One day later we have word from the other kingdoms.
The queens have discussed our tale of Mistmere, and have decided to send their own emissaries. We’re to meet them near Mistmere where we’ll continue on foot. Each queen has sent ten retainers. No more. No less.
Even a single extra guard might be considered a threat against the other retinues, or a plot to exploit the situation.
“Maia help us if Angharad intends to invade and has an army awaiting us,” Baylor says, pacing the shadowy forest outside the tents we’ve set up.
“At least it shall be a glorious death,” Finn points out.
“Or a swift one,” Eris mutters.
The edge of the swamp that runs into Mistmere lake is the best place to meet, as the brackish waters will hide our scent, and it’s unlikely banes will be patrolling here. A castle turret sticks out of the water ahead of us, moss lining its crenellations. It looks like the swamp has swallowed a castle whole, and only the tip emerges.
Maybe it will swallow us whole too.
That’s a cheery thought.
A light flickers in the top window, highlighting a pale face, and then it vanishes.
“They’re here,” I murmur, blowing warmth into my cupped hands. I forgot how cold it was this far north.
“It’s about time.” Eris wades into the shallows, pushing the boat out a little further. “It’s not as though the fate of the seelie alliance rests upon the other kingdoms actually getting off their asses, for a change.”
“Ah, Eris, my love,” Finn says quietly, “You expect everything to be straightforward. It’s your uncouth unseelie nature showing. This is Seelie. If we don’t stab each other in the back, slit someone’s throat while they sleep, toy with our allies’ emotions, or promise everything and nothing in the one breath, then can we even call ourselves fae? The only good news is that at least we look good while we do it.”
“Never trust a beautiful face,” Eris murmurs, as if she learned the saying by rote as a child.
“And never trust a seelie smile,” Finn adds.
“You smile all the time,” I whisper.
“Precisely.” The grin on his face doesn’t shift. “Don’t ever believe a word I say, my sweet princess. I’m a born liar.”
“I suppose you did tell me how handsome and brave and amazing you were, when we first met.”
Finn claps his hands over his heart, and staggers back as if mortally wounded.
Baylor merely sighs and rubs a hand over his eyes. “Here lie the hopes of Evernight. We’re doomed.”
A drift of shadow moves toward us in the night. Thiago dissolves out of nothing, looking as if he was born for nighttime.
“Is anyone here aware how far voices carry in the mist?” he whisper-breathes, as the guards following him melt into stillness.
Instantly, the four of us stiffen.
“Get in the fucking boat.” He includes me in his fierce look, though he does offer me an arm.
I can’t help feeling a nervous flutter in my veins as we seat ourselves.
My mother will have sent her most loyal and her best. Andraste’s standing in that turret. I know it with every fiber of my being, but the question is: Who else is with her?
One of her generals?
No, Mother won’t want the confrontation with Eris or Baylor. Never reveal your cards, she always tells me. And she won’t want any of her generals wondering about the unseelie we’re facing. Her generals are firmly under her spell, but they’re also responsible for the safety of Asturia. Any hint of a threat and all five of them would start asking questions Mother won’t want to answer.
I can’t help thinking of the conversation we had through the flames. I told her about Angharad and Mistmere, and yet she arrived at the alliance meeting acting as though the truth is something to smother, not face.
It doesn’t make sense.
Why would she not want the rest of the alliance to know about Angharad? Every day my eyes open to a new truth, including the one that’s been dwelling on my mind most.
My mother is acting as though she’s working with the enemy.
But that’s impossible.
She wouldn’t. She hates the unseelie and sees them as beneath her. All my life she’s warned against their lying, deceitful ways, and their filthy courts.
But what if she hates the prince more than she hates them? What if she thinks she can use them to ruin him, and then sweep them aside afterwards?
Someone taught her to curse-twist the fae into banes.
And someone cursed me with the dark magic the unseelie possess.
It’s a troubling knot and one I’ll need time to unpick.
Fog sits like a blanket on the lake as we make our way across.
Baylor rows, the heavy flex of his shoulders rippling beneath the stark black leathers he wears. A leather thong ties half his hair back from his face, but there’s no hiding the harsh slant of those cheekbones, or the glitter of his eyes as he watches me. I jerk my gaze away, but it’s too late.
He knows I’m hiding something.
Then we’re arriving at the small island that houses the turret. Thiago helps me ashore, and I realize I’m right. We’re not standing on a stony beach, but the remnants of a castle wall. Moss and lichen coat the stones, and I can see the gleaming amber eyes of demi-fey watching us from nooks and crannies. Some of them flutter in the air with translucent wings that hum on the verge of hearing. Others hiss at us from between reeds. One gnaws on a freshly caught fish.
“Are you sure you’re ready for this?” Thiago murmurs, squeezing my fingers.
Maybe he can sense my nerves, which means I’m not hiding them as well as I should be. “I’m ready.”
