Then it broke.
The healer’s stoop straightened. The wrinkles smoothed. Her golden Fire Fae complexion turned into a deep brown. The silver hair brightened into pure white, and her body stretched into a tall, regal figure as galaxies of gemstones rose on her skin up to her elbows, catching the light like buried stars. Emeralds traced her forehead like a crown that had never truly left her, with one larger stone resting at the center.
She looked like a queen that had been trapped in the wrong life.
“M-mother?” he whispered, the word barely sound at all.
“Yes,” she sobbed, and the sound was joy and grief braided together so tightly it hurt to hear. “My son. It’s me. You are so smart, my Folli-Pollie. You figured it out!”
He stumbled forward and wrapped his arms around her neck like a child afraid she might vanish if he let go. She held him as if she’d been holding that embrace in her bones for years.
“But how?” he managed, his voice muffled against her shoulder.
“Lord Nerot kidnapped me,” she said, just hearing the name tasted like poison on my tongue. “He brought me here. He spellbound me with dark magic to conceal my identity and imprisoned me in the castle. The spell ensured I could never speak—or write—what had been done to me.”
Her hands shook as she cupped his face. “I tried to find ways to let you know I was still here, but they all failed—until a fire sprite came to me in desperate need of healing. He felt indebted, so I asked him to bring you a moonstone on my birthday hoping you would figure it out and It worked!”
The High Lord’s eyes glistened with something that looked like his soul cracking open. “And all this time…” he whispered. “All this time you’ve been here?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t left since the day he took me,” she said, voice breaking. “He used my ancient blood-high healing to his advantage; he glamoured me to look like a Fire Fae and stationed me here as a High Healer.” She looked down at the truth stone in my hand as if it were sacred. “But the truth stone from our lands broke the spell. We can go home, Follie.”
She looked to me, "Thank you child, I am forever in your debt." He rose slowly, and the softness vanished from him the way flame vanished when it was starved of air. What replaced it was cold and lethal.
His fists clenched, and the room trembled again—not with grief now, but with fury.
“Guards,” he said through his teeth, each word carved. “Take the Lady of Land to my dragon. We are leaving immediately.”
One guard gently moved toward her.
Foliade’s gaze snapped to me, sharp as a blade. “For defending my mother and breaking the spell, I will spare your life,” he said, and there was no gratitude in it—only the terrible promise of what came next. “But I suggest you flee this kingdom because there will be nothing left when I’m done. Not a structure. Not a Fae. Not even ash to remember it by.”
Then he turned and strode out, and his guards followed, and his mother—his queen—went with them.
The door shut.
The silence he left behind was worse than the shouting.
My heart raced hard enough to make me dizzy, because the truth was already taking shape in my mind like a nightmare becoming flesh.
I had just set a war into motion. And Titus didn’t even know it yet.
I needed to tell Titus we had to evacuate the kingdom and ready ourselves for attack. I waited until I saw them leave—he’d glamoured her to look like a male guard to get her past our guards unnoticed.
I ran to Titus’s room. Seeing it for the first time, I wished I had more time to look around and study it, but this was a full-on emergency.
“Titus wake up!” I hissed.
He rolled over and rubbed his eyes. “Hmmm, ready for round two so soon?” He groaned.
“Titussomething is very wrong you need to get up. I was in Gleeda’s room, and she was cleaning my mate mark, when Folliade and his guards barged in,” I began to explain.
He blinked hard, like he couldn’t get his mind to catch up with his body. For a disoriented heartbeat, he stared at me as if he were still dreaming, then he sat up fast, suddenly alert, giving me his full attention.
“Are you ok? Did he see your bare chest? I’ll rip his fucking eyes out!” He interrupted.
“No, Titus, that’s beside the point. Gleeda was under some kind of spell from your dad. She was the missing queen!!!—and Folliade knows and he thinks you have been hiding it from him and he told me to flee because he is going to destroy the kingdom!!” I explained rapidly.
“The Lady of Land was glamoured by my father and hidden here as a healer through a spell?” he asked, almost unbelieving.
