“Oh yes, I feel full of hope.” I try to joke, but the words come out sounding as scared as I feel.
“I’m sorry,” I say to Faith as we begin to climb. She pauses on the stairs. “Sorry for not telling you the truth, for not pushing Emmett to be more transparent with you, for seeing you as competition when I should have been supporting you.” It’s not the right time, but I have to say it.
Faith smiles sadly. “It’s all forgiven. Let’s go get your boy, yeah?”
There are two guards at the door, but I command them to wait at the bottom of the stairs.
The small chamber at the top of the tower is lit only by a beam of moonlight streaming in from the narrow archer’s window.
The bars of the cell look new, as if they were only recently put in, and behind them, sitting perfectly still, isn’t Emmett. It’s Queen Mor.
She’s unsettling in her perfection, looking unmussed, even here. I’m struck by how young she looks, stripped of her finery and jewels. Her long black hair hangs in ribbons over her sharp shoulders, and her hands are covered in dried blood. Edgar’s blood.
She sighs as we approach her cell. “Not you all, again.”
I sit down on the cold ground, as close to the bars as I can get, and the others lower themselves beside me. “Where is Emmett?”
Something like sadness passes over her face like a breeze. “He took Emmett?”
“He’s not here?” I ask.
“I’m the only prisoner here tonight.”
My hope deflates. “I know you can lie,” I say, but for some reason, I don’t think she is.
This gets her attention. “You spoke to Bram, then?”
“I’d like to hear the story from you,” I say.
“I thought I was doing what was best,” she says. “I didn’t know what he’d become. You must understand, he’s not all bad.”
“Emmett loved him and was betrayed.”
Mor looks at me with pity. “That was always Emmett’s great flaw. He was so hungry for love, he couldn’t see the faults in who was offering it to him. His father was all too willing to let you both risk your life for his zealous cause.”
“You knew?” I ask.
“People like his father have existed for as long as I have reigned. Rebellion isn’t novel.”
“Why did you marry Edgar, then?” I ask.
“Because I didn’t realize his true motives until he was already my husband. By then I was quite fond of him. It seemed a great inconvenience to kill him.”
“But then you killed him anyway.”
She doesn’t reply, but for the briefest moment, sorrow breaks through her cool mask of detachment.
“Why didn’t you stop us?” I ask.
“You weren’t really a threat.”
“But we were, weren’t we? We worked out that the May Queen trial was the key to violating the terms of your bargain.”
The queen laughs at us like we are children. And to her, we are. “You think I would have let that trial happen if there was any risk in it? No. The risk was from my own son. He was still king of the Otherworld, which I didn’t know. I thought he was telling the truth when he came to me, distraught, a few years ago, with a story of his father ousting him. I loved him too much to see through his lies. I didn’t know that when he married, his bride would be both a princess of England and queen of the Otherworld. It didn’t matter what girl he chose. This was always going to be the outcome. I understand now why he was so keen to marry.”
Queen of the Otherworld. The words settle over me, and some awful part of me is tempted to laugh. I got what my childhood self always wanted, but now I’d do anything to undo it.
“This was always his plan?” I ask.
