Read The Unseelie King (The Kings Book 6) Online

Authors: Heather Killough-Walden

The Unseelie King (The Kings Book 6) (4 page)

Chapter Three

“She’s composed of anger,” whispered Caliban.

“As is proper for a Wisher, no?” came the weathered reply.

Cal turned to the man who’d spoken. Thanaeryv Drummar was a blue-eyed man four and a half feet tall and as wrinkled as an aged apple. A white beard brushed Drummar’s slightly paunchy belly, which he staunchly blamed on his wife’s cooking, the only thing in any realm that could pull him from his job and had on many occasions. But she was an award-winning Duwomm cook, which were unabashedly the best in all the fae lands, and so Caliban could very much forgive this.

The exceedingly old man had been his advisor for thousands of years, but time meant little to a fae. It was the wisdom in his eyes, the honesty in the depth of his tone, and the fact that this man had actually helped raise him – and had once literally died for him – that touched Caliban’s heart in a way little else in the realms could.

Duwomm fae were inhabitants of the Twixt, that realm between the realms. They were born with two very long lives. Drummar had sacrificed one of his for Caliban when the Unseelie King was quite young and still more foolhardy than not. Caliban would never forget it, even though Drummar seemed to have done so.

“But it’s different with her,” Cal insisted quietly. “She is not like her sister. She even knew who I was,” he said, turning to face his advisor, “and my weaknesses.”

“Wishers are powerful fae, Caliban, with minds of steel,” said Drummar quietly, his voice as papery with age as Lalura Chantelle’s. “They can recall things they have only known fleetingly. It’s possible she is simply remembering what little knowledge of the fae realms she gleaned while in her mother’s womb, and while she was an infant in her mother’s arms. No doubt, her mother told her stories or sang her songs.”

“Possibly. However, I don’t believe this knowledge was so intrinsic for her sister. Selene didn’t know Avery for who he was.” He shook his head. “For Minerva, it was immediate. She’s different.”

“Not like her sister, eh?” Drummer asked, rubbing his chin in contemplation.

Caliban, like any good fae king, came by his knowledge of what transpired in the fae realms through various channels. Elementals were a favorite form of spy, for instance. Air elementals could be anywhere at any time. Water and earth elementals were nearly as easy to call upon. In many situations, even fire elementals were useful. Then there were sprites, spriggans, trolls…. A veritable plethora of eyes and ears surrounded the world – and most of them reported to Caliban. But even so, they were not in all places at all times, so Caliban was lacking some information about the new Seelie Queen.

He hadn’t had a chance to speak with his brother personally in days, and Avery was good at
not
being spied on. Cal was forced to make approximations. “From what I’ve gleaned, both Wishers possess surprising power. But beyond their shared empathy and kindness, they seem to be night and day.”

The old advisor ran his knobby fingers through his very long, white beard and walked a few paces away in contemplation. “Yes, that makes sense.”

Cal’s brow furrowed. “Oh?”

Drummar turned back to face him and as he always did when he had to look up at his king, he tried to stand up a little straighter in his aged frame. “Twins among the fae must divide their strengths and weaknesses, their likes and dislikes, and their light and their darkness. It’s only natural that one would possess more of some of them than the other.”

He nodded, mostly to himself, and stopped stroking his beard to hobble quickly past Caliban to a window on the other end of the Unseelie throne room. It looked out over a vast and strange land, filled with more wonders than most mortals could ever conceive. “Yes, I can see them now. I imagine young Selene Trystaine is like the full moon. She is visible, she shines bright, and as far as those around her are concerned, she would appear the stronger of the two.” The advisor turned to Caliban, and his blue eyes became steely with knowledge. “But Minerva is the
dark
side of the moon.”

Caliban’s chin lifted slightly. He felt a chill move through him. And that was something he hadn’t felt in ages.

“And we both know which one is
truly
more powerful, don’t we, my boy?”

