Page 9 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
It was time I learned to use them, too.
I held all the power here, after all. It might be hidden, controlled, layered beneath the spell my mother put over me, but I—and Ialoneheld it.
It was a power so great that even Shiel was afraid to speak its name, let alone tell me what it truly made me capable of. I’d already seen a tase of its power, already felt the sting of the consequences to follow.
I’d already paid the price.
There was no taking it back, so rather than cower in fear, it was time to embrace it—to learn how to harness the one thing that might allow me to find my true place in this world, and to stand as an equal with those who had already set out to keep me from it.
I’d not yet decided if I would go to the Eastern Court, but I knew one thing—if I did, I wouldn’t be confronting my mother powerless. If I faced the fae that had abandoned me to a life of misery, it would be with every ounce of advantage that I could muster. Even if I chose not to claim the throne that was, in all rights, already mine…I was going to need that power to if I everwanted to know a semblance of peace. As Icarus had already shown me, even the fae who weren’t worried about me taking the throne would want to use that power for themselves. The best way to make sure they could never do that would be to learn how to use it for myself, first.
But to do that, first, I’d need to learn how to lift the spell currently binding my powers. And then second, I’d have to learn how to use them.Reallyuse them.
I knew what Shiel and the others would say if I told them my plan. Once my mother’s glamour was lifted, there’d be nothing stopping the other fae from sensing the true nature of my power. At least those who’d come face to face with the previous wielder of this power, who knew what it felt like—as the lady here no doubt had. The moment that spell was lifted, she’d knowexactlywhat I was. ExactlywhoI was.
But that was why I wasn’t afraid, because I knew something that Shiel and the others didn’t.
I knew that my mother hated me, that she didn’t want me, that the very last thing she wanted was for me to show up on her doorstep, safe and alive. I also knew that the lady that presided over this court wanted whatever her sister didn’t.
I’d have to be careful, I’d have to besurethat the lady of this court was as ruthless as I’d begun to suspect all fae royals to be, but in her hatred of my mother lied my greatest chance of survival.
But there was no time to sit and wait to be sure. I’d have to start unfolding my plan in the meantime, and as the days marched ever closer to Midsommar and the caravan that was supposed to take us from this court to the next, I’d have to hope I was right.
If my mother was from here, from the Eastern Court, then what better place to start to look for a way to lift her spell? Themagic used here was the kind she must have used to bind mine, so it had to be the magic best used to break it.
Or, at least, that was what I had to hope. Otherwise, I’d have to choose between fleeing from an entire kingdom or facing the female who’s only wish for me from the moment I’d been born was misery and death…without any way to keep her from finally exacting it upon me, herself.
CHAPTER SIX
There wasa strange sort of peace in accepting my mother’s hate. It allowed me to face it, sure, but more that…in a sad way, it was easier to accept than the alternative. I think I’d known the moment Shiel showed up at my door and claimed I’d been left there for my own good that there was no way that was true. The thought that my mother had left me withthosemonsters-for-humans out of some form of kindness was even more unbelievable than the idea I might be some sort of long-lost-princess.
Somehow, in accepting my mother’s hate, I also found it easier to accept the rest of my fate.
Despite my grand plans, that first day in the Southern Court, we all spent resting—myself included. Escaping the fiends and traveling south while caring for Shiel had taken a toll on all of us. Just as I’d discovered the night before, the exhaustion that I’d been fighting was all too happy to sink it’s claws into me now that our flight was at an end, and I had no choice but to let it.
Vestele was, doubtless, not the only spy keeping an eye on us in the Southern Court. The neighbors that shared our garden grew more conspicuously present as the days wore on, andthough they at least pretended not to be watching for us, we dared not speak anything aloud that might all too quickly find its way back to the lady’s throne.
We spent most of our time keeping watch over Shiel as he slept, the hours passing in a silence that somehow even Finch managed to preserve—at least, mostly. At times, when it became too much, he would find a reason to go pace the garden, his voice carrying up to where I’d returned to my place beside Zev, fresh ink in my needle as I traced the tattoos that had once more begun to fade.
It was in one of these rare moments when the only sound that filled the air was Finch’s far-off humming, when I came to the final piece now fading across Zev’s bronzed flesh.
I’d been working in a near stoic silence, the pressure of my skin on his as I steadied my hand nothing more than clinical, right up until that moment. I’d been careful not to get lost in the carved, hard shape of him, to keep myself from imagining how it would feel to run my hands along the heat of his skin instead of the point of a needle.
But now, as I stared at the shape of the word he’d had me ink that fateful night in the inn, the shape that had saved me now more than once, I couldn’t fight the stirring that rose up from deep inside me.
I must have been sitting there, frozen, unmoving, staring at the patch of fading skin over Zev’s heart for too long, because I nearly jumped out of my seat when the fae’s hand lifted up to touch mine. He was gentle, his touch as gentle as the searching look I found in his eyes when they locked on mine.
“What is it, Aurra?’
I opened my mouth to respond, only to find I didn’t know what to say. Something about Zev using my real name, the name he’d had me ink on his skin instead of the pet name I’d grownused to him calling me, it made the half-truth I’d been about to spout sound more like an all-out lie.
Whatwaswrong with me? What had stayed my hand?
It was more than the warmth the sight of my name, the recognition of its shape, brought me. It was certainly more than curiosity.
It was…something far more intimate than that.
I dipped my head a little, my eyes flickering away from his as heat blossomed in my cheeks.
