He shifts, looking flustered.
My stomach drops, realizing my words are bordering on treason. There I go with that mouth of mine again. Time to change the subject. “Tell me more about your childhood. Who’s your father? Foxglove said King Herne died before your brother was born, so I take it you don’t share his paternity.”
He shrugs. “I never met my father. He was one of Mother’s many undersea consorts and never bothered coming to land to meet me. It’s the unseelie way.” There’s a note of sorrow in his voice, and I can’t help but feel a squeeze of sympathy for him.
“I don’t remember my father,” I say. “He parted ways with my mother when my sister and I were small. When Mother moved us to Eisleigh, he stayed behind. We’ve never heard from him since.”
“I’m sorry. At least you had your mother, though. You must miss her terribly.”
My throat tightens. I do miss her, and I can’t fight my regret over the sharp words I said to her the night I left. She knows how much I love her, doesn’t she?
“What’s wrong?” Cobalt’s brow is furrowed as he studies my face from his reclined position.
I don’t want to tell him what’s really on my mind. If I talk about my mother, I won’t be able to trust myself not to cry. Instead, I voice another valid worry. “I just hope Amelie is faring well with your brother.”
“You mean at her interrogation?”
I bristle at the word. “Why do you call it that?”
He frowns. “You know he’s only spending time with her to make sure she doesn’t plan on killing him, right?”
“Amelie? Kill King Aspen?” I may have given her a knife for protection, but if anyone were to kill the king, it would be me. Of course, I don’t say so out loud.
“He thinks everyone is trying to kill him,” Cobalt says, a note of irritation in his voice. “You’ve seen how paranoid he is, how he has his food tested before he eats it.”
“Why is he like that? Does anyone have reason to kill him?” Aside from him being an insufferable prick, that is.
His eyes unfocus as he considers this. “He has many enemies—basically every fae on the Council of Eleven Courts. But I can’t imagine they would target him with the kinds of underhanded assassination attempts my brother fears. If anything, they’d demand his removal from the throne.”
“Why does the council hate him so much?”
“Well, to be honest, he’s the most unstable ruler in Faerwyvae, always switching from seelie to unseelie and back again for no reason at all. I think he does it on purpose, just to stir chaos.”
I remember what Foxglove told me during the carriage ride, about fae politics and the history of the original unseelie fae. “What do you mean he switches from seelie to unseelie? Do you mean politically or physically?”
“Politically. We all shift into our physical unseelie forms from time to time. But when it comes to politics, the rulers are supposed to take a firm stance on what each side represents. The unseelie ultimately want control over the isle. They were responsible for the war a thousand years ago and are the main supporters of going back to war and ridding the isle of humans. The seelie, on the other hand, are determined to keep war from ever reaching the isle again. They keep the unseelie in check and smooth things over with the humans when tensions arise.”
“So, you’re saying your brother constantly changes his mind about whether he supports war?”
“Yes, but it’s more than that. I doubt he even cares about the politics at all, otherwise he wouldn’t play the games he does. You see, in order to pass any new motions, the council needs a majority vote. Ever since the war ended, the council has remained mostly seelie. Occasionally, a ruler will change sides, especially when a court is inherited by a new ruler. But every time this happens, my brother switches sides too, to whatever opposes the newest change.”
I furrow my brow. “Why would he do that?”
“To be difficult. There could be no other reason. If he was doing it to keep Faerwyvae from going to war, it would make sense. But he even shifts sides when an unseelie votes seelie.”
“You think that’s why the council dislikes him?”
“I know they do. The seelie hate him because his constant shifting keeps the council from getting anywhere near unanimously seelie, which in turn prevents them from bringing in new measures to further the seelie cause. If the council were to shift heavily seelie, they’d be able to make bigger and better changes. Changes that would do more than the treaty does now. Changes that could make human-fae relations even stronger.”
“And the unseelie hate him for the same reason.”
“Exactly. If the council were to shift heavily unseelie, the same would happen. Drastic changes but with an opposite result. However, the unseelie probably hate him more than the seelie do, on principle alone. It was his birth that ended the war. My mother turned seelie just as the council was ready to pass a motion that would rid the isle of humans.”
I shudder at that. “Why did your mother turn seelie when Aspen was born?”
“I can’t promise any of this is true,” Cobalt says, “but the stories tell how Aspen was born in his seelie form and how my unseelie mother couldn’t figure out how to care for him. She tried to nurse him with seawater, but he wouldn’t take it. In a matter of hours, he was near death. Mother was so distraught about the possibility of losing the child that she became desperate. In a final attempt at saving her baby’s life, she snuck past the war camps to the nearest human settlement and located a nursing mother, begging her to nurse Aspen. The woman agreed on one condition—that my mother make a bargain. End the war and the woman would nurse Aspen to full health. She’d even teach my mother how to care for the boy herself, if she’d agree to take on a seelie form.”
“She made the bargain, I’m guessing?”
