No, it wasn’t. Our kingdom hadn’t been attacked in generations, so why now? If the goal was killing changelings, why not just send assassins in the night? Clearly the fae were so capable of infiltrating our kingdom, we’d never suspected that our babies were being replaced by changelings.
Battering down our wall—killing my people—had filled me with terror, with rage, withhunger.I’d felt vulnerable since the moment I’d seen that fragment of wall hit the barracks yard, and no one was more exploitable than the vulnerable.
That left an obvious answer. Faun saw it, and now I did, too.
The spiritstag had wanted this. Had wanted another Carys—a desperate, furious changeling to make a promise to a god. I had asked it to put me in the trials, and it had. It had asked me for a promise to save my life, and I had made that promise. Not unwillingly, but with relish.
If I had died in that attack, no matter; another generation of changelings would come in a hundred years. The stag had all of eternity to wait. But because I hadn’t died, because I’d survived—and survived, and survived, and survived—I became more and more the changeling the stag wanted me to be.
Which meant gods could be bastards, too.
It also meant queens were figureheads. Pawns of the gods.
There was only one other thing?—
“The stag couldn’t have known,” I said. “It couldn’t have known Dorian would save me rather than kill me.”
Faun gave a soft laugh, just a bit of breath from her nose. “How could he look upon you and not be enspelled?”
I stared at her, blinked once, uncomprehending. No one had ever spoken of me that way. “How many changelings has he killed, Faun?”
Her face went serious. She studied the blanket beside me, tracing a flower pattern. “I don’t know. That’s the truth. I only know he’s gone into your kingdom three times in three years. When he brought you back, that was a shock.”
Dorian had been to my kingdom before. Three times in three years.
“To kill changelings?”
She gave a nod, continued tracing with her finger. I’d never seen her avoidant like this. “Mostly Aurelia and Highmark. Some Noctere changelings, too.”
To what end?But the answer was obvious: if changelings were tools, and the courts were always vying for power, then what better way to deprive a court of that power than by destroying its tool?
My hands fisted in the blanket. “He isn’t a historian, is he?”
“He is, but he’s better with a sword than a pen.”
Yes, that much I had gathered.
I straightened. “I’ll need your help, Faun. With all of this—Seelie, Unseelie, the four courts…”
“They’re wolves, the other courts.” Faun leaned closer, her gaze flicking up to me. “If you don’t form an inner court around you today, you’ll become their meal.”
“Even the Seelie?”
Faun scoffed. “The Seelie may wear pastels and smiles, but they’re as sharp-toothed as snakes.”
I searched her eyes. “But a consort?” How would that help me?
“Would you rather name a king?”
The word burst from me. “No.” I’d rather name no one.
“Then unless you want to have a hundred noblemen throwing themselves at you from every court, you’ll name someone. Someone you trust.”
That was a commodity I was in short supply of.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
The next morning,I finally rose. Walking wasn’t easy, but it was necessary.
