“Then we’re good to go?”
I scowled at him. “No! I want to finish that last potion—then we can leave.”
Lord Linus groaned, turned around, and headed back in the direction we’d come from. “Sometimes I worry you inherited too much of your mother’s sense of responsibility.”
I glared at Lord Linus’ back and considered kicking a rock at him.
It’s not worth it—he’ll just squeal and then say I’m going through a rebellious phase.
I sighed and hurried after him before he could disappear through the doorway with his orb of light.
Just one more thing to add to my to-do list, I guess.
* * *
The endof September arrived faster than I thought possible, and with that came the first official day of fall.
In my pre-queen days, this wouldn’t have meant anything to me—except that I could finally drink my pumpkin lattes and no one would harass me. But now, as the Queen of the Night Court, it meant it was time for an occasion I was fast learning to dread: a ceremony.
“This is stupid.” I leaned my head back against the “throne” prepared for me and batted a dried corn leaf out of my face. “I don’t see any point in it whatsoever.”
“It’s tradition,” Skye said. “Every year the fae monarchs mark the changes of the seasons, and hold a ceremony with each transition.”
“What for? It’s not like fall isn’t going to come if King Birch over there doesn’t give King Fell a pumpkin.”
I pointed to the Summer King, who was standing at one end of a crimson carpet that had been unrolled over a quaint field. Food—pumpkins, sweet corn, gourds, cucumbers, and onions—was mounded up in a pile behind King Birch, but he held in his arms a few heads of wheat, some green vine-y plants, and some colored leaves arranged in a rustic bouquet.
The Autumn King stood at the other end of the carpet, wearing a cocky smirk with a thin wreath of golden leaves pressed into his russet hair.
Apparently, to observe the “passing of the seasons,” King Birch was supposed to present a “harvest bouquet” to King Fell, officially passing the season off to him.
Yeah, I’m pretty sure some heavy drinking was involved when they came up with this idea.
I rested my chin on my fist. “Sheesh. I should have been suspicious when Lord Linus insisted on staying home—he had the right idea.”
“The ceremony has existed for centuries,” Skye said. “And it’s tradition for other monarchs—especiallythose in the Fae Ring—to be present to witness. You had to come.”
“You’re just being quarrelsome,” Indigo said. “Because you hate socials.”
She and Skye stood behind me, in the shadows of my temporary throne. King Fell had assembled four of them—one for me, King Solis, Queen Rime of the Winter Court, and Queen Verdant of the Spring Court.
We were the “lucky” monarchs who made up the regional Fae Ring—basically the monarchs who made all the decisions for fae in the Midwest, including which monarch would serve as the fae representative on the Regional Committee of Magic.
Being a part of the Fae Ring isn’t random chance—heck, no, that’d be a waste of power plays and politics! No, we were the Fae Ring because we were the most powerful Courts in the Midwest, and had been for decades, if not centuries.
I scowled as I shifted in my stupid temporary throne—I’m pretty sure Fell designed them to be as uncomfortable as possible, and whoever was in charge of decorating had hot glued a ton of dried corn stalks to the wooden thrones, making them the perfect home for bugs.
“Yes, I hate socials, but if someone could give me a legit reason for this, I wouldn’t be so bitter,” I said. “But as far as I can tell, this is just another way for monarchs to show off their power to each other. I mean, there isn’t even a human audience that they’re performing for!”
I glanced to the side, where more onlookers stood—though calling them that was possibly a little misleading since I didn’t think they wanted to be there any more than I did.
King Fell had recruited a bunch of his nobles to watch, but he’d also madeallof the unseelie and seelie monarchs in the Midwest come to the ceremony.
The seelie and unseelie Courts are different from the bigger Courts—like my Night Court or freakin’ Fell’s Autumn Court.
Their territories are a lot smaller—usually just one city—and there’s a lot of infighting and wars because you can sometimes get multiple seelie and unseelie Courts competing for the same city.
The real seal to their power, though, is that they don’t have land in the fae realms like the rest of us titled monarchs, and in general, they just have to live with whatever rules the more powerful Courts decide on.
