I withered, shrinking in on myself and hating the logical explanation. “Your words were intended to hurt. You said them as cruelly as you could manage,” I said, shoving away his attempt to reason with me about something that had been deeply personal.
“You’re right. They were spoken in an attempt to get you to listen and understand the reality that we were going to leave Tar Mesa whether you liked it or not. No matter what you may think of it, Mab expects me to be responsible for both your safety and your behavior now, so I will not allow your actions to put everything I have worked to protect at risk. I have given centuries to doing everything I can to keep my people safe from the worst of Mab’s impulses and lost a part of myself to do it. If you would stop to see me as anything more than your enemy, you would understand that you are now in that list of things I will work to protect,” he said, dropping his arm back to my hip as I tensed.
“Bold words coming from one of Mab’s allies,” I spat, relishing the way his entire body turned solid behind me. My words had left their intended mark, striking as deep as he’d meant to hurt me.
Instead of spitting venom back at me, he only sighed and released all the tension into the dry air around us. “I think you might understand my position in Mab’s life better if you got to know me and how I came to know both her and Rheaghan,” he said, his hands tightening where they held me as if on reflex.
“What difference could that possibly make? Are the whispers I heard at Tar Mesa untrue? Was Mab not the one to name you Rheaghan’s second-in-command? Did you not spy on your own King at her behest?” I asked. I didn’t dare to admit to the hope surging within me, the tiny inkling that maybe everything wasn’t what it seemed. Given all that I’d seen in my short time in Alfheimr, it seemed unwise to hope for decency in a world where the cruel prevailed.
“I can’t remember my own parents,” he said instead, the vulnerable words stated in such a matter-of-fact way that I froze in place. “Most of the Gods didn’t generally have much interest in parenting, given the poor example they’d had from the Primordials. They dropped me offwith Diell in the Summer Court when I was five years old. She wasn’t with Khaos anymore—he disappeared long before the other Primordials and before Mab could be born, but since she had fallen in love with the Goddess Aesira, the two of them were raising Rheaghan and Mab together. Rheaghan and I were the same age, in spite of the fact that he was a God and I was the child of two Gods. Mab was less than two when I came to live with them, and I can still remember the way her brother doted on her.”
“Look where that got him,” I said, shaking my head from side to side to reject the tenderness of his admission.
“Rheaghan and Mab were just as much my siblings as they were each other’s. I grew up alongside them, and Rheaghan and I eventually grew very close. When Mab adorned her crown with that gem, everything inside of her changed overnight. She was suddenly dismissive of Rheaghan’s protectiveness, competitive with him in ways she hadn’t been. She was the opposite of what Diell and Aesira were raising us all to be, but I was the only one who could penetrate that hatred. Rheaghan always theorized it was because I was her sibling by choice, because I had actively chosen to love her as my own sister, versus the rest of her family, who had just gotten stuck with her,” he explained, and I furrowed my brow as I tried to understand how he’d come to choose Mab over Rheaghan. How his loyalty had strayed to the crueler of the two he considered siblings.
“And you continued to choose her? Even after all she’s done?” I asked, swallowing with my fear that I’d been right. Hoping he was a decent male had been foolish, but I had such difficulty reconciling the gentler side of him with the cruel one—his soft center with the hard edges he liked to show like a preening peacock.
He continued on as if I hadn’t spoken, not directly offering me an answer. “I think when the gem gifted her with those dark powers that twisted her up from the Princess of the Summer Court into what she is now, they also enhanced every insecurity she’d ever had. Took every notion that she didn’t belong and blew them to new proportions. Mab is the most insecure woman I have ever had the displeasure of meeting, and that’s why she needs constant reminders of her power. It’s why she binds everyone to her will, so they cannot betray her when they realize she isn’t infallible. Everyone but me,” he said, and I raised a brow as I touched his hand with mine. The movement seemed to shock him, a moment of something tender lingering between us that hardened to sharpened edges as I processed his words.
“You and I are the only two people connected to Mab who arenot condemned to carrying one of her snakes within us. We are the only ones who are capable of directing her to produce change. It is a great gift of power she has given us, and I do everything I can to use it wisely while remaining free.”
“You have free will, when so many others are not fortunate enough to be able to do as they please, and you spend that free will in her service anyway?” I asked, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I was to spend the rest of my life standing next to someone who supported the Queen of Air and Darknesswillingly.
“It is because I spend my life in so-called service to her that I am able to have free will even after all this time. There is something to be said for keeping your enemies close, Sunfire. Some wars are fought over centuries of deception before they ever reach the battlefield,” he said, and I went quiet as I let those words sink into me. The implication in them was that he was actively standing against Mab, that he was working to undermine her.
But how could he pretend to support the woman who had killed his brother?
“So, you’re not loyal to Mab?” I asked, unable to take an implication of anything as significant. The man was going to be my husband, and I needed to know where I stood. If I could trust him not to run to Mab with every development, or if he was as much my enemy as she was.
