Fine means nothing. That word is so hollow we folk only use it when we want to lie.
She lets herself down on one of the chairs near the fireplace, and taps the one in front of her, inviting me to sit closer.
Maybe I’m just dreaming. Maybe I’ve gone over the edge and this is what madness looks like.
“Come on. Tell me. Only one of us has a life. Entertain me. We used to be friends.”
I feel like she’s slapped me, insulted me.
“Friends?” I laugh. We were never friends.
We’d been a great deal less, and almost more, but never friends.
“Friends don’t disappear without saying goodbye.”
Her gaze, set on me until then, slides to the fire.
I don’t know what I expect. An apology? No, that isn’t her. That isn’t us. We are unseelie. What we choose, we own. When we're wrong, we own that too.
“I couldn’t.” That’s all I get from her: two words, delivered with an indifferent shrug. Then, she smiles up at me. “But I’ll make it up to you, I promise. Now, tell me how we’re doing. Here, beyond the walls. I can’t observe everything in Whitecroft, and my parents are being unbearably tightlipped.”
I want to shake her, scream at her, and demand more—more than this, her cavalier attitude.
The truth of the matter is that Vlari wouldn’t understand the root of my sense of betrayal. She never saw what she meant to me. She might have glimpsed through the cracks, but my secret has remained concealed under layers of petty games and mocking smiles. To her, wewerefriends, or something close to it. I was a man she could flirt with when she felt like it. I was almost a stranger.
I force a deep breath out and shake my head. “Almost every fae inside these walls has received combat training—some only at a rudimentary level. The courts haven’t forced anyone to take up arms; we need farmers, cooks, and healers, too. Those who wanted to—the majority of Whitecroft—have joined the ranks of our forces in one capacity or another. I train the youth for a year or two before sending them to their lords. The best recruits, I keep. They become my rangers, and travel out of Whitecroft when it’s necessary. As of now, we have seven thousand soldiers and thirty-two rangers.” I pause, then correct myself. “Thirty-three, counting the latest recruit. Another dozen in training. Between our magic and our agility, we assume a fae counts for ten human soldiers. In case of an all-out war, there will be terrible loss on both sides, and we can’t guarantee we’ll win with those numbers. We need another three or four thousand trained soldiers. Or a considerable amount of magic on our side. In five years or so, the younglings who’ll come of age may make up for our numbers, but humans reproduce a lot faster than we do. And let us not forget that they have the support of the immortals of Alfheimr.”
For the first time, Vlari interjects, rather coldly. “Let us not,” she echoes.
She gestures for me to continue.
“I believe we need to get more of the folk outside our walls in here. There are another ten thousand of us out there in the rest of Tenebris. If they could come, we’d have a better chance. We could use air surveillance to see any weakening in the humans’ defenses, and when there’s a chance of taking a village, or even a farm, we could take it. I’ve mentioned it to Frost. He believes it isn’t worth the risk.”
Vlari’s expressionless, taking all of that in. I doubt everything I tell her is news, but if her parents have sheltered her, she’ll still learn a thing or two.
“Whitecroft is almost at full capacity—we’re going to need more lodging. We’ve planted the greenhouses and we hunt the grove responsibly, but even so, food will become a concern within a year or two. We ration what we can. Meanwhile, the bitch daughter of Morgana has taken residence in the Wicked Court. She’s having trouble commanding the folk—only a handful have bowed to her, and there’s no gentry lord to back up her claim to the throne. The others hide. She opened the borders to Mithgarthians, and as they’ve all but destroyed their own land, they were more than happy to come here. Tenebris has truly become a human realm. Still, she rules, thanks to her army of mortals. When the fae refuse her tribute, her soldiers descend upon the groves and take what they see as their due.”
“Does the bitch have a name?” Vlari has fire in her eyes.
She looks like if she could get out of this room, she’d be out for blood. She can get in line. There are thousands of us who’d love to sink our claws in the usurper’s throat.
“According to your grandfather, she was named Violet at birth. Who knows what name she uses now?”
Violet was a changeling, given to a human mother in exchange for a mortal girl Queen Morgana fostered.
I never quite understood the purpose of such an exchange. In the old days, the fae gave humans a sickly, dying child and took a healthy one in its place, but of late, those who took changelings had a tendency to give away any child of theirs.
I suppose Morgana believed she had enough heirs to secure her bloodline. How mistaken she was. Now, all of them have perished, save for Ciera and Vlari—the two members of her family she cast away.
Humans have uses in the fae world. For one, while a fae could try for centuries before being blessed with a child, humans are a lot more fertile. Their bloodlines are so irrelevant, their spawn with fae blood have all of our strength, and almost none of their weaknesses. But for a queen from an unusually fertile line to give away a fairy child for a human daughter? I see no sense in it.
“Violet.” Vlari rolls each syllable around her mouth softly, almost lovingly. “Of nothing,” she translates from the old tongue, before chuckling. “She was judged useless before she said her first words. No wonder she wants us all to suffer. Perhaps we should meet for tea and converse about the thousand deaths Morgana deserved.”
I know little of the old unseelie queen, Vlari’s grandmother. I’d been aware of the fact that Vlari’s side of the family was disgraced since her mother married a common puck, against Morgana’s wishes, but I’d only started to glimpse the deep-rooted hatred between them at Samhain.
The only Samhain that mattered in my life; the first and last time I’d escorted Vlari anywhere.
The queen had attempted to throw Vlari at the ruthless Sea Lands Court, exchanging a granddaughter for an alliance. I’d seen nothing but callous indifference from Morgana. No, not even indifference. The high queen had seemedpleasedto see Vlari panic.
