Sorcha didn’t respond when Devlin walked into her gardens. She’d long since stopped acknowledging him when he did so. As if it will make the future less difficult. She hated that he was an anomalous creature—almost as much as she treasured it. He would be her undoing if she let him. Perhaps he would be even if she tried to stop him. In some matters the threads of possibility were seemingly determined.
“My queen?”
She didn’t turn. Facing him as they lied in their omissions made the whole business even less palatable. “Brother.”
“I have blinded the mortal as you commanded.” His voice was as empty as it often was, but that too was a lie of sorts. Her brother might pretend to be High Court, but she was under no illusion that he was solely her creature. He was hers, though.
“I have business there that needs tending,” she said.
He’d expected as much, but he’d hoped otherwise. She could see the resignation in the moment in which he frowned. The expression was gone too fast for most anyone to see, of course, but she saw much that no one else would. The pause before replying was infinitesimal, but it was still there.
“Whatever you command,” he said.
She turned. “Indeed?”
Before she could catch his gaze, he dropped to his knees. “Have I failed you?”
Sorcha didn’t speak. Have you? She knew he would, but had he? Her vision of the past was unclear. The present and future took her focus so fully, and eternity stretched longer than she could grasp. Have you? She waited, looking down at the first faery she’d made. Before he existed, there were only two, Discord and Order, twins who had once created one thing together. You. She reached down and ran her fingers through his multihued hair. It was unlike that which graced any other faery, and it was resistant to her will. He couldn’t be altered by her touch, not now that he was real. Other faeries couldn’t either, but they weren’t her creations.
They’d stayed this way for hours before. Devlin had the patience and willpower to kneel for as long as she required it. He didn’t falter, didn’t sleep, didn’t wince. He simply waited. She wondered idly if he could outwait her.
“Could we spend decades thus, Brother?” she murmured.
He lifted his gaze. “Sister?”
“If I demanded it, how long would you kneel thusly?” She traced up his cheekbones and down the outside of his jaw with her fingertips. “Would you falter from exhaustion first?”
“You are my queen.”
“I am,” she agreed. She cupped his face in her hands and held him still. “That’s not an answer.”
He didn’t even try to resist. “Do you require me to falter or to succeed in waiting as long as you wait?”
She smiled then. “Such a wise answer. You will do whatever I require then? You will strive to not fail me? You will serve me forever?”
“As your servant, your Bloodied Hands, your brother, your advisor, I will do all that you demand.” He bowed his head, and she loosened her grip to allow it. Then he added, “The last of those questions is unanswerable.”
“It is.” She turned her back, but she did not release him. She fashioned a chair of flowering vines and sat down. In her hands, a book appeared. She hadn’t created it. She had no such skill with art. She had, however, willed it to appear in her hands. Ignoring her brother, she began to read.
He stayed there kneeling for the next three hours as she read.
Sometime into the fourth hour, she lifted her gaze to look at him. “I need you to go to the new Dark King. Give him word of the High Court’s acknowledgment of his new station. Stress to him that, while we are not at conflict, I will not hesitate to act as required to keep order.”
Devlin stayed silent, awaiting the rest.
“It would be prudent to make clear your willingness to strike at the Dark Court should it be required,” she continued. “Perhaps a fight with the former Dark King? The Gabriel? His mate? The action should be something that emphasizes your assets as the High Court’s weapon.”
“As you will,” Devlin murmured.
The brief look of hurt on his face was reason enough for Sorcha to know that her actions were necessary. It would not do for Devlin to be coddled. Reminding him that he was a weapon to be utilized helped keep his tendency toward emotion in check.
It is for the best.
“Do you require death?” he inquired. “That will limit the choice of combatants.”
Sorcha paused and sorted through the threads that had come into focus as Devlin spoke. The consequences of some deaths would be disastrous. Unexpectedly so. Later, she would mull the import of one such thread, but for now, she said only, “Not of that list. Injure one of them, or injure many. A lesser death is allowable, but not the new king’s advisor or thugs. A regent does tend to react poorly to such losses.”
The moment was there, and she knew he would ask. In this, as in so many other things, her brother was predictable. He looked directly at her with those unnatural dark eyes and asked, “Would your thug’s death elicit such a reaction?”
“My assassin is my advisor and my creation”—she pursed her lips in an expression that should convey the dislike she knew was an appropriate emotion—“so I would be sorely inconvenienced by your death. I dislike being inconvenienced.”
He bowed his head again. “Of course.”
“If I were emotional regarding any faery in my court, it would be you, Brother.” She stood and walked over to him. “You have value to me.”
The relief evinced in his slight relaxing of posture was noteworthy for him. This was what he required: reminders of his value, of his use, of his proper role. He never spoke of the fact that his choice of her court was a struggle, but she knew. As does Bananach. It was in his nature to crave both Discord and Order. In her court, at her hand, by her word, she could give him that. And keep him from Bananach by doing so.
“I expect there to be violence enough that the Dark Court will be suitably reminded of my strength,” she added.
“As you require.”
She expected that this was a moment in which she should offer him comfort. He evoked that in her, an urge to nurture, but it would hasten the seemingly inevitable future. When he becomes my enemy. Instead she said, “You will not allow yourself injured, Brother. The High Court is represented by your success in this. Do not fail me.”
“I will not.” He was still on his knees, still unflinching. “May I depart?”
She set a storm over his head and walked away. “When the next hour ends, you may rise.”
As she left, she directed a small bolt of lightning to strike him. There was no cry of pain. A tangle of wild roses grew around him as she opened the gate to exit the garden. The thorns didn’t pull him off balance, but they would make his position increasingly unpleasant over the next hour. That pain would be predictable; the flowers’ rate of growth would be precise. However, in deference to Devlin’s discordant streak, she set the lightning strikes to a random order.