Chapter Four. Fallon
FOUR
FALLON
I worried the bridge of my nose between my fingers, hating this relentless game we played.
As far as Mab knew, there was no magic within me—making me a complete abomination to everything she believed her daughter should possess.
I didn’t own her penchant for darkness or her cruelty, only an extreme distaste for the place that was destined to be my home.
I was Mab’s only heir, but she was too far lost to her disillusion to see that I would never sit upon the throne.
Even if she’d known about the magic Imelda kept at bay, the only way Mab would hand down her rule was if she lay dead and her soul was lost to the Void.
She would have no control over her heir continuing to hold power in her death, and the Court of Shadows would return to the rightful line of inheritance.
The throne would belong to Caldris, and I would gladly hand it over. I might not have known where I belonged or if such a place even existed, but I knew it wasn’t here.
Estrella entered the throne room behind me, everything in my being sensing her proximity. She and I were the same, some gnarled and twisted-up bond. Opposites, but in a way that felt like two halves of one whole.
I turned to the side, letting our eyes meet as she took in the situation before her.
I watched that all-seeing gaze track over the male across from me.
I’d seen him only in passing moments in the halls of Tar Mesa, aside from the two times he’d offered aid in the throne room, but that stare always seemed to study me too intently.
Even now, with Mab to witness the curiosity that could never mean anything good, his head tilted to the side in thought, as if I were a puzzle he couldn’t quite solve.
Estrella’s eyes narrowed into a glare as she raised her chin higher, that protective streak making everything in her go taut. In this place of darkness, enemies were everywhere and nothing and no one was innocent.
I resisted the urge to laugh, knowing that Estrella would think nothing of severing his head from his body if she thought he meant me harm.
It wouldn’t matter to her that the man was Rheagan’s second-in-command—placed in his position by Mab herself to spy on her brother when he remained in the Summer Court.
Etan’s mouth curved at one corner, the faintest hint of a smirk rising in response to the smile I quelled.
His deep auburn hair hung around his shoulders in choppy, layered waves—his brown eyes cold and unyielding in spite of the amusement to the curve of his mouth.
As if he could feel Estrella’s disapproval, he turned to face her finally as she came to stand beside me.
She stared down Etan and his master, my mother, like the queen I knew she was meant to be.
One day she would have that title—would rule at Caldris’s side, not as a pretty ornament, but as an equal, because there was no one and nothing in this world that could put Estrella Barlowe into a cage.
I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. She’d been born to break her chains and use them to strangle her abusers.
“You summoned me?” she asked, refusing to bow where any others would quiver in their boots at the thought of showing Mab such disrespect. We hadn’t been in Tar Mesa for long, but I knew Estrella was the only one who could get away with such insolence.
She was a curiosity to Mab, a game she very much enjoyed playing with.
“I tire of having two incompetent children beneath my roof. You cannot seem to summon the magic that we both know you possess, magic that would make you useful. Maeve cannot seem to summon any magic at all. Both are unacceptable to me,” Mab said, running her tongue over her teeth in dissatisfaction.
She made a sucking noise in the side of her cheek, as if her annoyance was not already obvious.
“Her name is Fallon,” Estrella corrected, holding Mab’s glare with one of her own. It would never cease to amaze me that after centuries of separation from her own flesh and bone, I was nothing more than something to be used. There was no love in Mab’s heart for her long-lost daughter.
Only disappointment.
“But I fail to see what you would like either of us to do. Magic cannot be forced. If it does not come when summoned, then perhaps we are not fit to control it,” Estrella continued, utilizing her unique ability to come very close to outright lying.
I hadn’t retained that skill after my transformation upon arriving in Alfheimr. I had very much become defined by and limited to the rules that the Fae had to navigate, hinting further at the fact that we did not know what Estrella was.
The only reason I’d been able to tell Mab I possessed no magic was because it was a half-truth.
There was something stirring within me, but Imelda suppressed it before I could ever touch that magic and allow it to breathe.
