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We were always going to end up here, on the brink of another war.One only one person can put a stop to it: the weak, unprepared girl in my bed who can’t so much as find the source of her inner power, like a six-year-old urchin.
I wish I could tell them how pointless this squabbling truly is. Her arrival marks the end of the world as we know it regardless; why battle over the ashes of what once was?
A dozen times, I’ve asked myself if I should end it. Twist her neck and call it a day. It would be a mercy killing. If she lives, she’ll suffer. She’ll bleed. She’ll scream for mercy, and be granted none. And then she’ll do it all over again every single day, for the good of Ilvaris. Such is the fate of the high queen, the one power capable and fated to fight both seelie and unseelie into submission every day, every hour. The power to contain the horrors asleep at the heart of our world.
I might have known the chit for the space of a moment, but I can already tell she’s ill-suited to ruling. She’s ill-suited to fighting.
But she’ll learn. She’ll change.She’ll have to.All of us were something else before duty came calling and either shaped us, or destroyed us.
Or she'll fail. No matter the outcome, she can be of use.
I can't afford to care. If she stands at the gates and dies, her sacrifice will be worth it. I'll make sure of it.
“Did I miss an invitation to this lovely meeting?” I ask lightly.
Never show concern. Never betray doubt.
Don’t give them any part of you to tear out, twig.
The voice comes to me unbidden. It’s one I haven’t allowed myself to think about in hundreds of years.
Shifting eyes that could be green, or blue, or the deepest of amber, and gold like the mines running under the court of bones, or even ink black, depending on who she was talking to. That little button mouth shaped like a cherry. Eyes of many shades, like the waters around the isle she and her kin called home, in another time, another age.
You’re a flightless crow. The predators will pluck your wings and crush your bones if they believe they can.
“Then what should I do? Pretend I’m not scared? Lie?”
The queen had smiled, ever so sweet.
By the time I knew her, age had already claimed all of her heart and most of her sanity. She was cold to all. There was no doubt in my mind that the only reason she called me to her Hollow court was because she, in her immense power and wisdom, could see a future where she’d need me.
Where she’d use me.
Lie or die, little twig.
I was too young to understand, but her advice saved my skin, and made me the man I am today.Powerful. Respected.
Alive.
I will tell you a secret, Aedron Ryther Crow. There will come a day when I’m no longer queen. When the lords of every single court are at each other’s throats again. There will be no one there to stop them from destroying our world and plunging us into the dark days, like our ancestors did. A day when all that stands between Ilvaris and its doom is you.
I’d shaken my head then. At ten, I couldn’t even imagine living to see another decade. I was the heir to the court of wings, and I could not fly.
I was nothing.
I was prey.
Do you know what you will do then, twiglet? The mad high queen had asked me in the shade of her woods. I didn’t know what to say, so I’d remained silent. Then she’d laughed. Me neither. You could very well save or destroy us all. Isn’t that just deliciously fun?
Many times over the next age have I thought that time might have come. The day I took the child to the ironworld, mere years later. The first time the eldritch came to our borders, in search of the primal powers, I stood in their path with my brother was certainly one of them.
But now I know, in my bones, in my blood.This is the dawn of doom, and my choice right here, right now, will determine whether we’re to endure, or fall.
And I have no idea which is the right path.
Darina might destroy us. She’s unsuited for the crown that’s hers by right of blood, because she hasn't been prepared for it. She has no idea what she is, what we are.
She could ruin us all.
