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“I hope you stay, so that I can tell you about who he was, not just what the Carlin did to him.” Sloga gave me a mournful smile. “So that you can learn about the brilliant, beautiful man who was wild and carefree and loved so deeply. You deserve to know him. And he deserves to have you know him.”
My throat ached too fiercely for me to speak, so I nodded once before making my way out. It was dusk when I stepped outside, the air chilled, the trees becoming obscured by lilac haze. The sweat dampening my face began to cool as I climbed onto the top of the sidhe and sat between the saplings. The dusk chorus of birds broke the silence with familiar trills and chirps. Part of me wanted to shift into the blackbird and join them.
Faulis. His name echoed in my head. I had asked my mother repeatedly about my father when I was a little boy, but quickly learned that it was safer not to.
I had thought I’d already seen and experienced the true depths of her cruelty. I had thought she couldn’t possibly be any worse than what I had witnessed. How one person could destroy so many others out of nothing but pure avarice and spite… it seemed unthinkable.
Faulis. I wanted to know him. I wanted to know who he had been before the Carlin broke him. I wanted to know who I might have become if he had been able to raise me, to care for me, to guide me through life and shape me into someone like him.
The trees in front of me grew blurry and unfocused, and then hot tears were streaming down my face, and I wept for the father I’d never had a chance to know.
“Lonan.”
I watched Sloga’s beastly head emerge from the sidhe beneath me a while later, when it was fully dark. Idony appeared behind him, carrying her empty basket.
“I’m going now.” She looked up at me, green eyes gleaming in the dark. “I’ll be back tomorrow, but if you are already gone… good luck with whatever it is you came here to do, prince.”
I nodded, but couldn’t bring myself to speak. I had cried until I felt like an empty husk, and now my face was dry, eyes swollen and itchy. After murmuring a few words to Sloga, she patted his arm and walked away, her boots crunching through twigs and leaves. Once her footsteps had faded, Sloga clambered up onto the mound and sat beside me.
“I am sorry to tell you such painful things.” His deep, rumbling voice was laden with grief.
I shook my head. “I wanted to know. I’m glad I know.”
“And I am sorry that I couldn’t tell you sooner. As Idony said, there are rules we must follow.” He inhaled deeply and tilted his deer-like face to the dark sky. “It is a funny thing, being what I am. It feels selfish to say it, but… I’ve often wished that I was simply one of you.”
I stared into the darkness, my voice wooden when I asked, “Why couldn’t you tell me sooner?”
He sighed. “I’m afraid it’s not an answer you will like, nor is it one I like giving. It is simply the truth. Some things are meant to happen when they happen and not sooner.”
After a pause, my brows twitched into a frown. “Surely things happen when someone, or something, makes them happen.”
“Yes, and all those things are woven together in a complicated tapestry of fate and free will. One tiny pull of a thread and the whole thing unravels.”
“How can that be true if free will plays a part?”
“There are moments that are already woven, and then there are the moments that lead to them. Every choice made by every single fae is one of many they can make, but all those choices lead to the same end result. We Higher Spirits can only see the moments that already exist in the future. We can’t see the ones that are at the mercy of the actions of those involved in them. But the difference is that we have the power to unravel the entire tapestry with our choices.”
I frowned harder. “What do you mean?”
“I know what you came here to do, Lonan.” His voice was sombre. “I know what awaits you. That is a moment already woven into the tapestry. And if I had told you what the Carlin did to your father before now…” His broad shoulders rose and fell with a sigh. “The entire thing would have unravelled.”
I was struggling to keep up after everything I had learned, and on so little food and sleep. I rubbed my tight face, feeling exhausted. “Why?”
“Because it would have given you a new set of choices that would have stopped many other woven moments from happening. I can’t tell you how, because I can’t see the choices that weren’t or haven’t been made. But every time I thought about telling you in the past, I could see that if I did, your Ash wouldn’t have shed his mortal skin. If he hadn’t shed his mortal skin, he wouldn’t have become seelie king. And if Ash hadn’t become seelie king, you wouldn’t become unseelie king. And so the whole tapestry unravels.”
I wasn’t sure I completely understood, but I was too weary to keep thinking so hard about fate and free will, about the moments in my future that were unchangeable no matter what I did. I wrapped my arms around my legs and rested my chin on my knees. “I see.”
Sloga inhaled the cool night air deeply, stretching out his long, spindly fingers in front of him. A moth landed on one of them, flexing its pale wings for a few seconds before taking off again.
“For a while now, I have felt compelled to tell you these things, which means it is important for you to know them. To know them now. And there are other things I now feel compelled to tell you, but they will be just as painful to hear. Are you willing to hear them?”
I was quite sure that nothing could be more painful than what I’d already heard. “Yes.”
“Alright,” Sloga said softly, then took a breath. “After Ankou visited to let me know that he had led Faulis to the afterlife, I went to the palace to try and retrieve his body. By the time I got there, you had been born, just a touch early, on the start of the Bitter Months.”
I shuddered with horror. “I was born the night she murdered him?”
“Yes. When she heard that I was waiting outside the palace, she left you with a wet nurse and came to me.” His long fingers curled up into loose fists. “The smug look on her face when she led me to his body… I have never before felt that kind of hate inside of me. That kind of anger. I was so unspeakably angry. And when I saw him, when I saw what she’d done to him…”
