by Karen Lynch
I heard the challenge in his voice, but in his eyes, I caught a flicker of uncertainty. It was enough for me to keep going. He either believed me, or he didn’t. What did I have to lose?
“I don’t think she ever intended to harm Faerie,” I said. “But it was her actions that led us to where we are now. I’ve known that since long before I came to Seelie.”
He stopped pacing and spun to stare at me. “How?”
I wasn’t sure if he was asking how the queen had stolen the ke’tain or how I’d known all this time. I also didn’t know if he was ready to hear all of this, but I was running out of time.
I patted the pallet beside me, and he sat. Then I moved so I was facing him. “It all started when I went on a job at a black-market dealer’s house the Agency had raided.”
I told him about Lewis Tate, the dealer whom the Agency suspected had the ke’tain, and how I’d connected Tate to Davian Woods. That led to the party at Davian’s where I’d seen one of the queen’s guards create a portal and speak to her about the ke’tain. Rhys tried to interrupt me at that point, but I put up a hand to stop him. He could ask all the questions he wanted when I was done telling my story.
Rhys fell silent as I talked about Faris and what he had suffered after he’d discovered who had taken the ke’tain. Rhys’s eyes widened in horror when I described Faris wrapped in iron in that basement and Faris’s own account of it.
Rhys hadn’t been in the human world long, but like every faerie, he knew how deadly iron was and what long-term contact like that would do to a Fae body. The queen’s men could have killed Faris, but they chose instead to torture him for months. Kind-hearted Rhys struggled to process that level of brutality from people he knew.
I continued my story, telling him about Gus and how he’d had the ke’tain inside him all that time. I recounted how Davian’s men had kidnapped Conlan and me, and Davian had told me about his deal with Queen Anwyn. How I’d been shot by one of Davian’s men during our escape and would have died if Lukas and his men hadn’t attempted the conversion.
“What I could never figure out was why the queen would take the ke’tain from Faerie,” I said half to myself. “Today, I got my answer. She told me she did it to upset the balance of magic just enough to show everyone how dangerous it is to keep the barrier open. She wanted to use it to convince Unseelie to seal the barrier for good. But then the ke’tain was lost, and things got out of control.”
Rhys looked like I’d punched him in the gut. “My whole life, Mother has talked about sealing the barrier. At times, I felt like she wanted to do something about it, but I did not think she would take it this far.”
“She’s going to try again. This time, she’s not taking the ke’tain out of Faerie, but she’s going to use it to force Unseelie’s hand.” I paused. “And she’s planning to make it look like I was the one who stole it.”
“How could she? She has to know you will tell them the truth about her and…” He stared at me for several seconds, and then he vigorously shook his head. “No. She may be guilty of those other things, but my mother would not resort to killing an innocent. I cannot believe that of her.”
My stomach twisted as it did every time he called Queen Anwyn his mother. His real mother – our mother – was a good, strong, loving, fiercely protective woman who had been robbed of her son by that monster.
I looked into his blue eyes, identical to our father’s, and I was suddenly overcome with longing and grief. I was never going to hear my dad’s laugh again or feel the warm security of his hugs. And my mom would never recover from losing another child. My death was going to destroy our family, and Queen Anwyn’s victory over us would be complete. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I reached for Rhys’s hand and clasped it between mine. I might not be able to change my fate, but I could give something back to my parents before I died.
My father and I had been wrong. We’d thought the only way to protect our family from the queen was to keep the truth about Caleb a secret. What we should have done was tell our story to anyone who would listen. Most would not have believed us, but enough people would have. If we had exposed her and something had happened to us, then people would know who did it. More importantly, Rhys would know.
“There is something else I have to tell you. I believe it’s the real reason Queen Anwyn is trying so hard to seal off Faerie from the human world.”
He frowned. “I know her reason. She has talked about keeping our world free from the impurities of the other realm.”
“That’s what she tells you and everyone else, but it’s a lie,” I bit out the last word as the anger and pain I had been carrying for months threatened to spill from me. “She wants to close the barrier to protect her secret, to keep people from finding out about the horrible thing she did.”
“Jesse, I fear the stress of imprisonment is affecting your mind. I think I should summon a healer.” He tried to pull his hand from mine, but I refused to let him go.
“I don’t need a healer. I need you to listen to what I have to say.”
He sighed and assumed a placating expression. “Okay. What is this awful thing my mother did, and how do you know about it?”
I took a deep breath. “I know about it because she did it to my family.”
I didn’t know what he saw in my eyes, but he paled and spoke in a hushed voice. “What did she do?”
“Twenty years ago, Queen Anwyn stole something precious from my parents, and it nearly destroyed them. They’ve never gotten over it.”
Rhys’s hand flexed in mine. “Twenty years ago? That’s the year I was born.”
“I know,” I said softly.
He swallowed convulsively and covered my hand with his other one. “What did she take from them?” he whispered urgently.
“My brother.”
Chapter 21
Rhys pulled away from me so fast he fell backward. He scrambled to his feet and stared down at me, words of denial already forming on his lips. His eyes, however, conveyed a different emotion. He knew, maybe not consciously, but a part of him knew the truth.
