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“My mother stole Ash after his twenty-first birthday and trapped him on unseelie in the hope that being among the Folk would make his mortal side wither away and die,” I said woodenly as shame wriggled through me, cold and slimy. “She had already spent years searching for Prince Nua but could never find him. Ash was the backup—the seelie queen’s poorly kept secret. The unwitting, illegitimate half-mortal child on the other side of the forest, unprotected and unguarded and unhidden.
“He left home for a while,” I added absently, running my thumb along the arrow in my hand as I remembered making that long journey night after night just to catch brief glimpses of Ash through his window. Seeing him hunched over a desk, frowning down at books. Lying on his bed watching moving images on what the mortals called a television. Eating and laughing and getting drunk with his friends while I hovered outside alone in the dark, watching in secret. “A few years, actually, when he was about eighteen. I knew where he was. I followed him. I visited him. But she never asked, so of course I never told her.”
“Why did you follow him?” Sanya asked warily.
Humiliation made my face burn. “I already… cared for him,” I said, voice stiff. “I had watched him since we were boys. But when he returned home, and the Carlin realised…” I exhaled sharply. “She started planning.”
“I don’t understand. Why would the Carlin want the future seelie king to shed his mortal skin? Did she want King Ash on the throne opposite her specifically?”
“I don’t think she ever even considered the possibility of Ash becoming king,” I said woodenly, anger on his behalf simmering in my belly. “She barely regarded him as a person. She wanted his mortal skin gone so she could siphon the Brid’s power from him and become strong enough to stop the Mild Months from coming. She wanted seelie as well as unseelie.”
“Gods,” Sanya breathed. From the corner of my eye, I saw her shudder.
“She almost managed it,” I continued, trying not to picture that awful night. Seeing Ash chained up in her throne room. Watching him die. Being unable to do anything. “But Ash escaped. He is far stronger than she anticipated.”
“Thank the gods.” Sanya paused, then wondered aloud, “Why hasn’t the Luad told us this?”
That jarred me out of the painful memories. I frowned at her. “Why would he? All it would do is cause panic and sow greater dissent. The unseelie Folk aren’t to blame for my mother’s tyrannical aspirations. Telling the seelie that their king was held captive by her could start a war.”
“I suppose,” Sanya began doubtfully, “but it would certainly help instil greater confidence in him.”
I froze. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Not that—It’s not that we aren’t loyal to him,” she said quickly. “We are. All the guards are. It’s just… he’s so young. He was half mortal. It’s more that… many of us are waiting to see if he can prove himself. If he can live up to the promises he made us at his coronation—making it a better place for the seelie. Abolishing the horrific things the Brid carried out in the name of ceremony.”
“I think he’s already proven that, has he not?” I said coldly. “You’ve seen for yourself how hard he is working.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Quite honestly, many of the guards are hardened bastards who are impossible to please. Some of them are already calling him the Oath Maker as a snub. They question whether he’s making promises he can’t keep with all this open court business.”
I clenched my jaw, levelling her with a cold look. “Tell me who.”
For a moment, fear flared in her eyes, along with a hefty dose of regret for telling me such a thing. “I’m sorry, but no.”
“I’ll find out,” I muttered darkly, more to myself than to her.
“Unquestioned faith in a ruler is not something to encourage, wouldn’t you agree?” she asked hurriedly. “I don’t think killing off anyone who dares speak less than reverently about the king would do him any favours. He seems to want to make a true difference. He will prove it himself. Without bloodshed. The bloodshed he vowed to abolish,” she added.
I clenched my jaw, turning back to the target and saying nothing, because she was right. Killing was my mother’s answer to any question over her position as ruler. That didn’t mean it would be Ash’s answer too.
But it was the only solution I’d been taught. Perhaps I was destined to become just like my mother when I was unseelie ruler, I wondered absently as I fired another arrow and missed the target completely. I was conditioned, after all. Trained to obey.
Nothing more than a trained dog.
“So that is what led to you being here with the king,” Sanya said. “You already cared for him when your mother took him to unseelie, so you followed him when he escaped.”
I didn’t bother telling her any more details of everything that happened in between, because the memories of those bleak, endless months when Ash didn’t remember me were too painful to recall.
“So you chose him over your mother,” Sanya continued. “Over your court.”
I gave a slight shrug, gritting my teeth in frustration when I fired the arrow and it splintered the very edge of the target’s wooden support. “If that is the way you want to see it.”
“What other way is there?”
“Ash was… inevitable. It wasn’t so much a conscious choice. He never made me choose, and my mother would have never given me the freedom to. Ash was just… my path.”
“So you’re saying the Higher Spirits led you to him.” Her tone was slightly teasing. “No heretics here, eh? He’s your fate.”
“I don’t care how our paths are decided or who gets to decide them,” I told her honestly. “I only know that Ash is mine.”
