I nod my head curtly, and then I take the chains from Tauron and prepare myself to face my treacherous uncle and the salivating vultures of the Unseelie Court.
CHAPTERNINE
Rooke
There's no sign of poverty or desperation within the long and spacious walls of Yregar Castle.
As the Savage Prince and his small, close-knit group walk me through the palace, I feel like an interloper on some sort of ethereal party ground. My feet scuff the glittering white marble floors, and I imagine a trail of dirt being left behind, thanks to the terrible state I’m in. My temper begins to wake down deep in my gut, like the slow smolder of a fire. It’s not yet raging, but for the first time in a very long while, there’s something there.
The royal colors of House Celestial cover every surface that my gaze touches, a deep navy blue with trimmings of silver like soft glimmers of snow on a clear winter night. Star motifs are painted and embroidered on everything, clearly marking the castle as an estate of the Celestial Family, and there’s a tug of familiarity in my chest. The Seelie Court is ruled by the Sol King, every inch of his properties covered in gold and suns, the heat and the glory of the lands something to behold. The tug turns into an ache.
I miss my brother and my friends.
I let my gaze drift back to the Celestial finery, and the longer I look, the more my skin begins to itch. It’s beautiful and luxurious, but at the sight of it all, that fire sparks deep in my gut like a breath of wind on embers and ignites. The high fae covet their wealth and their beauty, their thrones and their bloodlines, all while the land has turned to dust. Kharl’s rhetoric would’ve never gained popularity with the covens if the high fae had remembered and honored their traditions. The resentments would never have taken root if the weight of the rites hadn’t been carried solely by my kind.
Kharl might have been the one to shove the witches over the edge of madness, but the high fae led them to that edge.
There are oil paintings of past kings and queens, relics of times long since turned to dust. Beautiful faces all reminiscent of each other, a long and prolific lineage of high-fae rulers. The servants and maids we pass all look to be in good health, something that is usually an indicator of a good ruler but only makes the despair of the village even more stark. It's all a façade, a beautiful mask covering the truth of this land.
The high fae dance and drink and dine while the rest of the kingdom withers away.
The winding hallways slowly get busier as we work our way through the center of the castle to meet with the regent and the Unseelie Court. The Savage Prince stayed firm in his decision not to let me clean myself up, and I find the numbness that washed over me the moment I decided to journey back to the Southern Lands thawing out.
Shame curls in my chest until every breath shreds my lungs like broken glass.
The filth covering me might not be my fault, but my cheeks flush regardless, bile churning in my gut. The Savage Prince’s loathing and ire is one thing, but parading me around in this condition might be his best attempt at torturing me so far. Fates be damned—I faced Ureen and survived the end of the world just to be forced to endurethis? My magic tingles at the end of my fingers, my mind filling with the voices of all those I love who would gut this high-fae male for treating me like this, royal or not.
It’s a futile fantasy to hold. Pemba, Hanede, Stone, Cerson, a hundred others—I left them all behind to fulfill my fate, and this is what I’ve been dealt. There are two options left to me, but I was never one to simply give up. Not without a fight.
I’m able to seep magic to hide the smell of my unwashed skin, but there's not much I can do about my appearance without rousing suspicions. I lift my head and take a deep breath, calm washing over me once more. This isn’t my doing. Someday, the Savage Prince will have to explain his actions to his ancestors and mine when he’s carried to Elysium on the smoke of the funeral pyres. I’d rather be cursed to walk the Fates alone for all time and never feel the peace of Elysium than bring such shame to my mother and father, and in this, my heart is clear.
I might be forced to walk through the castle on display as a dirty witch, but I hold my head high and unrepentant, never cowering from their derision.
I'm sure these people have forgotten what it's like to mix with lower fae outside of the Unseelie Court, the rituals and rites of the high fae and the lower fae nothing but a fable of the past. There are many things that go wrong when a society becomes insulated like this, and the starving villagers outside the castle walls are proof of that.
I think I'm about to get a vicious example of just what can go wrong.
We stop before a high-fae female who gasps at me and snaps, “You can't be serious! You can't bringthatbefore His Majesty, the Regent. She's probably carrying diseases.”
I look at the female who's spoken, the family resemblance like an echo across my mind. I’m quickly learning that all of the Celestials look far too similar to ever be mistaken for any other family.
“Mother,” the heavily pregnant female says with a cutting tone, “the Fates have decreed that this is Soren’s mate, and whether you and the rest of the Unseelie Court like it or not, we cannot go against the Fates. Not unless you're all ready to fight the Ureen.” She rolls her shoulders back, and her perfect posture is a move of its own in this war of words. How she can stay calm and move freely with the curse wrapped so tightly around her body is a mystery to me, the sight of it sours my stomach.
Her mother makes the sign of the Fates against her chest, as if to ward off such a future, horror etched into every inch of her face. It’s the first sign of intelligence I’ve seen at the Unseelie Court. I don't suspect we’ll see much more today. A competent ruler would not have let his kingdom fall into this state.
“We’re cursed. We have to be,” she mutters.
The pregnant female laughs again. “Of course we're cursed, Mother. There's no question about that, but maybe if we try todosomething about it, it won't be the end of the Unseelie high fae.”
Her mother makes another sign of the Fates before slipping into the room in front of us, muttering under her breath about evil, disobedient children and the end of time.
I glance at the high-fae princes but it's as though they’ve become a solid wall around me. What I assumed about this dynamic before was clearly wrong, and my perceptions of them shift in my mind. They’re shallow and thoughtless royals, cruel and selfish high fae, as most tend to be, but there’s more under the surface.
I don’t want to see it.
I don’t want them to be an exception to the rule. I wanted to hold on to the whispers and assumptions of the lower fae and not look past the cold façade. I was going to hide in the dungeons of Yregar, licking the wounds my soul still bears from the Fate Wars, until the rest of my fate came to call. My heart aches, and I want nothing more than to rest down there in the cramped cell, to share my magic with the earth beneath me, to be nothing more than a creature of the dark. A root buried deep, sustaining the life above.
I don’t want to be dragged into the light of day, to learn about the complexities of these people, to have any empathy in my heart. I went to the Seelie Court and learned better than the whispers; the same is more than possible here too, but they’ve done nothing to deserve that empathy from me.