“My brother’s name is Caleb,” I went on as if nothing had happened. “He was two months old when he died suddenly in his crib. Or so everyone believed, except for our mother. She tried to tell people that the dead baby wasn’t hers, but they dismissed her as a grieving mother.”
I tugged the blankets tighter around me. “I was born later, so I never knew Caleb. Whenever Mom and Dad talked about him, it made them sad, so I tried not to mention him often.”
“You were unhappy?” Rhys asked.
“No.” I sniffled quietly. “I had a very happy life, but there were moments when one or both of my parents let their guard down, and I could see their pain. I think Caleb’s birthday was the hardest for them. We go to the cemetery to visit his grave on his birthday every year.”
Rhys came back to join me on the pallet. “I am sorry for your loss and the pain your family has suffered. But nothing you have said implicates my mother or proves your claim that I am your brother.”
“I’m getting to that.” I swiped away the wetness on my cheeks. “Do you remember when those photos of you were leaked weeks before your debut?”
“Yes.” His brows drew together, and I could almost hear him wondering where I was going with this.
“The photog who took those pictures is a friend of my family. You met him the night the paparazzi cornered me at Navi. He showed the photos to my parents, who had never laid eyes on the Seelie prince.”
Rhys sucked in a breath. I kept going.
“My mother recognized you first. You have blond hair instead of Caleb’s red, but you look too much like my father at that age for it to be a coincidence.” I let that sink in for a few seconds before I continued. “They found out you were at the Ralston, so they went there to see you in person.”
“I never saw them,” Rhys said in a small voice.
“Some of the queen’s guards were with
you, and they got to my parents before you could see each other.”
“I remember that night.” Rhys stared past me. “Mother… she insisted on Aibel and Conard coming with us for our first trip. There was a commotion outside the room where we were doing a photo shoot, and they told me they’d taken care of a security breach. They made me return to Faerie immediately after.”
I let out a bitter laugh. “Yeah, they took care of it. One of them told my parents they should have killed them twenty years ago when they took you. Then they called a goren dealer to do their dirty work for them and to dispose of my parents. It was sheer luck that someone else took the call and kept my mother and father alive and hidden by drugging them with goren. My parents had to spend months in rehab after I found them, but at least they’re alive.”
“This cannot be real.” Rhys ran his hands through his hair, and I couldn’t tell if he was upset or in shock. He moved suddenly to put his hands on my shoulders. “Why did you not tell me? Your parents never tried to see me after that. I met your father, and he said nothing.”
My heart constricted at the hurt and confusion in his eyes. “At first, they didn’t remember what happened because of the goren. When they did get their memory back, we were too afraid of what Queen Anwyn would do if she found out. You have no idea what it’s doing to them to know you’re alive and not be able to tell you. Mom nearly had a relapse when she remembered.”
“Why are you telling me now? Are you no longer afraid of what my mother would do?”
“I’m terrified,” I admitted. “But I wanted you to know in case…something happens to me. You deserve to know that you have a whole family out there who loves you. Lukas…Vaerik has them hidden for now. I hope you can help to keep them safe from the queen.”
“Prince Vaerik knows about me?” Rhys asked.
“No.” Guilt and sorrow sliced through me, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. I’d carried the burden of my family’s secret all this time, and my fear had kept me from confiding in the one person I should have.
Rhys got up to pace the room again. “My…mother… she wasn’t always affectionate like other mothers. She treated me well and gave me everything I wanted, but I always felt like something was missing.”
“What about your…father?” I asked. I’d never thought much about the queen’s consort. Was he in on this, too?
“My father is a quiet person. He does his duty as consort, but outside of that, my parents are rarely together. He is a loving father, but he did not have much input into my upbringing.”
I tried to imagine what it had been like for him growing up here with an absent father and a mother who didn’t show him the kind of love I’d known. He was a prince raised in absolute luxury, but I felt like the one with all the riches.
He went to one of the windows and stared out into the night. I watched him for several minutes, wondering what was going through his mind. When Dad had told me Rhys was Caleb, it had shaken my world. What must it be like for Rhys to discover his whole life was a lie, to learn not only that he was stolen from his real family, but he was not even from this world?
More minutes passed, and the silence in the room became too much for me. I cleared my throat. “Rhys, are you okay?”
“No.” He turned to look at me with bleak eyes. “I cannot believe my mother is capable of the things you said.”
My heart sank. I’d hoped he would believe me, but I couldn’t blame him for siding with the only mother he had ever known. It was too much to ask of him.
“From our first encounter, I felt inexplicably drawn to you. Bayard teased that I was infatuated with a pretty human, but that wasn’t it. I felt connected to you somehow, and it grew stronger every time I saw you. When I met your father, I felt it with him, too, and I assumed it was because of my interest in his work.” Rhys let out a ragged breath. “I didn’t know. I didn’t know.”
I tossed the blankets off me. Shivering, I stood and went to him. I couldn’t hug him with my wrists shackled, so I laid my hands against his chest. “You couldn’t have known. Even my father didn’t know until his memory came back.”
