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“Claws and feathers. Hooves and horns.” Draven’s expression was sardonic. “There was a time not so long ago when you were terrified of displaying such features yourself.”
“That was...” I stopped. “That is true. But now I see people around me who bear them and I can look at you without flinching. There is a strangeness to the differences, yes, but also beauty, too.” I wondered if I was saying too much.
“I agree. And yet, such things became the basis for cracks in the unity of the fae. Oh, it was a pretext at first. Nothing more. Bitter feuds were exacerbated by it though. Houses that had once merged our features began to specifically breed them out through careful marriage alliances. Two groups slowly emerged. More different and more divided. There were the fae you see traces of in Eskira. The fae you have in your very own blood. The Valtain.”
“Brilliant colors of hair. Beautiful shades of skin. At least, I have always thought so.” I touched my hair self-consciously. My silver strands were muted, but I would take them over the former dull gray any day.
He nodded. “Because you are not your dimwitted, narrow-minded, rainbow-hating brother.”
“Your powers must have differed, too?” I calculated. “Was that part of it?”
Draven shrugged. “The Valtain fae tend towards the elemental more than we do. But it was all an excuse for enmity and war. Just as with humans. When humans fight, do you even have the excuse of varying appearances? You all look the same to us.”
I opened and closed my mouth again, then thought for a moment. “Historically, humans have fought wars based on even more subtle, stupid differences, it’s true.”
“What matters is there was a war. The Siabra had left Valtain and yet they couldn’t let matters go. The Valtain fae felt much the same. Across two continents, they spread seeds of hate.”
“Until the seeds of hate fell upon their children,” I finished.
He nodded. “My father chose to do something unspeakable. He thought it would put an end to things once and for all.” I supposed it had in a terrible, terrible way. “I would not have done the same.”
“But your brother would have?” I guessed. “And that was why you killed him? And... something to do with Lyrastra? He was going to hurt her? Why?”
“No. That was much later. Lyrastra was his wife. Tabar believed she had failed him.”
I had forgotten Lyrastra was his sister-in-law. She had been married to a man who already seemed unspeakably vile to me. “How? How could she have failed him?”
For a moment, I thought he would not answer.
Then, “Simply because she did not bear him a living child.”
I stared without comprehension. “And so, he what...? Was going to kill her for that? Is that the kind of thing your people usually do? Murder their spouses for failure to be fertile?”
Monsters. The word echoed in my head. Monstrous.
“At times, in the past, yes. We are not a gentle people, Morgan. We have always had our own rules. You may find they differ from the ones you are used to considerably. Please notice I do not say that is a good thing, nor that we are better than you are.”
I was beginning to understand the other things Crescent had said.
“You can’t have children,” I said slowly. “That is the curse that was put upon you.”
Draven nodded. “Very rarely. And when a child is born, it rarely lives past its first year.”
“And yet your brother would have punished his wife for failing to bear him an heir?” I suddenly felt more sympathy for Lyrastra than I had thought possible.
“She had delivered ten stillborn children uncomplaining,” Draven said softly. “And she would have gone to her death, silent and still uncomplaining.”
Silent and uncomplaining did not sound like the Lyrastra I knew, but I said nothing. I believed him.
“And yet now she hates you? Even though you saved her life and were banished in the process?”
A dark look flickered over Draven’s face. “It’s complicated. As the crown prince and heir to the empire, Tabar had the right to do as he saw fit. Even if it meant killing his wife and taking another. By robbing Lyrastra of her death, I robbed her of an honorable way out of an impossible situation.”
I stared speechless. “But she stillhasher life. She owes you everything. And despite all that, she can’t show you an ounce of gratitude?”
Draven grimaced. “Gratitude... I’m not sure Lyrastra has that in her nature. But no, she was not grateful. At least, not at the time. You see, like all of us, she had become used to the way things were done, wrong and backwards though it may seem to you and I now. When I killed her husband, she believed she had lost all dignity. Nor can she ever remarry for under Siabran law, a man or woman mated to a prince of the royal blood can never take another. I doomed her to loneliness.”
“That’s ridiculous,” I said at last. “All of it. That she should have to suffer if she wished to marry, but also that you doomed her to loneliness. She can still have lovers, friends. If she is childless, well, so is everyone else around her. She’s not alone in her plight. She might find other things to occupy her time than anger. Other hobbies and pursuits.”
