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And yet, allowing the wolves to tear her apart could be just as disastrous, if she’s our salvation.
It all comes down to whether I believe in the pouty brat.
And truthfully? I don’t.
I should step aside and let them take her. Drag her along the trails by the hair, tear her flesh until there’s nothing left but the memory of what could have been.If she's dead, her life force can no longer cause the damage it's capable of bringing about.
But then, Morrigan's bloodline will end.
So many paths, none of them sure.
What is sure is that Darina Thorn does not deserve any of it. Oh, she's a brat, and she absolutely should be spanked—often. But she doesn't deserve to be used, or killed, or tortured—and there's no future where at least one of those things doesn't happen to her.
“You know what’s going on, Crow,” the duchess of the court of wings hisses, showing teeth.
I see her gold-feathered wings flutter behind her, a sign of strength. A sight I shouldn't envy after so long.
I’ve never seen her personally, but with the long straight nose, and those eyes of night sky, she's familiar in a way that cut to the quick. There’s no denying she’s my blood.A cousin, a niece, an aunt.
Not that she'll acknowledge it.
“That thing you protect under your roof threatens everything. Our world has run itself for a long time. We don’t need a child of iron to dictate our doings. She needs to die.”
I don’t suppose she’d like to be told what to do at all. The court of wings live by their own rules—as do most of the low courts. For the last thousand years, they've functioned like kingdoms, with no authority to answer to. The regent rules over the affairs of Ilvaris, but never forces a lower lord to their knees in the way a high queen could.
If the regent heard of discontent in her court, he would have had to procure proof, witnesses, then summon the duchess's representative and bring the matter to the high council of all seats. In turn, the council could vote to act. Cutting down their trade routes, disallowing the local tithe, exerting some pressure until the matter was resolved.
It takes months, if not years, and more than often leads to nothing but a slap on the wrist.
A high queen can summon the duchess, and force her to act with a single word. She can stroll onto the high towers of their mountain homes and rule it as she pleases.
She can make us all bow.
Morrigan, even in her madness, never abused that power. That was why she, among all else, was anointed by the elder lords. Morrigan was the first high fae to have been both seelie and unseelie in equal measure, and fair to both sides. Wise, even in her youth, and later, despite her flirting with insanity.
The court of wings is harsher than most. They beat the children until they sprout their wings. Throw them off the mountain if they can’t.
It's not the only court like this. The sea lords hold their children under water and let those who can't breathe drown. The bone court, I hear, leaves all youth in a fighting pit until they've won every single challenge, only letting the strongest survive.
Such is the law of nature. As an unseelie, I appreciate them. As a wild fae, I live by them.As a child once called Aedron Crow, I remember that the only reason I draw breath is because the last high queen decided I should. She looked into my future and saw that I would stand here, inthis very moment.
I am the sole power between her and Morrigan's only living child.
There was never any choice. Just the illusion of one.
“Kill her, then.”
The long, unnatural, leathery wings that formed behind my back as I fell down the height of the Towers of Wings haven’t appeared since that day, nigh on a thousand years ago, when the high queen wished for a little wingless boy to survive his first flight.
I'd often wished to feel them again, yet they never came. I supposed they were gone—temporary magic, built for a specific purpose. Yet I feel them extend, forming without my calling upon any magic, tall, proud, covering the entrance of my camp, and half of the stone building with it.
“All you have to do is go through me.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
COOKIES AND CREAM
Darina
