She shook her head. “I love you. Everyone knows. You think Endellion doesn’t already know?” Alkamy crossed her arms over her chest. “I’ll stand by your side, do whatever you ask. I always have. I always will. If that means you being with Lily, I can accept it. I did accept it years ago.” Tears started to slide down her cheeks. “None of it means that I don’t need the words. Say them.”
“I love you,” he swore. In that moment, he wished he could be more like Lilywhite and Creed, that he could ignore the consequences and do what he wanted, that he could take Alkamy and run far from their responsibilities. But standing there with Alkamy in his arms, with words of love on his lips, didn’t change reality or duty.
A sound from Lilywhite’s room made Zephyr look into the half-open doorway. Creed looked back at him from his seat on her bed. He was clothed, so perhaps they hadn’t done anything to further complicate this mess.
He kissed the top of Alkamy’s head, and then he turned so he could see Lilywhite instead of Creed. “I love Alkamy, but I won’t sentence any of us to death at the queen’s order. That’s what it means to love someone: being willing to give them up to keep them safe.”
Lilywhite held out the object she’d been carrying then. “I told you my mother had left me a book. The others all read it last night while you were . . . sleeping.”
Zephyr looked down at it, read the title, and then glanced at her.
“Read the first bit,” Lilywhite said. “Then we’ll talk.”
Silently, he walked over to the sofa. Alkamy sat next to him, her hand in his, while he read what he quickly realized was a story of the past written by the missing heir to the Hidden Throne.
The Book of Secrets
Iana Abernathy
It was almost dusk when the Unseelie Queen started to swim toward the shore. Today was the last swim until her daughter was born. Children weren’t meant to be born into the churning sea—even children like hers. Although the babe wasn’t due quite yet, Endellion was near enough to her birthing time that from here on out, she’d restrict herself to land.
Her daughter would be the beginning of a new era, the start of a treaty that had taken both Unseelie and Seelie decades to create. As part of that treaty, Endellion had lain down with the Seelie King, Leith. The Queen of Sea and Sky would bear the daughter of the King of Fire and Truth.
The two fae monarchs agreed that their daughter would one day rule the two courts as one.
Endellion took a deep breath and dove down again, enjoying the lightness the water gave her now heavy body. Her hair was still unbound after her visit to Leith, and her stress was temporarily set aside in the aftermath of his affection and the joy of the sea. It wasn’t the sort of peace she’d known in past centuries, but she was closer to content than she’d been in more recent decades.
The burden of making decisions for her subjects had been heavy on her shoulders. Both the Unseelie and Seelie fae had been hidden away for several centuries, no longer meddling in the affairs of men. But faeries—as beings of nature—were left suffering from the consequences of the plague of humans that had spread over the world. The seas grew murky with poisons, and the soil had been exhausted from toxins that were discarded carelessly. To save their kind from the poisonous world, the two courts retreated to a series of islands hidden near the great whirlpool, the Coire Bhreacain.
With some subtle urging, the British queen had declared the Gulf of Corryvreckan “unnavigable,” so Unseelie and Seelie Courts had hidden their islands near the Corryvreckan. The two fae courts were learning to find peace on the chain of islands they’d divided between them. They mostly kept to their own kind, but there were those who traveled between the isles.
Endellion herself had been diving into the twisting waters of even this whirlpool since before the mortals knew it existed. She was of the sea. In her long life, there was no ocean that she’d not visited. She drew her strength from the waters and from earth, much as Leith found his strength in air and fire. Their daughter would share the strengths of both courts, and so be able to safeguard both Unseelie and Seelie.
The queen surfaced on the far side of the gulf when a screech of metal drew her eyes to the left. An over-large vessel had sailed into waters too treacherous and too shallow. The rocks that marked the edge of the hidden islands shredded the underside of the ship.
Endellion dove to try to avoid the sinking heap of metal, but a piece from the hull of the ship smashed into her, sending her deeper than she would have gone with a babe growing inside her. As she kicked toward the surface, her skin grew tight from the oil that coated the water. The poison spilled into her sea, choking her, clinging to her skin.
Rage filled her as her body went into shock.
Blood mixed with oil as her daughter’s birth began—too soon, in water too deep, in seas too poisonous.
Shock, blood loss, and birth proved too much. Endellion couldn’t cling to consciousness.
When Endellion woke, she was on the shore of her island. The survivors of the crash were surrounding her.
“Where is she?”
“Who? There weren’t any other women,” a sailor near her said.
“My baby.” Endellion’s hands fell to her stomach, as if she could touch the skin and find that she was wrong.
The truth was in the blood and pain that she remembered. The truth was in her empty womb.
She pushed to her feet and looked around the beach. “Where is my daughter?”
Another sailor reached out to touch her, as if there was consolation to be found in his murderous hands. “There was no baby.”
Endellion looked to the oil-slicked sea where her child had been born and ran until she could dive under the surface. She dove into those toxic waters, again and again. She cried out to the sea creatures, begging for help. She swam until her body screamed in pain. She searched until her lungs burned.
There was nothing. No sign of the life she’d carried and lost. Her child was gone.
When she reached the shore again, her subjects had arrived and stood behind the sailors. Every mortal and faery on the shore watched her as she stepped onto the land. Blood and oil streaked her skin. Her entire body shook.
Silently, the Unseelie Queen walked up to her son, Rhys, and held out a hand. Words seemed too heavy to speak.
Rhys frowned in confusion.
“Blade,” Endellion managed to say. “I need your blade.”
Once she had it in her hands, she turned to face the survivors of the wreck and her subjects and announced, “My daughter is dead.” She paused to let her words settle on the assembled crowd. “You killed my daughter, my hope . . . my people’s savior.”
And then there were no more words. She turned her blade against the murderers and slaughtered every human who’d dared to destroy her heart and her sea. Given time, she would destroy every last one of them. She would eradicate the plague that had taken everything from her.
When Zephyr finished reading, he looked at Lilywhite. “As you told me when I woke, this changes nothing. Not for me. I understand what the queen lost, and I understand her anger . . .”
“My mother wasn’t killed,” Lilywhite pointed out.
“It doesn’t matter,” Zephyr said. “We need to do as the queen orders. Surely, you can understand that. Please, Lilywhite.”