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But I was still related to her. She was still my birth mother.
Something wonderful happened today, another entry read. Mother has guards patrolling the queenswood now so I can’t play my games with the common Folk there. So I walked further than normal, unable to sit around the palace and look at her pathetic, doting face.
I came across a boar. A great, monstrous boar with a voice. He told me his name is Triath, and with a few choice words and the apple from my satchel, he was under my spell just like all the other sad little creatures that can’t resist the allure of my words.
I ended up telling him about Mother. He was a good listener. He is already smitten, saying that he could listen to my voice for aeons, that there is no sweeter sound. I teased that when I became queen I would make him the king of all boars, and he seemed to like that, because it was then that he told me the wondrous thing.
He said that the venom of the great serpent Gadleg on the Isle of Hybra has the power to kill the seelie monarch. I had never heard this before—I am quite sure it hasn’t been recorded anywhere—and I don’t know how he knew it. I suspect he is something more than just a talking boar. Not a Higher Spirit, but not just one of the Folk. Something other, like Fioda’s heifer mate. Regardless, he will already do anything for me, so I suppose it doesn’t matter. He will be a good ally when I am queen.
Now I have a way to take my crown without waiting for that old sow to die in her sleep.
I blinked hard, trying to focus my vision, rereading sections again and again because the words were a little blurred and hard to read in her overly ornate scrawl. I hurriedly flipped to the next page.
I have journeyed into the forest and made my way north to the shore. A solitary fae who lives in a sad little shack and spends his days fishing told me that Hybra will be visible in two years’ time.
Just two more years until I take my rightful place on the throne. They stretch endlessly before me, but at least it gives me time to plan. Time to find a group of common Folk I can convince to make the treacherous journey across the fingerstones—not that that will be hard, of course. Getting Folk to do whatever I want is child’s play. Some honeyed words, a furtive kiss in the dark, and they are eating out of my hand, just like Triath.
I was clutching the journal tightly as I finished reading the entry. This was becoming too familiar, too similar to what I had done. I didn’t want to keep reading, but at the same time, I had to.
I flicked past a chunk of the book, skipping over the two years the Brid had spent waiting until she could kill her mother. I saw the King of Boars’ name appear several more times as I skimmed the pages, more furious ranting and raving about the former queen, more condescending, vitriolic words about the seelie Folk.
Then I reached an entry that mentioned Hybra and Gadleg.
They have returned from Hybra. Well, only one of the seven Folk I sent there has returned, but he has it. He has Gadleg’s venom. Oh, it looks so beautiful in its little vial—thick, jewel-green liquid gold. I can already picture it coursing through Mother’s veins.
The fae who made it back said he barely returned with his life, but that the thought of never seeing my beauty again, never hearing the sweetness of my voice, drove him to stay alive and complete this task for me. I humoured him by listening to his little story before I killed him. He said one of their troop perished on the fingerstones before they’d even reached the isle. Two succumbed to Hybra’s wonders, following the whispering voices into the trees and vanishing.
The other three fell under Gadleg’s spell. The fae still seemed horrified by what he had witnessed—almost broken, weak-minded thing that he was. He said she slithered down from her tower and simply opened her terrible mouth wide, and he watched in horror as his three remaining companions walked willingly into her belly. He said they didn’t speak a word. They appeared to be hypnotised.
I pretended to take pity on him as he sobbed, telling me that the only way he resisted was by thinking of me and only of me—of my face, my voice, how wonderful it would be when I became queen and he would stand by my side as consort. And as the last fae walked into her gaping maw, he saw a single drop of venom fall from Gadleg’s golden fang and land in the cupped leaf of a wild plant on the forest floor.
His hands were shaking terribly, he told me, as he tipped it into the tiny vial and fled. When I laughed, he gave me such a betrayed look that my patience finally wore out. That look was still painted across his face as his head fell to the ground.
I cannot believe that I have it. I have Gadleg’s venom. My crown is finally within reach.
My hands were trembling as I flipped to the next page. It was the final entry.
It is done.
I can hardly write, my hands are shaking so much from the excitement. It was so terribly hard not to laugh when I told Mother that I wished to share a meal with her. She looked so happy—we hadn’t shared a meal together in years. She just didn’t know that it would be her last, and in the end, she didn’t even get to eat it. I must remember to tell Triath that detail so we can laugh about it together.
I offered to pour her wine for her, playing the doting daughter, and managed to tip the venom into her goblet without her seeing. She was dead before she’d taken a single bite of her dinner.
The most wondrous feeling filled me after the life drained out of her. Like warm, spiced mulled wine in the Bitter Months, coating my teeth and tongue and throat, filling my belly. It was glorious.
I plucked the crown from her head and put it on just for a laugh, then sat down to eat my dinner in peace. The young server fae who came to clear our plates started screaming the moment she saw her former queen slumped in her seat, face in her untouched dinner. I told the fae to shut up and clean up the mess, then poured the rest of Mother’s tainted wine onto the floor so I could take the goblet with me as a keepsake.
Already, I can feel the strength coursing through my veins. The power. It’s like a living thing inside of me, a constant companion I have always yearned for. But I can feel it trying to make me soft and weak like she was. Trying to temper me, like she always did. I can feel it trying to change me. I won’t let it.
I am the queen now.
I swallowed, closing the book and sitting there in silence for a long time. So the Brid had killed her mother, just like I’d done. She’d used Gadleg’s venom, just like I had.
I was just like her.
Feeling sick to my stomach, I opened the journal and read the last entry again, almost hoping it would say something different this time. Something that meant I hadn’t done exactly the same thing she had. Something that would reassure me that I wasn’t destined to become as evil as she’d been.
I can feel it trying to make me soft and weak like she was. Trying to temper me, like she always did. I can feel it trying to change me.
