My breath shuddered out of me, then hitched with a weak, pathetic sob as I looked at Lonan, but he still wasn’t looking back at me. He just looked bored, his eyes hooded and face completely blank. He didn’t deny anything. He didn’t say anything at all.
“Don’t blame you, you sly bastard.” Bres’s teeth gleamed as he laughed loudly. “Thought you’d have some fun of your own while you were being forced to watch him.”
The Carlin looked entirely unsurprised to hear this. In fact, she was laughing with her son.
They’d all known this entire time.
“So vicious in your own way, my little blackbird,” the Carlin said to her youngest son with affection, then clasped my face tight and tutted with false sympathy. “Does it hurt, sweet boy? Did you think it was real? Thatmyson could truly ever wantyou?”
It did hurt. It hurt so much that I couldn’t catch my breath. It hurt more than the insidious cold creeping under my skin and into my bones, making my heart thud too hard in my chest.
He’d never told me he loved me, because he couldn’t. Because it would have been a lie.
It had all been a lie. Agame.
“Another delicious stab at the Brid. Whatwouldshe do if she knew her spawn had been thoroughly tainted by unseelie royalty?” The Carlin grinned at me, filling my vision and blocking out everything else as she airily continued, “Whatwouldshe do if she knew you were here? Actually, she probably does know by now. And she probably doesn’t care, unless she knows what I am planning. But she’s too late to stop it.”
Who? Who was she talking about? My real mother? My fae mother?
“She wanted to kill you, you know. She sent her Golden Son to do it when you were just a boy. But he’s as pathetic as she is. Lucky for me, I suppose. Now you’re mine.” The Carlin laughed, face twisting into an ugly mask of cruel amusement. “If only she hadn’t been so weak. I’m sure she has sat there every day since, regretting the fact that she left you on your mortal father’s doorstep instead of stamping on your head the moment you slithered out of her body.”
Her bronze teeth gleamed in a rabid smile. “A half-breed abomination. A stain on her title. And look what happened. She lostbothher sons because of it. She’s hopeless. Shedeservesto watch her court and her land wither and die. She should begratefulthat I will take it all and let her rot away to nothing.”
When she leaned forwards and kissed my cheek, I tried to flinch away, but the cage of her clawing fingers held me completely still. The five points of her talons gripped my face so hard I thought they would pierce my skin.
“Just like you will, sweet boy,” she murmured. “You’ll give me many years of power first. You will be my weapon to stop the Mild Months from coming.”
I didn’t understand. I didn’t understand why they were doing this. She was… going to use my seelie power to stop the other queen from getting stronger once the Bitter Months were over?
But… why me? Why go to all this trouble? There were surely thousands of seelie Folk out there, ones who were full fae and didn’t need to shed their mortal half. Why did she want me?
She patted my cheek. “I bet you’ll taste just as sweet as you look. Like a plump, warm-blooded little pig, hmm? I’m going to enjoy carving you up and eating you bit by bit. But first we have to get this unsightly mortal skin off, don’t we?”
My heart thudded so hard in my chest that I thought it was going to explode. What was she going to do? Was she going to literally peel the skin from my body?
The Carlin tutted, tapping a clawed finger against my cheek. “We’d planned a wonderful celebration for you. To bring you to my court and welcome your true self. Of course, you weren’t to know that you were never going to leave this place once you’d stepped foot inside it.”
Leaning back, she swept an arm out. The movement drew my gaze towards Lonan, but I looked away again just as fast, shivering violently in my chains. I couldn’t bear the betrayal.
“Ididtell you, when you first arrived. I even welcomed you to your new home.” Her one eye hardened, glistening deep blue. “Thisis your home, Ash. My court. This is where you will spend the rest of your long life. That pathetic little cottage was just where we shoved you, out of the way until you became useful. But then you neverdidbecome useful. You just sat there, eating my food and drinking my wine and rotting beneath this ugly mortal skin, not eventryingto shed it.”
Moving faster than I could track, she snatched up my face again.
“So I will shed it for you, sweet boy,” she hissed, her breath like ice. “I’ll scrape it off until you become my seelie vessel, a living lump of power I can draw from to play that bitch at her own game.”
“I d-d-don’t understand,” I stuttered again.
She laughed, the sound grating over my skin.
“Youstilldon’t understand? Of course the Brid would spawn such a stupid little thing. You are Seelie High Fae, Ash,” she said slowly, like I was a child. “Her blood runs in your veins—blood that I will suck out of you to steal her power, once your mortal skin is gone.”
I was too weak to fully grasp her words. Too cold—it was so cold. My heart thudded painfully hard in my chest, my body spasming from the ice that was slowly locking up my limbs. How long had I been hanging here before I woke up?
How long had Lonan been standing there, watching my unconscious body shiver from the cold, waiting for me to find out everything?
“We’d hoped that killing your father would trigger it,” the Carlin conversationally, not seeming to notice when I stopped breathing entirely, even as she tapped my chin with her thumbnail.
“Y-you… y-y-you… Th-they d-died in a c-c-car c-crash,” I managed to get out, my voice pathetically weak.