“I could just lick my lips.” I start to smile. “I’m covered—”
“You willinsiston being given a crystal, and once it dissolves, you will tell them you were terrified.” She grips my face, her long thumbs digging into my cheekbones. “Understood?”
I bite my lip, tasting the brine of the canal and the fear of my grandmother on the pillowy flesh, and then I give the woman who raised me what she wants.
I promise that I will lie, because unlike the Fae, I can.
One
10 YEARS LATER
Mamma’s hair is a thing of beauty, red as the setting sun that burnishes Monteluce, the mountains she spends her days gazing at from the armchair she only leaves for her bed.
No Fae inhabit the rocky peaks forever swathed in clouds, but the pure-bloods thrive on the other side of the treacherous range, in the lush wilds that sprawl toward the ocean, renowned for idyllic coves, lush jungle, and pearlescent sand.
I’ve never traveled to Tarespagia, but my aunt Domitina lives there with my great-grandmother Xema. Together, they run a luxurious seaside ranch that attracts wealthy Fae from all over the three kingdoms.
Although the distance between us is a half-day sea voyage, Domitina and Xema have never stopped by Tarelexo. Not even during their trips to Isolacuori to visit my grandfather, Justus Rossi, the leader of the king’s guard.
Domitina, like Xema, like Justus, is ashamed of me.
I run the brush once more through Mamma’s shoulder-length tresses, careful not to graze the tops of her ears. Although my grandfather rounded them with a steel blade the day her pregnancy was discovered, twenty-two years later and she still winces whenever they’re touched. From pain or shame, I’m not quite certain. Since she’s hardly ever lucid, I fear I’ll never get an answer.
Briny gusts lift off the brackish canal and brush over the crowns of the tall conifers abutting the mountain range. Unlike the rest of the kingdom, that wooded area has no official name. It’s only known for what it holds: swamps, or racocci in the Lucin tongue. Colloquially, it’s come to be known as Rax. It’s a place we, Fae, are warned against visiting, filled with humans, poverty, and corruption.
“Have you ever set foot in Racocci, Mamma?”
My mother, as always, doesn’t reply, simply stares at the thin island with its army barracks and checkpoints and the mainland beyond. Lights flicker amongst the gray-green foliage and reverberate against the brown water. From a distance, the torches and candles give the forest an enchanted quality, but I’ve heard from the guards patrolling the swamps that there’s nothing enchanting about the mortal lands.
I set the hairbrush down on the small vanity table, beside a teapot of freshly brewed rowan tea. “Do you think it’s truly as awful as everyone claims?”
A gondola of soldiers passes under her window, pointed ears gleaming with gold darts. Where Tarecuorin citizens favor cut stones, soldiers prefer to match their jewelry to the pommels of their swords.
I smile down at the males; they don’t smile back. High-ranking military Fae are forever grim-faced, as though about to charge into battle. As far as I know, and I do know quite a lot from working with Sybille atBottom of the Jug, our people haven’t been at war for over two decades, so their ominousness is unwarranted.
Mamma murmurs something I don’t catch, because another gondola has slipped behind the military one, and it’s filled with Fae who, from the pitch of their voices and rowdy laughter, have been indulging in faerie wine. One of them, a male with black waist-long hair, gives me a saucy wink.
I shake my head before turning back to my mother. “What is it you said, Mamma?”
“It’s time.”
I frown. “For what?”
Mamma’s lashes reel up so high they skim her auburn eyebrows. “Bronwen watches.”
Goosebumps scamper over my skin. “Bronwen?”
My mother’s blue irises, four shades lighter than my violet, bob in a sea of white. “Bronwen watches.” She starts rocking back and forth, those two words unceasingly dropping from her shivering lips.
I clasp her shoulders and crouch before her. “Mamma, who is this Bronwen?”
Her reply is those same two words.
I release her and pour her a cup of tea, then bring it to her lips, hoping it’ll calm her sudden agitation. Perhaps Nonna will know whom Mamma speaks of.
As though she sensed me thinking about her, my grandmother trundles into Mamma’s bedroom with a stack of sheets. “Everything all right?”
I force more tea down my mother’s throat, and as always, the infusion works its magic on her, and she calms. Once she’s stopped rocking in her chair, I set the cup down and sidestep the armchair to help Nonna stretch the cotton that smells like wisteria and sunshine.
