I bow my head, hoping to hide my burning cheeks. This was what Juliana was talking about last night when she said the last time two brothers were in love with the same female it tore their realm in two.
Finn continues, “Although she was a peasant, Finnigan’s mother was also a priestess.
Unbeknownst to any of her peers, she was the most powerful priestess in the history of our kind. Now she’s known as Mab.”
“I thought Mab was a queen, not a peasant.”
“She was a peasant first,” Kane says. “And she was a loving but mightily protective mother—of Finnigan and then of the court the gods gave her.”
Finn flashes him a look. “You’re getting ahead, Kane.”
“So Queen Gloriana was urged to choose someone other than the brothers,” I prompt.
Finn takes a stick from the ground and begins absently breaking off pieces. “The queen may have chosen one of the royal-born males brought before her, but she found herself pregnant with Finnigan’s child. Children are so rare among our kind that Gloriana took it as a sign from the gods that she was to marry Finnigan. He was delighted, and they began to plan for their wedding and bonding day, but on the morning of the event, she was poisoned, causing her to fall onto her sickbed, where she lost the baby.”
“Oh no,” I whisper. “That’s terrible.”
“Deaglan whispered into the ears of all the queen’s court, and even the ill queen herself, blaming her betrothed for the poisoning,” Finn says. “Deaglan claimed that Finnigan had been after the throne and the queen’s power for himself.”
“Why would he poison her before the wedding?” I ask. “If he was really out for the power, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“That’s partly why the lie was so clever,” Kane says. “Deaglan claimed that Finnigan had intended to poison her on her wedding night, but the queen had found the chocolates before the ceremony, ruining Finnigan’s plans.”
“For whatever reason,” Finn says, “the people believed the lies and demanded that Finnigan be hanged for treason.”
Kane shakes his head in disgust. “He declared his innocence until the moment his neck snapped, but no one listened.”
“Mab was distraught,” Finn says. “She’d lost her son and her grandchild within a week’s time, and she knew Deaglan was responsible. She sent a warning to the palace, alerting them that she’d cast a powerful curse that would break the kingdom if the one responsible for her son’s death came to rule beside Queen Gloriana. The curse, as she cast it, said that the kingdom would suffer endless days, so the wicked rulers could never hide their misdeeds under the blanket of night.”
“But Deaglan didn’t realize how powerful Mab was,” Kane says. “He dismissed her as a peasant and proceeded to worm his way into the queen’s court.”
“In the months that followed Finnigan’s execution,” Finn says, “Queen Gloriana fell deep into her grief and abandoned all her duties as ruler of the kingdom. Deaglan carried the load, helping her keep her head above water so the people didn’t rebel against a neglectful queen and take her throne. After a time, she agreed to marry him, if only out of gratitude for what he’d done for her kingdom while she was too tangled in her grief to serve her people.
“But Mab’s curse was still in place, and the moment Gloriana bonded to Deaglan and had him sit on the throne beside her, the kingdom was cursed to endless days. Deaglan’s sentinels tracked Mab down and dragged her into the Goblin Mountains. They couldn’t risk killing her outright, so they left her bleeding in the mountains. Her blood drained out of her, along with her tears, forming what we now know as the River of Ice. And when the last drop of her blood spilled, her curse was broken, bringing night to the kingdom for the first time in weeks.”
“If she died, how did she become queen?” I ask.
“Mab never intended to rule,” Finn says, drawing two lines in the dirt. “She never intended to do anything but seek justice for her wrongfully accused son, but the gods rewarded her for her deep love in a world that had too little of that. They resurrected our Great Queen and presented her with a choice. She could choose magic, keep her immortal life, and have more magical power than anyone in the history of the realm. If she chose the power, it would pass down to every generation after her. Or she could relinquish her immortality and her magic altogether. In exchange, the gods would create the Court of the Moon and allow her to rule with the remaining years of a mortal life span.”