That was what infuriated me most. Oriana had raised Lara in an environment of perpetual disappointment, chastising her for the softness that made Lara a fundamentally decent person.
She’d torn down her daughter’s self-esteem in the name of strength, then insisted Lara needed help in the trials because of it.
She had decided how that help would be delivered, too.
And then when Lara had been punished for cheating, Oriana had abandoned her.
“You speak of traditions that are not yours.” Oriana’s jaw was so stiff her lips barely moved.
“The Shards are an authority above all else. When they judged Lara unworthy, there could be no place for her in my house.” There was a pause while she seemed to struggle against things unsaid. “No matter what I might wish.”
There were shadows under her eyes. She’d lost both of her children last night.
Except she hadn’t lost Lara—she’d thrown her away. “I made Lara a lady of Blood House, and the Shard didn’t say a word. Did the Earth Shard actually order you to disown her?”
Oriana’s expression was bitter as she stared at me. When she didn’t respond, I knew the answer.
“You’re a princess,” I told her. “You can shape the world however you choose, love however you want to, save whoever you decide to. There are no rules for someone like you. Can’t you see that?”
She sneered. “And now I know what sort of ruler you would be. Another small tyrant, wrapping her fist around the world.”
My chest was filling with bleak disappointment.
I’d provoked a response out of Oriana, but no matter how angry I made her, she wasn’t going to change.
She was never going to understand my point of view, and I was never going to understand hers.
“The Shards should have taken your magic instead of Lara’s. ”
“Maybe so,” she acknowledged. “But they did not, and I will not change millennia of tradition because of the opinions of a young, na?ve human.”
“Not human anymore,” I pointed out.
“Human in the ways that matter.” She shook her head and stepped back, putting distance between us.
“Your new king, whoever you choose to believe in with that na?ve human heart—maybe he’ll be good in the ways that matter to you, but he’ll be horrible in different ways.
All monarchs are. And you’ll kill for him and say it is moral, and you’ll let your people die for him and say it is right.
Because you, Kenna the human, must always have someone to serve. ”
I felt cold, chilled by the wind and the water and the argument. “And you, Oriana the coward, will sit in your house and do nothing. That’s how history will remember you, too.”
Her eyes fixed on the horizon. “So be it.” Then she raised her hand, and the water behind her swirled, churning faster and faster until it hollowed, the bottom dipping into a funnel. “I’m done with this conversation. You need to go back.”
My throat hurt. How futile this had been. “If you change your mind,” I said, already knowing the answer, “you know where to find me.”
“I won’t.”
The whirlpool drifted closer to the shore. “I take it I’m supposed to jump into that?”
She nodded. “It will spit you out where you started.”
I wasn’t eager to risk drowning again, but there was no real fear of that anymore. Oriana wouldn’t kill a rival house head. She wouldn’t do anything.
“Before you go,” she said, holding out her hand. “Give me the key.”
“The key?”
Her lips pursed. “Don’t pretend to misunderstand. I trusted you with something that belongs to Earth House. Give it back.”
She was talking about the key to Earth’s secret catacombs. “I don’t have the key anymore,” I lied. “I lost it in the battle last night.”
“Liar.” Her voice was a lash through the air. A bush behind her rustled and grew long thorns. “Yours is the only key not in my possession. I need it.”
Lara had apparently handed her key over last night after being excommunicated. Why had she done that? Obligation? Shock? “I don’t know who has it.”
Hate shone from her narrowed eyes. “I will have it back, whatever it takes. And if you enter the catacombs again, you will not enjoy what you find there.”
She delivered threats well, but would she actually follow through with them?
“Even if I still had it, what would you do? Take a knife to the princess of another house and cut it out of my chest? Torture me into giving it to you?” Grim amusement joined my anger.
In her smug self-righteousness, she had defanged herself.
“Unless you’re willing to break neutrality, I have nothing to fear. ”
She looked like she wanted to wring my neck. She wouldn’t, though, and now we both knew it. “Do not come back to my house unless it is to return the key,” she said viciously.
I had won that particular skirmish—but lost the rest of them. “Very well.” The whirlpool called, but I hesitated. One more question hovered on my lips. One final offer, a chance to right a wrong. “Do you want me to tell Lara anything?”
A haunted look swept across her lovely face. “No. She’s a lady of Blood House now.”
Lara would get nothing from her mother, not even Oriana’s regret. I couldn’t speak another word to this horrible faerie, so I walked to the shore, preparing to jump into the whirlpool.
As my feet left the ground, I thought I heard Oriana whisper something behind me. Something that sounded like “Take care of her, Kenna.”