Page 111 of Fae Champion

“Because Elowyn’s mother isn’t some floozy I bedded and instantly forgot.”

The queen’s body tensed so suddenly that the many beads lining her gown shivered. “And who might the girl’s mother be, then?”

The king only stared at her and bit his lip. Was he …afraidto tell her?

Oh, this was so not good…

“What tramp were you careless enough to shoot your seed into, Oren?” she accused.

My father gulped. I leaned forward over my chains, straining for that one piece of truth I’d yearned for all my life. The air around me became tangible as I breathed in, out, in, out, knowing that finally, after all these years, the secret would be revealed to me.

Zako was no longer denying me the truth. The queen wasn’t interfering with my every attempt to get the king alone.

My father sighed loudly and ran a trembling hand across his crown—a child’s toy compared to the opulence of hers.

“Tell me who thefuckyou betrayed me with right this second, or I swear to the holy Etherlands I’ll twist your balls till they fall off your body, and then I’ll slice off your dick and command the fairies to serve it on a platter in the Hall of Mirrors, and next I’ll?—”

The king swallowed again, louder even than her litany of threats.

“Your sister,” he admitted.

31.I’LL DO AS I WISH AND I’LL TAKE WHAT I WANT

My next inhale rattled through my chest as I sucked in my first breath since being aware of who my mother was. My skin prickled with the knowledge, my tongue suddenly alert as if readying for a burst of sensations. Even my lips felt slightly numb, tingly, as if that information alone were in the process of transforming my identity.

My mother is the queen’s sister.

I leaned my head against the wall behind me while I allowed that fact to settle, to unearth all the yearning and longing and desperation I’d suffered all my life.

After all these years,I finally fucking knew.

“My sister … what?”

The queen’s question, and the death threat that skittered along with it, yanked me back to the scene still unfolding in front of me, just on the other side of Sundo and Bandel’s beheaded bodies.

“Your sister is Elowyn’s mother,” the king answered before physically shrinking back from her.

Dashiell took a protective step toward him. Ivar drew his cutlass, and he and Braque, fingering the button clasping shut his satchel, descended the dais to flank their queen.

“Which sister?”

The queen’s follow-up question was sharp enough to slice up all the dead flesh surrounding us into tiny, little, gruesome pieces.

“You know which sister,” the king answered, only a faint trace of his earlier bravado remaining.

“No, I don’t suppose I do,” the queen said. “Which. One? Whom did you betray me with?”

The king stiffened as if stricken, and I suspected it was her reaction when she found out which sister exactly that he feared.

Another nervous breath awkwardly rumbled through me. Sure, I wasn’t thrilled about discovering I was directly related to the evil shrew who’d done her best to make my life a waking nightmare since my arrival at her court, but a flustered pink I’d never seen on her before was creeping up her neck, coloring her décolletage and inching toward her cheeks and forehead.

“Which sister, Oren?” she demanded with such ferocity that a shiver raced down my spine. I glanced at Rush.

Though he’d been studying the monarchs’ interaction with as much interest as I, he immediately turnedmy way. Instantly, his brow and lips tugged downward and those eyes I could stare into for endless days glistened with what I could only interpret as regret. Loss and fear held him in their cold, empty embrace.

My own fear spiked with a sudden and wholly encompassing lament.

Even if I found a way out of this and survived, I’d never again be able to trust the man who’d agreed to kill me, if I’d ever trusted him at all. He’d been my enemy from the start, had never even denied it.

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