Page 5 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
I expected Shiel to come up with some new lie to try and draw attention away from me, but instead, he simply turned his head and looked right at me.
More surprising still, was when it wasn’t a lie that came from his lips, but the truth.
“We found a lost fae and are trying to return her to her court.”
Suddenly, all eyes were on me.
I shrank back beneath the weight of the Lady’s gaze, her light eyes boring into me as if she was searching for the truth in me.
“And her court?”
“The Eastern,” Shiel said. His breath had grown ragged for a second, but a few more careful, steady breaths and it was back to normal. “She has a glamour over her, hiding her appearance.”
The Lady of the Southern Court tilted her head back for a second, taking in a deep breath. “That explains the glamour I feel on her. Not common for a fae from your court, girl.”
He leaned forward again, this time, a spark of interest lighting in her eye. “Tell me your name.”
It was all I could do to keep my own legs from shaking. “Aurra.”
The Lady’s eyes narrowed, and a new look I didn’t understand passed across her face. “Tell me more about yourself, Aurra. Lord Shiel says you were lost, but how does a fae get lost? What fate brought the two of you together?”
I begin to stammer, attempting to figure out what to say. At what point did the truth no longer suffice? At what point was it better to lie, if we were supposed to lie at all? Had Shiel decided it was safe to share the truth with the Lady here?
“My Lady,” Finch thankfully broke in, saving me from having to make that decision myself, “She’s a changeling that we found. We saved her from a terrible human life. We were going to bring her straight to you and then return to the Western Court in time for our own festivities, but Icarus took an interest in her, too. Hence…why we’re here, now, in our current state.”
A slight curl pulled up the outer corner of the Lady’s mouth. Finch, it seemed, had struck on the correct cord.
“That fae has been allowed to run rampant for far too long,” she spat, sitting back again. She seemed lost in thought for a second, but then she looked back down at me with that same interest again, perhaps even more. “A changeling,” she mumbled. “How very interesting…And what of Icarus? What interest did he take with her?”
Once again, I felt my stomach twist.
Shiel let out a sigh. “He thought she might be one of his, but she couldn’t perform his glamour.”
“Of course not,” The Lady said, almost a little too dismissively. “She’s an Eastern Fae. She has no glamour. Though…” she leaned forward again, her nostrils flaring as she drank in the scent of me. “The power over her is certainly something. I’d be very interested to know why my sister would bother placing an enchantment like that over her in the first place.”
All three of my companions stilled for a second.
Her sister?
I glanced over at Shiel. He’d said he recognized the scent of the glamour right away, that it was distinctly the queen’s…but if she’d been born of the Eastern Court then she wouldn’t have hadher own power. It made sense then, that she was from another court.
My stomach tightened again as I once again looked up into the face of the Lady seated above me. I drank in her face a second time, but this time, for a new reason.
Something thickened in the back of my throat.
The face now looking down at me with a mix of curiosity and suspicion was the face closest to the one that belonged to the mother I never knew. I studied her features like they were water and I was dying for a single drop to quench my thirst. There was no similarities between her and me, but would there be, once this wicked glamour was lifted from me?
When I looked into the mirror and saw my true face, would I see something of this lady looking back at me?
Or, really, what I wondered was…when I looked on my mother’s face, at long last, is this the face I would see looking back at me?
It was a mother who didn’t want me. A mother who didn’t love me. A mother that, even more than that, despised me. Hated me.
She’d abandoned me, trapped me, ensured my torture…and still, I couldn’t yet find it in myself to hate her, too.
The war of emotions I was experiencing must have been showing on my face, because suddenly the lady’s face changed too. She reached down towards me, her soft skin cupping the side of my face in her palm.
The gesture was so unexpected, so kind, something I’d not dare to hope expect from a long-lost-aunt, that those mixed emotions suddenly swelled past the point of overwhelming. I leaned into her touch, a sob wracking my chest as tears began to spill over to run down my cheeks.
