Eilidh wasn’t surprised to see her mother striding through the assembled fae like a warrior. The queen was undoubtedly notified the moment Torquil’s foot touched the staircase. There were enchantments to protect Eilidh’s virtue woven into the very building that was her home. Had she been beautiful those enchantments would’ve been more necessary. As it was, Eilidh had never considered them, never had reason to, until this moment.
“What have you done?” she repeated for the third time, hoping for some graceful way out of the mess Torquil had created. They needed an answer before the Queen of Blood and Rage reached them.
Torquil stood, keeping her hand clasped in his. Gently, he tugged, leading her to the ground. He said nothing as they descended the stairs.
The queen stood there, her armor absent for a change. They’d obviously interrupted her at a better time than most. For all meetings and affairs of state, she wore her war attire. Right now, though, she was dressed in what passed for casual with the queen—a heavy brocade dress in blood red with black accents. Her midnight dark hair fell unbound. To anyone who didn’t look in her eyes, she might appear as a sister to Eilidh herself, but a brief glimpse of the queen’s eyes would end that thought, as would the weight of her voice.
“Explain yourself, son of Aden.” The queen regarded Torquil, one of the rare fae of Seelie origins who had earned her genuine favor, and her anger was thick in her every syllable. Right now, none of that esteem was in evidence.
“You directed that I take a bride,” he said levelly. He didn’t drop to his knees as he should, as he had every other time the queen had spoken to him, as
every
fae save the king, the three royal sons, and Eilidh did.
Eilidh tugged his hand, trying to remind him to kneel. He ignored her and watched the queen. He was declaring himself family to her in this action as well. If most fae attempted such a thing, Endellion was likely to kill them.
Behind Endellion stood Rhys, the queen’s son, the fae who would’ve been heir to the Unseelie throne if the courts had remained divided. Eilidh met his gaze, but he barely acknowledged her as he stood waiting to act if their mother had need of his blade. He knew well that the queen was as capable of wielding every blade known to faeries,
but his chosen duty in this life was to protect his mother and bloody his weapons at her word. The
king’s
sons were frivolous things, but Rhys was devoted to the queen, and by extension, to her husband if necessary.
“You directed that I could wed anyone my heart chose,” Torquil continued, as if he wasn’t aware of the danger he faced from the queen and her son both. “There were no other rules spoken, no exclusions. By your word, I could select even those already wed.”
“Do not think to outmaneuver me, son of Aden,” the Queen of Blood and Rage said quietly. “Undo this.”
“You know as well as I do, my queen, that if she was unwilling, I couldn’t ascend the stair.”
Eilidh’s gaze shot to her mother. “Is that true?”
No one answered her. The queen prompted, “Would you take Torquil, son of Aden, to be your betrothed, daughter of mine?”
The real question was in there, but it wasn’t as simple as what was spoken. Eilidh had been raised under the guidance of the queen. She was meant to rule both courts if no other heir was born. That meant knowing how to hear what was unspoken.
Eilidh met her mother’s gaze unwaveringly. “If it pleases my queen, I will do so when and only when she decrees it wise.”
The Queen of Blood and Rage smiled at her, pride in her eyes, before she turned her attention back to Torquil.
When she spoke this time, she raised her voice and said, “Then I will allow you my daughter’s hand, and you will lay with no other.”
“Of course! There will be no other in my arms.” He bowed his head deeply and then said, “We will begin planning our ceremony today.”
“There is no rush, son of Aden and soon to be my own.” The queen waited until he looked up and met her gaze. “I am not ready for nuptials. It could be a great long time until I am. My daughter is young still.”
Torquil’s smile grew pinched, but he said nothing. Most fae were betrothed at birth; many others were already wed at Eilidh’s age. The whispers around them grew loud enough that Eilidh knew that the assembled fae were thinking exactly that.
“Of course, my queen,” was all he finally said.
The only rush would be in producing an heir, and that would require her to take him to her bed. Such things often happened when betrothed couples developed feelings, but Eilidh wasn’t so foolish as to think that his selection of her as his wife was anything personal. All he had done was take himself off the marriage block—and sentence himself to celibacy. After a time, he would accept that the queen would only allow Eilidh to be wed if there were no other choices left to secure an heir for the Hidden Throne. He would, in the end, set her aside and take a wife who could carry a child.
“Mother, would you rather we were not betrothed? If you will it, we can end . . .”
