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NUALA DIDN’T TOUCH people. It was a curiosity one wouldn’t think so curious if they could feel her empathic connection to all living things. She’d learned thousands of years ago to block thoughts and feelings from herself. In order to learn this trick, she’d had to use the ancients’ magic. It changed her. Now, with one touch she could see past, present, and future. She could see determining factors, and infinite possibilities. Her powers weren’t unpredictable, they were explosive. The type of knowledge she had, no one needed. So, she didn’t touch people.
The sound of sequins and satin as it brushed the floor alerted her to the intruder, but she didn’t have to look up to know who it was. Queen Riona had come to seek her insights, as Nuala had known she would. Nuala turned in time to see her queen. Her lacy, creamy-peach dress, sparkled with thousands of tiny rhinestones, each one sown on with the utmost care. The dress formed to her delicate figure — one that Nuala thought looked much thinner these days — making her a sight to behold. Her silver-white hair, the one thing the two of them had in common, hung loosely down her back in great waves of pearlescent shimmer and rested gently upon her iridescent, lavender wings.
Most Fae didn’t display their wings anymore, a fact that made Nuala nostalgic for older times, but a select few did still wear them with pride. Queen Riona was royalty; she was expected to show hers as a form of traditional Fae hierarchy, as with her guards and advisers. Nuala thought about her own wings sadly. She was only allowed to display them if the queen wasn’t present. Some whispered this was because hers were more brilliant than the Queen’s. Formed from the stars in the heavens and gifted to her by Danu — the great Goddess, All-Mother of the Fae — Nuala’s wings housed galaxies of beauty. They were once rumored to make humans weep if they looked upon them. The truth was, she couldn’t display her wings because the queen was jealous of them.
But Nuala was a peacekeeper, and so she hid her wings as well as her most of her magic.
“You’ve seen?” the queen asked. She didn’t need to say more, and it was times like these when Nuala was grateful for her understanding.
“The human girlchild has used her magic again. This time, she has passed into the veil. It gets more dangerous for her with every outburst.”
“Through the veil, why isn’t she here then? Wasn’t she curious?” The queen was right; the wards should have lured her humanity into Tir na nOg.
“Aria protected Faery.” Nuala didn’t want to tell the queen that her trusted guide had threatened the girl.
“But you have seen, and you are sure she is the one who carries my daughter?”
“Yes, your majesty, I have seen this.”
“How can we get her here?” The queen paced the room now, her rapid chaotic thoughts maddening in Nuala’s mind. The older Fae did her best to tamper the effects of the queen’s thinking.
Nuala cleared her throat, and the queen stood still.
“A course has been set in motion already. If we alter it, you may not like the outcome.”
“What does that mean, Nuala? Don’t be coy with me.” She pointed her finger at Nuala.
Nuala’s chin rose of its own accord. She was proud; she wouldn’t also change that to suit the queen. Nuala moved deliberately — slowly — to the seating area by the window to her private gardens and looked out upon her treasured flowers, some of them from the human realm and some of them from her homeland, all of them an allotment from the queen for her services. The place that long ago had set the course of what was to come into being. The place where her son and the queen’s mated daughter had fallen in love and conceived a child. The queen’s own foolishness had caused most of what’d happened to her twin girls, her never-ending need to control all things, and Nuala shook her head at the knowledge.
“The girl grows weak.”
“But you said her powers have started to emerge and they’re explosive, uncontrolled even.”
“I know you have seen the girl’s magic in action, but remember they aren’t just her powers, my Queen. Aoife’s powers are loose as well. The girl-child’s power wanes like that of a dying star. She will burn brighter before she burns out.”
“Unless?”
Yes, the queen did know about the alternate realities that lived in Nuala’s mind.
“She must choose a mate and bond with him to ground her to her humanity. It is the only way she will retain any semblance of who she is, the only way to save her own soul. I fear our Aoife is too strong for her.”
“Well,” the queen scoffed, “that shouldn’t be hard. That oaf of a father saw to that mess when he blood bound her to Quillen’s boy. A royal by blood bound to a half-mort, it’s unheard of, and I won’t stand for it. I’d break that contract now if I had it in my possession.”
Nuala bit her tongue, not mentioning that the queen’s granddaughter was a half-mort. That oaf the queen spoke of was Nuala’s own son, but she had vowed not to betray him or the princess neigh on three-hundred years ago when they’d had their little tryst. No one knew that Niel was her son; no one could ever know.
“The Guardians have her. For now, she is safe.”
“Then, I will take your word for it and give her a small amount of time to make this bond, for the sake of my daughter and my line.”
The queen didn’t wait for Nuala to answer. In a great sweeping motion, her and her dress brushed past Nuala, one of her wings hitting Nuala in the face on the way out. Nuala cringed, but instead of anger at the queen, she felt pity. She was a courageous leader on the brink of civil unrest, and the one thing her people needed from her she couldn’t give them no matter how hard she tried. The heir. That feat was up to their granddaughter Teagan, and the half-mortal guardians that would guard her heart. Without them both, she was destined to fail.
Nuala turned back to the window and pounded the glass with her fists; her power flew out in a great velvety blue spark and slammed into the unsuspecting glass, but it reverberated off the wards and back into her fists. To have this much power, to have this much insight, it meant nothing if she couldn’t do anything to help her granddaughter. If she were to interfere, Danu would strip her powers and cast her into the In-Between to live out the rest of her days in sorrow, alone and sightless. It was something, for selfish reasons, she could not risk.