Chapter Three. Etan
THREE
ETAN
Rheaghan’s warning was an echo in my mind as I paced in my room days later, feeling restless in my own skin with the need to take action.
The memory of those searing hazel eyes was vivid in my mind and had haunted my every dream in the nights that had passed since I’d last seen her.
I’d done everything I could to avoid her, thinking distance would be enough to make me forget the way her skin felt on mine.
The way her blood felt on me, and the way Mab’s violence against her seemed so much more horrific than against any of the others.
I’d been willing to divert Mab’s attention away from her, even knowing it meant that someone else would fill the vacancy she left and become a plaything.
Maybe it was the way she reminded me of the Mab I’d known when we were younger.
Maybe it was the possibility that she could be the only good to come from the sunshine girl who had been one of my closest friends.
I wanted to protect her from the darkness that had consumed her mother, to take her out of the shadows so that she could feel the sun on her face. Mab would never allow Rheaghan to take his niece home with him, but she trusted me, and that meant I carried the weight of her fate on my shoulders.
I knew I should make my way downstairs for breakfast, allow Rheaghan to talk me out of the decision I’d already made and fought to deny.
But I couldn’t, wouldn’t, be able to stop thinking of her and the strength she’d shown where others might have broken.
I wasn’t able to just simply let things be when Mab had continued to torment her in the days that had passed since Rheaghan and I had successfully intervened.
Rheaghan had continuously tried and failed to convince his sister to show her own daughter mercy since, and the tales of her suffering had spread around Tar Mesa, reaching me even as I tried to stay away from her.
The need to do what I could to protect her from this fate was overwhelming, even if I sensed it was her own stubbornness that prevented her from giving Mab what she wanted and sparing herself the pain of Mab’s attention.
Rage building in my chest, I tore open my bedroom door and stepped into the hallway, only to find Malachi approaching my room.
“The Queen bids you to join her in her bedroom,” he said, and the command struck me deep in the chest. I swallowed, everything within me sinking into a pit.
I had counted myself fortunate that in the centuries since I’d come to know the Queen of Air and Darkness, she had not yet summoned me to her bed.
I nodded in spite of myself, the daunting horror of what might wait for me in her chambers overshadowed by reality.
As if being forced to entertain Mab wasn’t bad enough, and didn’t fill me with revulsion that made everything within me wither, the knowledge that it would make my relationship with her daughter awkward at best was an added complication I hadn’t foreseen.
The walk through the halls was both too slow and too quick, leaving me with little hope that I had been summoned for any reason but what I anticipated.
Mab was not known for conducting business within her room, only those she summoned for entertainment joining her and her friend, Malazan, in the space they considered private.
Her doors were intricately shaped metal, carved with flowers and thorns. Malachi knocked on the surface three times.
“Enter,” Mab’s voice said, sinking into me and feeling like a death sentence.
Malachi responded by pushing the door open, revealing my first glimpse of the inside of Mab’s private quarters.
Snakes covered the floor between the door and the opulent bed that rested against the other wall, the intricately carved, gilded headboard shimmering against waves of light fabric that lined the walls.
The space was as opulent as I’d expected, but it had been filled with traces of warmth and Summer Court touches that I hadn’t.
For the first time, I understood what Rheaghan meant when he claimed his sister was still in there somewhere.
Her bedroom was a sanctuary loaded with items that would have reminded a young girl of the home she’d left behind.
Whereas Mab decorated the rest of her court with cold, unfeeling touches of stone and iron and all the things that made it feel as empty as it was large, her rooms were smaller and far more personal than anything I could have foreseen.
The thought made me uncomfortable, and I shifted from side to side before I caught myself.
I simultaneously wanted to believe that the girl I’d known was still in there and capable of being saved, and that she would never have to know the truth of what she’d become and the things she’d done.
I cleared my throat as Mab sat on her bed, petting one of her snakes on the underside of his head.
Do snakes have chins?