Caliban swallowed, his throat working against a sudden tightness. The moon was more than important to the fae, both seelie and unseelie alike. It was their banner, their symbol, their guide, their eternal token of faith. It rode upon their flags and armor for a reason. The moon was a part of them.

The full moon was as Drummar had said. It was visible, comforting, and symbolic.

But the dark of the moon…. The dark side was hidden. It was mysterious. Legend had it that the dark side of the moon was the source of unseelie magic. Untapped, it was the strongest magic in the fae realms. Un-disciplined, it was the most deadly.

“Your queen’s magic is darkness, Caliban. She is
your
darkness. But because of her blood, its fuel is anger. She is a Wisher, and a Wisher’s power is in the seeking of vengeance. Injustice is its birthing bed.” The advisor shook his old head, and his expression became weary and disheartened. “Poor soul has never had a choice in how much pain she must feel. The darkness in her feeds off of it. It will die without it. And so, she has no recourse but to experience all agonies. Hers,” he said softly, “and everyone else’s.”

Caliban felt odd standing there in the midst of this revelation. He imagined the untold sufferings that took place in the mortal world – and then, he imagined how Minerva must have felt suffering them right along with it.

Every time a plane crashed, a child was killed, a girl raped, a family left without their homes or one another in the midst of a tyrant storm… she felt that loss, that indignity, and that terror. And beyond humanity, the suffering only continued, from slaughterhouses to hunting. The Shifter King, whose kind had been hunted to veritable extinction, could testify to that.

Cal could imagine that before very long at all, Minerva would have shied heavily away from anything that exposed her to the pain around her. The news would never play on her television. She would never read the paper. She would have to find some way to hide from the gossip, from the headlines – from everything.

The very soul of empathy. This was Minerva Trystaine.

To be able to empathize with your fellow man made it possible to know how to reach them, to argue both sides, to become an effective case-maker, comforter, and friend. Empathy brought good deeds, to be sure. But no good deed goes unpunished. And kindness was a gift
and
a curse.

“Let me see your wounds,” Drummar said suddenly, slicing through Caliban’s thoughts. He looked up at his advisor’s request and met a steadfast, demanding gaze.

It took a moment for the request to sink in before Caliban realized what Drummar was talking about. There was little point in voicing his next question, but Caliban had always been the stubborn kind. “How did you know?” he asked as he self-consciously touched his fingers to his chest, where Minerva’s attack had left him dearly wounded.

“I know women,” the advisor replied easily with a slight shrug of his hunched shoulders.

Cal took a deep breath.
Fine
, he thought.
So what if the old man knows. Hell, he may know of some way to help me heal.
He grasped the hem of his long-sleeved black shirt and lifted it to expose the red, angry markings where iron had made contact with his body.

Drummar’s bushy white brows raised in keen interest. “I’m impressed,” he said, coming closer to get a better look. “And you’re sure you were fully clothed when this happened?”

Caliban knew he was joking, but the jab did little to ease his unspoken, very real fears. Minerva had managed to sear his flesh by hurling objects at him so hard, they’d ripped right through his clothing. Telekinesis was a rare power for anyone, and for a Wisher, it came only after centuries of practice using unspoken wishes to manipulate the world around you. Minerva had done it in the blink of an eye, in a single heartbeat upon learning who and what she was.

This was only a reminder of what Caliban was up against. It reinforced how powerful his fated queen was, as well as how much she clearly despised him.

He dropped his shirt and turned away from Drummar to pace to the same window the advisor had been at a moment before. He looked out over his realm as he had a thousand-thousand times.

“You’ll need to feed your magic if you want those to scar over,” said Drummar softly. But he was only telling Caliban something the king already knew. A seelie fae’s magic was replenished with innocent pleasures. Food. Drink. Candy. Sweets. Even wine. Chocolate was a favorite among them. Caliban’s brother, Avery, preferred beer.

