"But Fieran has you under his control in some way?"
I nodded.
“He usually does,” she muttered. “What is it you desire, Cara?”
Was it greedy if I tried to get both Tay’s life and Lidi’s magic?
“My brother, Tay, is suffering from a curse. Fieran has him in the healing sleep in his home.”
“He has your brother hostage. And he’s been pretending to find a cure foryou, yes?”
I stumbled on that word,pretending.My stomach dropped as if I were falling, but I couldn’t believe a word she spoke. I trusted her even less than her son.
“Do you really think that my son—the second highest figure in our kingdom—couldn’t get a curse healed for your brother if he wished?”
She’d already forgotten the name of my brother, I was sure of it. But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t help him so I’d be loyal to her and not to Fieran. “Will you help my brother?”
“If you do as I ask, I will free him from his curse. He will know peace again, and so will you—as long as I know peace, for I fear my son’s most recent antics.”
“I have another request.” I hadn’t made any promises yet, and after Fieran’s warnings, I would do my best not to.
“Yes, mortal?” There was a dangerous note in her voice, as if I were testing her patience.
“Fieran took my sister’s magic.” She might be more inclined to help me if it would undermine Fieran. “I’d like her magic restored.”
Her brows arched, the silence between us hanging like a cage.
She made a flippant but elegant gesture with one long hand. “She’d have to come here. I don’t travel for mortals. And to restore her magic, there are steps that must be taken. You would have to do the work.”
“Thank you.” I felt a rush of hope, though it was mixed with a sharp sense of misgiving. Like a breath of air filling my lungs, with a dagger still pointed at my throat. “I would do anything to help her.”
She smiled faintly, as if she knew that were true, and something disquieting wormed through my stomach.Make no promises.
“You want me to spy for you. But Fieran will guess our conversation.”
“He will know,” she admitted. “He’ll tell you what he wants you to pass to me. But I’ve had years of practice sorting Fieran’s lies.”
Why hadn’t she just killed Fieran if the two were involved in some struggle for the throne?
She drummed her fingertips on the arms of that throne. “You’ll tell me the lies he’s spinning for you. He might even ask you to lie to me; tell me what those lies are and what you come to understand from being in his circle.”
Her lips pursed with amusement, as if she had thought of a joke. “I don’t trust that rotted boy of mine, but Idotrust his judgment of you. Hopefully he’s right, and you are more clever than you appear.”
“It’s difficult for me to leave the grounds. How will I get that information to you?”
Ander’s face rose to my mind. He and Fieran were at odds. Was he a servant of the queen? Did she have other spies amid the shifters?
“Clever girl,” she said, though her tone suggested I was clever for a mortal. “Don’t be afraid. I’ll find a way to bring you back to me when I wish.”
Those words definitely did make me afraid. “I want to go home. I’ll do whatever it will take to put my family back together.”
She tilted her head, studying me. “You’ve been so careful to neither lie nor to promise, Cara.”
Something in her words chilled me.
“But you’re lying now. Do you even realize it?” She seemed amused. “Mortals lie to themselves so often. That’s why they are so vulnerable to the Fae’s deceits.”
I couldn’t think of an answer.