Endellion paused imperceptibly. Eilidh doubted that anyone other than her and Rhys even noticed. They had learned to notice. The queen had never raised a hand to her, never would. Whether they were Seelie or Unseelie, children weren’t struck in anger. That didn’t mean that Eilidh had avoided the chill in her mother’s voice or the refusal to give her the smiles she coveted like most fae coveted sweets.
“I offered Torquil his choice of partners. He chose you.” The queen almost smiled at her. “He will cherish you as he should, or he will learn from his foolishness.”
Eilidh curtsied before her mother and said, “I am yours to command.”
The queen smiled, a real smile this time. It was the closest to laughter she ever came. “Of course you are,” she said.
And, in that instant, Eilidh was certain then that her mother knew more than she’d admitted about her heir’s trips to the human world . . . or one of the myriad other secrets Eilidh kept.
“Speak to your soon-to-be-brother, Rhys,” Endellion added. “Be sure he is well aware of my expectations. I need to see the king.”
Then, with as little notice as when she had arrived, the Queen of Blood and Rage turned to leave. The assembled faeries scattered as she turned. They might love and respect their queen, but that affection was tempered by fear. She
was their greatest strength, but she was also the nightmare that they spoke of in whispers. All from the eldest to the youngest fae were raised to know that their queen was wrought of darkness.
Rhys gestured toward the glass tower.
Silently, Torquil took Eilidh’s hand in his, and they led her half-brother into her home. Her unease increased further.
None of her siblings ever visited her. Her aesthetically inclined Seelie siblings were understandable. Nacton tolerated her, but averted his gaze when they spoke. Calder, however, despised her for more than her scarred appearance. Not even the king could order him to be polite to her. Her Unseelie brother was more complex. The Unseelie were not put off by scars, but they were perhaps even less at ease with emotions. Rhys had behaved as Unseelie did, typically seeming wholly indifferent, but he’d also comforted her more than once when she’d wept.
Their silence was unbroken until they reached the first floor of the tower. It was a sitting room designed to allow her the privacy of conversation without offering easy access to her bedchamber. The faeries milling around outside could see them all clearly. Awkwardly, Eilidh gestured to the uncomfortable but lovely guest chairs.
Rhys gave her a chastising look that spoke loudly and motioned toward her own divan. He was too court-familiar to sit before her. Torquil, likewise, had stayed standing. By
right of rank, he and Rhys were equal now. Rhys was the queen’s son, but Torquil was the heir’s intended.
Eilidh blushed as she realized her faux pas. “Sorry.”
Once she sat, Rhys and Torquil exchanged a tense look, neither willing to admit a lesser rank and sit last, but neither wanting to clamber into a chair gracelessly to insist on higher rank.
“Is this necessary?” she prompted after the two fae stood awkwardly for several moments. “We’re in my home, not in front of the queen.”
Reluctantly, both faeries simultaneously sat.
“May I speak freely?” Rhys asked.
“Always,” Eilidh promised. She had wanted a closeness with her siblings for years. Only Rhys seemed remotely capable of that. If this horribly unplanned betrothal elicited sibling affection, she was ready to declare the whole thing a fine idea . . . even if she wasn’t pleased at the idea of Torquil’s unexpected political machinations.
“She’ll have me slit his throat before she allows you to wed,” Rhys announced bluntly.
Torquil said, “The king—”
“Does not control my mother, even a little,” Rhys interrupted. “She is Unseelie, and angry, and has pinned every hope she has left on Eilidh and the halflings.”
Torquil frowned at him. “The . . . ?”
“The Sleepers.” Rhys spoke slowly, as if Torquil should’ve known that secret. When he realized that Torquil didn’t, his gaze turned to Eilidh. “You didn’t tell him?”
“If the queen or king wanted it spoken, it would be,” she pointed out.
“You are more like her than I realized,” Rhys said, and from his tone, she was fairly sure it wasn’t a compliment.
Eilidh nodded. “I am their heir.”
“Until she has another child or finds the missing daughter.”
“The baby died at sea. Everyone says so,” Eilidh said mildly.
“Can
you
say that she died?” Rhys prodded. “Tell me I’m wrong,
Patches.
Tell me you aren’t aware of where our missing sister had been hidden. Tell me that I missed some of your machinations, and you actually planned this mess with”—Rhys gestured at Torquil—“him.”
“You know I can’t,” she said.
He continued as if she hadn’t spoken, “You are the heir,
my
replacement at the head of the Unseelie fae, as well as Nacton’s replacement for
the other
court.”
“There is only one court,” Torquil started.
