Page 69 of The Fae Lord

I blink at the venomous truth that spirals from her tongue. Like smoke, it curls around my ribs and squeezes.

That is how she sees me; a monster.

That is what I made myself.

“My mother...” I falter, the words sticking in my throat. The memory of reading those pages is still raw, still painful. I reach for the table beside the bed and Alana’s entire body tenses.

The icicle looks both comical and intimidating in her hand. I want to remind her that I saw what she did to herself with one just like that... less pointed. But still... by the waterfall. On the rock. When I watched her, and called her my good girl.

As if she knows what I’m thinking, she starts to blush. She adjusts the robe, and frowns at me. “What are you doing?”

I pick up my mother’s journal and toss it so it lands in her lap.

“My mother did something to yours, long ago. When your mother visited her. It’s all recorded in there. A journal that belonged to my mother. I recognise her hand. She wrote in a signature ink. It couldn’t be anyone else’s. It’s real.”

Alana glances down at the book, then flicks open the cover.

“The bit about you starts a few pages in,” I tell her. “Seems my mother wanted a record of her madness.”

I sit up fully, the sheets pooling around my waist. I run a hand through my hair, trying to gather my thoughts, to find the right way to explain the inexplicable.

“She cast a spell, a dark ritual, on your mother while she was pregnant with you. She... changed you, gave you the powers you have now.” I see the shock register on her face, her eyes widening, her lips parting in disbelief. She is scanning the words while I speak. But I press on.

“She believed you were the key to saving our kingdom from the evil that threatens it. That your powers were a gift, a weapon, to be used against the coming darkness.”

Alana holds up her hand to silence me. She is reading. Her lips move, and I follow them. I have read the entry so many times, I know exactly what she is whispering.

I have seen the face of our salvation. A child, born of a healer’s womb, with the power to turn the tide against the coming darkness.

As soon as I saw the child, I knew who she belonged to.

Magdalena. The healer who came to me from the Leafborne clan after Raylon’s death. She came unasked, and I remember wondering why someone would do such a thing. Make such a long journey out of pure kindness.

She spent days with me, making tinctures and singing me lullabies. She was kinder to me than I ever remember my own mother being.

Now I know it was fate who brought her to me.

Now I know why we spent so many hours talking, with her counselling me through my grief.

It was all for this. So the child growing in her belly could save us all.

I did not want to hurt her. Magdalena was sweet and kind, and clearly longed for the child she carried. But I did what I had to do. What fate had asked of me.

I found an ancient spell, a ritual of dark magic that would change the child forever, mould her into the weapon we so desperately need. The elves held the spell, of course. In their library. The price for taking it was one I am not willing to put on record.

I do not want it remembered.

But I do want a record of what I did to Magdalena. In case I was wrong.

In case, instead of saving us all, I condemned us.

Would you like to know how I did it? If you’re reading this, I assume you would. Either because things have gone horribly wrong or horribly right.

It was easy, really.

I am the Lady of Luminael. Everything comes easily to me.

She had not visited for a while, but I sent word that I’d like to see her before her baby was born. She arrived, belly full and round, wearing a yellow headscarf and carrying a bunch of poppies.

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