Yet, she could see…no, she could feel, the concubine’s point of view. The woman didn’t wish to be Fae. Her faith was different than the king’s. She believed life continued after what most perceived as death. Her race had souls, mysterious amorphous things that did not die when the body did, and to become Fae meant her cherished soul would ultimately wither and die. To the concubine, mortal death was nothing more than one door closing and another opening. She had no fear of it. Who was the king to force his woman to choose his faith over hers? Still, he mocked it. Told her death was the end, that she should capitulate her belief in something, for his in nothing. Yet the concubine’s impassioned entreaties, like hers, fell on ears made deaf by ego and arrogance.
Aoibheal pivoted away from the bed. If, as the king claimed, she hadn’t been born Fae but mortal, she would know it. She was not the woman who’d once been his concubine. She was bored, trapped alone, getting distracted by a passion play.
Still…the king claimed she’d been used as a pawn, forced to drink, unsuspecting.
Such had been known to happen, when feuds within her court escalated, until she’d assumed power and locked the cauldron away, along with the Elixir of Life, where only she could access them. She’d carefully conducted each Fae’s forgetting. Protected them from one another.
She’d been trapped in the boudoir long enough to have reflected upon every aspect of the king’s story, and was forced to concede that although his claims were outrageous and absurd, they were nonetheless possible. If someone had forced a cup from the Cauldron of Forgetting upon her much farther back in the past than she even knew she’d existed, then everything he claimed might be true. She’d been accused by her own High Council of granting mortals undeserved lenience, and on rare occasion of even protecting them.
She’d spent her entire reign studying and analyzing possibilities, the better to shape her race’s world, holding none too extreme to entertain.
How then could she deem this one beyond the realm of plausible?
Aoibheal spun to face the towering black Silver that divided the two chambers, light and dark, cozy and cavernous, lovely and frightening. The mysterious portal chilled her. She’d cut her teeth on tales of what lay beyond in the Unseelie King’s eerie realm of eternal midnight and ice. She’d recently been in that realm, until rescued by the O’Connor she’d delicately nudged to be there at her hour of need, but had glimpsed none of it, trapped in her coffin of ice.
She’d not regained consciousness until after the king had taken her from the abbey catacomb, had not foreseen that he would abduct her. She had no idea how she’d been freed from the Unseelie prison, and now her most powerful weapon, the O’Connor sidhe-seer, was possessed by the worst of the Unseelie King—most certainly her enemy.
She knew the legend of the king’s mirror. It was said that only two could pass through the portal and survive. She eyed the enormous, gilt-framed Silver, striving for objectivity, weighing the limited choices she had. It was possible there was a way to escape her prison from the king’s side of the boudoir. The arrogant king was too enamored of his own existence to believe the Queen of the Seelie would risk her own life trying to pass through it.
She smiled bitterly. He didn’t know her.
She would sacrifice everything, confront any unpleasant truth, yield even her immortal life to preserve the future of her race. All that mattered to her was that her people survived. Even if that meant she did not. She was their queen.
If she attempted to cross the threshold and died, what would become of them all? Guilty of the death of yet another queen, might the king finally do something to save their race?
If she tried and survived, it would mean that her entire existence was a lie, that she was far older than she believed she was, and had been born the unthinkable—mortal, human.
One thing was irrefutably true: she would die anyway if she remained where she was. Better to die trying than not.
When the planet collapsed, every Fae realm, including the Silvers and all they contained, would vanish. Except the king himself. Legend held he predated even the First Queen, some even claimed he’d made her. Made them all. And even now he had no care that his creations might cease to exist. Why would he? He would go on.
She glanced back at the concubine, tangled in bed linens with the king.
They touched her, struck a chord somewhere deep within her. Was it possible remnants of memory survived the cauldron? That a love as consuming as the one the concubine had shared with the king left an indelible imprint on a being’s very essence despite the effects of the Elixir of Forgetting?
With every ounce of her being she wanted to deny it. Yet she would not repeat the egotistical mistakes of the stubborn First Queen.
Often, it was only the bold, fearless, risky action that had any hope of circumventing impending doom, as if Fate was amused by the colorfully unexpected, and while she was laughing, one might slip changes past the pernicious bitch.
It was her duty to exhaust all means at her disposal to save her race. No matter how terrifying or distasteful.
She eyed the sleek dark glass, peering through to the shadowy interior of the king’s bedchamber.
Fire to his ice, frost to her flame.
She had no idea where the thought had come from.
But somehow she knew also that it was cold on the other side, his side. So cold it would be difficult to catch her breath.
She shivered at yet another thought that made no sense. She didn’t need to breathe. She was energy and projection.