This meeting is important. If we don’t convince the other courts of the threat then we’ll be standing alone against a possible unseelie invasion.
But when I climb the slick stairs, my sister is standing in the middle of the remains of the tower door, looking every inch a warrior princess.
My sister, who has lied to me every bit as much as my mother has.
And suddenly, I don’t want peace.
I want war.
I’m trembling badly as I sweep past Andraste into the tower.
It’s all I can do not to look at her, not to vent the rage that bubbles beneath the surface.
In a way, her betrayal is the sharpest blow. I’ve always known my mother never cared for me. It didn’t mean that I didn’t try to seek her approval, but when I constantly failed there was a small part of me that merely saw it as inevitable.
But Andraste….
She was the only one who had my back.
I loved her.
A part of me still does.
And as they say, the sharpest sting of betrayal is the fact it only ever comes from those you trust.
She reaches for my arm. “Vi—"
“Don’t.” I jerk away from her with a snarl. There are a thousand words I want to say to her, but none of them spring to the tip of my tongue. I’m so angry. Furious, even. I can’t put them all together.
“Ah,” says a mocking voice as my stepbrother, Edain, saunters down the tower stairs in all his finery. “The princess awakes.” He spares an insolent smile for Thiago. “Does she love you, yet? Or is she still holding you at arm’s length? Tick tock, Your Highness. You’re running out of time.”
It’s too much.
I don’t even know I’m moving until I drive a fist right into his stomach. Edain goes to one knee with a sharp exhale of breath, his red velvet tunic rumpling and his dark hair tumbling into his eyes. Then his sound of shock turns into a laugh and he slowly pushes to his feet. “I see you’ve lost none of your edge, dear sister. Nice blow.”
“I missed.”
“You’ve got your mother’s touch for going right for a man’s balls.” The smile on his face seems wrong, somehow. Edain never looks bothered by anything—harsh words slough off him like rain off a roof. But there’s an edge there I never saw before. “I wonder…. Do you have her gift for toying with a man’s emotions?” He looks right past me, the words aimed at Thiago.
It stalls my answer in my throat.
Stops my fist in mid-air.
I know what my mother uses him for. They call him her pet at court and whisper about how he’ll do anything to keep his position.
But I never realized it bothers him.
I used to look up to my sister, and wished my mother turned to me as often as she turned to Edain, but those were the wishes of a girl who’d long been neglected. I didn’t see the poison she drowned them with. I didn’t see the gilded cages they’re trapped inside. Or the puppet strings woven around them.
Perhaps none of us shall escape Mother’s twisted, tangled web without scars.
But I’m the only one who may actually escape her court.
And Edain knows it.
There’s no escape for him. There’s no mysterious prince claiming to be his husband. No gorgeous palace awaiting, filled with the warmth of allies and friends. And Eris, who is neither, if one is to be honest.
Edain will continue to be Mother’s whore, her pet, her lickspittle. And Andraste, who stands in the position I once dreamed of, shall forever bear the brunt of Mother’s nasty little games.
I’m free.
It’s a heady realization.
For all that Mother’s taken from me, she can never truly steal the one thing I didn’t realize I have: A chance.
My fist lowers. “You’re right. The princess is awake now. And she’s starting to see things clearly.” I glance toward Thiago, and it feels as though the veils have been lifted from my eyes. “I pity you, Edain. All you have is this. You’ll never escape the wounds she deals, if you continue to seek her favor. I’m well clear of such poison.”
Edain looks at me sharply, and it’s clear my words have done more than my fist ever could have. “You little fool.” He shakes his head. “You actually think you’re free of it.”
“I think my mother had best watch her back. It doesn’t matter how many times she steals my memories, I’ll always come back to this moment. I will always hate her, and…. I will always see the prince for who he really is.”
Edain laughs, the sound so rich and mocking that it jars down my spine. “She doesn’t know, does she?”
“That’s enough,” Thiago says, moving toward my stepbrother with menace dripping from him.
“Know what?”
Both men pause, gazes locked, as though they’re mentally crossing sabers.
But it’s Edain who turns to me with a sneer. “Save your pity for yourself, Iskvien. Because while you might think you’ve found your chance for forever, your time is running out. If you think the queen has finished with you, then you’re very much mistaken. She’s just waiting for the game to roll to its final, inexorable conclusion.”
“That’s enough.” Andraste’s voice rings through the hollow core of the tower. “We have guests.”
Ever the dutiful sister.
But I bite my tongue as I catch a glimpse of another boat skulking out of the mist. Muraid of Aska, judging by the stern slope of her shoulders, and those mismatched eyes. Queen Maren takes her to bed, it’s whispered, though Muraid is her fiercest general.
Behind her, is a tall man wearing Queen Lucidia’s emblem on his breast.
Time to focus on Mistmere.
