I shook my head.
“And now I am left with none.” She snorted, a bitterness to the sound. “The younger, Sura, was… foolish. She brought on her own end, and I thank the Stars above that Bastian was there to save me from her plot. The elder… my heir… my Nyx… That bridge was the last place I saw her.” The furrow of her brow deepened. “Months earlier, unseelie had broken through the veil, no doubt with some foul blood ritual. That was the night Bastian’s mother was raped. They must’ve worked together to come through to this realm and take whatever they wished.” Her jaw squared as her attention returned to the bridge.
So Bastian’s mother wasn’t the only one attacked that night. How many unseelie had come through?
“One took Nyx. My poor girl. In her own bed.” Her nostrils flared and those dark eyes gleamed in the dim fae lights.
This wasn’t the Night Queen speaking, but a mother whose daughter had been assaulted. I squeezed my hands together.
“After that, I knew they’d return. As sure as the sun setting and the moon rising, they would be back. That was when I enchanted the river to keep him out of the palace. And of course, I was right.” She bared her teeth, fury in her gaze. “All those months later, he came back for Nyx to take her away forever but couldn’t cross the bridge. Instead, he found a way to lure her to it. I saw her, but I couldn’t save her from crossing. I watched in horror, knowing that once she did, she would be in his clutches and he would take her to the Underworld.”
I could picture it—the queen helpless as her daughter approached the bridge and the unseelie man waiting on the other side.
“He’d done something to enchant her and despite my cries telling her to turn back, she stepped out onto the bridge. I saw her fighting when she was halfway across. A battle for her own will. He must not have liked that. Perhaps he decided if he couldn’t have her, no one would.” She swallowed and my throat ached in sympathy. “The next thing I saw was her blood… an arrow in her chest… and her body falling into the river.”
I rubbed my chest, which had grown tight with her sorrow. She might be a queen, but in that moment she’d been powerless. Even queens were only pieces on the board.
“I searched the banks myself, sent every guard I could… but no one found her, only the grave of a deer calf stillborn with two heads. An ill omen.”
Exhaling, she pressed her hands together and shook her head at the bridge, as though that was the source of all her sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured into the quiet space she left.
“So am I.” She lifted her chin. “Now you understand why Bastian is so important to me. And why I cannot allow him to become distracted from his duty.”
I went still as stone, not even daring to breathe.
This story… it wasn’t about “getting to know” me, it was the backstory to a warning.
She had no heir. No princesses to rely on. She had Bastian. And between her words, I heard what the Night Queen didn’t say.
She would do whatever it took to keep him.
39
Kat
The queen’s unspoken warning followed me back to our rooms. The lights were on when I entered, and in the sitting room I found Bastian, head in his hands before the fire.
I stopped in the doorway, struck by the collapsed lines of his shoulders and back.
Who you really are is what you do when no one is looking.
This was Bastian.
How had I ever questioned it?
The bored aristocrat who’d practically rolled his eyes at the idea of dancing with me. The stranger I’d seen in Albion after Robin had appeared. Business Bastian.
The cunning Serpent. The Bastard of Tenebris. The Night Queen’s Shadow who would go to any lengths to get what he wanted.
They were the masks.
This man—the one who came out when it was just the two of us—the scarred man, bent by responsibility, haunted by guilt from actions and memories that weren’t his own. This was the real Bastian.
The man I’d known in Albion—he was real.
It burned my eyes and throat.
“Bastian,” I said softly as I approached.
He swallowed as though gathering himself.
In this moment when he was vulnerable and soft, I ached to tell him about Elthea and the fact I’d had to get the memory of her treatments erased.
I ached to tell him everything.
But he didn’t need my pain on top of his own, and he was soft now, but he was also the man who’d broken bones for me. I needed Elthea’s cure, and to get it, I had to suffer in silence.
So, I took the chair next to his and curled up on it to face him. “What’s wrong?”
With a deep breath, he pulled his attention from the flames and swept his fingers back through his hair. “It’s been a long day.” One side of his mouth rose like he was trying to give me a comforting smile… and failing.
“What, in particular, made it so long?”
“Putting it diplomatically, the queen is not in the best of moods. Prince Sepher’s wedding has reminded her of… everything she doesn’t have.” Another attempt at a comforting smile.
Very diplomatically put.
“The king had several Dusk folk executed while we were away. If I’d been here…” He shook his head and his frown pierced my heart with thorns. “Then there’s…” He huffed out a long breath. “A list of things I can’t tell you. State secrets, etcetera.”
I tugged off my gloves and wrung them with both hands. “Does any of it relate to unCavendish?”
“Perhaps. It’s… unclear.”
“Is there some magic that could… I don’t know… Pull any knowledge from my head that I might’ve missed?” That had to be something Kaliban could do.
Bastian flinched and shook his head. “Not that I would risk using on you.”
I waited, but he didn’t elaborate. “There must be something I can do to help. Something I’ve missed. Maybe if you interview me again, I’ll—”
“I’m not putting you through that, Katherine. Not again.” His jaw rippled as he stared into the flames. “And even if I would, I don’t think there’s anything you missed in your report. You were perfect.”
I swallowed down the pleasure that word gave me. This wasn’t about me—this was about trying to pry some of that weight off his shoulders. “Then put me to work for you.”
“What?” He turned a fierce frown on me.
“I got that information about the necklace, didn’t I? I can be useful, and I can do something none of your kind can.”
“Lie.” His gaze flicked down to my mouth as though he could see every lie I’d told as a stain upon my skin.
“Even if you don’t need me as a spy, there must be something I can do. Plus, it sounds like you could use the help.”
His lips pressed together and he sat back. It felt frustratingly like a dismissal.
“Put me to work, Bastian. I don’t like being useless. And right now, with my inability to control this magic, I feel pretty damn useless.” Granted, I’d used Kaliban’s fire trick to help me keep it calmer, but it still didn’t feel like it was mine to control.