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“Once, we were ruled by a queen—fairly, they say. A little over a thousand years ago, she had to ride to war against her eldest child, who wanted to claim her power. And she died.”
I don’t miss how the stars in his eyes dim at those words.
“She named an heir, so her firstborn and his acolytes hunted her down, along with all of his siblings, convinced he could rule if no other child of Morrigan lived. But when came the time to take the high throne of Ilvaris, he too was killed. And so the story is told through the land.”
It’s strangely familiar to me, although I’ve never heard it.
Then it comes to me.
The song.
The damnable song that called to me for days before I was brought here.
I remember some of the lyrics Cissa’s enchanting voice had sung.
Tall is the tree,
Gold is the wine,
And both rest by Queen Mor’s side,
Her tomb covered in vine.
“What does any of that have to do with me?” I sound testy to my own ears.
I’ve had enough of stories. I want a straight answer now. And if I sound peevish, it’s because I look like a blue-haired Christmas elf.
Ryther isn’t done rehashing fairy history. “What the story doesn’t say is that the queen gave birth to a seventh child before heading to war—one she kept secret, as fairy newborns are weak and frail. And as the queen died, she made a single wish.”
I can’t stress how tired I am of hearing fucking fairy tales right now. But then again, I am talking to a bloody fairy prince or whatever, so I doubt I have a choice. Ryther’s lucky his voice is so damn magnetic, because I’m fairly certain I would have strangled him by now otherwise.
“The wish of a woman of such power is law in the land of the folk. So the child turned to stone until the day she’d be needed again, to take her place on the high throne of Ilvaris.”
“No.” Valdred’s word isn’t denial so much as shock. He shakes his head, and repeats it again. “No, you can’t mean that. We’d know. Someone would have heard.”
“Such a child would have been hunted,” Ryther continues, paying him no mind as those eerie eyes stay fixed on me. “If they’d known, the lords of the realm would have done everything in their power to destroy the stone. For that reason, one of the queen’s subjects, in on the secret, took it across the world to the mortal realms, knowing the little girl born under an ill-fated star would eventually awaken, and be drawn back where she belonged.”
I blink several times.
He can’t mean this. He can’t mean me.
I shake my head just like Valdred did moments ago. “This makes no sense.”
“No?” Ryther chuckles. “I don’t suppose there’s anything strange about you. You’re not restless and frustrated, wrestling with the knowledge that you’re meant for more than the mortals around you. Not quite fitting in the iron world. Seeing things that aren’t there, things that belong to the shadows of another world.”
He stares at me pointedly.
I remain silent.
“I don’t suppose you were sickly,” Ryther says, rather than asking. “Plagued by pain every day, because of all the accursed metal humans use all around you. I don’t suppose your very existence startles your healers, as you look like one of them but don’t function the same way. Too little blood. Stronger than you should be, for someone medically?—”
Incompatible with life.
That’s my diagnosis. My entire life laid bare. All the lies unraveling in the face of one mind-blowing truth that I am not ready to contemplate.
But it feels like the truth.
A scary, dreadful, dangerous truth.
