Chapter Eight
Lonan
I had managed to avoid going into my mother’s throne room since that night.
It had been two weeks. Two weeks since Ash had escaped. Two weeks of pain and misery and feeling like I would die with every breath. Not that I deserved anything less.
I wasn’t sure how long I would survive this, anyway. Just two weeks had felt like a lifetime.
At least my wounds had finally healed, so when my mother called for me in her throne room one afternoon, I didn’t have to worry about trying to hide my injuries from any of them.
As I made my way through the palace, I wondered if Balor was angry that I hadn’t succumbed to my wounds. We were forbidden from killing one another—we were too useful to my mother for her to allow us to tear each other to shreds—but there were ways around every vow and direct order. He hadn’t delivered a killing blow. If I had allowed my wounds to fester or not got them treated, my death would have been my doing. Not his.
But then, Balor surely wanted me alive. I didn’t know what he planned to do with his hold over me. What he planned to make me do for him. I had no idea if he was concocting something already, or if he would wait centuries to cash in on thefavours. Not that I saw what he had done as afavour. I hadn’t wanted it to happen at all, but he had made sure it did.
I resisted the urge to finger the thick scar ringing my right forearm through my shirt as I approached the throne room. A nervous habit that had formed in the weeks after the injury, one that I’d quickly tried to quash when I had seen Balor watching me do it with spiteful glee one night at dinner.
Now, his eyes darted down to my left thigh to check if I was still limping as I stepped into the throne room. I could spare him only a brief glance, because my gaze quickly locked onto what was hanging directly behind my mother’s throne.
I felt the blood drain from my face as I stared at Ash’s arm, suspended from the post she had chained him up against. It had been nailed to the wood and treated with something to keep it looking fresh. His new golden skin glimmered in the cold unseelie firelight from the chandelier above.
My breath caught when I saw my ring—the one I had given him—still sitting on the hand’s middle finger.
If my mother recognised it, would she suspect that I felt more for Ash than she had thought? If she asked me directly if I loved him and ordered me to answer, I wouldn’t be able to lie. What would happen? What would she do to me?
Even as I wondered, the hollowness in my gut meant that I didn’t really care. I didn’t care what she did to me, except that if she killed me, I wouldn’t be able to keep shifting and going into the forest to try and find Ash so that I could protect him, even from a distance.
“My little blackbird,” the Carlin crowed. “Come and take your seat with your brothers. We have news from the guards to hear.”
Panic streaked through me, but I forced myself to walk calmly to my throne beside Cethlen. His head tilted as I approached, listening carefully. Balor’s blue eyes tracked me the whole way, but Bres was gazing down at his nails with a bored expression on his face.
Three guards walked into the room, the one in front removing his helmet to bow once they stood in front of the Carlin. His long silver hair slipped over his shoulder with the movement.
“What news?” she asked in a bored voice, even though her taloned fingers were gripping the arms of her throne tightly.
The guard looked nervous. “Not much I’m afraid, my queen. Just that rumours pass between the solitary Folk about a seelie fae escaping your land and into the forest. But no one has seen him since.”
“How can he have just vanished?” The Carlin seethed, her long nails biting into her palms as she clenched her hands into fists. “He is in there somewhere. He hasn’t gone to seelie land.Find him.”
“He can’t know the woods well enough to truly hide,” Cethlen said demurely, stroking his hand over his hellhound’s back. “He can’t know them at all. If he’s remaining hidden well enough to stay undetected, he will surely be in bad shape. He may already be dead from the wound Balor inflicted.”
Fear tightened my throat, making it hard to breathe. No. No, surely his brother was helping him. Surely he was keeping him safe. I had been searching for days and seen nothing of him. And I could remember hearing someone screaming at Ash to run from the forest. It had to have been the Golden Son.
He wouldn’t hurt Ash, would he? He’d been trying to help him, leaving him the notes. Giving him the book with the passage about Ash’s fae mother.
“Doesn’t the Golden Son live in the woods now?” Bres asked. My throat bobbed with a nervous swallow. “Banished from seelie land. What if he found him? What if he’s stashing him somewhere?”
The Carlin grunted. “If that is the case, that doesn’t help us at all. I searched for him for years and saw no trace of him. They are both weak little snakes, cowering from us in the dead leaves.”
I relaxed only slightly. At least they didn’t know that the Brid’s Golden Son had been leaving Ash notes to help him. Although, he wasn’t her Golden Son anymore. Now that term was used mainly among the unseelie as a snide jab at the Seelie Queen. Her own people called him the Traitor.
“Get back out there and find him,” the Carlin was snarling at the guard. “If you return without that seelie dog in tow, you will be receiving a visit from my youngest son.”
Wide, fearful eyes darted to me and away again just as fast. The guard bowed, already backing away before he turned and walked hurriedly towards the door with the other two behind him.
As soon as they had left the room, the Carlin jerked up out of her throne and slammed her staff to the floor, sending tendrils of ice creeping out in all directions.
“Useless pigs,” she snarled.