Page 5 of The Queen The Fae Forgot
Shiel, however, was not.
“None of us leave here until our business is finished,” he demanded. “Or have you forgotten who we are? What we are here for?”
The queen summed him up slightly, if only for a second.
“I’ve not forgotten anything, Lord Shiel,” she said. “Some things do not need to be spoken aloud to be understood … however, for all of us gathered here, why don’t you do us the honor of speaking, plainly, what you are here to accomplish?”
“Then, at least,” she continued, with a sigh so dismissive that it made color bloom in Shiel’s flesh, still gray from injury, “we can all be sure we’re on the same page.”
Shiel, to his credit, managed to steel himself up to his full height. If it weren’t for the still-gray pallor of his skin, despite the ruddiness that his anger had brought to it, I might not have known how close he truly was to collapse.
His injuries were even more grievous than mine. Mine ran through the emptied channels of my glamour, exhausting me, draining me of power. His ran through his veins, draining him of life.
“It’s plain what you plan to do, this guise of yours too transparent,” he said, through half-gritted teeth. “But we’ll not be swept aside, imprisoned willingly in this palace at your whim. You ask what it is we came here to accomplish? Well, let me answer thatplainlyenough for you.”
He stepped forward ever so slightly, tightening that noose of tentative peace until it was tight enough to strangle all present, and then, somehow, drew it even tighter with every word he spoke next.
“We did not come here in peace, we came here to conquer,” he snarled. “We came here to claim Aurra’s crown.”
They were words brash enough to ignite a war, but instead of flying into a well-deserved rage, the queen simply turned to me and nodded, her face completely unphased by Shiel’s outrageous demands.
“Then take it,” she said, so simply, I didn’t understand the meaning of her words at first. “If you are my daughter, then the crown and this kingdom are yours to take. But … if you are my daughter, as you claim to be, then you must prove it to me, use the power that you inherited from your father, the power of Tongues, and take it from me.”
Once more, all eyes were on me.
I saw the flicker on Shiel’s face, on Zev and Finch’s too—concern that they couldn’t voice without damning us outright.
I had no power, none left that I could use. I’d used every last drop that flowed within my veins, and then some. Just the thought of trying to reach for those dried rivers beneath my skin made pain prickle at the base of my spine.
But the only thing more unthinkable wasnotreaching,nottrying.
This was what we came for, after all. My crown.
And I was being given a chance to simply reach out and claim it.
If only it was that simple.
All eyes were on me, but mine were on them, too. Did the queen know that my powers were spent? Could she sense it? Why else would she issue this challenge to begin with? Surely, she wouldn’t be asking me to use my powers if she had any faith I actually could.
The oracle had warned me that this woman, this queen of the fae, hated me—that her hatred for me ran deep enough that she was not justwillingto give me up, but that she had given me up in a way that would cause me the greatest pain. The oracle’s warning couldn’t be forgotten, refused to be ignored, but there was some small part of me that couldn’t help but wonder if that hatred that had once consumed my mother might have dulled with time. Sure, the fae queen standing before me showed no signs of love for me, but she didn’t look like she hated me, either. Aside from that brief moment, that moment when she spoke of the war she’d feared I’d brought with me, she was indifferent, or at the very least, played indifference very well.
Where she could afford indifference, however, I could not.
I’d been plucked from my tortured human life into a new life that could hardly be called a fairytale. It wasn’t the endless calloused monotony of the life I’d been given up to, but it was tortured in its own way. We’d been chased, hunted, cornered, and accused. We’d faced creatures, fae, and humans each out to destroy us, but from the very beginning, the glimmer that brought me through, that carried me onward, was the promise of something on the other side.
Even before I was sure I was the heir, the long-lost changeling daughter of the fae throne, I at least had the idea to carry me on. Even when I wasn’t sure I wanted it, even when now, I wasn’t sure still, it was a beacon. It was a future.
It was … destiny.
And now that destiny was here, within my grasp, if I could only reach out with my newly freed magic and take it.
So, despite the pain that blossomed at the very thought, I reached.
That pain scraped through me, dragging like pointed nails rasping through the dry canals of my veins, already stretched and scraped by the magic I’d last used, the magic that had last left Icarus a blackened husk before me. The magic that now left own fingertips smudged with darkness that deepened, taking further root as I tried to draw on the glamour—the one I inherited or otherwise—once again.
I didn’t need enough to command an entire fae court, I didn’t need enough to even string words together. I only needed one word, one drop of glamour.
But there was not a single drop left. No matter how hard I reached, no matter how I dug my own talons into those fresh, stinging wounds, nothing came.
