Page 62 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
The other question was the one Icarus had posed. He’d suggested I ask how to lift the veil over my glamour, but was that whatIwanted?
I’d already been able to use my glamour twice now without the spell over me being broken. From what Shiel had told me about my power, and from what I’d witnessed of Icarus using his, did I reallywantall of my power? Or was the little bit I already had enough?
But what then, did I really want to know?
“The answer is obvious, my dear. You only have to listen.”
She was right. I knew what I wanted to ask, I’d known all along, it just seemed…trivial, compared to all the rest.
Before I could ask my question, however, the Oracle leaned forward, her lips smacking together as if hungrily awaiting my next round of emotions she could devour.
“You know the price, correct?”
I nodded. “A bond.”
“A bondforeversevered,” she said, unable to hide her excitement.
I took a deep breath to steady my voice before I finally asked the question that haunted me the most.
“Why did my mother abandon me?”
Surprise flitted across the Oracle’s face, and then anger.
“That’s your question?” The incredulity in her voice was so thick, it practically seared me with her scathing. “You, of all fae, and that…thatis the question you ask?”
She clicked her tongue at me, her nose wrinkling up as if she’d expected a decadent cake and instead been given a crouton. “Heir to the realm, master of tongues, and this is what you give me to work with.”
She sat back for a second, her eyes closing for a moment as she sank back, searching for the answer to my question. It was easily found, her eyes snapping back open with a delight that made my heart sink.
Because I knew, already, what that meant.
“Oh, Aurra…” she crooned. “You shouldn’t have asked me that.”
She sat forward suddenly, her lips twisting into a wicked, wicked smile. “You want to know why your mother abandoned you?”
“Your mother abandoned you because she hated you, Aurra. From before you were born, from the moment you were conceived, she loathed you and everything about you. She sold you to those humans knowing they would make your life miserable, she gave you that enchanted blanket, knowing it would make you unable to fight back. She placed you just far enough away to make sure you never darkened her doorway, but just close enough that she could see, herself, that you suffered.”
I wanted to call her a liar, but I felt the truth of what she said in my soul.
I swallowed, hard, and nodded once at the Oracle.
“Thank you.”
She tilted her head as she looked at me, something close to pity on her face. “You took that much better than the last fae who received an answer he didn’t like.”
Her gaze flitted over to the fire that seemed to be ever-burning. A slight smile returned to her.
“He liked it even less when he heard the price. So many demons lost. And for what?”
My heart quickened. Demons? That could only mean one thing.
Icarus. Icarus had come here. He was the fae that had set his own forest ablaze. What could have consumed him so, that he would do this to his own forest?
More so, that he was willing to risk the bond between us himself? That same bond he’d tried to keep me from severing?
And price…if the oracle spoke the truth…he’d paid a mighty one indeed.
“I always speak the truth,” the Oracle answered m. “Which brings me to the matter of your price.”
