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Idony snorted. “Balor has fallen from grace, it seems. Once he recovered from whatever injury he sustained that day, he began spending all his time in the forest. We see him leaving the palace every afternoon and returning at dawn. He is rarely around the Carlin anymore. Prince Cethlen has become her closest confidant, but apparently she mostly stays in her rooms.”
“How do you know that?” I asked sharply.
“All the staff gossip. Her personal attendants say that she seems almost… frail now. Lacklustre.” After a pause, Idony added, “The Folk have all begun placing bets on who will succeed her.”
I looked at her and said nothing. But after a few moments, a sly smile curved her lips.
“I think I might put my bet on you.”
“Really,” I said without inflection.
She chuckled. “I’d win big if I’m right. Most are still betting on Balor, or Cethlen, as he seems the most sane. No one thinks it will be Bres now, and you weren’t even in the running, thanks to you being gone. But now…” She cocked her head, watching me closely. “I think I might put my money on unseelie having a crow king.”
“None of us can control who takes the crown.” My voice was flat. Wooden.
“No, but it will be one of you. And it seems like it will be soon.”
I gave her a hard look, then glanced back at unseelie land behind me. I still had no plan for killing the Carlin. I had spent the entire journey, as I traipsed through the forest, trying to think of the perfect first order to give her after using her true name—one that would make it impossible for her to retaliate, to worm her way out of it, to somehow kill me before I could kill her.
I had to get into the palace first, though. And then I had to find a way past the charms protecting my mother’s rooms.
Or try and draw her out of them.
“Do you want to know what I think?”
I refocused on Idony. “No.”
“Well, I’m going to tell you anyway.” She sniffed, then narrowed her eyes at me and nodded at the swords on my back. “I think you are here to kill her.”
“Oh?” I drawled. “And why do you think that?”
She snorted. “Why else would you come back? And wouldn’t it be such a fitting end for the Carlin? Her life taken by the very son she moulded into her own assassin. The black sheep of the family rising up to take the crown.” Idony shrugged. “Would make a good story at least. One for the ages.”
My lip curled as I muttered, “I don’t care about making a good story for the ages.”
“Perhaps not.” She paused, then cautiously offered, “Would be a satisfying way to avenge your father though, wouldn’t it?”
I froze. My entire body prickled as I stared at her. Swallowing, I quietly asked, “What do you know about my father?”
I barely managed to keep the desperation from my voice. I had never been told anything about my father—anything. The only thing of his I’d had was the ring I’d given Ash. The ring that was now stuck on the finger of Ash’s severed arm, hanging in my mother’s throne room.
He had died before I was born. I wasn’t a fool—I knew my mother had killed him. But I didn’t know why. I didn’t know who he’d been, other than a master spiritsmith. I didn’t know why she had been with him in the first place. Why she’d had me.
Whether he had wanted me, or had even known that I’d been growing in the Carlin’s womb when he lost his life.
“I knew him.” All hints of mirth or slyness were gone from Idony’s face. She looked sombre now. “We were friends.”
My throat bobbed again. “What did my mother do to him?”
She sighed, suddenly looking sad as she glanced down at her basket. Then she looked up at me again, her eyes showing no hint of malice or calculation.
“I can take you to someone who will tell you everything.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Lonan
I was tense as Idony led me through the forest, my mind churning, desperate for answers.
