Chapter 33 #2
I quickly covered my mouth. “My apologies,” I said. “It has been a long day—”
My protestation came too late. One of the guards, bulky for an Aos Sith and with features cruelly sharp, came forward with a whip. “Her Majesty is not entertained.” His stern tone was an eldritch echo of Eamon Grieve’s.
“Not so!” I protested. “’Twas my weariness only, I assure you.”
The guard did not listen. He shoved the harper to his knees, making him drop his harp, which made a mournfully discordant twang. The guard raised his whip.
“No!” It erupted from me, spilling from my lips, and radiating out of my pores.
The mortal harper was innocent, had done nothing more than try to please the queen.
It was not his fault that even the Queen of Faery could grow tired.
He did not deserve this, any more than I had deserved Eamon’s hand across my face, his rod against my back.
I will not suffer this cruelty done in my name!
The sky turned from twilight blue to black, and the cloud into a thick wall of grey.
Winds howled as against the rafters in the old cruck house.
The Cailleach Bheur comes roaring down the mountains, Mairi would have said, but it seemed I had become this hag of winter, the dame of storms, for ice burned beneath my skin and all my little hairs stood up on end.
The guard’s arm lowered, and a loud crack rang out, but not of a whip against flesh. From the cloud I summoned, lightning flashed and struck down the guard. His body instantly burned to ash, crumpled upon the grass, and was consumed.
“Sweet Mab,” I breathed.
I had never seen a fae die before. Certainly, I had never killed one myself.
That was my doing. My emotions. I thought them under control. But the sight of that whip awakened memories in me, dangerous memories, filled with pity, fear, and rage.
Such rage. I did not know how it slept inside me so long, but clearly it had.
I am Faery. Faery is me. This land obeyed me, surely as my own feet when I told them to walk, or my own hands when I tried to grab or hold.
I must remain aware of that, or who knew how much harm I might cause?
Hidden among the revelers, a woman wept. A mother. A lover. A daughter. Who could say? Widow or orphan, what did I just create?
The crowd watched me in silence, and then murmurs began to arise.
“The queen shows her sympathy towards mortals.” “Didn’t her mother love a mortal harper once?
” “Nay, I think that was a seer she loved . . .” Their whispers all tangled and made a thicket of knots within my head.
The harper clutched his broken harp and sobbed.
The land seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what I would do next.
I wondered that myself.
I will get through this. I closed my eyes, thought of a sunlit day in Carterhaugh, gathering herbs with Mairi Grieve.
Of nights spent lying next to a handsome shepherd—no.
That would make things worse. I tried willing this all away, unwinding the threads spun by the cruel, uncaring Fates. Not even I had that power.
Finally, I opened my eyes again, and when I spoke, my voice was filled with such uncanny calm, it did not feel like me.
“Send the mortal home,” I commanded. “Make him forget what he has seen.” And I thought of another mortal whose memory I had beguiled, that he might forget what he had seen of Faery.
I felt guilt for doing it then, and guilt for doing it now, and knew my mortal weakness was to blame.
“Yes, my queen.” A pair of guards came forward and escorted the weeping harper away.
I was spent but could not show it. Stood tall and rigid, pretending I was unaffected by it all.
The storm cloud grew diffuse, and it began to rain.
What happened at the coronation feast could not become a pattern.
Would not become a pattern. If I had to push down my feelings so far inside me there was no way to reach them, if I must turn my heart of flesh into a heart of stone, so those feelings would never again exist, then so be it. For the sake of my kingdom, I would.
As for my mortal sympathies, and the matter of my mortal father, I must make it clear I did not know or care who he might be.
“If it is any consolation,” Lileas said, as she combed out my long hair for bed, “you have become a force to be reckoned with. Faery does not stomach weakness, and you have certainly established you are not weak.”
My hair crackled with the brushing, reminding me of the crack of thunder when the guard was struck down.
I knew, on one level, Lileas was right. It was good to establish myself as a strong ruler, given I was an outsider, half-mortal by blood. It did not matter. I had killed a fae without meaning to. I swore that would never happen again.
Outside the palace, the rain still fell, relentless and heavy.
Lileas took my hand, gazing upon me with a kindness I did not deserve. “Your Majesty,” she murmured. “I could remain.”
I looked up, startled.
“Or Lyel could.” No disappointment shaded her features; she offered another option, nothing more.
She turned my hand about in her own. Her skin was warm and nearly as soft as mine; she smelled of green grass and yellow broom, and in the candlelight, her hair spilled like molten gold.
“In Faery, we take our pleasures—and comforts—where we would.”
I considered for a moment. I was not raised among the fae; ’twould be some time before I could simply take my pleasures where I would.
The rain eased up, drops tumbling slowly down the leaflike windows.
I gave Lileas’s hand a squeeze. “Another time, perhaps. I am gravely fatigued.”
She brought my hand to her lips and kissed it. “I shall look forward to it, my queen.”
“Under the circumstances, don’t you think ‘Fia’ would be more apt?”
“Fia.” She smiled sweetly and closed the door behind her when she left.
At least there’s one person not afraid of me, after what I did.
I was afraid enough for both of us.
I came to wish I had taken her up on her offer, for my luxurious bed felt empty and cold. And when at last I did fall asleep, I dreamed of my shepherd king.
He stood imprisoned behind iron bars, rust-colored and bloodstained already.
Wine-dark roses covered his entire body, piercing with their thorns, sucking away his life substance, and pinning him in place.
A tendril curved around his throat. Another had snaked its way into his mouth, cutting the corners of his lips into a lopsided rictus grin.
His back arched painfully, and his fingers were curved into claws, and all the while his grey eyes stared ahead, so blank and flat they might be carved of wood.
He was a puppet, hung up mid-performance, looking most agonizingly dead.
“No!”
I grabbed the bars of his prison, heedless of how the iron burned. “Shepherd King, what have they done to you?”
The tendril slithered out of Thomas’s mouth, freeing him to speak. “What do they ever do to shepherd kings?” His head jerked woodenly in my direction. “Nay, not ‘they,’ my love. None is responsible for this but you.”
It was impossible. What he said, what I saw, I did not credit any of it. “’Tis not true. I could never—”
The iron bars rusted away completely under my touch.
I ran to Thomas, who fell, like his strings were cut, into my arms. I pulled thorns from his ears and mouth, though the roses fought me, and the thorns kept growing back, until the ground was a carnage of petals, and Thomas’s skin a mess of scrapes and blood.
I could still help him, bathe his wounds in my own tears if need be, heal him good as new. I was capable of miracles once.
Almost.
This time I would be. I would stop at nothing to save the man I loved.
But he collapsed, boneless, and we both fell to the ground.
Thomas stared into the distance, head cradled in my lap, eyes no longer hard as wood but round with fear.
“I plucked the rose,” he murmured, lurching wildly. “And now she will pluck me as well.”
“Never,” I cried, and stroked his hair. “I would never hurt you, my love.” I trailed off, for the tangle of roses had consumed him completely, and I’d no hope of being heard.
In the morning when I awoke, my bower was curled and shriveled, the canopy overhead bare branches, and the petals of dead roses littered the floor.
Even in my sleep, poisonous turmoil welled inside me, and I had no idea how to keep Faery free from its effects.