My heart was beginning to pound deep in my chest. Everything he had shared could be taken for truth—he had mentioned my grandfather. But still, I held quiet, listening.
“Your mother wrote to me the day you were born,” Allenach continued. “The daughter I had long waited for, the daughter I had always wanted. Three years after that, all your mother’s letters ceased. Your grandfather was gracious enough to inform me that she had died, and that you were not mine, that I had no claim on you. I waited, patiently, until you were ten. And I wrote you a letter. I figured your grandfather would withhold it from you, but still I wrote to you, asking you to come visit me.”
When I was ten . . . when I was ten . . . when Grandpapa had flown to Magnalia with me, to hide me. I could hardly breathe. . . .
“When I still failed to hear from you, I decided that I should grant your grandfather a little visit,” Allenach said. “You were not there. And he would not tell me where he had hidden you. But I am a patient man. I would wait until you came of age, until you turned eighteen, when you could make your own decisions. So imagine my surprise when you walked into the royal hall. I thought you had at last come to meet me. I was about to step forward and claim you until one particular name came off your tongue.” His hand tightened on his chalice. Ah, the jealousy, the envy, began to tighten his face like a mask. “You said MacQuinn was your father. I thought perhaps I had mistaken it—perhaps my eyes were fooling me. But then you said you were a passion, and it all came together; your grandfather had hidden you by passion, and MacQuinn had adopted you. And the longer you stood there, the more certain I was. You were mine, and MacQuinn was using you. So I offered to host you here, so I could learn more of you, so I could protect you from the king. And then that skittish dog confirmed my suspicions.”
“Dog?”
“Nessie,” Allenach said. “She has always hated strangers. But she was certainly attracted to you, and it made me remember . . . when your mother was here all those years ago, one of my wolfhounds refused to leave her side. Nessie’s dam.”
I swallowed, told myself that a dog couldn’t have known. . . .
“Why let me return to MacQuinn, then?” I asked, the words too hot to hold any longer in my chest. “You let me reunite with him, only to tear me away.”
Allenach tried not to smile, but the corners of his mouth revealed his twisted pleasure at the thought. “Yes. Perhaps it was cruel of me, but he was trying to wound me. He was—still is—trying to turn you against me.”
How wrong Allenach was. Jourdain hadn’t even known whose daughter I truly was.
And then I stared at his hand—his right hand, holding his chalice—and remembered. That hand had cut down Jourdain’s wife. That hand had betrayed them, brought their wives and daughters to their deaths.
I rose, my anger and distress a marriage of horror in my blood. “You are mistaken, my lord. I am not your daughter.”
I was halfway to the door, the air squeezing out of me as if iron fingers had wrapped about my chest. The Stone of Eventide felt it, spread a comforting warmth against my middle, up to my heart. Be brave, it whispered, and yet I was all but running from him.
My hand was reaching for the door handle when his voice pierced the distance between us.
“I am not finished, Brienna.”
The sound of it stopped me short, sealed my feet to the floor.
I listened to him as he stood, as his tread moved into one of the adjoining chambers. When he returned, I could hear the rustling of papers.
“Your mother’s letters,” was all he said.
It turned me about. It dragged me back across the floor to him, where he had set a thick bundle of letters in my chair. It made me reach for them, this tiny remnant of her, the mother I had always longed for.
I began to read them, my heart completely sundered. It was her. It was Rosalie Paquet. My mother. She had loved him, then, even though she had no inkling as to what he had done.
In one of the letters was a tiny lock of hair. My hair. A soft golden brown.
I named our daughter Brienna, out of honor for you, Brendan.
I sank to the floor, my strength leaving me. My very name was inspired by his—this devious, murderous man. I looked up at him; he stood near, watching me absorb the truth.
“What do you want with me?” I whispered.
Allenach knelt on the floor before me, took my face in his hands. Those treacherous hands. “You are my one and only daughter. And I will raise you up to be queen of this land.”
I wanted to laugh; I wanted to weep. I wanted to peel this day back, burn it, forget it had ever happened. But his hands held me steady, and I had to reckon with this wild claim he was making.
“And how, my lord, would you make me a queen?”
A dark light gleamed in those eyes. For one moment, my heart stopped, thinking he had discovered I was carrying the stone. But we were not Kavanaghs. The stone was useless to us.
“Long ago,” he murmured, “our ancestor took something. He took something that was vital for Maevana to remain a queen’s realm.” His thumbs gently caressed my cheeks as he smiled down at me. “Our House has hidden the Queen’s Canon for generations. This very castle holds it, and I will resurrect the Canon to put you on the throne, Brienna.”
I closed my eyes, trembling.
All these years, the House of Allenach had been holding the Stone of Eventide and the Queen’s Canon. My House had destroyed a lineage of queens, had forced magic to fall dormant, had enabled a cruel king such as Lannon. The weight of what my ancestors had done bowed me down; I would have completely melted to the floor if Allenach had not been holding me upright.
“But I am half Valenian,” I argued, opening my eyes to look at him. “I am illegitimate.”
“I will legitimize you,” he said. “And it does not matter if you are only Maevan in part. Noble blood flows in your veins, and as my daughter, you have a rightful claim to the throne.”
I should have denied him right then, before the temptation could set down roots within me. But the Queen’s Canon . . . we needed it. We had the stone, but we also needed the law.
“Show me the Canon,” I requested.
His hands slowly drifted from my face, but he continued to stare at me. “No. Not until you pledge allegiance to me. Not until I know that you fully deny MacQuinn.”
Oh, he was playing with me. He was manipulating me. It made me despise him all the more, that he felt the need to compete with Jourdain. That he only wanted me to flex his own power.
I will not rush into this, I thought.
So I took a deep breath, and said, “Give me the night to ponder this, my lord. I will give you my answer in the morning.”