“No, that is all right.” In my current state, it would only go in one ear and out the other.
I straightened in my seat and made a deliberate show of drinking my wine. We had switched to juniper over the honeysuckle, and I did not like it nearly as much. I tried to conceal my grimace, but the steward noticed anyway and quickly swept my goblet out of my hands, swearing that variety must never, ever be served in Faery again.
My hand remained frozen in midair. I looked to Lileas. “That is extreme. Others may enjoy the vintage. They need not all have the same tastes as I.”
Lileas smiled sweetly. “Be at ease, Your Majesty. Faery has been without its leader for so long. It is still getting used to having a queen again. Your subjects simply want to make certain everything is perfect.”
I nodded, still ill at ease, and turned my attention to the entertainment, discreetly calling out “Well done” after every performance, applauding with tempered enthusiasm that I not be seen to favor any performer over the others. Yet even perfection can be wearying when one has had a long day of it, and my soft hands soon grew raw and red from clapping. Worse, after the performance of an unfortunate mortal harper I could contain myself no longer and let out a prolonged yawn.
The assembly silenced; all eyes turned away from the performer and towards me.
I might have dropped the crown jewels in the chamber pot.
I quickly covered my mouth. “My apologies,” I said. “It has been a long day—”
My protestation came too late. One of the guards, bulky for an Aos Sith and with features cruelly sharp, came forward with a whip. “Her Majesty is not entertained.” His stern tone was an eldritch echo of Eamon Grieve’s.
“Not so!” I protested. “’Twas my weariness only, I assure you.”
The guard did not listen. He shoved the harper to his knees, making him drop his harp, which made a mournfully discordant twang. The guard raised his whip.
“No!” It erupted from me, spilling from my lips, and radiating out of my pores. The mortal harper was innocent, had done nothing more than try to please the queen. It was not his fault that even the Queen of Faery could grow tired. He did not deserve this, any more than I had deserved Eamon’s hand across my face, his rod against my back.I will not suffer this cruelty done in my name!
The sky turned from twilight blue to black, and the cloud into a thick wall of grey. Winds howled as against the rafters in the old cruck house.The Cailleach Bheur comes roaring down the mountains, Mairi would have said, but it seemed I had become this hag of winter, the dame of storms, for ice burned beneath my skin and all my little hairs stood up on end.
The guard’s arm lowered, and a loud crack rang out, but not of a whip against flesh. From the cloud I summoned, lightning flashed and struck down the guard. His body instantly burned to ash, crumpled upon the grass, and was consumed.
“Sweet Mab,” I breathed.
I had never seen a fae die before. Certainly, I had never killed one myself.
That was my doing. My emotions. I thought them under control.But the sight of that whip awakened memories in me, dangerous memories, filled with pity, fear, and rage.
Such rage. I did not know how it slept inside me so long, but clearly it had.
I am Faery. Faery is me.This land obeyed me, surely as my own feet when I told them to walk, or my own hands when I tried to grab or hold.
I must remain aware of that, or who knew how much harm I might cause?
Hidden among the revelers, a woman wept. A mother. A lover. A daughter. Who could say? Widow or orphan, what did I just create?
The crowd watched me in silence, and then murmurs began to arise. “The queen shows her sympathy towards mortals.” “Didn’t her mother love a mortal harper once?” “Nay, I think that was a seer she loved...” Their whispers all tangled and made a thicket of knots within my head. The harper clutched his broken harp and sobbed. The land seemed to hold its breath, waiting to see what I would do next.
I wondered that myself.
I will get through this.I closed my eyes, thought of a sunlit day in Carterhaugh, gathering herbs with Mairi Grieve. Of nights spent lying next to a handsome shepherd—no. That would make things worse. I tried willing this all away, unwinding the threads spun by the cruel, uncaring Fates. Not even I had that power.
Finally, I opened my eyes again, and when I spoke, my voice was filled with such uncanny calm, it did not feel like me. “Send the mortal home,” I commanded. “Make him forget what he has seen.” And I thought of another mortal whose memory I had beguiled, that he might forget what he had seen of Faery. I felt guilt for doing it then, and guilt for doing it now, and knew my mortal weakness was to blame.
“Yes, my queen.” A pair of guards came forward and escorted the weeping harper away.
I was spent but could not show it. Stood tall and rigid, pretending I was unaffected by it all.
The storm cloud grew diffuse, and it began to rain.
What happened at the coronation feast could not become a pattern.Wouldnot become a pattern. If I had to push down my feelings so far inside me there was no way to reach them, if I must turn my heart of flesh into a heart of stone, so those feelings would never again exist, then so be it. For the sake of my kingdom, I would.
As for my mortal sympathies, and the matter of my mortal father, I must make it clear I did not know or care who he might be.
