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His golden eyes, now with fine lines around them, twinkled with amusement. "We had a plan, my love. I was to fill you up and you were to open a gate for us immediately. But I seem to recall you doing everything in your power to resist and change that plan. So now we've had to account for all the other creatures from our world and conform to your requirements. I think you'll find that we fey, while obviously superior in nearly every way, are not quite so adaptable as temporary creatures. If you want improvisation, you'll have to provide it yourself. "
"Of course I will. " I rolled my eyes, huffing. Why had I expected anything else? "Okay, fine. Do you all know any of the Unseelie names? Maybe we could force-"
"No," Reth said, cutting me off sharply.
"You don't know any?"
"It is not a matter of whether or not they are known. My queen knows every name of every soul from our world. But we will not use our brothers' and sisters' names to control them. It is not done. "
I raised my eyebrows in disbelief. "So you could have stopped this-all this-at any time? Your queen could have controlled those faeries?"
"If you could stop all this by killing someone you know-anyone-would you have done it?"
"No!"
"There are some boundaries we do not cross. IPCA visited great evil on us when it ensnared us and forced us to reveal the names of other faeries. We would have sooner perished but had no choice. "
"But you used my father's name!"
He sneered as though he had a bad taste in his mouth. "That creature hardly counts as fey. "
"But you still broke the rule. "
"I might have, yes. But there is a chasm between the Light Queen and myself that can never be crossed. You and your entire world have changed me, pulling me further and further from myself. I am not proud of it. She remains unsullied. "
"Well, goody for her. "
"Child?" The Light Queen's voice stilled the turbulent waves of my soul, singing calm and grace to every fiber of my being. Neamh. Ah, there, I was pissed off again.
I looked over the gathering of fey, all the ethereally impossible faces blending and blurring together. I didn't want to look too closely at them for fear of seeing the faerie who was my father, Melinthros. I didn't want to talk to him ever again. I didn't even want him to exist.
Putting my hands on my hips, I sighed. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to Unseelie territory, and you're all going to protect me with whatever faerie mojo you have, because I'm pretty sure the Dark Queen will not be very excited to see me. And then I'm going to talk to them. "
"Talk to them?" the Light Queen asked.
"Yes," I said, trying to compose a poem on her beauty comparing her to the light of the dawn, to the rays of sunlight piercing clouds after a thunderstorm, to. . . Evelyn. I shook my head, trying to clear it. "Gosh, can't you at least try to turn it down? Anyway. We're going to talk to them. If they're anything like your court, a lot of them probably think their queen is a freaking idiot. "
The Light Queen's wide, white eyebrows rose like a question mark.
"I mean, obviously not all these faeries agree with all your decisions. Like the one that got them stuck here. So we're going to tell the Unseelies that time is up and bank on them wanting to get out, period, more than they want to get out under the Dark Queen's terms. And then. . . we're going to hope she decides to come rather than hanging out here all by herself. "
Yeah. This was going to go well, I could tell already.
The Light Queen inclined her head in a regal nod, holding her hand out to me.
"I'll go with Reth, thanks. "
He took my hand possessively and put it in the crook of his elbow, though I supported him more than he supported me now. With one nauseating twist we were back in the clearing where I'd saved Lend. I had to give it to the Dark Queen-as we suddenly popped in with a few hundred other faeries, she didn't even look surprised. My eyes darted to her neck, but the skin was once again smooth and unblemished. So much for my secret hope that we'd find her wounded or dead.
But unfortunately for my grand plans to turn her faeries against her, the only faeries in the clearing were those that had come with me. The Dark Queen's court was missing entirely.
"Sister," she said, her black hole voice passing through me like a rush of bass too loud and low to register, leaving me shaken and trembling.
"Neamh," Reth whispered in my ear, so softly only I could hear it, and I felt myself warming up again.
"Sister," the Light Queen answered. "It is time to return home. "
"You have taken my things. I want them returned. "
