Chapter 9 #3
I didn’t speak. Whether or not she could hear me or not, I’d said all I’d needed to say to her months ago. Sobbing my heart out to her, begging her to wake up. Much like my father, she needed more than me. Her daughter and lost grandchild, her eldest son. Not the cursed one.
What did I to do bring you into the world? Her words. Vicious and toxic, said many times to me over the years.
Indeed. What had I done to not have the bright eyes and sunnier demeanor of the Sidhe? What had gone wrong in my mother’s womb? What had I done in there?
Minutes passed. I stared. She didn’t blink. Eventually, I headed out onto the balcony and took in the view of Summer. From here, I had a scope of the forest, of the green horizon of the western plains beyond it.
I listened to the sounds of the Summer City below, the voices, the life. A world beyond this room where time had forgotten my mother, lost in this place of rot and sadness.
Being hungover didn’t help my mental state. Neither did my father’s rantings. My mind wandered off to the past, of my brother and the pain of losing him so soon after my sister.
The last time I’d seen Daire had been here in the tower, standing on the balcony like this and looking out over the endless greens of the kingdom, toward Titheden City two miles to the north of the palace, connected by the Gold Road.
Daire loved that other city. Often dragged me there.
In what would be our last moments together, he’d leaned on the golden balustrade of this balcony in that lackadaisical nature of his, lamenting his having to leave Summer and his beloved city to meet the lord of Autumn.
His last royal duty. His last everything.
“I’ll miss my girls, dear brother,” he’d said. “What will they do without me? I’m the greatest fuck in all the land.”
He’d looked back at me with disappointment. “A pity my sibling cannot take up the mantle for me in my absence.” A shake of his head. “I suppose there has to be a weaker link.”
I loved my brother deeply and missed him every day.
But his tongue could be poison, and he enjoyed firing his barbs at me.
Reminded me of his greatness daily, of the love he held in the kingdom’s heart.
A love I could never match. Prince Valance didn’t ring the same as his name.
I knew that. I knew I wasn’t him. I’d stopped trying to be a long time ago.
But that night, as the sun went down before his departure, the sky alive with blazing color, he’d told me he loved me. It came straight after a putdown.
“I do, Valance. More than I can ever say.”
I’d been lost for words, mouth opening and closing like a fish.
When his hand slid to my shoulder, I almost passed out.
My brother didn’t display emotion. I’d doubted his capabilities at love.
He was a machine of war and fucking and eating—an entity of celebration and destruction.
We were heading for a tyrant king in him.
He’d left me on the balcony of our Sovereign Tower, marching to his doom. The next time I saw him, he’d been laid out in his rose gold armor and cloak, hands clasping his sword. Sweet and sickly smelling, eyes forever closed, pink silk beneath him in the coffin.
Dead.
Gone.
Tears escaped me. I caught them and went back inside, bidding my mother goodbye as I broke out of the memory.
There were better things for me to be doing than lingering up here with so many clouds of sorrow.
Luckily for me, a gang of Fomorians and unseelie aligned humans had made themselves known. Running out of the trees, trying their hand at dashing up the hill toward the palace. Armed with crude blades and clubs, cursing the royal name.
Despite my father’s command to not leave the palace, I rode out to meet them. My horse, a white stallion named Starlight, was happy to see me as always, and I’d planned to ride out with Maeve and her steed to enjoy some fresh air, head over to the meadows south of the palace for some good runs.
As soon as we’d left the stables, however, the alarm was raised for the intruders.
I rode with Maeve and the other guards to meet them head-on. Ten of them, no sorcerers, each one crying, “For Lasair!”
I swung my blade and took off the head of a human male before he made his own swing. His blood gushed out of him in an arching spray, splattering my armor, my face.
Starlight veered left, turned, and I stabbed another man through his chest as he tried to leap onto my horse. Starlight then kicked him. I heard bones crack. He landed awkwardly, snapping his neck.
This was good for blowing away the cobwebs of the morning.
Maeve took down a Fomorian woman and human male in one sweep. I whistled my applause.
Why did they even bother with this folly? There was nothing here for them but death. They fought for Lasair. But where was she? Why didn’t she show her face and blade?
I killed a woman screaming for my death.
“Fucking Sidhe cunt!” were the human’s last words. Her head rolled down the hill as a wayward boulder dislodged by an earthquake.
One by one, sometimes two by two, the rebels went down until there was one Fomorian man left, thrashing inside a net.
Pathetic creature.
“Take him straight to the orchid gardens,” I commanded. “Make sure the human in our cells joins him.”