But for an unseelie fae, it was pleasures of the non-innocent kind that did the replenishing. It was
passion
that did it. And the more powerful the subject of that passion, the more magic was restored.

Caliban could not help but imagine such passion with Minerva, and the power that would become his in such an act. She was like the Fountain of Youth to a 99 year-old man. She was the promised land.

“I’m aware,” he replied simply and with finality.

But Drummar wasn’t finished with the subject. “You don’t have to have Miss Trystaine. Not yet. There are countless others who would sacrifice themselves to your needs, Caliban.”

That was an understatement.

“And I dare say they would not consider it a sacrifice,” Drummar added with a wink.

“I’m aware,” Caliban replied again testily.

Many mortal kings had possessed harems over the years. What Caliban possessed was unimaginable by comparison. Any female in his realm would lie down for him if he indicated with a glance that it was what he wished.

“What of Dahlia? She seems to be a favorite of yours. And the gods know she would transport into your arms if you so much as whispered her name.”

Caliban pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I’m aware of that, too,” he sighed. Dahlia and her sister Violet were two of the most stunningly beautiful women in his realm. They were Tuath fae, rare in the extreme. Tuath were, in fact, often referred to as “royal” fae.

They were the kind of women who were forbidden from ever stepping foot in the mortal world due to their beauty. It was a deadly kind of beauty. Too powerful, too alien. Things would happen in the footsteps of women like that.

Dahlia was the more forward of the two, seemingly intent on securing Caliban’s attentions for herself. He was well aware of her manipulations – but what did he care? He was getting what he wanted.

Violet, true to the assumed shyness of her name, could have cared less about her beauty or its effect upon males. And though she would have most certainly sacrificed herself to Caliban’s “needs,” if he’d demanded it be so, the truth was, Violet was far more interested in hiding away in the comfortable shade of a Giant Bunder Mushroom, reading books written by mortals. It confounded him…. She reminded him, in fact, a little of Minerva.

Suddenly, Violet was so much more desirable than her sister.

He
could
have
her
. He could have her for hours on end, and that beauty and magical strength of hers would no doubt aid in Caliban’s healing. It would get him by.

But….

No
. Caliban’s brow furrowed, and his gut tightened. As insane as it was, the very thought of bedding another woman was not only distasteful to the Unseelie King, but slightly nauseating.

He wanted his
queen
, damn it.

Drummar sighed wistfully. “Ah… it’s true love, then. She’ll be the death of you. As is often the case with love.”

Caliban chose to let that comment go. It was just far too true for his tastes.

His gaze roved over the vast expanses of his beautiful, deadly realm. “She is so….” His words trailed off with his wonder, and for some unmeasured space of time, he pondered the woman that was Minerva. He knew that Selene was a painter. He’d heard that Minerva could sing like an angel. He was wagering, rather, that she could sing like a
fae
…. Perhaps like a mermaid, or a siren.

Every fae possessed a gift of some kind. For a Wisher, the gift would be ten-fold… as would its corresponding curse. “I’m told she attempted to take her own life once,” he whispered, his voice thin with a kind of helpless awe.

He hadn’t meant to say the words out loud, but Drummar heard him all the same. “She would have unleashed all of her magic upon the world had she succeeded,” the advisor said quietly, a hint of bewilderment in his tone. “Death at the hands of a Wisher is the only thing that can release that Wish Fae’s full power all at once. Not unlike a bomb. The destruction would have been incredible.”

Caliban had heard those rumors and stories his entire life. But he’d ignored them. It did little good to talk about Wishers when none of them existed any longer, and for most of his life, he’d believed that to be the case. It was like a human discussing whether or not a T-Rex would have exploded when killed by another T-Rex. Did it really matter? In the scheme of things?

He’d always simply suspected that the tale was told amongst Wishers as a way to keep them from using their powers against each other in knee-jerk anger: “Kill me, and you go down with me!” An effective peace keeper, if ever there was one.

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