by Terah Edun
But Katherine also knew her mother had a backbone of steel. If a disagreement, never a fight, erupted between her and her girls...she never backed down. But she knew how to sugarcoat her firm hand with sweet compliments. There was no way else Katherine would have gotten up before dawn for the last six years to escort Gestap out if her mother had been anything but inflexible, determined, and so sweet about it that it was hard to say no.
Then a door opened with a loud creak that had everyone twitching. Not the door that led to this room, but the entrance to the house. The guardians were a little twitchier than others. Two of them whipped out guns, one had a long knife in his hands, and other three kept their pikes.
“Weapon for everyone,” whispered Katherine a tad hysterically. They’d never been on edge like this before. But the death of an heir and the capture of were-lord would put anybody on their toes, she guessed.
Katherine had to wonder where the outside guardians were and why they hadn’t warned their compatriots, but they weren’t in the dark for long. One of the guardians went to the French doors and passed through at the wave of hand from another guardian, who Katherine now was sixty-five percent sure was the captain. To her surprise, it was Cecily he came back in with, firmly leading her by the shoulder with a stiff hand.
Cecily looked a little grim, which was understandable given the day and night they were having. But when she came into the room and saw the situation, she turned downright pale.
“Niece,” said the queen sharply. “What brings you here? I instructed your guardian to take you home. To my sister’s home.”
Cecily stopped staring at the Mr. LaCroix and barely caught Katherine’s eye before she turned her full attention on her aunt, hastily curtsying in a graceful manner that Katherine had never quite managed—especially under pressure—and said, “Forgive me, my queen. But I had urgent news for Katherine about a situation from earlier tonight. I was told she’d be here.”
The queen nodded. “Would that situation be the addiction and power vacuum within the dark faerie court?”
“It would, my queen.”
“Would this information be vital to judgment of the were-peacock lord, Mr. Thomas LaCroix?”
Cecily hesitated. “I believe it would, my queen. Very much so.”
“This is outrageous,” Mr. LaCroix complained before Cecily could get a further word in.
The queen turned a sharp eye on him. “If I hear so much as a word leave from your mouth while the girl speaks, I will have it sewn shut for a week.”
Mr. LaCroix snapped his mouth closed with an audible click of his teeth and bowed his head. To her mother, it would probably look like deference. To Katherine it looked like a way to hide the desperation in his gaze. She wondered how desperate he would be before the night was over.
“Then step forward, child,” the queen said solemnly, “And tell all those present. Do not fear. No more of my blood shall perish today. Not if I have any say in the matter.”
“Yes, yes, my queen,” Cecily stammered nervously as she stared at Katherine’s mother. She’d likely never seen her like this before. That was all right. Neither had Katherine.
Chapter 16
With a beckon of the queen’s impatient hand, Cecily sidled forward until she stood in the center of the room but far enough away from Mr. LaCroix that he couldn’t graze her with the slightest touch of his body. Not that he’d want to, as she was standing almost between the guardians on his perimeter and they were likely to cut off the tips of his fingers for the infraction.
Then Cecily spoke. “I did as close to a substance bio-analysis as I could manage with only coven-available skills.”
The queen raised her eyebrows in an unspoken question.
Cecily responded without pause, “The herbalist, Marsha, was able to preside over the study. When we were sure of what we had found, I came straight here.”
The queen nodded.
Cecily continued as she handed over a small vial of glowing white liquid, “As I was saying, this substance was used to intoxicate the faerie people. At its core, it is the same moon nectar imbibed recreationally by the faerie people, which is non-lethal.”
Katherine listened to Cecily intently. She was nervous at first, but the more she spoke the more confident she grew—in demeanor and tone.
Her cousin continued, “But a new variant was introduced to that core. A variant that, when added in crystallized form to the moon nectar, not only gives the faerie that ecstasy-like connection to the other realm that they so desperately seek...”
That was news to Katherine. The other realm had been closed off to any Earthbound fae who resided on this side of the Atlantic Ocean for centuries. A mystical world that paralleled their own with one key difference, it was almost more myth than reality for their people now since many couldn’t make the journey to cross the border. The faerie most of all. When they became settlers in the New World, they gave up many of their tributes from the Old One—access to the other realm being one of the most controversial.
But the high queens of the old European courts had been adamant. They wouldn’t have rival queens setting up empires in new, virgin territories. These ship-bound queens would settle the land for them and rule in their stead, but they would not affect the magical covenants between fae, human, and coven. So those old queens had continued on doing what they did best. Interfered. They weaved a joint spell so powerful that those queens couldn’t access the rift between this world and the next one. And if those queens couldn’t do so, then none of their subjects could either. Creatures like the dark faerie, a people who originated from the other realm, had signed up for the voyage across the seas for a sense of daring and adventure. But they knew they would only stay in the New World for a year. Two at most. They had to return home, where their old queens could open the rift and allow them access to what their heart desired above all other things: the other realm.
