Page 93 of The Crimson Throne
“Yes,” she confirms. I was braced for her answer, but it still hits me like a blow. “But more than that.”
My heart sinks.
“The High Blade lives.”
It is every fear, every nightmare, every horror in four words.
I hoped the High Blade, the original traitor of the fae, the one who led the Red Caps and the Romans, the most powerful of their kind,would be gone. Dead, perhaps.
A foolish hope.
“What chance do we have?” I ask, hating the quiver of fear in my voice.
“None,” she says. “The wall will fall. The High Blade will invade.”
I don’t argue with the goddess of winter, but there is a part of me, a tiny spark of hope, that refuses to die, even in the face of such icy certainty.
As if guessing at my thoughts, the old hag snorts.
“Have you told the Seelie Court of this?” I ask. “Because I have tried to warn my father, but—”
“They know.”
It’s the only information she’s willing to give me about it. Once again, I’m left out of the loop but expected to fight on the front lines.
“They have their own plans, and I have mine. As long as winter holds, I will aid you.”
Her single beady eye slides to Samson. It could not be clearer that she has offered aid to me alone. But she must have summoned him for a reason. I cannot help but wonder if this was a sort of test, to see him in the flesh, to know how he’d react to her. To see us together.
I want to ask her more. She must know what type of fae Samson is, what his role in the upcoming war may be…but I know better than to press my luck here. And Samson, bless him, has wisely kept his mouth shut.
I dip into another low curtsy.
The aid Beira has offered is no small boon. Not only can she help me with the weather—and she already has, I realize, in the way the wind has been so quick to aid me when I called for it to protect Mary in Darnley’s first attack or the way the snows have held off while Samsonand I have traveled—but she can send storm hags to fight beside us and deer to silently spy, and she has powerful connections in the fae realm.
I rise slowly. I want to ask for more—a united front, the fae and humans combined working to fight the Red Caps. But while it seems as if the entire fae realm knows the wall is going to fail, they don’t know for certain when or how.
And uniting the fae is as impossible as directing cats or catching fish with my bare hands.
Queen Beira cocks her head. She examines me as if I am a curiosity. To her, I must be. Tainted with both human blood and mortality, in the face of a being as old as the earth itself. But she smiles at me. It’s not a good smile. Her lips curl over her fangs almost maliciously. Her smile is a promise, but it’s also feral.
As wild as the land itself.
That?
That I can work with.
“Now, go on with yourselves.” Queen Beira gestures toward the copse of trees behind her. “Moyra is waiting.”
24
Samson
Before I can get half a question out about who Moyra is, the world’s shifting again.
It needs tostop that.
Another blink, another ripple and heave and gush of something being off—
