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“You mean like my being a ‘perfect wife’?”
“No, that’s an idea of this time. You chose this time, not me.”
“Without magic, without a little chaos, there would be no ambition. No freedom.”
“You’re buying the party line, Quinn. Of course there is freedom. Order brings about the greatest freedom of all. You can act and know the consequences.”
“I thought you weren’t going to interfere, yet here you are,” I huff. “Arguing for order. Why? So we can rush towards flashing screens that force-feed other people’s thoughts? Social media, twenty-four-hour news, an unending barrage of the ‘information’ age? Has it done any good?”
“You don’t have to be a ‘perfect’ wife,” Moira says. “Women’s suffrage and rights, an end to slavery, progress against racism, oh and let’s not forget that the world you left behind would never tolerate an entire clan having their name outlawed and then being hunted like animals.”
Her words are a slap to the face.
“Not fair,” I gasp, cheeks burning hot with anger.
“Too soon? Or too true?”
“I need to get back to Duncan.”
“I am not stopping you, Quinn.”
I turn and take three strides away when another thought occurs, and I stop and look back.
“You won’t lie to me?”
“No, I won’t.”
“You’re Unseelie, a Dark Fae, right?”
“I’ve said as much, Quinn.”
I nod and chew the inside of my lip.
“Lord Nicholas.” As soon as I say his name her eyes narrow and her lips purse. “He’s Dark Fae too. Right?”
“He is.”
“Why?”
I don’t have to elaborate. I can see she understands the question and what I’m asking. She crosses her arms over her chest and turns away to stare off at the horizon. I walk back to her side and stare out there with her, letting her decide when to speak.
“The King’s Council is divided,” Moira says at last.
“The Dark Fae have a king?”
“Aye,” she says softly.
My mind races. “But no queen?”
“Our queen is—” She cuts herself off. “Some things I cannot say.”
She doesn’t have to say it; I know it. I don’t know how I know it, if it comes from one of these mysterious past lives or from innate magic or if perhaps as likely as anything else, I’m reading her mind. The Seelie Queen is the king’s wife. I think I’m right, anyway.
Oh. Shit.
“Why is the Council divided? What does that mean, or at least what does it mean for me? Can you help me with Nicholas? Can you stop him?”
“The Council is divided on our actions,” she says, and I don’t miss the implication that she is part of the King’s Council. “And no, I’m sorry. I cannot intervene.”