Mab sneered and huffed a laugh at Estrella, a grim, bitter smile transforming her face.
She should have been beautiful, was beautiful, but the ugliness within her shone through her every expression and the crazed, desperate look that always seemed to linger in her eyes.
“I might have believed that to be true if I hadn’t heard rumors of all the things you’ve done.
If I hadn’t seen them in your memories and for myself, Little Mouse.
” The Queen of Air and Darkness’s voice was low and soft, for she had no need to raise it to invoke terror in most who came into her presence.
“I think I have proven myself to be more than a mouse,” Estrella said, smiling in the face of what most feared.
After her battle with the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, no one could deny that she’d proven herself to be far more than a rodent scurrying in the dark.
I wrung my hands together, one fingertip touching the teardrop mark that bound Estrella and me to one another.
I could only hope that some of her bravery would bleed into my skin, become mine as much as it was hers.
Most of my life had been spent waiting and hiding, tolerating uncomfortable situations but never risking myself.
Aside from that night the cave beast attacked me, I’d never known violence before coming to Tar Mesa.
I’d thought myself brave all those nights I’d spent in the tunnels of the rebellion, longing to step foot in the sun and fight in battles I had no place in.
Only now did I see the beauty I’d been offered, that Imelda and my human family had provided me with.
“Occasionally, the mouse’s bite carries a deadly disease. But it is still just a mouse, at the end of the day,” Mab said. I watched Estrella’s jaw tense as she swallowed back her rage at the insult. She drew it within her, storing it for motivation later when the time was right.
At first glance, I would think Estrella impulsive, that her small aggressions toward Mab were parts of her that should have been contained.
But I knew her better, and saw the deep well of rage that existed within her.
The comments she made and the fights were nothing compared to what she stored for later, and Mab would be wise to fear the day that Estrella could act on that anger in truth.
“What do you want from us?” Estrella asked, glancing at me.
I saw the drive there, the need to protect me against any and all threats.
I felt the same, but whereas I felt limited in what I could offer while keeping the growing magic within me a secret, Estrella’s strength knew no bounds.
She would suffer. She would hurt. She would walk to the ends of the earth if it meant saving me from the fate she’d already been forced to endure in Tar Mesa.
While Mab had tortured me to attempt to draw out my power, it was nothing compared to what I’d witnessed her doing to my friend.
Estrella’s strength came in fighting, and it showed. Mine had always been in secrecy.
“I only have the energy to invest my time into one of you. I have no desire to make that decision, so the two of you will determine who remains here with me,” Mab said, waving a hand as if it were inconsequential to her.
My heart dropped into my stomach, even though I’d already known she hadn’t cared for me in the slightest. The confirmation that she would send me away if I was less useful than Estrella was still a swift kick to the gut and made me miss the human parents who had loved me all the more.
It was also a relief at the same time.
“Will the one who does not stay go free?” Estrella asked, sensing the trap in Mab’s offer.
There was no way she would ever allow anyone to escape her clutches freely; rather, she would kill whomever she did not keep.
But I would gladly die if it meant Estrella had a chance to live with Caldris, to know serenity and peace with the love of her life.
All I wanted was freedom. Freedom to roam and discover the world I’d been kept from all my life. Being trapped in Tar Mesa with Mab meant I had only exchanged one prison for another, and I was so tired of cages.
I wanted to live a life I chose without fear of having it ripped away from me.
“Of course not,” Mab said with a cruel laugh. “Etan is in need of a wife, and is owed one for the loyalty he has shown me during my brother’s reign as King. Whoever does not remain with me shall be betrothed to him and return to the Summer Court with him after the Tithe.”
Estrella’s eyes widened, her arm twitching at her side as if she meant to raise it in shock.
She twisted her head, her jaw working as if she’d swallowed a rock and needed to force it down.
“I have a mate,” she said, turning to look at Etan cautiously.
He shifted uncomfortably, clearly bothered by the idea of taking another man’s mate as his wife.