Page 28 of A Kingdom of Monsters

“I fucking hate fairies,” she sighed loudly, before crumpling into a nearby armchair.

I raised an eyebrow. “That’s inconvenient.”

She looked up, and seemed to realize what she said. Her eyes widened. “I didn’t mean like that. I just meant it will never not be frustrating to try and have a direct conversation. Why can you all never answer a damn question with a real answer?”

“Depends on the question, love,” Ambrose replied, looking infinitely more cheerful than he had only moments before.

Lonnie laughed hollowly, then looked around the room seeming to take it in for the first time. “Sorry, am I interrupting something?”

“Not really,” I told her. “We haven’t found a single fucking mention of the curse in any one of these journals.”

“How many have you checked?” she asked.

I gestured to the growing pile of books on the desk. The pile had started out modestly, but now was nearly two dozen volumes high, and covered the entire surface of the large desk completely obscuring the statue of the bronze raven. Ambrose had begun stacking more finished books beside his chair, so that soon there would be more volumes off the shelves than on them.

Lonnie groaned, and closed her eyes slumping back in her chair. “I’ve not had any luck either.”

“I didn’t know you were trying to help,” Ambrose said. “You don’t have to, you have more than enough to deal with at the moment.”

I glared at him. It wasn’t his responsibility to worry about what Lonnie was or wasn’t doing. I shifted, turning my back on Ambrose, blocking him from our conversation. I peered down at Lonnie, trying to discern meaning from her annoyed expression. “How are you feeling?”

She bit her lip. “Alright, I suppose.”

“Are you certain? You’d be well within your right to stay in bed far longer. Your mother just passed.”

“I’m fine,” she said stubbornly. Then, perhaps correctly reading my skeptical expression, she added: “No, really, I am. I’m sick of lying around, I want to do something useful. And anyway. I’verealized that nothing has really changed. I believed my mother was dead for years. I already grieved for her years ago, and in a lot of ways I feel the same.”

“This is different, though.”

“Yes, different in that now my last memories of her are unpleasant ones,” she said darkly. “She tried to kill me, and then made it all too clear that she wished I was never born.”

I growled low in my throat, unable to keep my anger at how she’d been treated from bubbling up to the surface. Oddly, I was sure I heard Ambrose do the same. I glanced over my shoulder at him, narrowing my eyes.

Ambrose cleared his throat, coughing. “I only wish we’d had a chance to ask your mother more questions.”

“I know,” Lonnie bemoaned. “Which is why I’ve just tried to speak to Idris.”

She quickly explained her unproductive conversation with the mysterious prisoner in blow by blow detail.

“I’m not sure I understand what you were trying to accomplish,” I admitted when she’d finished.

“My mother said Aisling asked her to find her heir, and that she’d managed to do it while in Underneath,” she explained. “It seems too much of a coincidence that we should meet someone who claims to be as old as Aisling.”

Ambrose shook his head. “I don’t think Idris has anything to do with this. For all you know, your mother meantus. Our entire family are descendants of Aisling.”

“Yeah, Bael said something similar. Lonnie frowned, and glanced around the room as if expecting Bael to emerge from behind a bookcase. “Where is he, by the way? I thought he’d be with you.”

“Sleeping in his old room,” I answered flatly. “Again.”

Lonnie’s brow furrowed in evident concern, and I could hardly blame her. Bael had been growing increasingly absent over the last few months, but this week had been unusually bad. Lonnie likely didn’t realize it, since she’d been locked in her room, but Bael had been spending nearly every hour of the day sleeping in his cage. He’d get up in the evening and drag himself upstairs where he’d climb into bed with Lonnie, pretending to go to sleep as normal.

I’d asked him about it, but he’d laughed me off, refusing to give any clear answer. I’d already decided that if he didn’t pull himself together by the end of the week I’d call in a healer and have him assessed.

“Well, I’m going to try and talk to Idris again at the soonest opportunity,” Lonnie mused, clearly still following her own train of thought. “There’s something…strange about him that I can’t put my finger on.”

Ambrose shook his head. “I talked to Idris almost the moment he set foot on my ship. He has no interest in harming us. He doesn’t even know who he was before prison.”

“Doesn’t that seem strange, though?” Lonnie burst out, obviously frustrated. “I’m sure he’s said something about his past to me before, but I can’t recall when.”

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