I ran my finger along an illustration in the corner of the map; three small mounds in the middle of a field behind the castle, marked with a weird series of lines and dashes.
What did it mean?
Did I really want to find out?
I could defer my place at MIT for a semester. It wasn’t a big deal. Maybe this was just what I needed. Maybe if I went to England for a little while, I could find the peace I needed to mourn, to cry for what I’d lost, and then I could move on.
“You know what?” I folded the letter and stuffed it into the cup of my bra, the paper rustling against my naked breast. “I might just do it.”
CHAPTER FIVE
BLAKE
“What you ask is ludicrous, Daigh.” Queen Morgana took a delicate sip from her nectar wine and placed the glass daintily back on the table. One of her sprites darted forward and refilled the cup, flitting back to the wall of the sidhe and pressing her back hard against the earthen walls – dark brown skin camouflaged perfectly against the dark dirt. “Seelie and Unseelie will never be united.”
My gaze swept from the Seelie Queen’s attendants (a brownie winked at me. I’d be chatting to her later) to the Lady of Summer herself. From my place at my adoptive father’s right hand, I had to turn my head to glance upon her. But Queen Morgana was used to captivating every eye in the room. Her cloak shimmered with emerald light, casting a warm glow around the gloomy space. A waterfall of sunshine-gold hair flowed down her back, wreathed in a crown of wildflowers and elder branches.
If she was frightened of my father, she did not show it. Her features remained serene, although I noticed her gaze never wavered from his face.
Daigh – my adoptive father and the King of the Unseelie Court – raised his own cup and took a deep swig. We did not usually have nectar wine in our court – the Seelie brewed it,and they limited our supply, for they knew it set off our dark revels. I usually had to content myself with the horrific Unseelie mushroom beer, which tasted about as good as it sounded and sometimes made my vision disappear for hours at a time, giving a new meaning to the term ‘blind drunk.’
Everything in the fae realm made me sick. The beer made me blind, the honey cakes made my stomach swell up, the berries made me lose complete control of my limbs and other aspects of my body I won’t mention in polite company. Daigh had food brought back for me whenever he sent his fae to the human realm, but there was never enough to fully satisfy. The Unseelie thought it was the best fun to mix their fae food into my human supplies and watch as I fought for control of my body.
Haha, yeah, hilarious. With friends like these…
It was recorded in our annals that one of the human witches – the red-headed one – once said that all fairies were wankers.
He wasn’t wrong.
There hadn’t been a food delivery for me in a couple of days. We could only send one fae at a time into the human realm, and then only for a few hours at most. Each one came back weakened, many without completing their assignment, thanks to the witches. My stomach growled with hunger, but there was nothing on the feast table that I could eat. That may have been on purpose.
Daigh could’ve procured enough food for me to eat like a prince, but near-starvation was an ideal way to make sure I’d never grow strong enough to usurp his throne or run away back to the human realm.
You can’t run very fast when you’re too weak to lift your head.
Say what you like about my father (and there is quite a lot to say), but he treated me as if I was his true, biological son – ie. with mistrust and disdain. Weirdly, he’d shown me a greathonor tonight by allowing me a place at the table for this unique meeting.
I turned my attention away from the delicious food I couldn’t eat and focused on the conversation. My father said this would be an historic day for the fae. I had no inkling what he was planning. As his words registered, a coldness seeped into my veins.
“—an alliance is not so ridiculous,” my father was speaking ardently, wringing his hands through the air. “For years we have let this feud between our courts divide us, keeping our power and our focus inward. But now, the High Priestess of Briarwood is coming to England. This changes everything.”
The fae – a bean-sidhe, or banshee – who was tending to the table whisked my untouched plate away and replaced it with another platter. This one was filled with various dried fruits rolled in honey and seeds. They smelled like happiness, but I knew from past experience that eating one of them would have me out of action for a week.
What I wouldn’t give to try a curry. My adoptive brother, the prince Kalen, told me about how humans lined up for the chunks of slow-cooked meat drowning in greasy brown sauce. That sounded amazing, like the dogs bollocks (to quote a phrase the fairies had stolen from the witches. Contrary to the way it sounds, the Dogs Bollux refers to a good and excellent thing.)
But curry wasn’t an option as long as I stayed in this realm. Fae didn’t eat meat. They also couldn’t deep fry anything. Bread was forbidden, as it symbolized the agriculture that had destroyed England’s forests and wild places and led to our imprisonment. It was fruit and vegetables in berry sauces or slathered in honey, three times a day, every day until the Old Gods returned, and if you couldn’t eat that, you got bruised apples that fell over the orchard wall from Briarwood andoccasionally half-eaten pork pies the giant blond witch hurled into the meadow for a laugh.
Dammit.There I was, dreaming about real food and missing all the conversation again.
The Queen must’ve said something about the High Priestess, because Daigh was talking again.
“—she is within our grasp. My spies overheard the witches’ lawyer gossiping in the village. Apparently the girl has decided to take up her place at Briarwood. She will arrive within the week. I think we should be ready for her, take her as soon as we see a chance. She does not know what she is, and from what my spies have heard of her, she’s a skeptic who will take some time to be convinced. If we act before she fully realizes her powers?—”
The Queen laughed, a tinkling sound like the flow of a river. “We?You keep using this pronoun as though we are somehow in this together. Unlike you, the Seelie are content to remain here in our realm, to make our revels amongst the ancient trees and pristine waters. We do not lust after an old world that has been tainted by the human race with their factories and combustion engines and computer chips.”
“Are you certain of this? You have been Queen for half a century. Perhaps you should ask your subjects if they wish to roam over high mountains and across glades, if they long to stretch their legs beyond the walls of our prison.” Daigh gestured to the row of sprites and brownies lining the wall behind the Queen. Faint whispers rose up as they twittered among themselves.
“I do not have to ask them,” Queen Morgana simpered, but her eyes flashed with anger. Abruptly, the twittering behind her ceased. “I am the Summer Queen. I speak for the Seelie Court.”
