Chapter 17
We shucked off our heavy coats and dropped our rifles as we hurried up the stairs to the front doors, barreling through them like we just expected them to be unguarded.
Safe bet, since we hadn’t seen a single person other than Burke since we entered the courtyard.
The massive oaken doors banged into the walls as we flung them open, breaking into a dead sprint down the marble halls.
Amy still had her pistol out, and she swept it around each corner as we ran, but we didn’t see another soul.
Mama took the lead, moving unerringly down the corridors, turning right and left seemingly at random until she took us up a short flight of stairs to a landing with a single guard standing there, halberd in hand.
He leaned against a wall as if he could barely hold himself upright and stammered out a weak “H-h-halt” as we approached.
Mama stepped up to him, put a hand on his forehead, and murmured “rest.” His eyes fluttered shut, and I shouldered past her to catch the armored faerie as he clattered to the floor.
I felt around for a pulse, but Mama and Amy pushed past me and flung the door open.
I let the sleeping faerie lie and followed them into the room.
Mab’s bedchamber was huge, dominated by an enormous, canopied bed ringed with heavy tapestries on thick rails.
All the drapes were pulled back, and my grandmother looked like a child floating in a sea of pillows and blankets, her form withered and shrunken by the wasting sickness, and she barely managed to lift her head from the pillows as we stormed into her room.
“Mother.” Mama’s voice came out a whisper as she stopped at the dais holding the massive bed.
“Welcome home, Ygraine,” Queen Mab said, her voice thready but firm. “And my grandson has come back for a visit. How…nice.”
“Good to see you, too, Granny,” I said. It was hard to reconcile this shrunken, doll-like figure with the powerful woman who tried to have me killed the last time I saw her.
This old woman didn’t look like she was strong enough to order a milkshake, much less rule a kingdom.
But her eyes were the same chips of blue ice that I remembered, unyielding and cold.
Mama climbed the steps of the dais and sat on the bed, taking her mother’s hand. “Mother, we have stopped the invaders and halted the spread of the disease, but we do not know how to reverse its course. Can you help us?”
Mab nodded, as if speaking was too much effort, then stretched out a skeletal finger toward her bedside table. Mama reached over and picked up a small hand mirror, holding it in front of Mab’s face.
The Winter Queen shoved herself up into a sitting position and took the mirror, then shook her head and handed it back. “You hold it.”
Mama took the mirror again and angled it so that it pointed directly at Mab’s face.
I thought it was an odd time to care about her makeup, but I don’t claim to understand human women, much less faerie queens, so I kept my mouth shut for once.
Mab closed her eyes, and a few seconds later, I saw a light emanate from the mirror.
I scooted around to the side of the bed so I could see what was going on, motioning for Amy to cover the door.
The surface of the mirror glowed with a pale blue light, then a golden yellow suffused the surface and Oberon’s face appeared. My grandfather looked annoyed at first, but his expression shifted to one of horror as he took in her appearance.
“Mab?” he asked. “What’s wrong? Oh no, you have it, too?”
“I’m so glad to see you are still as intelligent as ever, Oberon,” Mab replied, her voice stronger than I thought she could possibly sound as she insulted her ex-husband. I guess some people are empowered by spite. “I need her.”
Oberon’s image shook its head. “She can’t, Mab. She is very ill.”
“I am dying, Oberon. Get Titania so we might be able to stop this plague before it destroys all of Faerie.” Her voice was iron, and I almost ran out to fetch Titania myself, there was so much command in Mab’s words.
“I am no longer your consort, Mab, and it would serve you well—” I don’t know what bullshit Oberon was about to spew because Mama cut him off.
“Father, stop being an idiot and bring the mirror to Titania. This mess is partly your fault, so get your enormous head out of your ass and help Mother fix it!”
Oberon’s face jerked back like Mama had just slapped the taste out of his mouth, and trust me, I know exactly what kind of a slap Mama can lay on somebody when she needs to. He shook himself, and we could see the reflection moving as he carried the mirror over to look upon Titania in her bed.
The Summer Queen looked like she had aged thirty years in the couple days since we’d left her chambers.
She no longer sat in a chair, relegated like Mab to lying in a bed surrounded by blankets and pillows.
Her hair had lost all color, its honey-blond faded to dishwater gray.
Her skin was sallow and seemed to hang off her cheekbones and jawline.
She looked like she was melting away moment by moment.
“Mab,” she said, her voice a wet croak.
“Titania,” Mab replied in a paper-thin rasp. “We seem to have a problem.”
Titania chuckled. “That we do. Do you have a solution?”
“I do. My daughter and grandson have removed the threat from our realms. But the humans did not create an antidote. There is only one way to purge Faerie of their poison.”
“A spell uniting Summer and Winter magics,” Titania said.
