"It's a new word!" Aspen squealed.
"Am I?" Torian asked Jack.
Emphatically, Jack slung his beak up and down, a clear yes. "Prince!"
"Just the Summer Prince?" Torian asked.
Jack paused, looking over at Shadow.
And the creepy-looking thing's face split as its grin appeared. Then it lifted a hand and flicked its thumb up.
Torian sighed hard and backed up until he could drop down to sit on the edge of his bed. "I'm no longer a Winter Prince?"
Shadow flattened its hand, then rocked it from side to side.
"I think you're still a prince," I told him. "Just not one who can inherit the crown?"
This time, Shadow thrust its thumbs-up in my direction.
"And this is a good thing?" Keir asked.
"Uh-huh," Hawke said. "Means that no matter what, Tor can't fuck up the magic now."
Those words made my entire body still. "Did someone say something to you, Tor?"
"A girl," he said, waving that off.
"No," I pressed. "Who?"
"I took her to Ms. Rhodes," he admitted. "She's in third with me, and we were talking on the way to fourth. She pointed out how her suitemate mentioned my father.Ourfather, Asp. Combined with a few other things that sounded like the Children of the Exodus? Yeah, they know."
"And who would know that?" I pressed. "I thought everyone came here a long time ago. That the gates were closed way back when."
"Sorta," Keir said. "There were always fae here. Earth was a sort of vacation spot. When the Queen went mad, the Exodus began. When she began killing the Winter Court, it ramped up."
"The gates didn't close until I was born," Torian said. "Titania wanted to make sure she had options, but once I was born, she didn't need them, so she started her revenge."
"Eighteen years," I breathed, trying to sort all of this out in my head. "She sent the Wild Hunt here, then closed the gates? So did she send anyone else?" Immediately, my thoughts jumped to Ms. Rhodes, the woman who'd once been her general.
I didn't want to think she could be working for the Mad Queen, but it would make sense. Dictators relied on the military for support. They had soldiers do the dirty work, but Ms. Rhodes had done nothing but help us. Still, Torian kept acting like I was an idiot for wanting the adults in my life to help me.
"I don't know," Torian admitted. "She didn't tell me those things."
"Ms. Rhodes?" I asked, looking at my friends, hoping they'd tell me I was wrong.
Torian quickly waved me down. "Titania wants her dead. She says Ivy Rhodes betrayed her. I do not think she's working for my mother."
"But someone is," Keir said softly, reading between the lines.
"Maybe the Children of the Exodus are their kids?" Wilder offered.
"Or just The Silent?" I suggested.
"The problem is, we don't know," Hawke pointed out. "And tossing out names isn't really going to help us."
"But this did," Torian told us. "Aspen, naming Wilder as your heir?" He looked up with the most relieved smile. "That was brilliant."
"And not what I wanted," Wilder said. "You know that, right, Tor?"
