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I raised an eyebrow, thinking of her orders to send prisoners to Aftermath to be turned into afflicted. Had they never once questioned that? They’d never advised Queen Celia otherwise? “But you had to wonder what might have happened when she was no longer there to give orders.”
He shook his head. “Not in such a direct way as you seem to imagine. Grandmother Celia was over one thousand years old, and she’d ruled for centuries. My father had been the Prince of Ravens for some five hundred years, while Penvalle got quietly madder and more twisted in the background, never once thinking he might be king. It was not until the last three decades or so that things became less stable.”
I frowned, relaxing my crossed arms. One had to wonder what caused that shift—if anything. If perhaps it had not just been the natural cycle of things. “So your grandmother demanded my mother killed? Why?”
“Again, not killed, merely taken,” he said vehemently. “If the queen wanted your mother killed, it would have been far easier for me to do it right there in the street. I would’ve preferred that to dragging her, screaming, all the way back to Aftermath.”
I reeled back. “That’s where you went?”
He nodded, and my heart began to pound.
I hadn’t known for sure what happened to her, and I couldn’t imagine that Scion would have answered me if I’d asked up until recently—very recently. Something seemed to have changed with him, and it could not just be that he seemed to be at least somewhat attracted to me. No one changed this much this quickly over sex alone, which meant this was probably some new trap I had not yet worked out.
Before I could put any of that into words, a horrifying idea occurred to me, driving all else from my mind. “She wasn’t turned into an afflicted?”
Scion grimaced. “Not that I’m aware of.”
That was not a no. Oh gods…what if she’d been one of the ones in the woods? Or was still there now? What if her body had decomposed, but she’d turned into endless, static noise like all the other angry, afflicted spirits?
“Take a breath, rebel,” Scion said, putting his hands gently on my shoulders.
“Do not be nice to me,” I snapped. “I do not have the time nor the energy to sort out what game you are trying to play.”
“Fine.” His lip curled, but he did not remove his hands. “I’ll spit on your face later if you like.”
I choked on a laugh, if only because it was such a shockingly out-of-character thing to say—and worse, he had to be completely serious.
At the very least, it snapped me out of the spiral that threatened to consume me and brought me back to the moment. “Do you know why she was taken? What did your grandmother want?”
He thought for a moment, eyes darting up as if he were searching for a memory. “She’d had a dream about the fall of Nightshade. A nightmare, I believe it was.”
I could have groaned. I was so sick of thinking about prophecies and dreams and seers. It was like some large puzzle, slightly out of focus, where everyone had a piece except me. “And what did she see?”
“After that nightmare, she sent us to find women born on the day that Nightshade fell. Your mother had just recently escaped from the palace, and I was sent to retrieve her.”
My heartbeat sped up, the wheels in my mind turning. I remembered less than I would have liked about the days, even hours, leading up to our leaving the place. It was slipping away with time, leaving only the most poignant moments behind, but I would have given almost anything to know exactly what caused us to leave. “You were sent to find us, you mean.”
“No.” His eyes narrowed. “Just your mother. I was told to find the escaped servant woman with the red hair who was born on the day of the fall. I went to find her…I didn’t know she had children.”
My heart beat, if possible, even faster. “But my mother wasn’t born on the day that Nightshade fell.” I widened my eyes, urging him to realize the impossibility of that. “She would have been far too old, and in any case, she wasn’t born in Elsewhere at all. She was a changeling child from the human lands.”
“Then—” His eyes widened, and I watched as realization dawned on his face, followed almost immediately by horror and, I was fairly sure, embarrassment. “I didn’t realize, but I take ityouwere born on the day of the eruption.”
I let out a frustrated breath, nodding. “Yes, but not only me, my lord. My sister as well, so we may never know who you were meant to take.”
A cold numbness washed over me. Somehow, the knowledge that this had been an error all along made it worse. Now, rather than feeling relief or closure, I felt only guilt. Renewed anger. What would have been different if it was me instead? What had happened in Aftermath?
I shook my head, my red curls bouncing wildly. I could not let myself descend too far into despair, or I would never surface. Since we’d been in Inbetwixt, and perhaps slightly before, I’d not thought much about all the horrid things that I usually spent so often ruminating on in the quiet hours of solitude spent within the castle. The reason was clear enough: I’d had company. Something to do. The hunt and talking with Bael had been distraction enough, but then the attack, and now constantly fighting with Scion in between plotting. It was…if not pleasant, then at least different. I hated to admit that I was feeling more myself these days, as that would mean admitting that I might not despise the company of the Everlasts as much as I’d thought—as much as I wanted to.
I uncrumpled the paper in my hand and stared at it again, this time with all the clarity brought on by pain. “What I don’t understand is why my mother? Why would anyone choose to sign her name? Was taunting me really so important?”
Scion frowned but did not protest my change of subject. “May I see?”
I handed him the paper he’d already looked over and watched carefully again as his eyes darted back and forth, reading. “I don’t see any handwriting that looks the same. They are all different, so they—”
“What?” I asked eagerly as he broke off, his eyes widening. “Did you see something?”
The prince made a furious sound in the back of his throat, so abrupt I jumped back in alarm. “That fucking traitorous prick.”
