“I suspect that’s what Bastian thought of you. A fascinating, flame-haired human. Even better that he was away from home and most of his usual responsibilities. I dare say he saw the whole trip as a chance to relax… blow off some steam.”
Meaning I had been a chance to blow off steam and nothing more. Yet he’d had ample chances to take his pleasure with me and hadn’t.
Still, what she said (and presented as her opinion, so not a lie) had an undercurrent of truth. Now I’d seen how Bastian lived here, I understood that Lunden had given him some measure of freedom.
“Maybe he needed the break from such heavy responsibilities placed upon him.” Subtle enough to not get me in trouble, but with all her centuries of court life, she had to understand that I meant she placed too much upon him.
She exhaled a soft sound, a shade thoughtful, a shade amused. “To think they say humans are stupid.”
“And they say fae are polite above all else. I think they don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Her chuckle rose, then fell into a thoughtful silence. We stood there a long while, the lights and life of Tenebris playing out before us. I wondered if I could excuse myself or if I had to wait for her to dismiss me as I would in Albion.
“I come here some evenings.” She spoke quietly, gaze on the bridge, a crease between her brows. “More so since this news of Dawn’s royal wedding.”
Prince Sepher and his human bride. They’d chosen the eclipse for their wedding day so the queen could be present alongside King Lucius. I hadn’t thought of how she might feel about it.
“I think of my daughter,” she added.
The princess Bastian had beheaded?
“Did Bastian tell you I had two daughters? Once upon a time, anyway.”
I shook my head.
“And now I am left with none.” She snorted, a bitterness to the sound. “The younger, Sura, was… foolish. She brought on her own end, and I thank the Stars above that Bastian was there to save me from her plot. The elder… my heir… my Nyx… That bridge was the last place I saw her.” The furrow of her brow deepened. “Months earlier, unseelie had broken through the veil, no doubt with some foul blood ritual. That was the night Bastian’s mother was raped. They must’ve worked together to come through to this realm and take whatever they wished.” Her jaw squared as her attention returned to the bridge.
So Bastian’s mother wasn’t the only one attacked that night. How many unseelie had come through?
“One took Nyx. My poor girl. In her own bed.” Her nostrils flared and those dark eyes gleamed in the dim fae lights.
This wasn’t the Night Queen speaking, but a mother whose daughter had been assaulted. I squeezed my hands together.
“After that, I knew they’d return. As sure as the sun setting and the moon rising, they would be back. That was when I enchanted the river to keep him out of the palace. And of course, I was right.” She bared her teeth, fury in her gaze. “All those months later, he came back for Nyx to take her away forever but couldn’t cross the bridge. Instead, he found a way to lure her to it. I saw her, but I couldn’t save her from crossing. I watched in horror, knowing that once she did, she would be in his clutches and he would take her to the Underworld.”
I could picture it—the queen helpless as her daughter approached the bridge and the unseelie man waiting on the other side.
“He’d done something to enchant her and despite my cries telling her to turn back, she stepped out onto the bridge. I saw her fighting when she was halfway across. A battle for her own will. He must not have liked that. Perhaps he decided if he couldn’t have her, no one would.” She swallowed and my throat ached in sympathy. “The next thing I saw was her blood… an arrow in her chest… and her body falling into the river.”
I rubbed my chest, which had grown tight with her sorrow. She might be a queen, but in that moment she’d been powerless. Even queens were only pieces on the board.
“I searched the banks myself, sent every guard I could… but no one found her, only the grave of a deer calf stillborn with two heads. An ill omen.”
Exhaling, she pressed her hands together and shook her head at the bridge, as though that was the source of all her sorrow.
“I’m sorry,” I murmured into the quiet space she left.
“So am I.” She lifted her chin. “Now you understand why Bastian is so important to me. And why I cannot allow him to become distracted from his duty.”
I went still as stone, not even daring to breathe.
This story… it wasn’t about “getting to know” me, it was the backstory to a warning.
She had no heir. No princesses to rely on. She had Bastian. And between her words, I heard what the Night Queen didn’t say.
She would do whatever it took to keep him.
39
Kat
The queen’s unspoken warning followed me back to our rooms. The lights were on when I entered, and in the sitting room I found Bastian, head in his hands before the fire.
I stopped in the doorway, struck by the collapsed lines of his shoulders and back.
Who you really are is what you do when no one is looking.
This was Bastian.
How had I ever questioned it?
The bored aristocrat who’d practically rolled his eyes at the idea of dancing with me. The stranger I’d seen in Albion after Robin had appeared. Business Bastian.
The cunning Serpent. The Bastard of Tenebris. The Night Queen’s Shadow who would go to any lengths to get what he wanted.
They were the masks.
This man—the one who came out when it was just the two of us—the scarred man, bent by responsibility, haunted by guilt from actions and memories that weren’t his own. This was the real Bastian.
The man I’d known in Albion—he was real.
It burned my eyes and throat.
“Bastian,” I said softly as I approached.
He swallowed as though gathering himself.
In this moment when he was vulnerable and soft, I ached to tell him about Elthea and the fact I’d had to get the memory of her treatments erased.
I ached to tell him everything.
But he didn’t need my pain on top of his own, and he was soft now, but he was also the man who’d broken bones for me. I needed Elthea’s cure, and to get it, I had to suffer in silence.
So, I took the chair next to his and curled up on it to face him. “What’s wrong?”
With a deep breath, he pulled his attention from the flames and swept his fingers back through his hair. “It’s been a long day.” One side of his mouth rose like he was trying to give me a comforting smile… and failing.
“What, in particular, made it so long?”
“Putting it diplomatically, the queen is not in the best of moods. Prince Sepher’s wedding has reminded her of… everything she doesn’t have.” Another attempt at a comforting smile.
Very diplomatically put.
“The king had several Dusk folk executed while we were away. If I’d been here…” He shook his head and his frown pierced my heart with thorns. “Then there’s…” He huffed out a long breath. “A list of things I can’t tell you. State secrets, etcetera.”
I tugged off my gloves and wrung them with both hands. “Does any of it relate to unCavendish?”