Page 50 of Fae Unleashed
I didn’t quite mention that my hesitation had allowed Queen Beryl to intervene and send the pookah man back to the Unseelie Court. Both of them were waiting for their curses to take effect. They thought that would destroy our effort from the inside.
While I would do everything in my power to keep Faust from getting what he wanted, I had no way to break Beryl’s curse. She would soon run out of patience and launch an attack. We’d only been able to gather our resources like this because of the time Beryl’s curse had allowed us.
We were still lacking so much. I couldn’t accept Foxglove’s arrangement. There was no way that I would marry that man and subject myself to years of unhappy marriage. I wasn’t going to do it.
A knock came from the door behind me. I wasn’t expecting visitors, and neither was Del from the look on her face. We glanced to one another, then to the door as if we expected it to fly open any minute.
When it didn’t, I cautiously approached the door and rose on my tiptoes to peer through the eyehole. The sight on the other side of the door gave me pause. I rocked back, falling flat on my feet.
“What is it? You look shell shocked.” Del prodded my shoulder.
For a long moment, several stuttering heartbeats passing, I stood there, speechless. Del looked about ready to shake the answer out of me.
I swallowed. “We’re safe…I think.”
The person in the hall huffed and knocked again. This time, I flung the door open and looked Lady Ostara in the eye. She wore a long white sweater dress and thick leggings, her boots rising up to her knees. I could see the faint fae detailing in her brown leather boots and the bits of silver plating at the toe.
She pushed a lock of her pale blond hair out of her face and smiled sweetly before inviting herself inside. I blinked at her audacity even though I shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
“To what do I owe this visit?” I asked with a sharp note in my voice.
Ostara stood in the middle of my living room and looked the apartment up and down. I had no idea what she was searching for, but it seemed like she couldn’t find it. That or she wholly disapproved of my décor choices.
She spun on her heel to face me and smiled wide. “I have decided to join you after all.”
Again, Del and I shared a look. Del raised one suspicious eyebrow, and I nodded. This was very much out of the blue.
I turned my attention on Ostara. “What changed your mind? Do you think you can get a foothold in my court and overthrow me later?”
Lady Ostara’s jaw dropped. She put a hand to her chest in chock. “I would never. I’ll have you know that leadership is not my strength. I would rather lounge in the lap of luxury—which your domain has provided me in the past few days.”
I’d forgotten that I’d taken over Lady Ostara’s private domain. It’d been a show of power and a bit of a spit in the face after she’d treated me like shit. Even now, I was hesitant to trust her. The woman didn’t have a trustworthy bone in her entire, bony body.
“Your domain has shown me that you are more like your mother than I expected. The woman was a determined queen. I assumed that there would never be anyone else like her, not even you. As a child, you took after your father’s bloodline. He came from a questionable lineage, so I thought you would follow in his footsteps.” Ostara meandered as she spoke.
She paused in my kitchen, her gaze on the cauldron. “Ah, it seems that youhavetaken after him.”
The words dragged me forward. I rushed up to her with thoughts of the stolen books on my mind. In my dreams, I saw another cauldron in the tower of the Seelie Castle. I’d yet to go back and look for the cauldron, but I knew that it had something to do with me and my bloodline. It had to.
“What do you mean? What does my cauldron have to do with my biological father’s lineage?”
Ostara ran a finger along the rim of the cauldron. I grimaced when she touched it because the thought of someone so rude and self-centered touching my belongings made me want to clean everything, and I simply didn’t have the time.
“Cerridwen, have you ever wondered where your name came from?” She slid a sidelong glance in my direction. Her gaze probed but found nothing.
That was largely because I had nothing to give. I hadn’t really given my name much thought.
“In the beginning, there were no Seelie or Unseelie. There were only fae as powerful as gods. We had Arianrhod and Rhiannon guarding the skies and forests. We had Epona running with the horses. Then there was Cerridwen and her cauldron. She was the first of your family.”
The information pulled me out of the mortal life I’d lived up until now. It dumped me in the middle of something much older than I’d ever anticipated. Was this how Addie had felt when Hel approached her?
“Am I, like, the second coming of Cerridwen or something?” I asked, curious.
Ostara laughed. “It is nothing so dramatic, child. Your father simply wanted to see you study Cerridwen’s craft the same way he did. He wanted to see you unlock the secrets that he could not access. By passing down Cerridwen’s name, he thought he could gift you some sort of advantage.”
Lips twisted to the side, I rocked on my heels and did my best to unpack everything I’d learned. So, Fae Dad wanted me to become an alchemist like him. That was nice and all, but I’d still leaned into the craft without his intervention. The man had no part in my life, and yet potion-crafting had been my first foray into arcana.
I couldn’t help but feel like there was a greater power at work here. Ostara had also noted that Cerridwen, the original one, had lived long before the rise of Seelie and Unseelie courts. The fact that I now stood with a foot in both made me feel a connection to this ancestor. I wanted to tear down the walls separating the courts, separating all sorts of fae.
