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My head lurched up so quickly that the bones in my neck cracked. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“How’s Lonnie doing?” Gwydion repeated at twice the volume. “What else would I mean? If we can’t be there to watch, we may as well get updates.”
I growled low in my throat, unable to find the words to express my frustration. Now, she was ruining my cousins, too, and every infernal conversation.
Gwydion, tall, curly-haired, and muscular, rested on a bench against the far-right wall, absentmindedly oiling the silver blade of his sword. His brother, Bael, paced up and down the long, cavernous room, exhibiting every bit of agitation that I felt. Their sister, Aine, lay on the floor to my left, staring up at the ceiling, so still she could have been sleeping.
“Does it fucking matter how she’s doing?” I snapped.
Gwydion chuckled, ignoring my challenging glare. “Yes, actually, it does matter. Unless you want to start over with a new queen.”
“Or king,” Aine muttered, her eyes still closed.
“It’s irrelevant,” I barked. “That’s not going to happen. She’s fine.”
She’d better be fine, after all the threats I’d made to keep her so.
Bael made a derisive noise in the back of his throat as he paced by me at top speed. “You sound quite certain.”
I ignored him—anything I said would only start another argument. In any case, I wascertain that Lonnie would survive the hunts for two reasons, neither of which I was happy about.
First, unbeknownst to my family, I’d sent my pet raven, Quill, to watch her. He was circling the quarry now, and should something happen, I would know. Second, it was only days ago that I’d murdered a group of bandits who’d snuck onto our grounds to attack her. I’d spared one, only to make sure he spread word far and wide that the queen was not to be touched. I wasn’t yet sure what I wanted to do with her, but until I decided, no one hurt Lonnie Skyborne. She belonged to us, and if anyone was going to kill her, it was damn well going to be me.
But I couldn’t say any of that.
Bael had spent the better part of the evening with his eyes rolled into the back of his head, ignoring all of us as he watched Lonnie’s progress in the hunt. Clearly, if anything went wrong with the little human queen, he’d leave for Inbetwixt in an instant.
As long as I’d known him, Bael had never cared so much about anything. She was fucking ruining him.
“So?” Gwydion asked, jerking me from my musing. “How is she?”
Bael dragged both hands through his reddish-blond hair and paced faster, nearly breaking into a jog. “The same. She’s nearly at the top of the hill on the south side of the quarry. She had the good sense to bring a lantern this time, and there are some Underfae with her.”
“That’s strange,” Gwydion said.
“What is?” I asked too quickly.
“Humans can’t see the Underfae. Why would they follow Lonnie if she doesn’t even know they’re with her?”
Admittedly, thatwasstrange. Just another thing to add to the ever-growing list of Lonnie Skyeborne’s suspicious behavior. There was far too much about that woman that wasn’t right.
It was more than her unusual smell and the way her skin tasted like magic; it waseverything. How my power had no effect on her, and she’d survived a year in a dungeon literally built to drive mortals insane within days. How she seemed to waver between almost unbelievable naivete and a brashness that should have gotten her killed years ago. How she’d clearly brought my cousin over to her side in only a few short weeks.Everything.
“How far is she from the boundary?” Aine asked.
“Not you too,” I muttered. “Can we speak of nothing but the Slúagh?”
“I don’t know,” Bael answered his sister as if I hadn’t spoken. “Perhaps a mile?”
I made the mistake of looking over at Bael, and my stomach lurched as I watched his right eye roll backward, spinning in his skull as if he were looking for something just out of reach. “I fucking hate it when you do that.”
The walls around us seemed to sigh, and every shadow shuddered. Bael blinked, his eyes returning to their usual yellow as he fixed me with a mutinous glare. “Why? Jealous?”
“Hardly,” I scoffed. “Revolted, perhaps.”
I’d never be jealous of such blatantly Unseelie magic. Not when it was what kept my cousin out of the running for the throne.
As if reading my mind, Bael rolled his eyes again, showing me the whites. “I think perhaps you don’t like reminders of darkness in what’s left of your gleaming court.”
