Thane’s fingers curled along the edge of the table.
“Is it possible the story is wrong?” he said. “She was young. Something else could have happened.”
“It’s possible. I don’t know how we prove it unless her father admits to it.” I paused. “Did you catch her mother’s name?”
Thane frowned slightly. “Mairead. I don’t remember a Queen Mairead.”
“I do.”
He looked up quickly.
I shifted in my chair so I was facing him directly.
“The king has been married many times. Six that I know of. That is why he gathered omegas. He has spent a century trying to produce an heir. His last omega was human. It failed.”
Thane leaned forward.
“His only heir was born to his first queen,” I continued. “His true mate. Queen Mairead.”
Thane stared at me. “I don’t remember a Queen Mairead.”
“That’s because she died,” I said. “Along with her daughter. Over a century ago.”
The color left his face.
“How is that possible?”
“Fae live long lives,” I said. “The king has lived longer still.” I glanced toward the stairs Aveline had climbed. “She told us herself that time behaves strangely in the tower. It’s possible she sleeps through months. Even years.”
The realization reached him slowly.
“What are you saying?”
“If Aveline’s mother is Queen Mairead and her father is the king, then she is far older than twenty-six.”
He sat very still.
“And she has been imprisoned far longer than ten years.”
Thane leaned back in his chair and stared at the table.
The air in the tower still carried traces of Aveline’s scent through the passages. Softer now than it had been during the spike. Honey threaded with something clean beneath it.
The mark beneath my bracer had not cooled since she sat across from us earlier. She had met two armed warriors without flinching, though she had spent most of her life alone in a tower. She had argued with us when necessary and yielded when it made sense.
I pressed my thumb against the leather bracer.
“She’s beginning to trust us,” I said. “Slowly. And she’s questioning the things she’s been told. I’m not ready to give her this information until we confirm it.”
Thane nodded once. “It’s fragile. If her father comes back, she could retreat into the story he built for her.”
“True.” I leaned back slightly. “The larger question is why the tower allowed us inside. And how the king moves through it so easily.”
Thane’s mouth tightened. “You feel the bond. Perhaps the tower sensed it as well.”
I had already considered that.
The tower behaved as if it were aware of Aveline’s needs before she spoke them. It had allowed us through the wards that should have kept every outsider away.
