“I thought you would call me Veyka.” I hated the vulnerability, the honesty. I was not good at it. Nor at strategy. Hell, what was I good at?
My hands fisted against my hips.
Elayne’s eyes softened, but she held her silence, waiting for me.
I swallowed past the emotion in my throat. “Arran said Eilean Gayl would be a safe harbor.”
This time, she laughed aloud. “Arran said no such thing.” She pushed herself up from the chair with an ease that belied her advancing age.
I held her gaze, unflinching. “He implied it.”
Truth for truth. Arran had spoken of Eilean Gayl with such love and affection. I had assumed this would be a safe harbor for me and my companions. We’d been welcomed, yes. But formally. As a queen visiting a distant noble, not a daughter-in-law visiting her husband’s family. No warmth.
Why? What had changed here? Or worse… what had I done wrong?
Elayne waved her hand as if stating the obvious. “Arran has not been to Eilean Gayl in decades.”
I was too well trained to let my jaw drop open in surprise. But the tell must have been there just the same, because Elayne frowned and said, “He did not tell you that.”
I shook my head—not in agreement, but in disbelief. “He was happy here.”
Another sigh from Elayne. “He was a child here,” she allowed. And I was reassessing everything. Had I misunderstood Arran’s recollections of this place? Had he lied to me? No, Arran did not lie. It was endemically contrary to his nature. He was who he was, and he did not apologize for it. It was one of the many things I loved about him. But why… why paint me a picture of a place, a reality, that no longer existed?
Elayne watched me closely. And even though I had relaxed my guard, I knew that I kept most of the emotions off of my face by habit. Despite what she said, I was good at hiding my feelings. My survival in the elemental court had demanded it.
“Arran has not been happy for a very long time,” she said quietly. Sadly.
“That is not true.” It cost me to say it. But it was the truth. We were happy.
Even with the threat of the succubus hanging over us, the mystery of my powers and all of Arthur’s lies and what that might mean for Annwyn… I’d never felt happiness like I did when I was in Arran’s arms. Or when I was kicking his ass in the sparring ring. Or trading pointed barbs that turned sharper and hotter until we were clawing at each other in desperation to get closer, to join our bodies along with our souls.
I opened my eyes, realizing for the first time that I had closed them. Maybe I’d been standing there for minutes, rather than seconds, letting myself get lost in the memories. Only weeks separated me from the faerie pools where we’d finally consummated our mating bond, and yet it felt like years. Decades. Maybe another lifetime entirely.
Elayne watched me with such sadness in her dark eyes. Eyes that were familiar. Arran’s eyes.
“Why did you come to Eilean Gayl?” she asked. I watched her throat bob as she swallowed. Now was the time, then.
I sucked in a breath and shoved my sadness, my heartbreak, all of it to the side. “How many amorite blades do you have?”
Elayne’s dark brows joined together, arms coming across her body as she stared at me like I’d grown a second head. “Amorite blades?”
I unsheathed one of my daggers, then one of the rapiers, holding the blades across my palms non-threateningly. I held them out into the light, so that the swirling gray and silver of the blades was easier to see. “Like these.”
Elayne examined them closely—touching neither. She leaned down, cocked her head to the side to get a different angle of light coming off of the braziers pegged into the stone walls, but she did not reach for the blades. Interesting, given Arran’s comfort with them. But that was an observation to be analyzed at another time.
“We have finely made weapons, to be sure. But nothing like this…” she said, shaking her head. “Why?”
I sheathed the blades once more, exhaling slowly. Giving her my back, just for a moment, to gather myself. “The amorite blades are the only weapon that can kill a succubus.”
Her voice did not shake, but her body was stiff when I turned back to her. “What is a succubus?”
I told her all of it.
The darkness that we had first seen in Baylaur—the human messenger from Eldermist and then the witch in the Tower of Myda. I left out the details of Arthur’s murder, the betrayals of Gawayn and Roksana, their attempted coup. I was not ready to bare those parts of myself to her yet. She was Arran’s mother, and she’d shown more openness in this conversation than thetwo days since our arrival. But I was not ready to give her those parts of myself.
I spoke briefly of the Faeries of the Fen, giving minimal details about their locations and their caves. Whether they considered themselves my subjects or not, I knew they were mine and I would protect them as such. I would not risk exposing them to the terrestrials. But I did reveal what Taliya had told us about the first time the succubus had come to Annwyn.
And finally I told her about the Void Prophecy and my place in it. That it was my void powers that had allowed the succubus entry into our realm once again.
