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“But the queen didn’t want that,” I guessed.
“No, she didn’t,” Cari said. “When the queen put me in charge of the monsters, one of those palace diviners was still alive. She had been turned into a monster. I saw the truth in her memories. The queen killed all the other diviners and turned her. I guess she was a friend so the queen didn’t want to kill her like she did the others.”
“Why would she kill the others?” I asked.
“To keep the prophecy a secret,” Cari replied. “Once she took care of the diviners, she plotted to make sure the prophecy could never be realized.”
“She tried to alter the paths?” I asked. I remembered from Feremir’s divination lessons that paths to the future constantly changed. It was possible to change the future once a diviner had a vision or a prophecy, but since you could never know how your actions could alter the future, you could just as easily be working to fulfill a prophecy while trying to avoid it.
Cari nodded. “The diviners thought the next ruler of the Seelie would be a double. The queen believed them. At the time, there were lots of double fae living in her lands. Unseelie and Seelie considered themselves two different folks, but they did not think of each other as enemies. They hadn’t for centuries. The historical animosity between them was dwindling. The queen didn’t like that. And now that she knew of the prophecy, she decided to make sure it could never come to pass.”
“She went after the double fae living in her lands, first,” Cari continued. “She turned the Seelie against them, blamed them for everything. At first, no one believed the lies she spread via her minstrels and pamphlets. They had been living together for centuries. The two realms had good trade relations. But the sentiment was already there. The history of the two realms is not full of love. The problem was, they no longer perceived the Unseelie as evil. They were just different.”
I nodded. It was crazy to think she could get rid of all the double fae by simply turning the Seelie against them. But I also lived in the present and not the past. I knew she had succeeded, I just didn’t know how she had done it.
“She created her monsters,” Cari said. “She imprisoned double fae and then created the first monsters to ever roam the realms. She sent her monsters to wreak havoc in her own lands.”
“She used them against her own,” I said.
My hands were getting colder now, but the dropping temperature was not the only cause.
Cari nodded. “It was the perfect plan. Instead of sending the monsters to the Unseelie, she sent them to attack her own lands. Once the Seelie suffered long enough against the monster attacks, she convinced them that Unseelie had created the monsters. The Seelie believed her, not easily, but forcefully. Only then she could declare war against the enemy she had created.”
“Fifty years ago,” Cari continued. “The two realms waged war. The Unseelie did not know why the war happened, but the queen’s monsters came after them just the same. The queen kept gathering the doubles and the Unseelie living in her lands. She killed some and turned the others, creating even more monsters. She rejected the calls for peace. She did not agree to meet with the Unseelie King. Until she was sure that all the doubles in her lands were either dead or turned, she did not stop.”
“How could she know that?” I asked. “How could she tell who is a double and who is not?”
“In the past, she used the records she already had about the doubles living in her lands,” Cari said. “The more important question is, how does she know that now? Because she knows. She knew to call you to the trials, and even you didn’t know that you were a double.”
I remembered the amulet that Allison had. She had been captured by the queen only when she had stopped wearing it and had given it to her son, to protect him. Thinking about Allison hurt. Ilerd's anger and grief were like a sharp piece of glass I had swallowed.
For now, I tried to push all that away.
“Divination,” I said. “The queen might be using diviners to spot the doubles.”
“That makes sense,” Cari said after a brief pause. “She has an army of them, living with her in the palace. Your brother is one of them. She uses those diviners to scour the realm and find the double fae living underneath her palm. For years, there were nearly none. But this time, she found you.”
“Is that why she chose me for the trials?” I asked. “Because I’m a double?”
“Yes,” Cari said. “I was getting to it. After she had all the double fae killed or turned, she agreed to make peace with the Unseelie. Her terms were rough, but she had won the war thanks to her monsters. The Unseelie could not resist.”
King Duncan’s father... He was the one who made the agreement in the first place.
“The trials...” I mumbled. “She demanded the trials.”
“She also demanded that the Unseelie and the Seelie don’t mix,” Cari continued. “She made sure no one could travel between the lands nor marry one another. She forbade the Seelie from traveling to the human realm to prevent them from running into Unseelie there. She separated the two kinds once and for all. And yes, she demanded the trials. Every ten years, ten candidates chosen by her would fight for their lives at the arena and only two would become champions.”
“Why?” I asked. “If she didn’t want Unseelie and Seelie to mix, why would she demand the trials, where the two fae meet every ten years?”
“Because she didn’t want to rule as a tyrant for too long and she needed a legitimate way to capture any new doubles that might have come into existence,” Cari said. “Like you. Or Dearen.”
“Dearen is a double?” I asked. “But he doesn’t have double skill.”
“Oh, he does,” Cari said. “The only way for him to conjure doors into solid walls is to use his earth magic to push away the stone. Kieran has conjuring, but he can’t do something like that, can he?”
“But...” I hesitated. Could it be true? I didn’t know the intricacies of conjuring to know for sure, but I trusted Cari.
“Dearen is a double,” Cari said. “And you are too. The next ruler of the realm was called a candidate since they could not be sure who it was exactly until the prophecy was fulfilled. But they did know some traits of the next ruler. The queen thinks a double fae will take her throne. But I don’t suppose all the trial candidates are double fae, not directly at least. Most have grandparents or great-grandparents who were Unseelie. And some, like Fiona and Kieran, are chosen to make sure the Unseelie keep their heads low. Then, there are those she chooses as the winners. They are not double fae. She knows, from the start, who will win the trials. Even if you had decided to pass through the bridge, you would not be able to pass through the gate. The gate knows who can win and who cannot.”
