“Tradition says we're not allowed to interfere,” Olivia snapped back. She rested on the top of my bent knee, dangling her feet. “I'm hungry. Let's go back to the castle. It's obvious she's dead.”
“Don't say that,” Anna cried. “You said so yourself she's really powerful. Maybe she received the blessing or what if she escaped?”
“Unless she can fly, there is no way out of the grove except through the cave, but I will go see.”
A slight apprehension entered my bones. It was not as if I was nervous to go in there, but I didn't want this game to end so quickly. I had gone through a lot of trouble and favors from the dryads to find Deirdre’s location. It would seem a waste if she died so quickly.
Perhaps I had been a bit hasty in bringing her here so soon.
I stood, brushing the grass from my pants. “We will at least give her a proper burial.”
Liora stood at the mouth of the cave, hands clasped in front of her. She had not moved at all since her lady went inside. She held the robe in her arms.
“Here,” she said, handing it over. “She'll need this to come back out.”
“You think she's alive?”
“You don't?”
I raised a brow and she quickly bowed her head.
“I'm sorry, Your Majesty. I did not mean to speak so boldly.”
“It's alright.” I took the robe and folded it over my arm. “She is unique and it wouldn't surprise me if she survived, but you and I both know that is rare.”
The hood of Liora’s cloak hid her expression, and she said nothing more.
I walked into the dark cave. I didn't have to go through this trial since I inherited the throne through my father and I was a moon fae from my mother’s side, but anyone entering the royal family had to. There had always been a moon fae on the throne.
Only moon fae could wield illusionary magic, one of the more powerful elements, and our people refused to let thebloodline be sullied, unless of course it was with a child of prophecy or a dragon like my father.
My father refused the tradition after usurping the previous king, but no one was going to argue with a dragon. I was only half-dragon and people barely argued with me. I could only imagine the terror my father would have unleashed if anybody tried to force him to do anything he didn't want to.
Since I hadn’t been born when he usurped the previous king, killing him and taking my mother as his own bride, I could only rely on what I’d heard of that fateful day and the staggering fear that swept through the court, immobilizing our toughest guards.
There were whispers that his death and madness were due to him bypassing one of our most sacred traditions, and without the unicorn’s blessing, the throne was truly never his.
While I believed what happened with my father was some type of dragon sickness, I was not one to openly defy our traditions… just in case.
I followed the cave to the secluded grove and paused at the entrance.
Would she have survived?
I didn't want to see such a powerful creature ended so quickly. But she was human. There had never been a human on the fae throne. There was no telling what the unicorn would do.
“Well, let's get this over with.”
I stepped into the grove and stopped.
Massive flowers and vines crept along the ground, wrapping around trees. Strange bark weaved around the grove like a wooden bramble maze. I stepped forward, moving around the strange structures, following the thorny maze until it opened into a very peculiar sight.
My breath caught in my throat. I blinked once, twice, wondering if the magic of the grove had created a hallucination. Deirdre sat on the ground, her long hair hanging over her… not completely bare chest. Odd strands of grass wrapped around her breasts, creating a banded top. Her eyes were puffy, her face blotchy, as if she had spent all this time crying.
The unicorn lay next to her, and she stroked the creature’s side, humming.
As the king, many beautiful females had crossed my path, but none had ever conceived such an image of innocence and beauty. Fae or not, I didn’t think I had ever been left breathless.
She looked up. There was no smile on her face, but there was some sort of contentedness, as if the grove had surrounded her in a blanket of serenity. I had been convinced that the prophecy surrounding her birth had been a foolish old tale the priests created to heal the balance between fae and humans.
