Page 35 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
His voice rang out clear in the silence that had fallen.
All eyes were trained on the boy now, awaiting the lady's judgement.
I felt something prickle on the back of my neck again, and once again, I wasn't entirely sure what it was. It was a mixture of emotions I wasn't used to feeling.
Anger. Fear. Jealousy. Pity. Disgust.
All of that, but for what?
I understood the boy’s crime. It was more than the bread he'd stolen. He'd nearly ruined an important ritual moment, not only for his entire court, but for the lady that governed over him. I'd felt the swell of magic as the court came together, fae together with fae, in reverence for the Southern Court throne. I'd read enough children stories to understand that these days, these festivals, were about more than simply donning new gowns and waving pretty, colorful flags. These festivals were not simply fun and games, they weren't just celebrations. The actions the fae performed had real-life consequences, direct correlation to the success of their magic and all that glamour affected--everything from safety to rain to healthy crops.
Or, in this case, the return of the future queen the fae didn't even know they'd lost.
This boy had nearly risked everything.
I should have been mad at him too, but instead, the only emotion that settled into me as Lady Phyrra leaned closer to inspect the boy was pity. All the other emotions warring within me faded as I looked too, and it wasn't the boy’s face looking back. It was mine. The face I'd left behind, the face that I'd never again see when I looked in the mirror.
When Lady Phyrra spoke, her voice was amplified across the courtyard. I wasn't sure if it was by magic, or by some clever acoustics dreamt up by the fae, but what her surely-pursed lipsmanaged to spew was sure to be heard by all who gathered around her.
"What do you think you're doing, boy?"
There was a sharpness to her voice that I'd never heard before. Usually, the lady of the Southern Court was all honey and syrup and sugar, her words almost lyrical in the way they ensnared the loyalty of all who tread her colorful court. But now, though I still couldn't see her face, I didn't need to. No, not when I could practicallyfeelthe way the outer corners of her mouth turned up in a sneer as she continued in place of the boy's silence.
"Come now, speak up. You were so eager for attention earlier. Now you have it, you really have nothing to say?"
Something about that sour lilt in her voice, it soured my stomach, too.
The boys antics had nearly been my undoing, had nearly turned enough attention away from the Midsommar ritual to cause my unbinding spell to fail, but even knowing that wasn't enough to undo the knots my stomach was quickly tying itself into. The whole scene unfolding before me felt wrong, out of place. Lady Phyrra's voice was measured, still, but her hands now gripped the edges of her throne so tight that even from where I stood, at the very edges of the shadows, I could see the way the veins beneath her usually perfect skin had begun to bulge. I could practically feel the pressure building in her veins, just as I could feel that sneer earlier.
But still, despite all that, the boy said nothing.
He just kept staring at his shuffling feet, his hands dangling limp and lifeless beneath the tight grip of the two soldiers who still held him so tight that his feet could barely scrape the dirt beneath them. My own underarms burned at the sight of how they held him. I remembered one too many times when one of my human excuses for parents had grabbed me like that,remembered the pain and humiliation that something so simple bore.
And I knew the lady saw it, too.
I'd thought when I first came to this court that Lady Phyrra was nothing like the dark fae lord of the forest. Icarus had ruled with cruelty and she with grace. Or...so I thought. But maybe, I realized, as once more the lady of the Southern Court opened her pretty lips to speak, they weren't so different after all.
"Do you have any idea what you nearly did today?" she asked, her voice low but still somehow carrying out as if her words were shouted.
The boy looked up then, and in that moment, I felt that thing inside me stir again. He fixed Lady Phyrra with a half-confused look, but beneath it, I saw the challenge in his eyes.
"I stole some bread, that's all," he said, finally speaking, and also, finally, condemning himself.
His voice didn't carry out of like his lady's. I barely heard it, despite the silence. I didn't need to hear it, didn't need to read the shape his lips formed when he spoke the words. It was obvious enough from that half-concealed defiance on his face when he said it, so simply.
It was nearly as obvious as Lady Phyrra's reaction.
She was not a fae used to being treated with anything but a near god-like reverence.
I'd seen the way her advisors worshipped her. I'd heard the way her court spoke of her, even when she wasn't present. I'd assumed it was because that was how they truly felt.
But then, as Lady Phyrra once again stiffened in her seat, her back going rigid and her posture tall and cold as the statue her form once more resembled, I discovered the real truth.
Just as Icarus ruled his court with fear, so did she.
"In these trying times, it's more important than ever that we stick to the ways our ancestors laid our for us here, in Luxia.That we respect the rulings and the ways of the glamour that has protected us here, alone, when it failed all other fae. We must adhere to the principles that have made us prosper."
She was no longer speaking to the boy. She was speaking to the crowd, and though her words were flowery enough, the rotten core of what she was getting to was more than apparent. She spoke not only to the crowd, to the boy, but to me.
