“Yes. The beloved Queen Reé. She watched all her children and her children’s children be slaughtered by the Seelie Court, and she knew she couldn’t pass the crown to her own without risking the end of our line altogether. So she transformed her last child into a human and sent her to the human realm, where she would be safe, so that generations later, when the court needed it the most, you could return to us and save my people and our land from being completely annihilated.”
“We thought your line was gone,” Finn says. “We were never told.”
“The prophecies were there,” she says. “Didn’t you hear them? Whispers of a queen who appears as an outsider, one who will balance the sun and shadow and end the war?”
I draw in a breath. “A queen? ” That was the prophecy Sebastian talked about when he justified his plans to take the throne. But he believed it would be a king.
Mab flashes that beautifully creepy smile. “It is the females in my line who have the true power.
Of course a queen. Your mother was to tell you everything when you turned sixteen, and then when you turned eighteen, the suppressed magic in your blood would’ve been freed and turned you.” She barks out a sound I think might be a laugh. “If you’d never bonded with Arya’s son, you never would’ve needed that Potion of Life. Your blood would’ve done it for you without the painful death.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand. My mother was human. If she was your blood as well, why didn’t she turn fae at eighteen?”
“Because it wasn’t time,” Mab says. “Not for her or for any before her. They weren’t the promised ones. They were not you. So that which made her fae was suppressed, just as it’s been in you and your sister.”
Her words slowly settle into my bones, as if they were always there. “My mother knew this.”
“And Oberon too, the night he saved you,” Mab says. “Her blood was part of what drew him to her to begin with, though he didn’t know it then. When he was able to return home after the long night in the human realm, he wanted her to come with him. She denied him because she knew her role. She knew she’d be the mother of the next great shadow queen. She knew Oberon’s realm would need you more than she needed him. Only when you were dying did he finally understand the truth.”
Finn studies the earth at his feet and shakes his head. “He was protecting the court after all,” he says, and I can hear the relief in his voice, can tell that he needed to know this about his father.
“He would’ve had more time if Queen Arya hadn’t interfered.”
“Arya—she knew I was your descendent?” I ask.
“Gods no. The power that masked you was far too strong to be detected by a descendent of Deaglan. Her seer prophesized that the eldest daughter of King Oberon’s lover would end her, cut into her heart with her own blade. So Arya sent her nasty sprites through the portal to start that fire.
They set a trap so the house would collapse just as you ran for the door. But you chose to save your sister first, and because you put her before yourself, you weren’t where they planned the worst of the collapse. Because you saved your sister, Oberon was able to save you by passing you his crown, though years earlier than planned.”
My heart races, and I backtrack in my mind and reconstruct a puzzle I already thought I understood.
“I thought you would figure it out when you were able to sit upon the Throne of Shadows,” Mab says. Her hazel eyes, so much like mine, burn into me. I feel that she can see right through me and into my past. “The throne was yours. You could’ve kept it. Though ruling as a mortal might’ve been . . .
tricky.”
I shake my head. “I didn’t know. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Those of us in the Twilight are unable to speak directly with the living unless they make the journey here. You’re here now only because the priestesses united their power to send you the message, despite the traitor High Priestess’s efforts to keep you away.”
“The Unseelie Court is dying,” I say. “You say I have a role to play, but I cannot sit on the throne without the crown, and Sebastian cannot sit on the throne without the power. Tell us how to get someone on the throne.”
Her smile is wide this time, showing a mouth of black teeth and, between them, endless darkness.
“If he forfeits his life, he could surrender that crown to you, my child.”
Snakes slither through those flickering flames around the base of her throne. Their hissing sounds like a warning, a ticking clock.