Chapter Sixteen. Etan
SIXTEEN
ETAN
We rode in silence for a while, Fallon’s body carefully controlled.
I wouldn’t have called it tense exactly, merely like she was somehow missing from her body.
Like her mind had gone elsewhere, considering all that I’d told her and what that meant for her life in the Summer Court.
She was infuriating, uncompromising when it came to attempting to understand the position I was in.
Choosing a Queen was no careless task, and when I’d thought to manipulate Fallon into being my wife, I hadn’t intended to ever become King.
I had greater concerns now, far more people relying on me than I’d had even days before.
We were constantly at odds with the Unseelie Court, long before Mab had become the ruler of us all.
Those old wounds didn’t merely disappear when we were all held captive, and the fall of the Veil had only worsened those tensions.
Though my time at home had been limited between the fall and the time that Mab summoned us for the Tithe, we’d been forced to interact with the Unseelie Fae of the Winter and Autumn Courts more in those recent weeks than we had in centuries before.
Fae fled their home courts in droves in an attempt to make it to the boundary between Alfheimr and Nothrek and board one of the ships to seek out their mates in the human realm.
But that meant that enemies who had not seen one another in centuries suddenly found themselves face-to-face, old tensions rising.
While those of us who had Mab’s attention weren’t in any danger, because none would risk her wrath by killing us, the Sidhe who she would not miss were not so lucky.
Fae had been killed over slights that had otherwise been forgotten, and it was all Rheaghan and I could do to try to keep our people safely tucked within the Summer Court—sending regiments to seek out Summer Court mates in Nothrek who were trained to survive and do no harm.
Fallon tipped her head to the sun for the hundredth time since we’d departed that morning, making our way down the rugged, sandy terrain in the scorching sun.
She seemed to come alive beneath the light of it, appreciating it in a way that I hadn’t seen before.
“Did you miss the sun while you were locked away in the darkness of Tar Mesa?” I asked, referring to the way the shadows clung to every corner of the palace.
While there was limited light outside during the day, Mab prohibited people from leaving the palace to enjoy it, knowing that her power lingered in the shadows and she did everything possible to maintain the integrity of her magic.
“You can’t really miss what you’ve never had,” she said, the strange words making my hold on her tighten.
“What do you mean? You’ve never seen the sun?
” I asked, and the very notion of such a thing was so strange that I couldn’t wrap my head around it.
When I’d told Mab that I’d thought she needed to be exposed to the elements of her home court in order for her magic to surface, I hadn’t realized that she may never have seen it.
“There were a few days when we were traveling through Nothrek to get to Alfheimr where I felt the sun on my skin,” she admitted, her voice trailing low as if she realized how sad that made her life sound.
“That was one of the first times I had seen the sun, though, the very first time I spent more than an hour in it. It wasn’t a part of my daily life before, so it makes it hard to miss it daily even now. ”
“How is that possible?” I asked, thinking of what life must have been for the humans.
Had they been plunged into darkness in truth?
Had the erection of the Veil somehow influenced the sun in their realm?
It felt like the human mates who had successfully returned to the Summer Court and not been caught up in Mab’s schemes would have mentioned that, or their mates would have known once the bond was completed.
“I grew up in a human rebellion that had formed in opposition to the human monarchy and the influence of its new religion on us all. We long since stopped worshiping the Old Gods, but instead of just accepting that maybe we didn’t need Gods at all, the King’s great-great-grandfather, or whatever the fuck he was, placed the New Gods on a pedestal.
Their will became all that mattered, and our lives were supposed to be spent in direct worship of them, to the point that there were strict expectations for us and how we spent our time.
Particularly in the case of women. Most of us were sold to the highest bidder for marriage and breeding.
The rebellion opposed that way of life,” she explained with a heavy sigh.
“Why did that mean you couldn’t see the sun?” I asked, unable to understand how her refusal to worship these New Gods had resulted in her life in the dark.
“We would have all been killed if we were discovered. We didn’t follow the rules that the High Priests and Priestesses set out for us, and in doing so, that meant we would be executed.
Estrella was condemned to death for refusing to marry the noble who chose her, and we would have all met that same fate on the surface.
So we hid away in a network of tunnels in the caves of the mountains and formed a community there.
It became a refuge for so many, and it was necessary.
It allowed us to live as we saw fit, but there were sacrifices, too,” she said, turning to look back at me.
She licked her lips, and my gaze dropped to the drying skin there.
“Like seeing the sun,” I said, watching as she nodded.
I took my canteen from the saddlebag strapped across the back, guiding it to Fallon’s mouth so that she could drink.
For a moment, I thought her pride would make her refuse.
That she would insist on holding it herself and the independence such a rebellion had instilled in her would be a block for us in the future.
Instead, she let me guide her head back so the water could pour into her mouth, taking deep gulps that hinted at her strong thirst.
She’d known I had the canteens with me, had watched me drink countless times, but that independent streak had prevented her from asking for water.
Stubborn fucking woman.
I would need to check in with her regularly, clearly.
To ask and offer to meet her needs so that she was not forced to ask.
I noted it in my mind as something that I’d likely do for the rest of our lives.
Having someone to care for and tend to was new territory for me, and I’d have to learn as I went.
“Like seeing the sun,” she agreed, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand when she finally finished drinking.
“For me at least. Most of the others alternated going to the surface to tend to the gardens that we’d hidden away on a mountaintop or going out to set traps or go hunting.
But I had to stay within the wards Imelda placed on the tunnels to keep Mab from sensing me.
We couldn’t risk it even when the Veil was between us.
We weren’t sure how much she could sense with it in place. ”
She stroked her hands through Thunder’s mane absently, gently tugging out any tangles she found in a way that he didn’t seem to mind. She shifted as if her ass had started to hurt, and it occurred to me that it may have been her first time on horseback.
If she’d never left the tunnels, had she ever even been near a horse before? Had she ever been near any animals, aside from the dead ones hunters would have brought back?
A little bit of understanding bled into my knowledge of her stubbornness.
“So you never left those tunnels,” I said, my voice gentling as I shifted the reins into one hand and rested my other palm on her thigh—hoping she could feel it for the comfort I intended it to be and didn’t read into it as something I didn’t intend.
She’d shared a bit about what life was like for women on the surface, but said little about what her rights as a woman might have been within the rebellion.
My jaw clenched at the thought of her being forced into a relationship with someone else—let alone someone she did not want for herself.
“What did you do with your time all these years?” I asked, wanting to get to know her.
I knew she was selfless, staying hidden to avoid bringing Mab’s forces down on her entire community.
I knew she was loyal to her friends above all else.
But I knew very little about what she wanted for herself and a part of me wondered if she’d ever even been given the opportunity to think about that.
“Imelda trained me as her apprentice in each of my lifetimes,” she said, a wistful smile gracing her face.
“I had human parents who lived there with us, and they did love me. But there was always a little bit of distance between us because they knew that I was different than the rest of them. Imelda made sure I always felt like I belonged…” She trailed off, and I barely refrained from flinching.
“Because you belonged with her,” I said, suddenly understanding the attachment between the two women. Imelda may not have been her mother, but she’d been her guardian in every way that mattered.
She’d been her home.
Fuck.
Fallon nodded. “She taught me all about the different plants that the others brought back from the gardens and showed me how to preserve them for healing purposes. We stored them in what she called the apothecary, but it was really just this random alcove at the end of one of the tunnels that only a few of us knew about. She trained another girl too, because she knew there would come a time when she and I left the tunnels and someone needed to know how to use the herbs to heal without her.”