25 LONNIE
ABOARD THE FORESIGHT
I stormed back across the ship, and threw open the cabin door, still fuming.
Tearing off the stupid, too-tight dress, I threw myself onto the small bed in nothing but my underthings, and buried my head in the pillow.
Fucking Ambrose Dullahan…fucking questions. Fucking Fae.
The bastard had caught me unaware, with the sort of question that shouldn’t have stung, but somehow opened up a gaping wound inside me that I was only just managing to not think about on a daily basis.
My sister had been my closest, and only, friend, and it was because of Ambrose Dullahan that she was no longer here with me. It was because of him that she’d charged into battle with the rebels and stood there as King Penvalle murdered her right in front of me…and I didn’t even know why.
Of all the questions I had for the rebel leader, what happened to my sister was the most important, and the most terrifying to ask.
Learning about my mother had been painful enough.
For nearly ten years, I’d believed my mother to be dead, and it was only in the last weeks that I’d had any hope to the contrary. If she was alive, then why would she stay away so long? Why would she not return to find my sister and I?
I couldn’t face the possibility that I might know just as little about my sister as my mother. That maybe the friendship I’d thought we shared was a lie, just like everything else.
Without warning, the door banged open again. “What the fuck was that?”
I kept my face buried in the pillow, even as I knew Ambrose Dullahan was standing in the doorway, watching me. His heavy boots stomped across the floor, stopped beside the bed, and I felt the radiating warmth of his skin and magnetic presence looming over me.
“Leave me alone,”
I murmured, my voice muffled. “I’m done talking to you. I’d rather starve.”
“I’m sure you would.”
He chuckled under his breath, and sat down on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped with his weight, and I snatched my feet up to my chest, curling into a smaller ball to avoid inadvertently touching him. “I said go away.”
“No,”
he replied calmly. “Not until you tell me what’s upset you.”
“Used to knowing everything about everyone, I take it. You don’t like being in the dark?”
“Precisely,”
he said flatly. “I know more than any one person ever should, but you, love, are a mystery.”
I clenched my teeth together, my anger rising higher at the sound of that nickname.
“Fine.”
I sat up, hardly even aware of my lack of clothing until his black eyes darted automatically to my body, before flicking back up to meet my eyes. I shivered, but refused to stand to find something to cover myself with. “You want to know what’s upsetting me?”
“Desperately.”
“You,”
I hissed. “You’re the problem. It’s because of you that I do not have a closest friend. She’s dead, and you killed her.”
He stared at me for several long seconds, and I could practically see the calculation taking place behind his eyes. Perhaps he was running through all the women he’d killed, wondering which might have been a friend of mine. Finally, understanding dawned on his face. “Your sister.”
“Rosey,”
I snapped. “At least say her name when you speak of murdering her.”
He cocked his head to the side. “I didn’t kill Rosey. You know that, but still you can say so without suffering the pain of lying. How is that possible?”
I shook my head. How was I supposed to know how magic worked? I only knew that I believed, with every fiber of my being, that if it were not for the male in front of me that my sister would still be alive. He might not have wielded the sword, but he killed her. It was as simple as that.
“Tell me what happened to her,”
I demanded. “How did she know you? What was she doing in the rebel army in the first place? Why did she have to die?”
My voice cracked on the last word, and I looked down, hiding the tears that had sprung, unbidden, to my eyes.
“I’ll tell you,”
he said tonelessly. “But I do not think it will bring you any comfort. You may hurt less not knowing.”
I scoffed. It was impossible for this to hurt more than it already did. “Tell me.”
“Fine.”
He sighed. “Some three years ago, now, your sister approached one of my men in the capital.”
“She wouldn’t do that without some reason,”
I insisted. “She wasn’t the type to break rules, let alone try to overthrow a kingdom.”
“She had a reason,”
he said patiently. “You must know she dreamed of the future.”
I sneered. “An ability you gave her, I assume.”
He let out a bark of laughter. “Not at all. it’s impossible to share powers like that.”
My brow furrowed. “No it isn’t, I’ve seen it.”
I’d certainly seen Bael use my magic before, and even once, I was fairly sure I’d used his. Hell, if I’d had any idea how, and hadn’t been drugged, I might be able to use Scion’s powers right now. Ambrose was a Fae prince, he had to know more about magic than I did. Except, he was staring at me right now like he had no idea what I was talking about.
His brow wrinkled. “Well, if it is possible, that’s certainly not what happened to your sister. Rosey was probably a marginally-gifted seer because it’s the most common trait to be mixed into human blood. It could have passed from either one of your parents, and had little to do with your own magic. A lot of my rebels have some vague prophetic ability, but nothing like mine.”
But nothing like mine. How arrogant. I snorted a laugh. “So, you’re special then?”
“Yes,”
he replied without a hint of remorse or embarrassment. “Your sister was not particularly gifted, but she did have one very specific ability that made her useful.”
“Which was?”
“She could see herself. I don’t know why, I’ve never met another seer who could have visions of their own future, but she did. She was good enough to see some of the most significant paths that the future might take, and to want to stop them, especially when it came to those she was close to.”
“Like what?”
“Like you joining the rebellion.”
