There hadn’t been much time to prepare for my trip here. Moria had quickly gone on a rampage, trying to ferret out anyone who might be loyal to Torin. Now, I was stuck here, whether I liked it or not. The only way out of Faerie was with a monarch’s permission, and Queen Moria would sooner execute me than let me leave. Apparently, I was a demon lover.
A month ago, Aeron had rushed me to this remote safe house. Orla was kept in a separate location, Cleena in yet another. We were, I think “high profile” targets. Princess Cleena was once Moria’s closest friend, but she’d loathed her ever since Moria had tried to slaughter her in the arena. Funny how that can put a real damper on a friendship.
Now, the crackling fire, a single book, and my frozen spirit friends kept me company. The idea that I’d been bored before in early retirement now seemed quaint and ridiculous.
A wild howl carried on the wind, and I hugged myself, shuddering. The mournful cry of the banshee carried on the winter winds.
I swallowed hard. Someone was going to die. And if Cleena didn’t gain control of her banshee scream, it could end up being her.
Aeron hadn’t said this out loud, but I think we were supposed to know as little as possible about the others in hiding. That way, if any of us were caught, they wouldn’t be able to torture answers out of us. Whenever that disturbing thought occurred to me, I’d turn to my frozen spirit friends and ask them to kill me with their icicle hands before I was captured.
Was I losing my mind?
Yes.
The highlight of my day was sitting in front of the fire. Aeron, bless him, had supplied me with an automatic fire lighter, and while I sat in this cabin, he ferried himself among the safe houses, checking on everyone, supplying them with food as best he could. Whenever someone in town would get tarnished with the epithet “demon lover,” he’d try to bring them to safety before they were captured.
He wouldn’t tell me about the ones he couldn’t save, or what he saw going on by the castle, and that told me it was a particularly grim situation. This was, after all, a culture in which people casually said things like, Oh, Sir Durian, yes, I decapitated his son in a duel, or and then we slaughtered the human sacrifices after the party.
My teeth chattered. At first, when Moria had taken the throne, everyone had assumed that spring would come. That was the entire fucking purpose of having a queen on the throne. We waited for the warmth, for the thaw, but Moria wasn’t sitting her cute little ass down on that stone.
The thing was, like any good tyrant, Moria knew that if people were happy and comfortable, she’d lose her grip on power. She needed their rage and fear, or they might start to question her legitimacy. Hang on a minute, why are you queen…?
If people were comfortable, they might welcome Torin back again if he returned. They might forget to be angry at the demons, and she needed them desperately united against a common enemy—one only she could defeat.
Only by the constant threat of an attack by the Unseelie could she exert this control, so when people asked her why they were still freezing in their beds and why the cold gnawed at our bones, she still had her scapegoat. The demons were to blame, along with every traitor who might support them.
I turned back to the spluttering fire and knelt, rubbing my hands together and breathing on them for warmth. Aeron had brought me one other amazing treat: he’d managed to smuggle a single book out of the castle library, an eighteenth-century Gothic romance called The Cursed Monk. For something written centuries ago, it was surprisingly dirty, and I wondered if the subject matter had been on purpose. Aeron was, after all, something of a monk himself, sworn to chastity. It was hard not to think of some of the dirtier passages in the book as what might happen if he finally let that vow go.
The creak of the door turned my head, and snow swept into the room around Aeron’s fur-clad figure. The cold breeze slipping into the room stung my skin, and he turned to close the door. “I brought you back bread and cheese.”
My heart swelled at the sight of him, braving the icy temperatures just to make sure I could have a sandwich.
Aeron’s expression had become haunted, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know everything he’d seen by the castle.
“You need to be careful, Aeron. How are you getting this food without people seeing you?”
He handed me a paper-wrapped parcel, and I pulled out the frozen block of bread to warm it by the fire.
He sat down next to me on the hearth, stoking the fire with a stick, the dim firelight warming his cheeks. “It’s not just me, Shalini. There’s a small network of people who don’t trust the queen, those loyal to Torin because they loved him. Those who know she could have ended this winter a month ago. A resistance of sorts. People are starving now, and some believe her story that it’s all the demons’ fault, but she’s losing her grip on them. She’s not doing what a queen is supposed to do. And the more she’s losing her grip, the more she retaliates with force.”