Page 24 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
Shiel looked down at his hand as if it was poisoned—even though any remnants of the shriveled, blackened skin had long since healed. The only sign that remained of the spell that had drained him were dark lines crisscrossing beneath the skin, and even those were fading. It was a reminder of the power of the glamour that flowed through this dark fae’s veins.
“And how long do you expect it to take you to figure out if Aurra here is one of yours?” Shiel asked, refusing to take his hand yet. His eyes bored into Icarus, searching his face for any sign of deceit. “Months? Weeks? Years?” He pressed his lips together for as second, the distaste plain on his own face. “I’m not a human you can so easily trick, Icarus.”
“No tricks,” Icarus said, his tone remaining all too smooth. “I know you feel the power this girl possesses as well as I do. That magic of hers can only stay so bound. It will soon begin to leak out, if it hasn’t already. Give me a week. If I have not coaxed out my own magic from her by then, then I will let her go with you willingly.”
He glanced at me, a tiny spark alighting in his eye then. “If she chooses to, of course.”
“A week? Why an entire week?” Shiel narrowed his eyes. “That brings us dangerously close to Midsommar, and you know it. I have no desire to spend it here, in this court.”
A tiny bit of anger flashed across Icarus’ face. If it was any other fae other than a lord of his own caliber, I imagined Icarus never would have allowed a slight like that to go unpunished.
“Why?” he asked, once he’d once again regained his composure. “Because that is how long it will take for me to throw Aurra’s ball.”
Once again, Icarus had managed to surprise all of us.
Finch was the only one who’s eyes lit with an excitement he couldn’t conceal. “A ball?”
“It’s only customary for a fae to celebrate her coming-of-age,” Icarus said, head bowing. “She just turned eighteen, did she not? If Aurra is one of my court, then it will make for an appropriate welcome. If she is not, then it will be a fitting sendoff. It isn’t every day that we have a lord such as you in my court, Shiel. A ball and a hunt. Surely, you can’t deny Aurra that?”
Shiel grimaced, but instead of answering Icarus, he turned to me.
“Is this what you wish, Aurra?” he asked.
What I wished?
What I wished was for this game to be over. Icarus could play the honesty card all he wanted, but it was clear this was no split-second decision he made now. This was all a part of his strategy. Even Shiel now only pretended to offer me a choice, and only because he’d been forced into it.
But this game wouldn’t be over until I’d learned who I was and how to control my powers for myself, and since this seemed the best way to do that, I really had no choice but to agree.
So, I did.
“One week,” I said, nodding. “And then I—and I alone—get to choose where fate takes me next.”
CHAPTERNINE
And so thedeal was struck between the two lords.
Fate, however, was a fickle mistress. I knew there was little chance I’d be given any real choice of where I ended up at the end of this trial with Icarus. If I turned out to be one ofhisfae, then he’d simply claim me and demand I stay. If I didn’t, then would he really be so willing to let me go after all the trouble he’d taken to get me here?
I could, of course, go visit this so-called Oracle that made the demons and fae alike shrink back. She…or he, I supposed…could give me the answer I sought. But apparently, I could ask only one question, so I had to choose it carefully. It might not matter what court I belonged to if we didn’t know how to lift the glamour over me. We could wait until we found my mother and ask her how to lift it, but that relied on her being willing to share that information, not to mention stillalive.
Icarus’ claim had a strange calming effect on me, because as much as I doubted I was actually one of his dark fae of the Wildness, he’d given me hope for something else. Maybe there really was a chance that I was just another fae, not the heir to the kingdom with far more to lose then there was to gain. The idea of harnessing the glamour within me was far more enticing if it meant I wouldn’t be hunted and hated for whatever it turned out to be.
I was grateful for the chance to be Icarus’ student for one reason, and one reason only.
Maybe, at long last, that meant I might finally get somerealanswers.
Even if it meant awakening in me something so powerful, it could suck the life out of me in an instant, as it had done to Icarus before my very eyes.
I expected to find the fae lord encased in some self-made cage of darkness, a piece of the Wildness where his quarters had been grown up above the rest of his court to protect him with those shadows that the rest of his fae craved. Though I was right about the cage, it was not a place of darkness.
Vines and branches had grown out of the forest below to form a half-open room that encased me on all sides. The final layer of leaves formed a shifting roof over my head that allowed the light in still, but so that it formed a constantly shifting pattern across the floor so intricate that it rivaled the glass mosaics down below.
I was breathless, already, from the climb that had led me up the greatest tree in Icarus’ domain, and then higher still. The breaths dragging up from my ragged lungs was nothing compared to the strained muscles in my thighs and calves—a feeling the dour demon servant waiting down below actually seemed to share.
One of the stipulations of my agreeing to study under Icarus was that I would not be transported like cargo around his court by the servants that seemed to have a very dubious understanding of the concept of consent. More than once, I suspected the demon considered breaking the latest of Icarus’ demands rather than waste the very considerable time it took to cross the court on foot beside me.
I should have just been glad that my wishes were being honored, a rare thing in the world I’d found myself thrust into, but instead, all I felt was a deep unsettling. Something told me that it wasn’t a good idea to find myself at odds with the demons of this court. They were perhaps the strangest creatures in a court that was nothing butstrange.They followed Icarus’ orders, sure, but there was something about them that felt wild, untamed in a way that even the Wildness couldn’t claim. At least Icarus hadsomecontrol over his court. The demons, however?