Though I won’t forget any of what happened here.
“What did he mean?” I grind out through gritted teeth, as the boat rows us toward Mistmere.
Other boats follow ours, though they’re warded so well I can’t see or hear them.
It’s a good thing our boat is warded too, because there are words I need to say, and this may be the last moment of privacy we get.
Or as private as we can be, with Eris leaning in the prow watching the waters ahead as if she’s waiting for an imminent attack. Finn clears his throat, setting his back into the oars, and Baylor has a sudden fascination with the moon.
Thiago tugs his leather gloves into place, his face impassive. “That is between your stepbrother and myself.”
There hadn’t been a chance to insist upon answers earlier, for the representatives for the other kingdoms had arrived then, and if there’s one thing you don’t do, its show Muraid of Aska your underbelly. I’d swallowed my frustration and greeted her with a smile, but I knew Thiago could sense the brewing storm within me.
“It seemed as though Edain was trying to suggest I was involved. I’d like to know what he meant by ‘time is running out.’”
“Later,” he promises, leaning toward me. “We need to focus on—”
“No. Not later. Now.”
Sometimes I forget how much bigger he is, but I’m not backing down. Not this time.
The prince stills, his eyes hooding. “Thirteen years,” he says softly. “I bartered for thirteen years with you. It was all your mother would agree to. There are no more chances for you to remember me. This time when I return you, if you don’t remember me then I forfeit my lands… and my life.”
The world drops away.
“What do you mean, if I don’t remember you?”
“The rules are clear. I must return you to your mother. Three days later the entire alliance meets at the Queensmoot, where you must make your choice.” Thiago captures my gaze, his eyes alight with feral need. “Your mother, or myself. You leave with one of us.”
“You agreed to this bargain?”
It’s a terrible bargain.
“I didn’t know what she intended to do to you at the time. I couldn’t fathom a world in which you would walk away from me.”
I sink onto the bench seat of the boat, my knees trembling. “But if I don’t remember you, then I’ll never….” I’ll never choose you.
“You will remember.”
I wish I had his certainty.
“Why did you not tell me?”
“Because I wanted to enjoy my time with you,” he snaps. “I wanted to spend these days in your arms, not worrying about the future.”
“We could have been working toward a solution!”
“We’ve tried,” Thiago replies. “Do you think I haven’t done everything in my power to break the spell over the years?” A bitter smile touches his mouth. “It’s not true love’s kiss, let me assure you.”
“What if there isn’t a means to break it?” My chest feels tight. I cannot have his death on my conscience. “What if she….”
I can’t say it.
Thiago kneels in front of me and takes my hands. “I have faith, Vi. You never want to see me hurt, no matter how much you think me the enemy. Even if you don’t recognize me, I think some part of you will always know me. Maybe this is what the spell needs to break? Maybe if my life is at risk, then the curse will shatter?”
“Maybe?” Does he not see how wrong that sounds? To pin all our hopes on maybe? “What if I don’t feel a thing? What if it’s too late?”
“I have faith,” he repeats.
“Well, I don’t!”
“For once, the princess and I are in agreement,” Eris mutters.
I’d forgotten about them, forgotten about them all. I stare at her hopelessly. This is why she hates me. This is why she can’t even look at me. She knows I’m the millstone around the prince’s neck, threatening to drag him to his death.
Thiago leans closer to me. “Later,” he repeats, in a deathly quiet voice.
Behind him, I can just make out the foreshore of Mistmere. He’s right. This isn’t the time, or the place.
“Later.”
The words are a promise made.
He tilts his head to me, one adversary to another. “There’s the woman I married. There’s my queen. Don’t lose sight of her, Vi. Because I need her at my side. As much as your mother’s curse must be dealt with, this takes priority. I won’t allow another war.” The boat glides to a smooth halt, and he leaps down into the shallows with barely a splash. “Now, come.”
Darkness blurs his features as I accept his hand. I can sense the magic shivering beneath his skin like a quiet storm.
The others dismount, and we wade ashore toward the Hallow. Edain and Andraste are already there, waiting for us.
“Is this some sort of joke?” Edain demands loudly.
The words cut through the night like a whip crack.
Thiago was shielding us, but there’s no aural shield surrounding Edain.
“Mother of Night,” Eris curses, drawing her sword. “Are you trying to get us killed?”
Instantly, the guards surrounding my sister set hands to weapons. Andraste quells them with a single sharp flick of her hand. “Killed by what?”
It’s only then that I notice the silence.
A frog croaks somewhere in the distance.
Wind whispers across the lake.
And as it blows, the mist stirs.
It doesn’t disguise a damned thing.
Because there’s nothing to disguise.
The Hallow is naught but ruins, covered in a thin layer of snow. Everything—the tents, the crane, the work teams—are gone.
Or, if one is kind, it looks as though they never existed.