They would only stay in the colonial lands for so long because of that. And so the most powerful fae subjects of the new coven queens cycled in and out of their territories. Never letting them become confident in their seats before a new wave came in, new negotiations began, and the young, stalwart queens had no choice but to accept this as fact.
The high queens of Europe had thought that the matter was settled then. They had confidently stuffed young, nubile queens on boats for the New World and instructed them to report back with their findings as well as to procure wealth for their titular queens’ courts. But something changed along the way. Some sense of independence grew.
Well, the last laugh had been on those old queens. The new blood queens had not only affected those covenants but broken them in their revolutions for recognition as high queens’ who were equal in power to their sisters across the ocean.
Broken them enough to give the queens of the new land independence. Even power. From the stories told of her ancestors’ great, if not necessarily heroic, deeds, Katherine had learned that they had made a covenant between the thirteen original high queens of the Atlantic. A covenant that had repercussions to this day. But one that stabilized the land and stopped the endless cycle of fae returnees—the key to a thriving magical and mystical community.
But nothing could break the old queens’ spell and allow the colonial queens what they wanted most: access to the rift. So when Cecily said this new strain of the moon nectar gave all of the dark faerie a sense of access to what was for them a homeland, she suddenly understood the appeal. What would cause dozens of the fairie, who weren’t stupid, to imbibe the substance. They had what centuries of their colonial brethren had been unable to obtain, a connection to home, no matter how slight of a connection—it mattered.
Because a queen who couldn’t give her subject what they sought most risked losing them entirely. The only reason war hadn’t erupted sooner was because the old queens had vengefully, and some said sadistically, put an armed blockade along the sea wall that extended from the moors of Scotland to the inlets of the Carthagian
Empire. There was no way for the blood descendants of the original fae adventurers to return home to the land that would allow them access to the other realm even if they wanted to.
Cecily said, “A connection like that would be powerful. An aphrodisiac in itself and I can estimate is the reason why they would risk so much. In fact, they’re taking the drug so much that they’re overwhelming their own sense of self-preservation.”
“How so?” murmured the queen in a fascinated manner, with rapt attention on Cecily. There wasn’t an eye turned away from Cecily, except for Mr. Thomas LaCroix. Katherine’s gaze sharpened on him as he dipped his head and his shoulders bowed, almost as if in resignation.
If Katherine had doubted her cousin’s words a moment before, she didn’t now. Mr. LaCroix knew it as the truth, she could tell from his demeanor...and the aura of muted anger that surrounded him like a red, hazy glow. But soon the whole room would know the truth, the full of it. Not just bits and pieces.
“They have to consciously lower the shields between their magical cores and the outside world,” Cecily said almost reluctantly as the room gasped in astonishment.
That was tantamount to saying the faerie had agreed to assisted suicide. The faerie people were one of the few fae peoples that gained access to magic from an internally from birth. They didn’t have learn it. They didn’t call it. They didn’t practice it. It was just there, like an extra part of their being that responded to their every living will. But their internal source had one major fault. It was finite and they couldn’t gathered more of their power or their magic from nature or the elements like a witch or many other fae could. The source, in fact, was incapable of being replenished outside of the other realm. This was, in part, why the faerie kings and queens were subjected to the rule of the coven queens on both sides of the Atlantic. In the old world, the coven queens had controlled access to the other realm. Enforcing concordant after concordant along with way with their sister queens and brother kings of the faerie. But the colonial coven queens had no such access to another realm and the faerie were forced to age and wither away bit by bit, like the humans and coven did. Without access to the endless fountain of power from their homeland, they were no longer immortal. In fact, they were vulnerable.
Vulnerable to death. Vulnerable to pestilence. Vulnerable to addiction.
But none were more vulnerable than when they let their shields down.
“Why would they do such a thing?” Katherine asked in amazement.
A voice answered from closer to the doors, “Power.”
Katherine turned to see the owner of the voice even though she knew who had spoken before her eyes confirmed her thoughts. She’d actually forgotten he was in the room.
“Power to be as they once were,” said Ethan with dark finality. He stopped then. Hesitant to move forward into the room, a room where a queen, an heir, her blood, and her guardians reigned. Even an ally would step carefully on such grounds. Katherine’s mother was a fair ruler, but what was fair and what was right in the heat of the moment could be tricky, and Ethan probably didn’t want to step in unwanted.
But Queen Leanna turned to him with a look that encouraged him to continue speaking without words.
“I’ve been living among the faerie court for months,” Ethan said with a deep swallow. “When they took the enhanced moon nectar they knew what they were doing. If anything, only Ceidian was kept in the dark. At first, they lost little by little only what they thought they could regain tenfold if they could harness the drug to force a connection to the other realm.”
“Only the queens of Europe can do that,” Katherine whispered, almost as if to deny it.
Ethan shrugged. “It’s been centuries since any of them had tasted their homeland. Centuries since they had hope. Some of the people you saw tonight are second-generation colonials, even third. As each generation came into existence they saw their natural powers weaken and knew there would come a time when their children would be nothing but whispers of what a true faerie of the old courts would be. Their internal cores were dwindling no matter what they did. And less-powerful parents produce less-powerful offspring. You know that.”