Rhys ignored him, speaking only to Eilidh. “I realized that I could serve you or hate you. Calder and Nacton chose hate. I think Mother was right to unify the courts. I will support that path, which means protecting the heir. To do that, I had to know your secrets—and the queen’s secrets.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t expecting this, not his support and certainly not his implied knowledge. Eilidh wasn’t sure where to go or what to say. She glanced at Torquil again.
Through it all, he had sat silently, the slight widening
of his eyes the only true clue to how shocked he was. He’d maintained his calm facade well enough to convince Eilidh that he might make a fine consort after all.
“Eilidh?” he prompted.
She sighed. “Which disaster do you want to discuss first?”
Choices matter. That was the greatest and the first of the Abernathy Commandments. Some families had the Ten Commandments hanging in their foyer; the Abernathy household had security cameras and a framed list of the first eleven Abernathy Commandments. There were more than eleven now, and the original ones had evolved a bit, but that framed list would never be replaced. Her mother had given it to her father before Lily was born. Daidí had said that it was how he knew that she was his soul mate.
Abernathy Commandments
#1: Choices matter.
#2: Be yourself.
#3: Never get caught.
#4: Weigh the consequences before beginning a course of action.
#5: Be bold.
#6: Never confess your vulnerabilities if you can avoid it.
#7: Secrets are valuable. Don’t part with them for free.
#8: Make use of opportunities that arise.
#9: Be kind to those who deserve it.
#10: Know when to be assertive.
#11: Know when to walk away from trouble.
Lily had grown up in the shadows of those commandments—thinking that every family had a set of rules to avoid “complications,” thinking security cameras and bodyguards were normal, thinking that all good fathers were opposed to sending their daughters to school.
In truth, Lily had been perfectly content with the way things were. She didn’t want a change. Being around people her own age, especially people who weren’t raised in a world where there were different kinds of “good,” was far from appealing. Being around normal people would make it hard to hide her own peculiarities too. Learning at home meant not making many friends, but it had also meant not having to hide herself. It seemed like a fine trade-off.
Daidí had always said she was like her mother—drifting away on flights of fantasy. But unlike her mom, Lily had no desire to write. Sure, she wanted to read, maybe watch movies . . . and pretend that she was the girl smiling at Zephyr Waters or getting caught skinny dipping in a fountain in
Roma with Creed Morrison in the pages of a magazine.
But now, her isolation was being yanked away. Her bodyguard, Hector, was escorting her to the city of Belfoure in a black car with tinted windows, bulletproof glass, and heated leather seats. Lily stared out the window until the hum of the road and the soft patter of rain on the car roof lulled her into some semblance of calmness.
“This is a bad idea,” she pointed out yet again as Hector made a left turn.
“It’ll be fine. You’ll meet kids like you.”
Lily shook her head. The school was a haven for special people. All of the students were
somebody
: child prodigies; children of diplomats, politicians, and rock stars; glitterati; and of course, those whose wealth was inherited. Those like her—kids whose parents earned their money in less ethical ways—didn’t attend fancy boarding schools.
“Your father is a smart man,” Hector reminded her.
“Smart men make mistakes too. Being around others . . . like me . . . it’s not a good idea,” she said gently.
Hector wasn’t going to overstep by arguing with her—or by siding with her against her father. He kept his mouth shut and drove through the streets toward the campus that sat on the hill above Belfoure like a medieval fortress.
As Hector started up that winding drive, Lily thought back to the night she’d met Creed. She wasn’t going to lie to herself about what she thought about him. Creed was captivating, but that was precisely why she didn’t want to see him.
He’s probably forgotten all about me
.
She’d done the right thing in not calling. She had. If not for her father’s ridiculous urge to send her to St. Columba’s, Lily would never see Creed again. That had been her plan, and it was a good one. As it was, the school should be big enough to avoid Creed to some degree.
As the car pulled up to the massive front gates at the school, Lily slipped her sunglasses on. It was a small comfort, like putting on a mask.
Stone walls surrounded the entire campus, but the front gates appeared to be iron or steel. They were made to resemble some sort of faux castle gate. It was modernized, of course, with a gatehouse and a guard. It also stretched across the road where she assumed the entrance to the inner walls of the fortress had once been.
Hector cracked his window and announced, “Abernathy.”
After a minute, the guard found her name on the list and buzzed them in. The heavy metal gate slid open with a series of clangs and clacks. If the myths about fae sensitivity to iron were true, Lily would feel wretched right now, but she’d never felt any weakness from iron. Maybe full-blood fae did. The media claimed that was so, but Lily herself hadn’t ever experienced any trouble with iron or its alloy, steel. Considering how often she wore a blade next to her skin, she was certain that she’d have known far before now if the metal was toxic to her.
