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I felt the blood drain from my face. Sacrifice?
“Start with the driath,” she said with a flick of her hand towards one of the tall branchy creatures, his face wide and flat and green eyes bulging with terror.
“No,” the driath cried, struggling in his bonds. “P-please, Lady Brid, choose someone else. My family will—My children—”
“Shut him up,” the Brid barked, and the guard slit the driath’s throat in the next instant.
Despite his skin looking like wood, dark brown blood poured from the wound. He choked for long, agonising moments until he went slack in the guard’s hold. The guard stepped back, carelessly letting the driath’s dead body crumple on the grass. Another driath, with more delicate features, wailed nearby. Three smaller versions were frozen beside her, staring at their father’s body on the ground.
They did the same with the rest of them until six seelie Folk lay dead at our feet. The Brid gleefully informed me that they did the same on Samhain, to ward off the cold of the Bitter Months with hot seelie blood.
I managed to ask her why she did this—what it achieved. I felt sick to my stomach, and I couldn’t take my eyes off the six crumpled bodies on the grass. They were ignored by the rest of the Folk, who stepped around them as they began drinking and dancing. Blood soaked into the grass, a mix of colours that created a dull brown.
The Brid laughed.
“Itachievesnothing, my dear, except to show the might of the seelie court. The Carlin’s spies watch us from the forest. This”—she swept an arm out—“is nothing but a taunt to her. We have a glut of Folk on our land, Ash. More than that hag could ever hope for. We are showing her just how powerful we are. That these six Folk are worthless. Replaceable. They mean nothing.”
I tried to swallow the lump in my throat, unable to answer her. The Carlin was awful, but I’d never witnessed her kill her own subjects just for the sake of killing—just to taunt the other queen.
The unseelie had at least seemed happy in their day-to-day lives. The seelie Folk were celebrating the start of the Mild Months, drinking and dancing, but the atmosphere was completely different. Tension ran beneath the festivities. There was a constant fear lurking among all of them as they waited to see what their ruler would do. Who she would slaughter next.
I had to sit there with the Brid until she retired for the night, patting my cheek and telling me she would see me for breakfast. A fae servant showed me to my bedroom, which had a big hearth already lit, and a huge four-poster bed. I nodded at them in thanks, and once they had left, stood there in the centre of the room. I was numb.
What had I done?
My mouth trembled, but I forced myself not to cry as I walked unsteadily to the strange bed. Why had I marched into the Midsith? Why had I been so arrogant and foolhardy, thinking I could ever outwit the two queens?
I wished I knew why there was a hollow ache in my chest. My new arm hadn’t filled it. Growing to know Nua and Gillie hadn’t filled it. Killing the Carlin’s guards and taunting her in the Midsith hadn’t filled it. Meeting my birth mother, being here on seelie land, wasn’t filling it.
It felt like I was always going to be missing something vital, but I had no idea what. Would killing the Carlin and her sons finally do it? Finally fill the void inside me? Somehow, I knew it wouldn’t. But that didn’t mean I was going to give up.
I could still hear the Beltane festivities taking place in the nearby meadow. I went and stood at the window, staring out, trying very hard not to feel as trapped as I had in that little cottage on the Carlin’s land.
I jumped when a pure black moth settled on the stone window ledge outside. I stared down at it as its wings opened and closed gently. Something about it soothed me—made me reach up to the glass to trace its outline with my fingertip.
It fluttered up, but rather than flying away again, it landed on the windowpane directly over my finger. I swallowed hard, fighting the inexplicable urge to cry.