Ethan paused and glanced at Katherine. It was an awkward look.
Katherine grimaced. It was unspoken rule than less-powerful coven queens were born from low-blood matriarchy. It was why provincial queens almost always had nurturing powers, like the ability to call upon the winds and rain for a bountiful harvest or an emotional gift to calm the masses. It was the high queens of the thirteen provinces who had the true gifts. Gifts only whispered about, gifts that Katherine could only shiver thinking about. A shiver of fear...and anticipation. She wouldn’t be a red-blooded teenager if she didn’t want to see at least one high queen in action in her lifetime. Most of her teenage witch and warlock classmates could talk of nothing else but a homecoming trip into Atlanta, to attend the High Queen of Georgia’s night festival, and see her in life as well as taste the magic of her gift, which was said to shiver in the air like a living wind.
Katherine would be a fool if she said she wasn’t looking forward to the same excursion two years from now, during her senior year. The idea always brought an excited thrill running through her, but now...now she felt a little apprehensive. Until tonight, she hadn’t been able to imagine why seniors given a taste of that high queen’s magic and her court would ever want to return to Sandersville or the surrounding provincial counties. But return they did. Year after year, even though they were given a queen’s gift upon high school graduation. One gift, and it was choice—one year of sponsorship in the lower courts of the Atlanta high queen or one year of apprenticeship with a local coven member to learn a trade. Without fail, every single graduating member of the coven high school class, all thirty of them on average, had chosen the apprenticeship.
With the dark taste of her mother’s gaze, as intoxicating and deadly as staring into a serpent’s small eyes, Katherine knew why they wouldn’t want to go back for a year now. Rumors of the darkness of the high queen’s court aside, if a provincial queen could summon such nefarious magic, how much stronger and more terrifying would a high queen’s gifts be?
Katherine shivered, then Ethan broke eye contact with her, and she shook her head to clear her thoughts of reverie.
“They felt they had no choice,” Ethan said in misery. “The faerie people know they are dying out. Even if Ceidian won’t admit it...can’t admit it to himself.”
“So they took action,” concluded the queen.
“So they took action,” Ethan said quietly.
Katherine’s face twitched in denial. But the heavy darkness in the room, the horror of the truth that echoed in Cecily and Ethan’s words, and the silence of the were-peacock lord told everyone all they needed to know. They knew in their hearts, even if their minds couldn’t comprehend a connection so strong that an individual would slowly allow their life to be drained away to access it again.
Katherine blinked and said allowed before she could think about it. “But what about their power? It had to go somewhere. Lowering their shield’s made them vulnerable, but it’s not like their gifts leaked out on their own.”
“Katherine is right,” Cecily said with a shudder. “They were siphoned away.”
“Can they be siphoned back?” the queen asked.
Cecily shook her head. “From what I was able to determine, my queen, I think not. What’s done is done.”
The queen knelt down to peer into the eyes of the were-peacock lord. “What say you, Thomas? Is my niece right?”
The man shuddered as the queen’s forefinger raised up his lowered chin inch-by-inch.
“What’s done is done?” she continued coldly.
He turned defiant eyes up to his queen. “The girl is right.”
The queen smiled. A bitter one. “Tell me, Thomas. What were you doing with all of these gifts? What could be so necessary that you would break the sacrosanct agreements between the fae communities to do this?”
For the first time that evening the man laughed, and it was dark and rich. Almost evil.
“Money,” he whispered. “It’s always money.”
The queen dropped her finger from his chin as she leaned back in disgust.
“I sold every drop of power to the highest bidder in five counties,” he said with a nervous lick of his lips. “There’s nothing left on me.”
“And no way to reverse it,” Cecily said.
“What about the addiction?” the queen asked.
“I don’t know,” Cecily answered truthfully.
By the time she was finished, her voice was firm with only the hint of a tremor. Then the queen nodded and turned her head away to think.
That’s my girl, thought Katherine, proud of her cousin’s strong demeanor.
As Katherine turned a troubled gaze back on her mother, who now stood facing forward, she wasn’t sure what to expect. Sick horror. Pained understanding. What she hoped to see was firm resolution and a queen ready for decisive action no matter how distasteful the punishment would be.
She got that and more. Her mother’s face was wiped. Instead of steel with a sweet nature shining forth, Katherine saw hardened anger in her eyes. Then she realized something important.
Sweet steel was her mother’s persona as a homemaker.
Finely honed calculation was her persona as a queen.
“One last chance,” purred the queen.
The man stiffened his spine. “I have nothing left to give.”
“You mean you’re not willing to give it,” replied the provincial queen.
A tic appeared at the corner of the man’s mouth.
Irritation, perhaps? Katherine wondered as she studied his face. Or perhaps a sign that Mother’s interrogation is getting to him?
Fear was fine. But fear didn’t make every man break. No, sometimes it was the stupid things. Like pride. Like the need to be superior. Perhaps it would be that chauvinist pride that would cause this were-peacock lord’s downfall.