Do I marry the witch to take my throne, or do I declare all-out war with my uncle and take it by force? Only one of those options sounds appealing, but even if I had the support to do it, the Northern Lands were almost destroyed by a broken fate. Do I think myself stronger than the Sol King? Am I so arrogant that I believe I could succeed where he failed?
No. But the other option makes me want to throw up, a sensation compounded by the headache still roiling in my skull.
When I reach for the pitcher of wine once more, Airlie shoves it out of my range, giving me a dark look and pointing at my plate again without a word. My lip curls in her direction but the filthy look Roan sends me on behalf of his heavily pregnant wife reminds me to hold my temper, my hand landing instead on the plate and dragging it toward me.
It doesn't matter that the curse is going to take their child from them; for now the baby in her womb is healthy and strong, and they’ll protect it until the curse takes it. I've been in such a rush to find my mate that, in the chaos of discovering what it is, I forgot that small fact. My fate is to marry my mate, take the throne, and save my people. I believed that the curse would break at our union, or maybe my coronation, the intricacies of magic beyond my knowledge. I trusted the Fates to reward my patience and my efforts to save my kingdom, not to place an even greater obstacle in my way.
I’ll never make that mistake again.
“I need to see the Seer,” I mutter.
The words are just as futile now as they have been every time I’ve uttered them. Speaking to that female won’t change the fate I’ve been given, and yet still I cling to the hope that I can convince her she’s wrong.
That this union isn’t my path.
Tauron and Tyton glance at each other before Tyton says, haltingly, ”Do you want one of us to cross the ocean and bring her back here? I'm not sure how we could persuade her, but we could…try.”
The vessel of the Fates hates me, I’m sure of it.
I shake my head, picking over the wedges of cheese on my plate as though they can fix this problem for me. “I need you here for what's to come. There’s no use splitting up when we're so close to the end. I'll just have to…figure out my fate for myself.”
Tyton nods and rubs a hand over his forehead again. There's a tension in him that usually lasts only as long as the forest whispers in his ear, but even after a night at home, he looks haunted.
A cold sweat breaks out along my spine. “What's happened?”
He shakes his head. “The forest was in my dreams last night. I feel as though it has sunk into my mind, and I can't get rid of it, even with the distance. It’s soangryat us all…so very angry.”
We all stare at him. None of us are as tight-lipped as Roan, who once entered that forest and came out alive with his mind intact. No matter how much we poked and prodded him, he never told us what happened to him inside. All he would say was we wouldn't believe the truth. He barely believed it himself.
Airlie clears her throat and carefully moves food around the table until each of us has a full plate in front of us once more. “I understand that the identity of Soren’s mate has been a great shock to us all, but there’s no denying that we need a plan.Nobodywants a witch in this castle less than I do, especially so close to the baby’s due date, but there’s nothing we can do to fight the Fates. I know this just as well as the rest of you, so instead of bickering and arguing amongst ourselves, we need to decide what we're going to do about her.”
It's a line in the sand.
A careful display of siding with her husband, and one I was not expecting. When I sent Roan ahead of us yesterday, I expected Airlie to pack up and return to her ancestral lands to have the baby there, effectively tearing my family apart due to my ill-fated wedding and ascension. She’s been so protective of her pregnancy, so careful, as if she did something wrong the first time around that caused the loss of her son. We all know that isn't true. The curse doesn't care how good of a parent someone would be. It takes every child.
And here she is, siding with Roan and the enemy in the dungeon.
I don't want to think about any of it.
The table falls silent as we eat, my mind churning through the responsibilities I hold over and over again until my hands are fisted around the silverware and my temper boils over. The curse is one horrifying problem, and the endless stream of lower fae and part-blood refugees who arrive at Yregar each week is another. We’re struggling to house them, feed them, and offer them assurance for the future. Their plight fills me with an urgency that can’t be talked away.
When I finish the plate in front of me, I set down the cutlery. “Enough of this. I’m going to the village to check how our people are faring. We have more to worry about than the twisted whims of the Fates.”
Airlie nods her head sagely, a small smile creeping across her lips. “That’s a good idea, Soren. Clear your head, come to terms with the fact that being angry about this isn't going to transform the witch into a high-fae princess, and once you’ve accepted it, we can move on to the tasks at hand. The only thing more difficult than getting the Unseelie Court to accept this union might be the wedding rites themselves. We can’t just torture the witch into accepting you—the binding won’t work, and your union won’t hold without her full consent.”
Now Tauron takes the fairy wine, ignoring the way Airlie snarls at him, and pours himself a large glass before pouring me another one.
“We’ll never get that far into this fool’s errand!” he snaps. “The court will never agree, and we all know it. We’d be better off convincing them that the laws shouldn’t apply to Soren because the Fates are shoving him off a mountain ledge right now with nothing but iron spikes to catch him.” And he downs his glass in one go.
* * *
As tempting as the wine is, I have duties to attend that don’t include losing myself in debauchery.
I leave my cousins behind and take stock of the castle. This duty is mine until I have a wife to pass it on to.
Over the long years of waiting, I imagined what my mate would be like. My fantasies were fueled by her voice in my mind, and every image I came up with is the opposite of the silver-eyed nightmare in the dungeon.
After the Seer’s decree of patience, during almost a thousand years of waiting, I lost myself in grief for my parents and the war that raged around me. I entertained the affections of some of the high-fae ladies at the fringes of the Unseelie Court, always careful to steer away from anyone under my uncle’s influence. For a time, I hoped that my fate would lead me to someone like Loreth, beautiful and cunning in the ways of our kind. She is a Mistheart, though far enough removed from the First Fae that the only title she now holds is Lady and not princess, but that didn’t matter to me. If anything, it made spending time with her easier and though at the time I thought that what I felt for her was true, it was that ease that I was grasping so desperately at.
