“Why are you telling me this?” The words barely made it past the tightness in my throat.
“Because Morden deserted us exactly twenty-five years ago, child. He must be your father.”
No. The denial screamed through my mind even as the pieces clicked into place with horrible certainty. Twenty-five years. I’d turn twenty-five in just a few weeks. Morden had crossed to my world and had known my mother. He was my father. The man I’d never known, whose Unseelie blood ran through my veins, was a deserter. A coward who’d abandoned his people.
My heart skipped a beat.
“No.” I shook my head violently, panic scratching at my chest. My father had a name—Morden Grimshaw. And somewhere on earth, I had a brother. A brother I’d never known existed.
My mind raced frantically. When would my mom have met him? Did my dad—my real dad, the one who raised me—know about Morden?
I was drowning, drowning in a past I didn’t want to know about.
I had a half brother, Nyx, raised by a man I never knew—a father who’d taken Nyx with him when he fled this world. When did he meet my mother? Did Nyx know I existed or did he evencare? Had Morden ever mentioned to him that he had a half sister?
Did Morden favor Nyx because he was full-blooded Unseelie and I was just a mongrel—half-human, half-Unseelie? Had my mixed blood made me less important, less worth the risk of trying to rescue?
And Steve—god, had Steve ever met Morden? Did my older brother know there was another son out there, another piece of our fractured family that I’d never been told about?
My throat tightened and tears pushed on the back of my eyelids.
She smiled as her gaze flickered over me, enjoying my pain. “Now, enough of your pathetic history. Do you know of our Unseelie history?”
I cleared my dry throat, trying to focus. “Only what Ari has told me,” I said numbly. “That there was a great supernatural war where your father was killed?—”
“Murdered,” she corrected me. As if the word made him a victim rather than what he actually was—a tyrant who’d finally faced consequences.
She looked at the many rings on her fingers. “Do you know of my brother?”
I squirmed in the chair uneasily. “No, not really.”
“He’s imprisoned in the Hollows—a supernatural prison,” Ari explained.
“That’s not good enough,” the queen said, her fingers gripping the jeweled arms of her throne until her knuckles went white. Her voice dropped to a deadly whisper that somehow carried more menace than shouting. “He could escape and try to steal my crown. I am queen.” The last words came out like a hiss, her eyes flashing with fury. “But some of my subjects still remember him fondly—they would want him restored to the throne. That...” Her voice turned to pure ice. “I cannot allow.”
The venom in her eyes sent chills racing down my spine like icy fingers. My stomach clenched with this-woman-is-a-monster revulsion.
Why was I here? What did she want from me?
If she was anything like her father, I understood why Morden fled this realm and took his son, my brother. I had two brothers—not one, two.
Ari leaned forward in his chair, his voice smooth. “I understand that, Your Majesty.”
“If my army and I go through the portal, my soldiers may discover that Prince Killian still draws breath.” She paced—sharp, predatory steps echoing across the marble floor.
My ears pricked, and my pulse quickened. Meaning what?
Ari’s smile stretched wider, cold and sinister. “Ah yes, you told them he was deceased.” His voice dripped with dark amusement.
My blood ran cold. The queen had lied to her entire kingdom about Killian being dead. Guilt? Honor? She possessed neither.
She whirled toward the massive oval mirror, her hand sweeping dramatically through the air. The glass surface rippled and shimmered in response to her gesture. “I can make it show whatever I desire. Truth, lies—it matters not. The mirror obeys my will.”
My gaze lingered on the mirror, a desperate hope flickering in my chest. Maybe it could answer my questions—show me a way out of this nightmare. But the queen would never allow me to use it, would she?
Alarm bells rang in my mind as I remembered Brynn’s warning about the queen’s magical objects. My mind raced with questions that made my stomach twist with anxiety. Were the objects themselves corrupted—tainted with some inherent evil? Or were they simply tools that became dangerous in the wrong hands, twisted to serve the queen’s cruel purposes?
The distinction was crucial, though I wasn’t sure why. If the mirror was just a tool, maybe there was hope. But if it was inherently evil...
“But going through the portal isn’t possible since I don’t possess the Anchoring Obsidian stone. The minute my army and I go through the portal, we would be thrown back into this world.”
Ari broke out into a smile. “You don’t have to worry about that, Your Majesty.”
She frowned. “Why not?”
I stared at him. No way. He’s not about to say?—
“Because I have the Anchoring Obsidian stone.”
