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I cast her a sideways glance and noticed that the delicate gold filigree cuffs that covered her ears were replicas of the ones my mother wore in the portrait. Neither matched the gold cuff that I had taken from her room, though.
“I miss them dearly.”
The sadness in her voice was rich and layered.
“Did you know them well?”
I didn’t want to speak with this woman. I didn’t want her here, invading my quiet reverie, as I looked upon my father’s face for the first time in my life and probably the last.
“They were my parents. The Lady Airgetlám and her beloved husband Lord Túathal of the House of Magic. Behind them is Canai eter Duthracht, the House of Magic itself. Long gone and crumbled into ashes.”
“I didn’t know they had children.”
Confusion played across my face as plain as could be as I stared at the side of the face of the woman claiming to be my sister.
“They didn’t. I am their only child, but, no, I didn’t know them well. I was born the day of the siege. My father had already passed into magic by then, and my mother followed him soon after.”
Her jade eyes, the exact same shade as the ones in the painting, which were a tad too dull to properly capture the shimmering oceanic depths of my mother, slid to me.
“What happened to him?” I kept my eyes on the painting, trying to fit the pieces together in my head.
“My anam cara says that the Lady Airgetlám killed him when he returned from his journey into the heart of the Well of Magic to retrieve the name of the new Ard Banríon. He says that the long line of succession of Queens had come to an end and that my Lord father had sent a messenger announcing to the heads of the royal courts as much. My Lady mother did not know that he had informed the rest of the heads of courts but didn’t wish for the crown to pass to a male heir. So, she killed him and claimed that his last act as the God of Magic was to declare the Banfhlaith Aíbinn, a duchess of the House of Magic, was the rightful heir to the throne.” She paused and let her gaze find me again. I could feel it beating into my cheek. “She was killed for her crimes against magic. So, I never knew either of them. I grew up here at court with my anam cara.”
The longer she spoke, the more that perfume flowed into me and made itself at home in my head. I felt dizzy, drawn into the sound of her voice and held there by the crook of her finger. I wanted her to speak forever, wanted her to tell me bedtime stories about whatever she wanted to. I wanted to fall into those eyes that were the slightest bit of the wrong shade.
The Raven’s forest-green eyes flashed in my mind and drew me back from the precipice of her soft song. I reeled myself back in. In my mind, I felt a fist close around the perfume and crush it in the armor of its gauntlet. My head cleared like the popping of a bubble on the blades of a grassy field. I wanted to narrow my eyes at her, wanted to vent my wrath at her for her attempt to lull me into whatever game she was trying to play, but I decided better of it. It was better to let her think that whatever she was playing at was working.
“You’re lucky to have found your anam cara so soon,” I whispered in my best interpretation of a drugged mumble.
“Yes, I am. The Ard Rí is everything I have ever hoped for and more.” She turned back to the painting, a secret smile playing on her lips. “He has promised as a wedding gift to me that he will rebuild Canai eter Duthracht from his memory so that we can spend holidays there in the house of my ancestors.”
So, this was The Lady Sapphire Speaker that The Raven had told me of, the baby betrothed to that beast. It was good to have a face to the name upon which my enemy was building their fortress.
Daróg had hoped to marry the supposed heir to the House of Magic to consolidate his power. Just as my mother had feared would happen to me. He had done the very thing that she had sought to avoid by sending me into Human. Only, in the absence of the daughter she had promised Magh Meall, he had created one.
And his creation was a cold, poor amalgamation of the features present in the painting before us. I could see it in the way her eyes did not match the color of my mother’s, the way her nose did not match the regal line of hers nor even the cheek bones that were a little too high and a little too sharp. But they matched the painting. Everything about her was a near carbon copy of the features present in the painting. An artist’s representation of another artist’s representation of two great people.
I watched the Fae woman with a new regard. Did she know? Was she complicit in his plot? Was she oath-sworn not to tell? Or was she a hapless player in his charade? What would happen to her when I tore the seams from his coat of lies and lit it ablaze? Would she get singed, too? Was she worthy of that punishment?
She was Fae. Who fucking cared if she was as guilty as he was? She was Fae, and that’s all that mattered. I would bleed them from the jugular, and if she happened to be innocent of this sin against my family and against me, then she was probably guilty of some other sin against humanity. They all were.
My blood ran icy in my veins, chilling the aching pain of The Raven’s lies and the bittersweet sight of my father’s face.
“The Ard Rí is a magnanimous Fae,” I murmured in my practiced deference. I had no interest in bowing or saying a nice word about the man, but keeping my cover was the best idea as my plans started to tie together. “It was lovely meeting you, lady . . .”
She turned fully to me and smiled a summer’s day lit smile that mirrored the enigmatic one of the painting of my mother but held none of the warmth and cleverness that hers held. This woman was merely a collection of gestures and features that mimicked the artist’s rendition of my parents but could never capture their true essence. I could see it now, with the painting at her back. The edges of her mien were a polished replica and held no true depth or understanding of who the two were. I didn’t even need to know my father to know that the black shade of hair in the painting and its exact match on the head of the woman before me had no true relation to the depth of the raven tresses he’d have worn in life.
“I’m so sorry. It’s poor manners for me not to introduce myself, even to a daoire of my anam cara. I am The Lady Sapphire Speaker, heir to the House of Magic and sole living Cailleach.” She gave me a cursory glance as if to ask if I expected her to curtsy as was custom when introducing oneself. I didn’t care. She could break her knees in a curtsy or not. Neither mattered to me. “It was a pleasure speaking with you, Golden Pearl.”
She paused, tilting her head to see if the blow of her knowing who and what I was to her betrothed would land. It did not. I didn’t give a fuck about her nor her pig of a fiancé. When she was unsatisfied by the strike against me, she reached out and slid her finger down my jawline to tip my head up to her examining eye. “I can see why he favors you. You are a beautiful little gilded dove, aren’t you? When we are married, I will ask him to share you. I look forward to hearing your screams of delight and agony, sweet little dove.”
Disgust roiled in my belly. I would rather plunge myself off the edge of my mother’s prison than be shared between this imposter and that beast of a man.
I let a saccharine smile play out across my face as she watched me. She wanted to strike at me. She wanted to hurt me, and the sad reality was, she could claw out my eyes, and she’d never hurt me as deep as she wanted to. Someone else had already gotten to that nerve and killed it with their brutality before she ever got there.
“I would like that very much, My Lady Sapphire Speaker. I look forward to the day I can entertain you and our Ard Rí to your deepest delights and pleasure,” I purred up to her in a breathy tone.
Satisfied, she leaned down and pressed her lips to mine. Her hand roamed the line of my curves teasing the skin beneath it. She was a skilled lover. I could tell by the way she seemed to caress every part of me without even veering into an awkward hand position. My flesh was cold and uninterested beneath her touch.
