Page 11 of Foundling

“Forgive me, my Queen. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

Allarion’s words were gentle, and he didn’t try to touch or comfort her. His steady presence was comfort enough.

Bitterness clogged her throat. Goddesses, she’d come to rely on him too much.

“Fae with other folk…it can only bring heartache,” she told him.

Allarion didn’t refute her. He didn’t say anything at all for a long while, and Leita suspected he saw far more than she wished.

“That can be so,” he said eventually, voice as calm as his manner. “I dread the pain my Molly will feel as her kin begin to age. We will remain in the human realm as long as she wishes, but I know there’s only so much she can bear.”

“What if it breaks her?”

“I know Molly. She will accept that heartbreak.” When Leita looked up at him, Allarion grinned sadly, his gaze turning out to sea. “By then, her ties to the human realm will have lessened. I hope to one day leave Scarborough to her kin, or any of our children who may want it, and bring Molly back to the faelands. A faelands at peace.”

Leita could see Allarion’s dream spread out before them, stretching out to the horizon. It was a whole life, built of love and commitment. One of family and kin and belonging.

A burning jealousy replaced her bitterness.

Despite all her hurts, despite knowing it could only lead to more pain, Leita longed for a family. An azai of her own. Children. Her fangs ached with her yearning, with a need she knew could ruin her.

“So this isn’t goodbye, you see,” Allarion said. “We’ll visit, of course. And someday, I intend to return to the faelands as your loyal subject.” Turning to face her, Allarion once again swept into a low bow. “I look forward to seeing all that you can do.”

Leita couldn’t manage a smile or even a gracious nod.

His confidence in her made one of them.

He might say it wasn’t goodbye, but really, it absolutely was.

Putting her hurts away before they could show any more, Leita muttered, “Very well, then. Safe travels.”

She didn’t wait for Allarion’s polite niceties or thanks, turning on her heel to stalk back inside.

Thalia met her at the archway, head bobbing. So, when do we leave?

As soon as possible.

3

“This is all your fault,” Chrysanthe hissed from behind the bars of her cell. Not for the first time.

“So you’ve said,” Attalus sighed from behind his.

Despite almost three days locked in the bowels of the palace, in the windowless prison known as the Maw, with Chrysanthe reminding them almost hourly that she blamed him for their situation, Attalus just couldn’t fathom why it’d happened at all.

Why had he and a handful of half-siblings been thrown into the Maw? Sure, there was that accusation that one or all of them were part of a conspiracy to poison Araxos. But why would anyone believe it?

Attalus was hardly ever on the islands and had never, ever expressed any desire for power. He was a healthy, correct amount of terrified by Araxos—but more importantly, bore no grudges against him. Araxos had only ever conspired against their father; he’d hardly ever even acknowledged that Attalus, Theron, and their mother existed.

Much the same could be said about Phiobos. The youngest of Diometrios’s brood, he was too young, barely out from under his mother’s wing. Good-natured and guileless—at least insomuch as their kind could be—Phiobos wasn’t devious nor clever enough to plan something like this. His mother and her kin, possibly, but they wouldn’t risk such a move with Phiobos still so young and vulnerable. Better to wait for a few more diadochos to kill each other off before making a move.

There might be a case to be made against Eudora, or at least her mother, but then again, the chances were next to nothing that she’d do anything without her twin. That Anamache hadn’t been implicated and thrown into the Maw with them was strange to say the least. The only reason Chrysanthe was here with them was because she refused to let Eudora be taken alone.

All things considered, it might’ve been an almost pleasant few days of conversation between siblings had Chrysanthe not been there.

The dragoness paced the cell she shared with Eudora, the latter watching her as she made a linear track in the stone floor. Chrysanthe spent her time alternately railing against Araxos, baselessly blaming Attalus, and concocting evermore elaborate escape plans.

Even Eudora looked ready to murder her sister after three days of this. And the bad food.