As Hector drove onto the campus, Lily stared at the
main building. It was imposing and dark, unlike the bright front of her home. This felt more like visiting the courthouse on the rare occasions when she’d been allowed to accompany Daidí to one of the government’s various attempts to convict him.
The central building of St. Columba’s was a towering black structure with gargoyles at the top, spires straight up into the gray sky, and doors that looked like they were meant to let in some horrific beast rather than mere people. The many steps up to those doors spanned the width of the building.
“Home sweet home.”
“Give it a chance,” Hector said. He parked the car at the top of the circular drive.
“Why?”
Hector opened her door, and in an instant, he was at the trunk pulling out the luggage. There were only three bags. The rest would follow in the next day or so. These were just the essentials Shayla decided to send.
“Walk, Lilywhite.” Hector looked behind them, glaring at the gate that wasn’t shut yet before herding her up the steps with a terse one-word command: “Inside.”
At the top, she could see that a smaller door was nested inside the vast one. Hector opened it, and Lily went inside.
She pulled off her sunglasses and surveyed the hall, looking for potential exits and hiding areas.
Abernathy Commandment #15: Always have a way out, more than one if possible.
There weren’t any obvious egresses, unfortunately. It was
a room designed for one way in and out, which made her nervous.
The foyer of the main hall was a vast high-ceilinged room. Sconces lined the walls, jutting out from the thick vines that covered the walls for as far as she could see. On either side of the room, staircases spiraled upward to the balconies that lined the second and third floors. In the center was a wide hallway. A small sign reading
ADMINISTRATION
was the only indication of direction.
They made it as far as the mouth of the hallway when a woman in a well-tailored suit walked toward them. “Miss Abernathy?”
Lily nodded.
The woman offered the sort of tight smile that didn’t bode well. “We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow. There are no suites presently available as a result, but if you give us an hour, we’ll get it all sorted out.”
Hector scowled, but Lily simply nodded and walked toward the plants clinging to the back wall of the massive room. Belatedly, she realized that she should’ve spoken, but there wasn’t anything that the woman could tell her that would be as useful as the plants would reveal.
“I’ll carry her bags to the office,” Hector said, drawing the woman’s gaze to him and away from her.
Lily’s affinity for earth was sacrosanct. Every new hire was told without fail that any time she needed to pause to touch nature, they must facilitate it. To do otherwise was a firing offense. They were also told exactly how horrific
their deaths would be if they revealed her fae-blood tendencies to anyone outside the house. At least one employee had vanished suddenly after he’d allowed a reporter to capture a picture of her with waves seemingly bending toward her. The picture vanished, and both the reporter and her then-guard had never been seen again. Daidí left nothing to chance—at least he hadn’t until the night of her birthday when he’d invited Creed into their home.
Lily glanced down the darkened hallway. “Can I help in any way?”
The woman’s stiff smile softened into something close to approval. “I’ll get everything sorted out. You just take a look around your new home.”
“I’ll be right back,” Hector told Lily. He glanced after the woman suspiciously for a moment before following her away, dragging Lily’s bags with him like they weighed nothing.
“I’m in no rush,” Lily said.
She watched him as he walked away. Her hands absently twined into the plants, and she was grateful for this bit of the natural world inside this unfamiliar place. The plants talked in whispers and rustles, telling her of students, of sounds from the underground, of the spiders that draped the leaves in webs.
It wasn’t enough.
Once Hector turned the corner, Lily exited through the same door she’d just entered minutes prior. The woman had said Lily could look around. She hadn’t specified that
she’d only meant look around
inside
, and when Lily didn’t have to stay inside, she didn’t.
The water in the fountain outside wasn’t pure, far from it in fact, but it was
there
. Lily could feel it tugging at her the way she suspected magnets drew metal. Soil and sea called to her; plants whispered to her. As she got older, she came to understand that most people didn’t hear words in the wind or feel the weight of moonlight. It had taken years for her to learn to rest without her windows wide open—and longer still to hide her need to be barefoot.
Lily walked back out of the administration building and into the courtyard. Her intent had been simply to be in the sunlight, maybe sit near the large fountain that filled the center of the circular drive, but when she walked down the steps, she saw that the gate to the grounds still yawned open like an invitation. The guard was talking to someone on his phone, and the gates were unwatched.
It was a sign.
She slid her sunglasses on and walked through the open gate as calmly as if she were walking into the theater with Daidí. She didn’t run or look around furtively. She didn’t glance back at the administration building.
Abernathy Commandment #8: Make use of opportunities that arise.