Page 47 of A Courage of the Chosen

My nerves triple in my chest as I walk across the throne room toward the windowless chamber, with Callahan and Brodie flanking me.

Everyone is already gathered by the time I arrive, and Hector is the first to stand and bow while the rest of them reluctantly rise.

Hume is back in his usual seat to the right of my chair. The smug look on his face is enough to remind me who the fuck I am, and who I’m descended from. Granny would tear into Hume without a second thought. She wouldn’t be so hesitant in claiming what was hers, in silencing their doubts and proving to them who she was.

Perhaps I’m holding back because I don’t feel like I wholly belong here. It was easy to claim my heritage when I was chained and tortured. Easy to tell the people of Morven who I was, because they were ready to accept it. But here? In the palace that Granny called home for a whole part of her life I’ll never know about, I don’t quite fit.

There’s no going back now, though. And I refuse to fail my family in this as well.

So, it’s with Granny’s energy pumping through my veins that I square my shoulders and address them in a voice I wish was firmer than it was. “We need to gather the court. Tell them the truth of what’s going on. And tell them who I am.”

“I think that’s going to have to wait, Your Majesty,” Hector replies solemnly.

I take my seat, and the rest of the council take theirs. Callahan remains stood behind me.

“What is it?” I ask, knowing already that I’m not going to like the answer.

“More villages have fallen,” Lady Navin answers, barely looking in my direction.

“How many?” The question comes out as a whisper, dread chilling me to the bone, the memories of the blackened, drained villages floating to the surface like a corpse. The land stripped of all life, homes demolished and crumbling, not even the wind daring to move through those places, like they were cursed. It was what I imagine death to feel like. The absence of all things.

“At least half a dozen that have been reported. Only a few survivors made it to the nearest bigger towns and villages. When guards rode out, there was nothing left. Homes decimated. Seelie gone. Crops completely destroyed,” Hector adds.

“Crops? What crops?”

“Your inexperience is showing, Your Majesty,” Hume purrs beside me, voice dripping with derision. He crosses his arms and leans on the table, talking slowly like he’s explaining the alphabet to a child. “If we’re at war, like you say we are. We need crops to feed an army to wage said war. Without them, the soldiers have nothing to sustain them.”

“What Lord Renfrow is explaining with his usual charm,” Lady Calder shakes her head as she speaks, “is that this attack is not like the others. It’s coordinated and precise. They’ve targeted farming villages that supply us with the goods we need to feed our citizens and armies.”

My heart tumbles, their first move far worse than I feared, and I fortify my own mental walls to make absolutely sure Tavish gets nothing from me.

“And that’s not all,” Lord Garside interjects.

Fighting the urge to bury my head in my hands, I hold my spine straight and look in his direction. “One of the supply wagons has been intercepted, too. It never made it to Lassodie this morning, as expected.”

Which means there’s Brollachan, or Dorche at the very least, not far from the city.

My tongue lies heavy in my mouth, despair thick in my throat.

The council watch me as I process the information. Some faces remain blank, carefully curated masks that hide what they’re really thinking. Others wear their triumph at my silence like a badge of honor, as though they’ve been waiting for me to falter under it all.

“Well,” Hume says smugly. “If you want to play at being queen, what should we do?” He observes me like I’m dinner.

I knew there’d be setbacks. That we’d face unexpected challenges in our quest to bring the war to an end. What I didn’t expect is the way I’d be so scrutinized. Or the pressure of making a singular wrong move and being labelled a bad ruler.

It’s happening now in real time, and I can’t think around the intense satisfaction being expressed by more than one Seelie on this council.

“All that is, belongs to you.”

The words come from that presence that filters into my mind at the most random of moments. Something ancient and wise and watchful. Instead of it giving me the courage it has done when I’ve needed it, it makes me retreat, backing away like a cornered animal.

At least inside my mind. My body remains rooted to the chair, hands clutching the arms.

I can’t do this. I’m not . . .

“So we send another,” Callahan says, resting a hand on my shoulder and interrupting my mental spiral.

“Breathe, mo sholas.” The prompt is firm but gentle. Only for me. An anchor in a tsunami of emotion. It allows me to drag in a full lungful of air, and more importantly, his comment has pulled the focus of everyone away from me.