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“Perhaps I could go and look for him, mother,” Balor drawled, shooting me a smirk behind our mother’s back.
“No, darling, I wouldn’t put you at risk in those miserable woods.”
Balor was mother’s favourite. He’d always been her favourite, not that it was anything to be proud of. He was the most like her of all of us, which meant he would most likely be the one to inherit the crown when she eventually died or stepped down from the throne. I was already confident that his rule would be worse.
When a new fae monarch was needed, the ruling power transferred to the most powerful in the lineage, not necessarily the eldest. But Balor certainly believed himself to be the most powerful. At the very least, he was the slyest, the most devious. Bres was an airheaded fool, and Cethlen preferred to skulk on the sidelines, listening for anything he could use for his own gain.
And I was just my mother’s assassin. Trained to kill without hesitation or emotion. Ash had been right all those months ago. It was all I did. All I had done, until I had him and my life suddenly felt less bleak.
It felt even bleaker now.
“Perhaps Lonan could search for him,” Balor said with a smirk in his voice, making me stiffen in my seat. “Fly through the trees as a little bird until he spots him.”
I had been doing exactly that, but not for the reasons they would want me to. I said nothing.
“Hm.” The Carlin looked back at me, her one eye hard and calculating. “Perhaps. Let me think on it.”
With that, she swept from the room and we all rose from our seats, Cethlen setting his dog at his feet. He and Bres walked to the wide doors, the latter already drawling about getting a drink and being sick of hearing about the seelie halfling prince.
I didn’t want to walk with them, so I waited until they’d vanished before striding to the door.
“And how has your search been going?”
Balor’s voice stopped me dead in my tracks, but I stayed silent. I heard him chuckle, and tensed when his boots echoed across the floor as he approached.
“Youareracking up a list of slights against our mother, aren’t you?” He appeared in front of me, blue eyes flashing with cruel amusement. “All the carefully crafted words to try and help him figure it out. All the little gifts. All the nights spent warming his bed.” He stepped closer and bared sharp teeth at me. “If only she really knew why.”
Realising the true extent of how much he had watched us made my blood run cold, but I refused to react.
“You appear to have spent a great deal of time watching your younger brother at very inappropriate moments,” I said flatly, as though the thought of him seeing me with Ash didn’t make me feel sick. “Perhapsthatis what she should be worried about.”
“What she should be worried about is the fact that you are continuing to try and help him,” he snarled. “You know, for a while I thought that perhaps itwasall a game. That you were simply seeing how far you could go—if you could get the seelie dog to bend over for you. But it wasn’t, was it, Lonan? You truly want him. You truly choosehimover your family. Your court.”
I stared back at him in silence. At my lack of reaction, the anger bled from his features to be replaced by a cruel, sharp smile.
“But then, that doesn’t matter anymore, does it? He hates you.Loathesyou. Believes you killed his little mortal parents. If youdofind him out there, what are you planning to do? Fall to your knees and beg for his forgiveness?” He snorted with derision. “As if you could sink any lower.”
I would have, again, if it could have made any difference. But Ash didn’t remember any of it anyway. He didn’t remember me.
“Whatever youareplanning to do, it won’t work,” Balor hissed. “We will find him. We will bring him back, and you will have to sit here and watch our mother slice him up and eat him bit by bit.”
He gestured at Ash’s arm, nailed to the post behind the Carlin’s throne.
“Until then, at least you have a memento. Don’t think I didn’t notice that dear little ring on his finger.” He gave me a vicious, sneering grin. “The only thing you have of your father’s, isn’t that right? How precious. Shame you didn’t think to put it on the other hand.”
He turned and strode from the room, leaving me standing there frozen, vibrating with fury and grief. Once he was gone, I forced myself to turn and approach the post, my eyes getting hot at the thought of the pain Ash must have gone through. The struggle he was surely facing, out there with only one arm.
My hand was trembling when I reached up to remove the ring. I didn’t know if the Carlin would remember it, but it was too dangerous to leave here in plain sight.
But the moment I gently touched the hand, the fingers curled instantly into a tight fist as if the arm was still alive, preventing me from removing the ring. Even as it horrified me, I was filled with a pathetic desperation to cling to his severed hand. To press my lips to it, as if he would be able to feel it.
Unable to look at it any longer, I turned and strode from the throne room, through the palace and into my bedroom. The moment I was at the window, I shifted into the crow and flew to the forest, where I spent the next several hours fruitlessly searching for any sign of Ash until it got dark. It was like he had vanished into thin air the moment he crossed the treeline that night.
I was glad for it even as I fervently wished for just a glimpse of him, just so I knew he was safe. Still alive. The thought of him dying alone in the forest from his wound gutted me.
When the need to shift back grew too strong, I reluctantly flew back from the forest. But I didn’t go to the palace. I shifted into a spider at the doorstep of Ash’s cottage and crawled under the door before returning to my true form.
It was so still. And cold. It felt wrong to be here without him, but I needed it.