There was a long, charged pause, in which I waited for him to continue, or perhaps jerk in pain as the heat of his lie burned his throat, but he didn’t. Finally, I shook my head and leaned forward. “You mean she saw herself joining the rebellion?”
“No, I mean she saw you.”
“I wouldn’t,”
I hissed. “I would never.”
He laughed. “Perhaps not now, but what about two years ago? I’ve watched you for years, and I know what you were like before all this.”
“What was I like?”
I snapped, angrily. “Tell me, since clearly you think I don’t know myself.”
“Angry, rebellious, full of hatred toward all Fae, and the royal family especially. Do you not think it’s possible that you would have found your way to me, if my cousin and my brother had never found you in the forest? Or, perhaps, even later, if you’d found me when you spent nights sneaking out of the palace to search?”
I glanced down, horror washing over me and rising the skin on my neck. That did sound like me. Perhaps he was right, then, but if so was it somehow my fault that my sister got involved? Could I blame myself for something I’d never even done, but only could have?
“Fine.”
I said quietly. “I suppose it’s possible I could’ve joined your rebellion.”
“It’s more than possible,”
he replied. “It was likely. Such a strong possibility, in fact, that your sister saw it time and time again. For the year before she sought me out she saw dozens of visions of you in the rebellion, until finally, she saw one that prompted her to go out and stop you.”
“Which was what?”
He took a deep breath. “She watched herself die, and thought it was you.”
My mouth fell open. Suddenly, as if it were happening all over again, all I could see was the cold madness in King Penvalle’s eyes as he raised his sword and sliced once, twice, three times through my sister’s body.
All I could hear was the rushing in my ears, the screaming filling the clearing, when, as if in slow motion, Rosey’s body fell, her head tumbling onto the ground beside her.
Somehow, I could feel it, as the white-hot, all-consuming fire overtook my entire body, and all I could think of was murdering the male in front of me. Of raising the crown high, and bringing it down again into his smirking, too arrogant face.
“Are you with me, love?”
I heard the voice from too far away, and still couldn’t seem to see the room in front of me as I replied. “I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
I shook my head to clear it of the screaming. “Why was she there in the first place? Perhaps I believe that Rosey would seek you out looking for me, but once she realized I was not there, why would she stay?”
“For the same reason you would have. She wanted to see your mother again, and I could do that for her.”
I gasped, and my heart somehow beat impossibly faster, like I was running for my life rather than sitting on the bed. “Are you telling me that my sister saw my mother before she died?”
He shook his head. “No, Rhiannon was in Aftermath until quite recently, but I knew where to find her and if Rosey had lived I would have made good on my promise to reintroduce them. The problem was, that by the time your sister arrived on my doorstep she was already sick.”
I sucked in slow, even breaths, only half listening as I tried to keep myself from breaking open and letting the pain leak out across the floor. “Sick in what way?”
“She’d been fighting a cough for some time.”
“I thought she was faking the cough. Those trees that she was claiming to make tea from are poisonous.”
“They are,”
he agreed. “Never hide in a moondust tree at noon.”
I glanced up, frowning at the sound of the familiar expression. “My mother used to use that phrase a lot.”
“I know. Where do you think I heard it? It’s some idiom from the court of Nightshade she must have picked up as a child.”
I shook my head. “So what?”
“That expression only makes sense because moondust leaves bloom at dusk and fall to dust by the morning. It was your mother who gave me the idea to use the moondust trees to pass messages throughout my army. The leaves are the perfect place to write a message you want to be sure will be destroyed within a few hours of writing it.”
“And Rosey knew that?”
“Yes,”
he nodded. “After your sister had been with the rebellion for a few months, I asked her to share information with us about the palace. She saw a lot as one of the servants who was permitted on the upper floors, and always knew what courts were visiting, and how often my grandmother ventured out of her room. She would write her reports on the moondust leaves every night for one of us to collect.”
“So she wasn’t making tea?”
He shook his head. “She was truly ill, that much was true, but I assume she told you she was making tea to cover her frequent trips outside.”
I could only stare at him. He’d been right—I would have been happier never to know this. I felt not a shred of closure, only as if I’d been torn open again to bleed anew.
Part of me wished to tell him to stop, that we would pick up this conversation again another time, but I knew deep down that if he didn’t finish telling me now, I’d never broach the subject again.
“So she was ill,”
I reiterated, “and spied for you, but how did that turn into her charging into an unwinnable fight? Why would she try to kill the king for you?”
“A few weeks before the raid on the hunts, Rosey realized she was dying.”
I gasped. “No.”
“Yes. The cough was not improving, and she was, after all, only human. She didn’t have much time left, anyway, and requested to take on the task of going after my uncle. She knew she was unlikely to succeed, but by then I think she’d realized what her original prophecy was—that she’d seen not you, but herself—and wanted to ensure that the correct sister died that day.”
“Didn’t you try to stop her?”
I demanded.
He glanced to the side, as if not wanting to look at me when he answered. “No. Perhaps I would have if she’d had a long, happy life ahead of her, but she didn’t. This way, her death served a purpose.”
“What was that?”
I spat. “She didn’t kill Penvalle.”
“No,”
he said slowly, eyes widening at me as if I were missing something very obvious. “You did. Your sister died because she had to for you to become queen.”