“No, Sunfire. I am loyal to the people of the Summer Court and to those I consider family. Mab stopped being my family centuries ago when I lost hope that she could be saved. After all she’s done, I’m not even certain I want her to be. The little girl I remember would have rather died than seen what she became and what she’s done. She was a good person, and I loved her.” He paused, letting that revelation sink in for a moment. “But she’s been dead for a long time.”
SIXTEENETAN
We rode in silence for a while, Fallon’s body carefully controlled. I wouldn’t have called it tense exactly, merely like she was somehow missing from her body. Like her mind had gone elsewhere, considering all that I’d told her and what that meant for her life in the Summer Court. She was infuriating, uncompromising when it came to attempting to understand the position I was in.
Choosing a Queen was no careless task, and when I’d thought to manipulate Fallon into being my wife, I hadn’t intended to ever become King. I had greater concerns now, far more people relying on me than I’d had even days before. We were constantly at odds with the Unseelie Court, long before Mab had become the ruler of us all. Those old wounds didn’t merely disappear when we were all held captive, and the fall of the Veil had only worsened those tensions.
Though my time at home had been limited between the fall and the time that Mab summoned us for the Tithe, we’d been forced to interact with the Unseelie Fae of the Winter and Autumn Courts more in those recent weeks than we had in centuries before. Fae fled their home courts in droves in an attempt to make it to the boundary between Alfheimr and Nothrek and board one of the ships to seek out their mates in the human realm.
But that meant that enemies who had not seen one another in centuries suddenly found themselves face-to-face, old tensions rising. While those of us who had Mab’s attention weren’t in any danger, because none would risk her wrath by killing us, the Sidhe who she would not miss were not so lucky. Fae had been killed over slights that had otherwise been forgotten, and it was all Rheaghan and I could do to try to keep our people safely tucked within the Summer Court—sending regiments to seek out Summer Court mates in Nothrek who were trained to survive and do no harm.
Fallon tipped her head to the sun for the hundredth time since we’d departed that morning, making our way down the rugged, sandy terrain in the scorching sun. She seemed to come alive beneath the light of it, appreciating it in a way that I hadn’t seen before. “Did you miss the sun while you were locked away in the darkness of Tar Mesa?” I asked, referring to the way the shadows clung to every corner of the palace. While there was limited light outside during the day, Mab prohibited people from leaving the palace to enjoy it, knowing that her power lingered in the shadows and she did everything possible to maintain the integrity of her magic.
“You can’t really miss what you’ve never had,” she said, the strange words making my hold on her tighten.
“What do you mean? You’ve never seen the sun?” I asked, and the very notion of such a thing was so strange that I couldn’t wrap my head around it. When I’d told Mab that I’d thought she needed to be exposed to the elements of her home court in order for her magic to surface, I hadn’t realized that she may never have seen it.
“There were a few days when we were traveling through Nothrek to get to Alfheimr where I felt the sun on my skin,” she admitted, her voice trailing low as if she realized how sad that made her life sound. “That was one of the first times I had seen the sun, though, the very first time I spent more than an hour in it. It wasn’t a part of my daily life before, so it makes it hard to miss it daily even now.”
“How is that possible?” I asked, thinking of what life must have been for the humans. Had they been plunged into darkness in truth? Had the erection of the Veil somehow influenced the sun in theirrealm? It felt like the human mates whohadsuccessfully returned to the Summer Court and not been caught up in Mab’s schemes would have mentioned that, or their mates would have known once the bond was completed.
“I grew up in a human rebellion that had formed in opposition to the human monarchy and the influence of its new religion on us all. We long since stopped worshiping the Old Gods, but instead of just accepting that maybe we didn’tneedGods at all, the King’s great-great-grandfather, or whatever the fuck he was, placed the New Gods on a pedestal. Their will became all that mattered, and our lives were supposed to be spent in direct worship of them, to the point that there were strict expectations for us and how we spent our time. Particularly in the case of women. Most of us were sold to the highest bidder for marriage and breeding. The rebellion opposed that way of life,” she explained with a heavy sigh.
“Why did that mean you couldn’t see the sun?” I asked, unable to understand how her refusal to worship these New Gods had resulted in her life in the dark.
“We would have all been killed if we were discovered. We didn’t follow the rules that the High Priests and Priestesses set out for us, and in doing so, that meant we would be executed. Estrella was condemned to death for refusing to marry the noble who chose her, and we would have all met that same fate on the surface. So we hid away in a network of tunnels in the caves of the mountains and formed a community there. It became a refuge for so many, and it was necessary. It allowed us to live as we saw fit, but there were sacrifices, too,” she said, turning to look back at me. She licked her lips, and my gaze dropped to the drying skin there.
“Like seeing the sun,” I said, watching as she nodded. I took my canteen from the saddlebag strapped across the back, guiding it to Fallon’s mouth so that she could drink. For a moment, I thought her pride would make her refuse. That she would insist on holding it herself and the independence such a rebellion had instilled in her would be a block for us in the future. Instead, she let me guide her head back so the water could pour into her mouth, taking deep gulps that hinted at her strong thirst.
