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“Can you tell me what this is about?” he asked.
I didn’t know the answer to that. I turned to Aislinn.
“Yes,” she replied. “The queen has found a former monster in the Seelie Realm. She ordered one of her lords to go and capture them. We don’t know which former monster it is, but we need to act quickly and rearrange all the monster locations to keep her from them.”
For the first time since we'd entered his room, I saw a flicker of emotion on Lord Aster's face. Surprisingly, it wasn't fear or anxiety.
He became very angry.
“Of course, she did,” he started pacing the room. “That vile, wretched tyrant! She thinks she can just take us.”
“Are you a former monster too?” I asked.
“No,” he replied, calming down a bit as though he had just realized we were still in the room. “My son is.”
“Is he here?” I asked.
“No,” he replied. “Once he turned back to fae, we took him out of the city to hide him in case something like this happened. I always thought that despicable woman would be able to find him. Of course, she wouldn’t dare ask me what had happened to my son when he turned into a monster. No. She didn’t ask me anything, even though she knew exactly what had happened.”
“So you know that she is the one making the monsters?” I asked.
“I do,” he replied. “She turned my son and sent him to our room to kill me and my wife. I woke up in the middle of the night to a monster in our room, in my haste, I pushed him off me and pinned him to the wall using my air. I was about to kill my own son when my wife recognized his eyes.”
That sounded odd. Everyone knew that all the monsters had the same red eyes. But I decided it wouldn’t be polite to question him about it.
“That’s horrible!” Aislinn said.
“It was,” Lord Aster nodded. “We had to lock our son into our dungeon. Then, I started asking around. I discovered that the culprits used the mirror in his room as a portal. That’s how they transformed him from afar. I paid a portaler a great sum to track the connection. We had never used his mirror as a portal, so he was able to locate it back to the palace. I knew at once that it had to be the queen. After all, I had vehemently objected to her policies on the human population of Terlyth and I was the only one in her way to implement certain measures. That suspicion was enough to make me reach out to the resistance. And they confirmed my suspicions. That was when I joined the resistance.”
“And now, the resistance needs your help,” Aislinn said.
“I am part of the resistance, girl,” Lord Aster seemed offended. “It’s not help anymore. It’s my duty. Come with me.”
He walked past us quickly and went out of the room. Aislinn and I hurried after him.
Lord Aster did not look back as he walked in the long hallways of his townhouse. As we followed him, I noticed that some of the paintings on the walls had to have been taken off recently, leading to abrupt changes of color on the stone.
Perhaps he wasn’t as wealthy as I had thought initially. Or maybe he was willingly sacrificing his resources to support the resistance, even if it meant losing money.
“When my son transformed back into fae, he insisted on leaving to join the rest of the monster folk,” he started talking as we rushed to catch up to him. “He’s nine, so I refused. But most of the monster folk did not return to Terlyth after becoming fae again. Yeen is one of the few who did.”
“Yeen?” I asked.
“The girl who let you in,” Lord Aster replied.
“She’s a former monster too?” Aislinn asked.
“Yes,” Lord Aster said as he stopped in front of a door. We were still on the same level, so as he opened the door and let us into another study, I was surprised that there were two studies on the same floor. “She resists the urge to join the others so that she can help the resistance. I applaud her for it, apparently, it’s difficult to resist the call of their new hero.”
This new study had a large mirror. When Yeen entered the room behind us, I realized she had been following. I felt uneasy discussing her as if she were not present in the room, yet she showed no signs of offense as she met my gaze with an expressionless face.
“You want me to set up a meeting?” Yeen asked.
“Yes, please,” Lord Aster replied, standing before the mirror. “And once that’s done, I want you to leave at once. You might be the one they’re hoping to seize.”
Yeen nodded.
She went to the mirror and stared at it.
