“And the half-breeds like me,” I say.
“No, love…no.” She shakes her head, sounding tired and more like the mother I remember, which breaks me a little. “We need you to help us in our quest. To get the realm united. To bring the others on board so that we may live in peace. It’s all she wants.”
“Under her control, you mean. She wants the ultimate power. We’ll be her slaves.”
“No, it isn’t like that at all.” She shakes her head. “Join us. Meet with her yourself, and you’ll see.”
I stand. “I wish you would come with me, away from her and this court, so that you can start to see more clearly.”
My mother stands as well.
“I can’t do that.” Her tone is clipped. “What are you saying, Isla? That’s blasphemy. You mustn’t say things like that. It’ll get you jailed or executed. I’ve worked too hard for too long to get to where I am. I can’t just leave.” Something ugly flickers across her face. Something that has nothing to do with love or protection. “I didn’t spend all those early summers in Ruler General Tarro’s bed for nothing.”
I swallow because my throat is suddenly thick. Father would still have been alive during those summers. Waiting for her. Grieving for her.
“I thought you said you worked hard,” I manage.
“I did. Harder than most.” Her chin lifts. “I worked every single angle, Isla, and all for you. I still had youth on my side. I still had high breasts and shiny hair.” She says it without shame. “I used my title and my skills both inside the bedchamber and out. It was Belen who was supposed to be appointed as Ruler General.” She shakes her head. “Not me…never me. Besides,” she makes a strange noise, “Tarro would never have even resigned if it weren’t for the nudge I gave him.”
“How did you get him to do it?”
“I had to dig. Search his quarters when he was asleep. Drunk on sex and wine.” She moves to the writing desk and leans against it, folding her arms. “I finally found information on him. Information damning enough that I could use it against him. I got him to resign.” She smiles brightly, and I force a smile back, urging her on. “I even got him to name me as his successor. By then, I was very friendly with the queen, and she agreed with his decision.” She meets my gaze. “I did all of it for you.”
Perhaps she tells herself that. I study her face, searching for the mother who braided my hair and sang old songs by the fire. She’s not there. Then again, maybe she was never fully there to begin with. If I think back on all the stories she told about the shadowfae, there was always a glint in her eyes. A hunger.Perhaps she had designs even then. Perhaps she had regrets about the simple life she had chosen.
“I know all about doing what it takes to survive,” I tell her. “I get it. I do.” I nod a few times. “I’ve had to use my body a time or two,” I lie.
“I’m sorry.” My mother’s face falls for a beat or two. “It can be pleasant.” She looks at me, and my belly sours. “But mostly it’s arduous business. It’s not something you will have to do ever again, Isla. You’re—”
“I would love to know what it is you found that was so bad that Tarro had to resign over it.” I tilt my head, keeping my voice light. “That he agreed to name you Ruler General. So bad that he hasn’t spoken a word of it since. I have to say, it must have been really bad. And really clever of you to uncover,” I quickly add. I feel guilty lying to her, but I can’t help but feel that she isn’t the mother I once knew. That she’s looking more like the enemy with every passing second. My heart aches with the knowledge.
She brightens up, her whole face aglow with that same pride. She quickly turns serious. “If I tell you, you will not be able to breathe a word, Isla.”
“Of course.”
I see the moment she decides to trust me with it, the way her shoulders drop and her arms unfold.
“I found evidence to suggest that Tarro was the one who orchestrated the murder of the Shadowfae King and Queen.”
The air seizes in my lungs.
I don’t move. I don’t blink. My mouth has fallen open. That was the last thing I expected to hear.
“You see, Tarro didn’t want peace between the species,” she continues. “He hated the idea. He believed the shadowfae would lose their standing, their identity, if the courts began to cooperate. He feared being rendered obsolete.” She pushes off the desk and moves to a heavy chest in the corner. She liftsthe lid and pulls out a leather-bound book. It’s thick, the spine cracked and worn from use. “The fool kept a diary. Wrote in it every single day. Tarro liked to boast about his achievements within the pages, as though he were writing his own legend.”
She holds it up. Even from where I stand, I can see the dark stains on the cover. Ink, perhaps. Or wine.
“It is all in here. Every last detail.” She opens the diary to a page she’s clearly visited many times before. The spine falls open there on its own, the way a book does when you’ve bent it to the same place again and again. “He wrote about how he tried to change the royals’ minds first. How the king and queen pushed him into a corner with their insistence on uniting the fae species. How he found it…” She glances down at the page, reading his words. “Unfortunate that he had to go the route he did.”
My stomach drops.
“There was a young nursemaid in the castle named Dilia,” my mother says, turning a few pages. “She was so kind and lovely, according to his writings. Everyone trusted her, especially the young prince. The king and queen adored her. She had the run of the castle.”
I nod once, urging her on.
“Tarro found Dilia’s daughter. The child was still small and staying with Dilia’s mother at a border village.” My mother taps the open page. “He made it very clear to Dilia that if she didn’t kill both the king and the queen, he would have both her mother and daughter killed and that their deaths would be slow and painful. He wrote that he didn’t think Dilia would be able to carry out the assassination. That she was too soft.” She taps on the top of the diary. “It’s all in here. He was even grateful that she carried it out because he didn’t want to have to murder an elderly woman and an innocent child.”
I feel sick.