“Exactly.” Mab’s voice seemed to grow stronger the more she talked, like she was gaining power from her determination.
“You know what that will do to us both,” Titania said, her own voice strengthening. She pressed her hands into the bed, shoving herself up into a sitting position.
Mab mirrored her movement, getting more upright. “I do. Is yours chosen?”
“She is. Yours?”
“She is here.”
“Then shall we begin?” Titania asked.
“Yes.” Mab turned away from the mirror to look at me. “I wish we had known each other better, Robert. I feel there is honor in your blood, even polluted as it is by humanity.”
I started to get a little sense of what was about to happen and decided not to pick a fight. “My humanity is what makes me noble, Granny. I wish we’d known each other well enough for you to see that.”
She nodded, then turned her attention to Amy. “Please take care of my grandson. He is an idiot, but he seems to be a good man.”
Amy nodded back. “I think you know him very well, then, Your Majesty. I will take care of him.”
Mab looked at Mama. “Ygraine, are you ready?”
A tear rolled down Mama’s cheek, freezing as it did. “No. I am not.”
Mab smiled at that. “No one ever is. Go to the throne room. You will know when it is done.”
Mama shook her head. “I’m not leaving you, Mother.”
Mab glared. “Go. This is the last order I will ever give you, Daughter, but it is the most important. You must sit the throne, and you must do it now. If you do not, then it is all for naught. Now go.” Her voice was stronger than it had been since we stepped into the room, and I could tell she didn’t have much left.
I stepped in, took Mama’s arm, and led her from the bed.
She handed the mirror to Mab and turned, head down as she walked out of the room.
Amy and I followed, with me looking back at the tiny form of the Queen of Winter lying in her bed before I closed the door.
* * *
Mama had barely gotten settled on the throne before a bell-like tone rang through the castle, echoing over and over again building on itself until it was almost unbearable, then faded to memory.
Mama stiffened in the big silver chair, then began to glow from within, getting brighter and brighter until I had to shield my eyes.
The blue-white light streamed outward and upward from within her, filling the room and coalescing into a column of luminance that shot upward like a transporter beam until it struck and passed through the ceiling.
A massive thunderclap split the air so loud it drove me to one knee and knocked Amy flat, then the column of light exploded outward, passing through me with a tingle of magic as it radiated outward from Mama, who slumped forward, head bowed.
I struggled to my feet and took a step toward her, but stopped at her raised hand.
I dropped back to one knee, rocked by the onslaught of light and sound, and watched as she collected herself.
After a long moment, she drew in a shuddering breath and raised her head.
I heard Amy gasp beside me as we both saw something new sitting atop Mama’s brow.
Where pale smooth skin had been now sat a glittering crown of ice, capped in front with a deep blue stone that swirled with dashes of white light, like a snowstorm was trapped within the fist-sized gem.
Mama opened her eyes, and the warm brown color I’d known my whole life was gone, replaced by the pale blue chips of ice I’d last seen peering at me from shrunken brows in a massive canopy bed.
It might have been my mother’s face that I gazed upon, but it was Mab’s eyes that looked back.
“Mama?” I asked after a few seconds.
“Yes, Robbie,” she replied. Her voice was different, too. Colder, somehow, as if the very soul of Winter now lay within her. Hell, maybe it did. “I am here. I am your mother, but I am also…more.”
“More?” Amy asked, getting to her feet.
“I am no longer merely Ygraine, daughter of Winter,” Mama said, sitting up straighter and squaring her shoulders. “My mother has given herself to the magic to purge the foreign plague from our land. With her passing we are saved, and I am now Queen.”
“Wait, what?” I asked. “You mean Granny Mab somehow, what, became one with The Force or something and wiped out the plague?”
Mama chuckled. “I mean precisely that. In times of great danger to Faerie, queens of the fae can tie their powers together to cast greater workings than they can alone. Mother and Titania worked together to vanquish the disease the humans brought into our realms, and the cost was great.” She took a deep breath. “It could not have been greater.”
“So, Granny Mab is dead? And so is Titania?” I asked, trying to wrap my head around it.
“In essence, yes. They lent their essence to the spell, blending themselves with it to reach every corner of Faerie and eradicate the disease. And it took all of themselves to do it.”
“So…you’re the Winter Queen now?” I asked.
“I am.”
“Wow, Mama…” My voice trailed off. What do you say when your mother becomes a queen? Then a thought hit me. “Am I a prince now?”
Mama laughed, and if the sound wasn’t quite as warm is it used to be, it was still her.
It was still the sound of the woman who raised me.
“Robbie, you have been a prince of Faerie since the moment you drew breath. But fear not, you will never be a king. Faerie is a matriarchy, so your head will never know the weight of a crown.”
“Thank goodness,” Amy said. “You could bankrupt a kingdom making a crown big enough for his giant head.” We all laughed, and for a moment, everything was okay again.