“But you haven’t. Why?”
He looks to me, then away. “Because I still haven’t asked you something yet.”
The world slides away from me. Have I not already given him what he’s asked for? He wanted me to come against my will, to take me until it hurt—how is that not enough?
Still, I breathe until my pulse evens out.
“What…what do you want to ask me?” I rasp.
“It will only make sense once you know more about me.” He pulls back, lying down on the ground. I decide I can do this—to know, to understand, I will do this. As he settles on the blanket, among the pillows, I crawl to him, rest my head in the crook of his shoulder. I let him tuck me into his side, allowing the illusion of our coupling to continue.
“It was over my mother,” Maxian says. “And me.”
I rub my palm over his chest in soothing circles.
“You see…my mother was the queen’s faerie. Herattendant.” He clears his throat, and I dare not move. “My grandfather had more bastards than you could count. They were all sent to the mines. I do not know if any have survived. They would be dead by now, anyway. My father was different. My father hadn’t seeded any other bastards before me, and neither had the queen fallen pregnant. So it wasn’t a problem that I was a halfling, because I was still strong enough to pass for fae. To continue the royal line. Strong like you.”
“I am not strong,” I say, bereft.
“There is something unyielding in you. Like those ancient trees in fae tales, with their deep roots and wide, tall trunks that can weather anything.” He tilts his head so we are nose to nose. “You are the strongest faerie I have ever met. Save for one.”
“Your…mother?”
He looks back up at the ceiling. “She and the queen both raised me, and I did not understand why the queen didn’t hate her attendant until the end. But the beginning of the end was Phillip.”
P.V.
Phillip Vandorne.
“A full-blooded, Reign fae child. A miracle. Except that Phillip, you see, was born without a genius.”
The air in the room disappears. No, this isn’t correct. No one is born without a genius.
“Did he become a Molder, your brother?” I ask, blood roaring in my ears. Is this why Eli’s own father invented Ashent? To cure a royal of a faerie disease?
“You cannot lose magic you never had.”
But a creature without a genius would be like a creature with no soul.
“I…I don’t know what to say,” I respond, numb.
“At first, House Healing believed that he was slow to develop, like my cousin Daisy. She did not develop a genius until six years old.”
“What…what happened to her?”
“Born sick, like more and more of the Reign children seem tobe. Eventually a fever did take her. Fewer and fewer make it to adulthood, and when they do, their geniuses are weak, but there. Until Phillip. They tested him for years. They could not find his genius. Could not develop it, even as they destroyed the boy in the process.”
“Oh, Maxian” is all I can say, and this pain I do not falsify. What a terrible, brutal existence for a child, to lack the companionship of a genius, to be prodded and experimented on by Healers, to live in isolation of the plane, of plants and people.
“The medicine they developed for him did not work. The other Houses knew that the queen had birthed a sick child, and with this excuse, we kept him out of sight. But it was getting harder and harder to prove that his magic was only just delayed. By his tenth birthday, there was still no sign, not even a trace, of a genius.”
I stare up at the thousands of candles that float above us, as if we are living on a star.
“What happened?” I whisper.
“My father.”
Gregor the Great, Gregor the General, the fae who defeated House of Death during the Dark Rebellion and rebuilt the palace of Versara.