“You wished to see me, my Queen?” I asked, watching as her only friend, Malazan, made her way from the dining table to perch on the edge of the bed. Her stare was intent on me as she leaned back on her hands, attempting to present a seductive figure.
It elicited the opposite reaction from me, making everything wither and shrink at the possibility that it could be either of them who had wanted me to join them in their private quarters.
Mab waved her hand and the snakes that remained in my direct path slithered to the side, creating an aisle that I could navigate carefully to approach the two Fae women. I took the first step, knowing that it would do me no good to delay the inevitable.
The unfortunate reality of the situation was that it did not matter if I did not desire either of them; to reject them would be a death sentence.
The only line they did not cross and did not toy with was the one created by a mate bond, and even that was simply because a man’s body could not and would not react in such a way that they would find useful.
The bond prevented it entirely, though I had no doubt there had been a time when they did it purely for torturous purposes. They’d found other ways to engage those interests, though, other ways to make their victims scream.
“How long has it been since they brought me my daughter?” she asked when I finally stood at the foot of her bed. The topic of conversation made everything in me both still and surge with relief, and I hoped that she had not brought me here to fill her bed.
“A couple weeks, if I had to guess, my Queen,” I said, attempting to keep my voice calm. Half interested.
I was completely unable to count the nights I had spent sleepless and wondering what I could do to help us both get what we wanted—what we needed. Fallon needed freedom from the overbearing, controlling, and outright abusive mother she’d found herself imprisoned by.
I just needed her.
“And yet she has proven herself to be entirely useless. Tell me, Etan,” she said, gritting her teeth through her disappointment.
Malazan reached out and stroked Mab’s knee over the top of her dress, and while the movement wasn’t sexual in the slightest, it hinted at the intimacy between the two of them.
Out of everyone in this world, Malazan was perhaps the only person Mab would miss if she were to disappear from her life.
“Do I seem like the kind of queen to trifle with?”
“Of course not, my Queen,” I said, bowing my head slightly to indicate my respect. “Do you have any reason to believe that Maeve is defying you intentionally?”
Mab tilted her head to the side, as if it had not occurred to her that there could be any reason other than defiance that motivated Fallon’s actions.
“You think my daughter is truly unable to access her magic?” she asked, releasing the snake who had cuddled up with her.
It slithered onto the floor, gliding its way off the high, opulent bed and joining the rest of its kind in a pile on the floor for warmth.
Most children of the Gods were born with only a sliver of magic in their veins, and the only reason Mab believed that Fallon would be different was her own hubris.
“I do not pretend to know Maeve at all, so I cannot make any statements about what may be her motivations. But what I do know is that I have watched you break the strongest of men to your will. Your methods are effective, even if messy at times, and for Maeve to be able to resist that would be most unexpected when she does not seem to have lived a violent life in Nothrek,” I explained, allowing that to sink in.
The next part would need to be handled carefully, because Mab would not take well to me insinuating that her daughter could be anything other than powerful.
She did not see herself as just another of the many Gods and Goddesses that had been born to the Primordials.
She saw herself as the Queen of them all. Even going so far as to ignore the fact that the magic that gave her the ability to overpower the rest of her kind wasn’t the magic that flowed through her veins.
It was the product of the crown that had cursed her to the darkness.
“At the very least, her magic should be acting defensively without her even willing it to happen. While she may be fully grown, her magic is new to her. I have a difficult time believing she has mastered control like this in a matter of weeks, when it takes most Fae decades,” I said, keeping my words as vague as possible.
If Mab knew I’d been watching Fallon too closely, even as I tried to avoid her, if she knew how I listened to every whisper that carried her name, she would never allow me to influence her choices regarding her daughter.
She’d see me as biased, rather than an impartial advisor whose opinion she could trust.
“What other explanation could there be?” Malazan asked, her singsongy voice deceptively sweet as she eyed me up and down.
I swallowed back my discomfort, hoping that the other woman wouldn’t express desires to Mab.