I picked up my spoon but just toyed with it. I cleared my throat, but my voice was still hoarse when I asked, “Where is the Midsith?”
“Far from here. In the dead centre of the forest.”
I stared into my half-eaten bowl of stew. “So… the Carlin will be coming into the forest?”
“Ash, please believe us when we say that the Carlin is nearimpossibleto kill. You won’t be able to, and it’s far too dangerous to even try.” Nua gazed at me worriedly. “She’ll have her sons with her—and guards. You’ll be wildly outnumbered.”
“Besides, Samhain and Beltane are supposed to be days of peace.” Gillie snorted. “Not that us solitary Folk care much about court politics.”
“Gillie,” Nua hissed. “Don’t encourage Ash to run blindly towards certain death.”
I clenched my jaw at that. “I wasn’t thinking about that. I know it would be too dangerous to try and kill them then.”
I looked up hesitantly, meeting Nua’s big green eyes. “I think… Do you think it would be safe for me to go and watch? Hidden, I mean. I’d stay hidden.”
“Why?” he asked, staring at me.
I flushed, looking back down and feeling like a little boy.
“I think… I think I just want to see her.”
They were both silent for a long moment. I tensed when Nua said gently, “You don’t mean the Carlin, do you?”
My face burned, so I kept my head down. I felt like a child, desperate for his mother’s approval, even though I wasn’t. I didn’t even consider the Brid my mother. But… part of me wanted to see her. Just once. The woman who’d birthed me. Who’d abandoned me and wanted me dead as a boy.
“Is that stupid?” I mumbled.
“No,” Nua said quickly. “No, of course not, Ash. I… understand. But…”
I looked up to see him glance worriedly at Gillie.
“She’s not a nice woman, Ash.”
“I’d argue she’s worse than the Carlin,” Gillie muttered from behind his mug before taking a sip of tea.
I stared at him. “Seriously?”
He nodded, lowering his mug and gazing at me. “The Carlin is all bluster and cold fury. The Brid is… bloodthirsty. Hot-blooded, but still conniving. Unseelie Folk struggle to reproduce as much as the seelie. There are far fewer of them, so they tend not to slaughter one another. Even the Carlin reins it in, though she does still send her assassin son out to murder the Folk who slight her.”
I didn’t know which of her sons he was referring to, so I stayed silent.
“But the Brid has a glut of Folk on her land,” Gillie continued in a grim voice. “It makes her more… frivolous with their lives. They mean less to her. They’re her playthings.”
I gritted my teeth. “The Carlin treated me like a plaything too. She didn’t give a shit about my life.”
“No. But you’re not unseelie, Ash.”
My blood boiled. “I know, but—”
“I’m not saying this to try and make you think more highly of the Carlin.” Gillie snorted. “She’s still terrible. I’m just saying… don’t expect the Brid to be any better. Because she isn’t.”
“She’s awful, Ash,” Nua said softly. “You’re better off never knowing her.”
“I’m not saying I want to know her,” I snapped, feeling foolish. “Just that—I just…”
Nua sighed, darting a worried glance at Gillie. “We can… We’ll try and think of a way. For you to safely watch them arrive at the Midsith.”
“We can ask Odran,” Gillie said. “He knows that area better than us. He’ll know if there are any good spots to remain undetected.”
He smiled at me. “Beltane is in a week. We’ll visit him at his lake tomorrow.”
My stomach twisted with nerves at that. A week? It was that soon? I hadn’t realised I’d been out here so long, living in the forest with Nua and Gillie. The Carlin had chained me up in her throne room about a month after I’d had my little Christmas celebration alone, so near the end of January.
So, three months. I’d been out here nearly three months. Beltane was on the first of May. The start of the Mild Months.
I wondered how much of me the Carlin would have sliced off to eat by now if I hadn’t escaped.