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Lonan
For the hundredth time, I reread Ash’s letter.
I miss you too, so much.
I’m sorry for all of it.
I’ll be with you as soon as I can, I promise. We’ll figure it out.
I’m glad she’s gone. Congratulations, Unseelie King.
Please don’t let it change you.
I love you.
The paper was crinkled from how often I had clutched it, rereading his words, letting them comfort me. I missed him so much. All I wanted was to have him here with me.
I understood better now why he hadn’t wanted me to leave seelie. I didn’t want to do any of this without him.
The last few days had been filled with meetings that were thankfully brief, but they never seemed to stop coming. The palace’s head cook, the chief spy, the royal treasurer, the head of the guards. I’d had the Carlin’s seamstress promptly removed from the palace. They had been somewhat close, and I’d never trusted her.
I despised being around so many people, but luckily Idony was willing and eager to take charge of what she could. Sloga had affectionately warned me that she could be quite bossy, but I didn’t mind it. Not at all. She told all the palace staff to come to her with any concerns or queries. She intercepted the Folk from the village who arrived to shower me with gifts in hopes of appeasing me. She found a new royal tailor for me—a large, quiet fae with a bushy red beard whose shop on the outskirts of the village had been failing because that prick, Caom, had spread rumours about the quality of his work.
I had taken to wearing my old black clothes again, my father’s neatly folded and stored away. But I had already asked my new tailor to make me some things that resembled them. Things made from something other than black cloth. I felt less like I needed to hide in the shadows now that my mother was gone. I didn’t want to hide in the shadows anymore.
I felt truly free, for the first time in my life.
Ash had said in his letter that he’d found out something about how the power affected a new monarch. He’d implored me to fight it if I felt it changing me. There had been a few moments when it had felt like ice was settling into my bones, trying to make me cold and hard and unforgiving, but the Carlin had taught me well how to shove back all of my emotions and not let them cloud my judgement.
I used that ability now to stop the power from making me like her. I drowned out that insidious coldness by letting myself feel in a way I never had before. I didn’t try to push down my emotions until I went numb or they manifested in damaging ways. I let myself feel all of it. Happiness as Sloga told me stories of my father. Grief as I mourned the fact that I never got to know him. Desperate longing as I lay in bed at night thinking of Ash.
My mind felt healthier. Overwhelmed at times, but healthier. For the first time, I was looking forward to the future.
Ash was right. We would figure it out together.
Sloga had returned to his sidhe the night before, saying he wanted to gather some things of my father’s for me to keep. I hadn’t had the strength to protest, even though I didn’t want to take his most cherished possessions from him. I was desperate to have more pieces of Faulis. To feel close to him in the only way I could for now.
To my horror, Ash’s severed arm had still been hanging in the throne room. A morbid, gruesome trophy of the Carlin’s brief victory over the seelie king. When Sloga had arrived the morning I sent him and Idony a message, he had carefully removed it from its post and laid it in a fur-lined box. I didn’t want to keep it, but my father’s ring was still sitting on one of the fingers, and they stilled curled into a fist when I tried to remove it, like they were unwilling to let it go.
I hoped seeing it wouldn’t cause Ash too much distress, but I suspected he would be the only one who could take the ring off. That, or I cut off the finger, but the thought of doing so was horrifying.
Raised voices from the entrance to the throne room made me lift my head, finally tearing my gaze from Ash’s letter. Idony was arguing with the head of staff, a tall, thin fae with greying hair pulled tightly back into a long plait.
She was tough and ruthlessly efficient. I had decided to keep her employed during my first meeting with her, when she had lifted her sharp chin in defiance and bluntly told me, “My staff are good and quiet and will stay out of your way. There is no reason for that to change. Treat us with a bit more respect than the Carlin and I daresay things will run even smoother around here.”
I appreciated anyone who didn’t automatically fear me. Her ability to feel fear had probably been destroyed by working for my mother for so long, and I wasn’t going to punish her for that.
“I know you said to speak to you about any issues,” Golra snapped at Idony, flinging her arm in my direction. “But the king is sitting right there, and I wish to speak with him myself. If I stand here and tell you, he’ll bloody well hear it anyway.”
I cleared my throat and called, “It’s fine. Come in, Golra.”
She shot Idony a triumphant look and smoothed down the front of her tunic, making her way towards me. “Appreciate it, King Lonan.”
As she stopped in front of me, I felt something ripple through the air. Something that made my hand tighten around the letter still clasped in it as I sat up straighter and went still.
It was like the pressure had changed on unseelie. Like something… foreign had stepped onto it. I frowned, trying to focus on the sensation, looking distractedly at Golra when she started talking.
“What would you like us to do with Cethlen’s hellhound, king?”