He wrapped his arms tightly around me, and it broke the damn of emotions inside me. I cried for him, our family, and everything we’d lost. It wasn’t until I felt him shake that I realized he was crying, too.
“I have a sister,” he said hoarsely, and my chest expanded with bittersweet joy.
We were still holding each other when the door opened. I lifted my head as Bayard entered and eyed us impatiently.
“This is no time for a tryst, Rhys,” he growled. “Donan says Bauchan will come for her within the hour.”
I shuddered as the reality of my situation came crashing down on me once more. How could I have forgotten, even for a second, what was waiting for me?
“I will not let them hurt you again,” Rhys said fiercely. “We will get you out of here.”
“We?” Bayard glared at him. “You want us to help a prisoner of the queen escape? That is treason.”
“It is not treason if the crown prince commands you to do it.” Rhys released me and scowled at his head of security.
Bayard raised an eyebrow, and I got the impression Rhys rarely issued commands to him. It was confirmed when his mouth twisted into a wry smile. “Of course, Your Highness. How are we to smuggle your little friend out of the palace? She does not exactly blend in, and Bauchan has strengthened the wards. We cannot even create a portal inside the palace.”
Rhys thought for a moment. “We could take her to the door in the servants’ wing that we used to sneak out as children.”
My breath bottled up in my chest as I dared to hope for the first time in days.
Bayard was quick to squash it. “It’s on the other end of the palace. We’d never make it without being caught.”
“Perhaps we could hide her,” Kaelen said, joining the conversation. “She would fit in one of those large baskets used to collect bed linens.”
“We would not look at all suspicious carrying a linen basket,” Bayard retorted. He turned to Rhys. “Anything we try will be risky. Is she worth incurring the queen’s wrath?”
“Yes,” Rhys answered without hesitation.
Bayard’s surprised gaze flicked to me. “Why?”
Rhys laid an arm over my shoulders. “Shut the door, Kaelen.”
Kaelen obeyed. He and Bayard stood together watching us expectantly. Rhys didn’t make them wait long.
“Because Jesse is my sister.”
“What?” The two guards exclaimed at the same time.
Bayard pointed an accusing finger at me. “That is impossible. What lies did you tell him to make him believe such a ludicrous claim?”
“Do not speak to her that way,” Rhys ordered in a hard voice.
“You cannot believe this.” Bayard shot him an incredulous look. “She is using you to help her escape.”
Rhys looked at me, and I nodded. The truth had to come out eventually, and we might as well start with the people he trusted the most. I needed them if I had any hope of getting out of here alive.
Ten minutes later, Bayard and Kaelen were staring at me like they’d never seen me before. Bayard wasn’t one hundred percent convinced by my story, but he admitted that Aibel and Conard had been acting strange that night at the Ralston. And Bauchan had told him multiple times to keep Rhys away from the James family. The reason given had been the queen’s disapproval of her son associating with bounty hunters.
“You have the same eyes,” Kaelen declared, looking from me to Rhys. “How did I never see it?”
I smiled at Rhys. “We have our father’s eyes and our mother’s hair. Yours was as red as mine once.”
Bayard held up a hand. “We still need to address the why and how of this?”
“The how is pretty obvious,” I said. “The queen’s guards stole Caleb and put a dead baby in his place. They glamoured the medical examiner to cover it up. Then Queen Anwyn secretly went to my world and did the con
version herself.”
“You are forgetting one important detail,” Bayard said. “Queen Anwyn delivered a son. I know this because my mother was present at Rhys’s birth. After the queen lost her first baby, all of Seelie followed her second pregnancy closely.”
“The queen lost a baby?” I asked, surprised.
Rhys nodded seriously. “It was a stillbirth, fifteen years before I was born.”
“My mother has told me how all of Seelie celebrated for days when Rhys was born,” Bayard said. “How do you explain that?”
I shook my head. “I can’t.”
He looked at Rhys. “We also need to remember the queen’s dislike of humans. She has made no secret of the fact she considers them weak and inferior. Would she take one of them to pass off as her own child? Her heir?”
“He’s right,” I said deflated. “When you think about it that way, it sounds insane.”
Rhys faced me. “Do you believe I am your brother?”
“Without a doubt. If you could talk to my parents and see the pictures of my dad when he was your age, you wouldn’t have to ask me that.”
He nodded firmly. “Then we will go to your parents. First, we have to get you out of Seelie.”
My relief was so strong it made my legs wobble, and he had to reach out to steady me.
Bayard let out a harsh breath and looked at Kaelen. “Tell Donan, Ash, and Mitah to meet us at the bottom of the tower and to bring a weapons bag from the training room.”
Kaelen left, and Rhys smiled broadly. “Brilliant. No one will question you carrying a weapons bag.”
I almost spoke up and said I could create a glamour to hide me, but I remembered my failed attempt before they arrived. I bit my lip. I felt like I could confide in Rhys, but could I trust Bayard with my secret? What would he do if he found out I had a goddess stone? Would he still help me or turn me over to the queen? If I showed them the stone and I couldn’t create a glamour, I would have risked it all for nothing.
“What is it, Jesse?” Rhys asked. He and Bayard gave me questioning looks.