I twisted the stem of my glass between finger and thumb. What price had the Night Queen paid to improve her own position? Allowing those people to be executed. Perhaps she could’ve saved them. How did it benefit her not to? It made King Lucius look paranoid and unreasonable—killing folk with little evidence. I’d heard whispers since, even from Dawn folk.
“And whose lives you’re willing to pay with,” I murmured.
“Exactly.” She exchanged a glance with the tattooed man before leaning forward. “Have you heard about my sister’s death?”
“I’ve heard a version of it. But I’m guessing you’re about to give me yours.”
“I’m about to give you the truth.” She set aside her glass and took a breath as though steeling herself. “No doubt you’ve been told vaguely that an unseelie broke through the veil and touched my sister, the implication being that she was taken against her will.”
One took Nyx. Yet the queen had used the word rape about Bastian’s mother. I’d carried over the assumption from one to the other, encouraged by her vague phrasing.
But Sura was trying to manipulate me with her own version of the truth. Perhaps she thought I’d help her persuade Bastian.
So the Night Queen didn’t want to use that word when referring to her dead daughter—hardly surprising. It didn’t mean she’d deceived me.
“My sister was in love with the unseelie man she invited to her bed. She helped call him through the veil that night as she had other nights, so they could be together rather than talking through an old scrying mirror she’d found.”
Frowning at the table, she ran a finger over its smooth surface. “She didn’t know unseelie men don’t use a contraceptive like our men do, and she found herself pregnant, with her lover back in the Underworld.”
I clasped my hands in my lap to keep them still. Pregnant? The Night Queen had left that part out of her story. But, again if her daughter had been violated, I could understand her not wanting to dwell on the idea.
Sura hadn’t explicitly said her sister wasn’t attacked.
I clung to every word, the exact turn of phrase and cast my mind back to that conversation with the queen.
Somewhere, growing between the cracks, was the truth.
“Our mother wasn’t pleased.” She scoffed. “An unseelie in the line of succession? Not acceptable. She locked her away and tried to persuade her to get rid of the baby. In secret, I helped my sister, while she pretended to consider our mother’s demands. I even took her the scrying mirror with its frame of crows and spears. How my sister didn’t know what it was when she first found it, I never understood. The Morrigan’s sons rule the Underworld, and those are her symbols. Of course it was going to form a connection to that place.”
The goddess of death and war. I fought a shudder at the idea of getting caught up with her or her sons.
“They used it to plan her escape. The night before the new moon when the veil wore as thin as gossamer and a storm made the night dark and loud—the perfect cover. But our mother had enchanted the river to keep him out. Everyone thinks it’s unseelie fae in general, to keep the palace safe, but it’s actually one specific unseelie to keep her and what belongs to her safe.”
Of course, it would benefit her to have everyone believe she’d acted to protect all the palace’s inhabitants.
I frowned as I realised—she never crossed that river, though I’d seen her wistfully looking out over the city. Was she afraid of him? Was that what kept her bound to the palace?
“My sister was heavily pregnant by that point—a couple of months from giving birth. She tried to run, but…” Frowning, she shook her head. “I discovered later our mother had been feeding her mugwort to get rid of the child. That together with the stress of the escape must’ve brought on her labour early. I can still hear her screams. She broke two of my fingers from squeezing so tight through the pain. I didn’t dare visit a healer—they’d have told the queen.” When she lifted her hand, her third and fourth fingers were the slightest bit crooked.
“I did what I could to get Nyx to the bridge, but she told me to keep out of sight—she’d take those last steps alone.” Her head bowed, but not before I caught the gleam of unshed tears. “She was protecting me. If the queen found out I’d helped her…” She shook her head.
I slotted everything the princess said between the queen’s words. They fitted. So far.
“It was a battle for her to cross that bridge. Every step.” Her voice cracked.
I saw her fighting when she was halfway across. A battle for her own will.
The queen’s version, that he’d enchanted her, had made it sound like the unseelie was magically manipulating her into crossing the bridge, but… couldn’t enchantment be love, or at least infatuation? And couldn’t the battle be to enact her own will rather than succumbing to the queen’s?
The hairs on my forearms rose with the possibility.
“But she was fierce. For all her sweetness, Nyx would crush me in the training ring every fucking time.” Sura smiled, but it was a brittle thing like spun sugar. “With her lover waiting on the other side and rain lashing down, she made it halfway, and that was when I knew she was going to reach him and they would escape and all would be well.” Her smile broke into bitter splinters and a tear escaped down her cheek. “I was wrong.”
She dashed the tear away along with any softness, scowling. “Someone fired upon her. Someone from the palace. A black arrow with white fletchings. She stumbled but kept going. I tried to get to her, to shield her or pull her back into cover or carry her to him—I still don’t know what I planned to do. But she used her gift to push me back. All I could do was watch as with a fucking arrow in her chest, she kept going. Lightning flashed and a second arrow struck her. She didn’t stop.”
My heart pounded. I could see it. The long arc of the bridge, its lack of handrails, the storm breaking overhead. Below, the river would be swollen from the rain, crashing through the ravine.
The princess’s bowed figure pressing on, one foot after the other as she clutched her round belly.
Gripping my glass, I held my breath.
“I couldn’t get to her,” Sura went on. “But from my hiding place, I could follow its trajectory back to a figure on the royal balcony. A figure I knew well, even in the rain and dark, one whose black arrows had white fletchings. Our mother. As lightning cracked the sky, I watched her fire the third arrow. The one that stopped her.”
Goosebumps chased over my skin as another tear slid down her cheek.
“I turned just in time to see her topple off the bridge.” She wiped away the tear and frowned like she was angry it had escaped. “Whatever story the queen told you, understand that she is the one who killed my sister. No one else.”
I sank back in my chair and clutched my head, which buzzed with two radically different versions of the story. The implications if this was true…
“You believe me, don’t you?” She raised her eyebrows. “You know I can’t lie.”
“With fae it’s hard to know what to believe. You speak of vague words, but I note you never said that he didn’t rape your sister.”