Morven shook her head. “Mairi Grieve, she did serve our queen Una, and saved her daughter’s life. For this, I have sworn to serve her kin ’til the end of my days. Once that was you, by love, if not by blood. But now?”
Now I have no place in this world.
I’d torn it off like an offending garment, a troublesome vine wrapped around my throat. The price I paid to become Faery’s queen. And whether it was too dear, whether I sold my mortality too cheaply, who could now say? It seemed a necessary loss at the time.
Bess Grieve sighed in her sleep. BessGrieve.Mairi Grieve’s true kin.
I was only the cuckoo, long flown from her nest.
The cuckoo who was also queen. Who was learning now to lock her emotions away. “It is your decision, of course,” I told her coolly. “And so, I must bid you farewell.”
Farewell not only to Morven, but to all I had ever been on this side of the Veil. All my mortal allegiances were now broken.
And so, I returned to Faery, my true home.
Samhain
Janet shrinks away, suddenly timid,shy. “I am sorry.”
It is an outrage she thinks the Queen of Faery needs her pity.
“It must have hurt.” Janet chews on her lips, looking suddenly young as only mortal whelps can do. “You went back home and your connection to Morven was severed.”
Why does she believe me so fragile? I, who command the hours and seasons, who will not allow dawn to break on this most auspicious day? I cast glamours in the blink of an eye, and curses from the words that pass my lips; I need feel only the slightest irritation to summon the storm.
She assigns mortal sentiment to me. It would be laughable were it not also so very inconvenient.
“Faery’s queen must be immune to hurt,” I finally reply.
“That does not mean you are.” This time it is Tam Lin who speaks, surprising me. But it should not. I snatched him away to the very Underhill. He has stood beside me, filling my cup at the feasts of the higher fae even before he shared my bed. He has seen me at my most pensive and troubled.
When the Unseelie thought to form their own court and I had to talk them down. When Jenny Greenteeth and the Leannan Sith fought over a mortal swain, I solved the dilemma by cutting him in half.
In short, Tam Lin has been privy to more of the queen’s moods and responsibilities than any mortal should have. I ought to kill him for that alone.
I ignore him instead.
“Brownies,” I tell Janet, “are the lowliest of fae creatures. Certainly, no fit companions for a queen.”
She shrugs. “It does not always matter where friendship is concerned.” Her eyes grow dreamy, and she starts to distractedly pull the petals off one of my roses.
It feels like peeling off my very skin. I wonder what she will discover inside.
“My nursemaid went off to marry when I was six years old,” says Janet. “I cried for weeks after that.”
I cross my arms over my chest, trying not to roll my eyes.
“Isabel changed, when she was married. Like a rushlight put out, gone was her spirit, and the light in her eyes. I swore it would never happen to me.” Janet smiles up at the mostly naked man who looms behind her. “Tam Lin ensured it would never happen to me.”
All this was on purpose then. She ran off to Carterhaugh intending to get herself with child. To force her father to wed her as she willed, and not as would benefit her house, her people, and her line.
I scowl, growing my thorns on the inside now. They prickle and ache. “You are luckier than Glenna Baker then. And worse than Thomas Shepherd. He at least was willing to sacrifice for what his barony needed.” We are alike in that way, the shepherd king and I. We did as our title and duty compelled us in the end.
As little credit as I would like to give to Margaret of Roxburgh, she saw to it de Lyne’s line did not die out.
I stare at Tam Lin, reading both Thomas and Margaret in his appearance now: his grey eyes, her straight hair.
Janet clings to the young man, like the mistletoe to the mighty oak. “I would have given up everything to be with Tam Lin.”
