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No one had to clarify what I meant.
“I don’t know for certain,” Scion said slowly. “In fact, no one does. At some point, when I was barely older than Elfwyn is now, he simply left. Several years after that, he reappeared in Nightshade.”
I tried to do the math in my head and struggled to make the timeline fit. “He reappeared in Aftermath, you mean.”
“No, in Nightshade. He left before the fall.”
“Even so, that’s not that long ago…not even for humans. Why does no one remember him?”
They all laughed, but it was again Aine who answered. “They do. But Grandmother wouldn’t allow anyone to speak of the traitor for some time, and with each passing year, word of mouth gets warped further. At some point, I’m sure, he will be written out of history altogether. It wouldn’t be the first time.”
I frowned, considering that. “Is that why he would change his name? To avoid the association?”
“Perhaps,” Scion said, “but I do not think so. Hiding one’s name is hardly uncommon,Lonnie.” His tone dripped with derision, and I flushed.
“He was hiding his name to avoid bewitchment, then?” I furrowed my brow. “I always assumed you all had secret names that you chose not to share.”
“None of us is using a false name.” Scion looked around at his family, and his gaze lingered on Thalia for a moment, a question in his eyes. I took that to mean he didn’t know her well enough to be sure.
“No,” she said softly.
He continued as if uninterrupted. “We have several middle names and titles, mostly for the sake of ceremony, but the risk of a name-binding to any of us is far smaller than it would be to you…” He paused and gritted his teeth as if pained by his next words. “Probably.”
Aine whipped her head around to look at Scion so fast that her wine sloshed in her glass. Based on her extreme reaction, I expected her to say something, but she remained stonily silent.
I narrowed my gaze, still focused on Scion. “But a true name gives you power over anything.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Aine said slowly, a small smile spread across her face as I turned to her instead. She laughed, high and delighted. “It’s only logical that it would only be possible to hold power over something weaker than yourself.”
I stared blankly at them all, flabbergasted. “How can that be right? Everyone knows to hide their names from the Fae, or you’ll use them to bewitch us into bargains.”
“Yes,” Scion said, as if explaining why the sun rises and sets to a very small child. “Wewill use them againstyou, but do you think that when we pray to Aisling, we are invoking her false name? What about other gods?”
I blinked. “I…I don’t know.”
“I do. No god or high queen, for that matter, would use a false name. Queen Aisling had three mates, so we know from that alone that she was far more powerful than anyone else of her time.”
“So, true names make no difference to you?”
“That’s not what I said,” Aine replied. “I said that you can only control someone weaker than you, and name-oaths are only dangerous to the weak.”
I bit my lip, thinking. This was staggering information and something that my mother couldn’t possibly have known, or she wouldn’t have been so fearful every day of her life. Or perhaps she still would have. I supposed it might not have mattered much to her. “Would that not be true for your brother too, though?” I asked. “Dulla—er, Ambrose? Or was he less powerful than you?”
Scion crossed his arms. “Ambrose is far from weak, but there are few Fae who can do as we do and simply flout common convention. I have wondered if he was attempting to downplay his own power by adopting an obviously false name, as if he were trying to hide his own.”
Interesting.It was possible, I supposed. “Is it obviously fake?”
Scion smirked. “I take it you do not speak the old language.”
“No.” I took a sip of wine. “I never found I needed to know any word other than Slúagh.”
Gwydion laughed, as if I’d been joking. Aine smacked him, while Thalia looked uncomfortable, and Scion just held my gaze, refusing to look away. “‘Dullahan’ means ‘Nightmare.’ There used to be creatures known as the Dullahan. They were phantom horsemen who rode at night across worlds, leaving carnage in their wake as the afflicted do now. They are one of the Unseelie monsters who haunt the realm of Underneath, banished from the rest of Elsewhere by Queen Aisling and her mates.”
I shuddered, unable to tear my gaze away from his. “Why Dullahan, though? Why that monster specifically?”
“Scion,” Aine said, warning in her tone. “She doesn’t need to know all this.”
He ignored her, barreling on as if now that the floodgates were opened, he could not stop. “The Unseelie court is ruled by might as we are, rather than by a particular hereditary line.”
