“A Favored Child has returned. A Favored Child has returned to us. It fixes, it gives to us, it bleeds for us.”
If I wasn't positive that we were standing on Yregar land, I would swear we were standing at the edge of the Ravenswyrd Forest once more. He speaks with the same possessed voice that he always does near the forest, sounding so urgent and desperate, racked with grief, and yet…this time there’s an undercurrent of joy, of relief.
Of hope.
Hope is a dangerous thing. I’ve learned that a hundred times or more, and still I'd let myself hope for my mate. If I hadn't learned the lesson before, finding the witch staring back at me had certainly done the trick. I'm not feeling hope now.
I glance around, but none of the villagers stopped when we did, the soldiers directing the small stream of beaten and broken folk through to the castle and into the Grand Hall. I nod to Tauron to get the horses stabled with Ingor with haste, keeping his brother close to me as I plan a route to move without the entire household hearing what is spoken in his magic-soaked madness.
I’m aware of all the high-fae ears within the castle, especially Sari’s guard, but I have no choice but to walk Tyton through the service hallways and past the maids there to reach my chambers. Airlie is already in my reception room, set up with her breakfast in one of my more comfortable chairs, and Tauron goes over to stand by her with a scowl on his face that only deepens when he sees the meager amount she’s eating. She ignores him, her nose wrinkling at the smell still clinging to us all. She pushes the plate away.
I take both of Tyton’s arms to keep his attention. “Who is the Favored Child? Tell me.”
He cocks his head slowly, and the sinking feeling in my gut only gets worse. “We want more. Weneedmore. They must all return to us.”
I don't like the sound of that.
Tauron stares at us both as though we're fools, and with a single finger pointing down, he says, “We have a witch in the dungeons. She’s spilled blood. What's to say that she isn't aFavored Child?”
My eyes narrow at him, but he holds my gaze unflinchingly, one eyebrow slowly rising. “It makes sense, doesn't it? The Fates have given her to you for a reason.”
Sightless silver eyes flash through my mind, and every inch of my body rejects that notion.
The smell of the dead still lingers in my nose even as those silver eyes of hers flash in my mind, and I shake my head to clear it, my teeth bared at him as though I would rip his throat out for suggesting such a thing. “It says it wants more Favored Children, that they need to return. If it is the witch, then I'm right in my suspicions and she’s here to further the witches' reach in the kingdom.”
Airlie tilts her head, carefully perusing each of us from her seat in the corner with her feet propped up. Her ankles are a little swollen, and a dish balances on her belly, covered in biscuits and freshly cut fruit that she pokes at half-heartedly. She's been queasy and struggling to eat the meager rations, but it hasn’t dulled the sharp edge of her tongue.
“You really need to make a decision about her, Soren. Either you trust the Fates and marry her as you have been instructed to do, or you go against them and we prepare ourselves for the consequences.”
Tauron spins on his heel to glare at her. “It's not even possible to defy the Fates! The Sol King was at the pinnacle of his strength when he broke his fate, and it almost killed him. Then theconsequencesalmost killed his entire country, wiping out an entire economyandgeneration. The entire kingdom would have perished if they hadn't taken on soldiers from other lands.”
Airlie shrugs and says, “Why shouldn't we do the same? The witches are going to kill us all if we don't put aside our pride.”
I'm not so pigheaded that I haven't thought of such a thing, but my uncle is still in power. Until I take the throne, I can’t put out such a request for aid, and she knows it. The other kingdoms have barely replied to my offer for trade—an offer any prince could make—they will never answer a call for aid from an heir.
Something has happened between her and the witch, and now she finds herself in a mood to argue the point.
“Do you want me to marry her or not?” I say, and Airlie glances at me before her gaze drops back down to the small slices of apple.
Even from here, I can see that it is not the greatest of specimens, the rosy blush and crisp flesh dulled, but she nibbles at it all the same. “I hate the female. I wish nothing but a violent and painful death for her.”
One of her toes taps in the air as she thinks, her delicate slipper embroidered with pearls catching the light, and she goes on, “I wouldn't go against the Fates, though, and not just because we've seen what happened to the Sol King and the Seelie Court. If we forsake the Fates, then who are we? They've never led the Celestial line wrong before. We have to believe that they're steering us right in this as well. Tell me again, Soren, exactly what the Seer said to you. There has to be an option that we're not understanding right now.”
I sit in the chair across from hers and lean back against the plush cushions, rubbing a hand over the scar on my face as it aches. “The Seer said that my mate would be at Port Asmyr the day after the summer solstice. She said I had to learn patience, and the nine hundred and eighty-eight years of waiting would teach me that. We would marry and I’d claim my crown, and only with our union could I restore my lands and defeat my enemies. She said that the high fae would flourish under my rule.”
The words come out as plainly as they always have, falling out of me as easily as a recited poem for how long I’ve worked them over in my mind, but I see them a little differently now. The witch had watched Tyton closely as we moved past the forest of madness. At the time, I assumed that she was taken aback by his comments, or that the magic was calling out to her in some way, but now Tyton’s words come back to me.
It needs the Favored Children.
Was it her that the forest was calling out for? Was she surprised to hear a high fae mentioning such things? Is she going to lead an army of witches through my kingdom to steal the throne with the blessing of the land because their kind have somehow fooled it into thinking that she alone can fix the damage?
I’m tempted to go back down to the dungeon and question her myself, but those silver eyes flash back into my mind once more, and I cannot bear the thought of looking into them. The way that she peers into my very being, the solemness with which she has withstood and accepted everything we’ve done without question... I assumed that she was helpless, that she knew she was outnumbered and could not risk fighting back, and yet…she killed two of my soldiers.
If I could access magic myself, I would use it to learn what transpired in that cell, how she overpowered two fully grown and well-trained high-fae soldiers. I want to knowexactlywhat they did, how far they had to go to cause such a reaction in her, how far they pushed before she snapped.
I want to know what I have to do to break the witch and the hold our fate has over me.
Tyton has been the only one to truly coax information out of her and only when she was questioning him about the kingdom, an exchange taking place between them. I’d rather be forced into inane ramblings about pretty trinkets with Sari than utter a word to the witch with the ash of my people still clinging to my clothes, their deaths just one act of war out of hundreds of thousands by her kind, but there are other ways to lure her into revealing her true plans here.
