Page 63 of Fae Champion

“There’s more to it than that. There has to be. The royals have kept mistresses and lovers long before King Spiro cast out Borromeo.” Unlike how Pru pronounced the prince’s name when she first told me the story of the mirror world’s creation,Borromeorolled off Rush’s tongue like silk. “We fae are long-lived, and love doesn’t always last as long as we do.”

“Did the king and queen marry for love?”

He chortled. “No, most definitely not. The king was supposed to marry the queen’s sister at first. I wasn’t around then, but from what I’ve heard,the king loved her. But like so many of us, he put aside love to marry out of duty.”

“Like what you’re going to do?” I asked, the question sticking in my throat like sand before finally tumbling out.

“Yes.” Again, his tattoos brightened intensely before dimming, a tell, I was learning, that his emotions ran high.

“And you’ll do it because of this … Ramana and Larissa?”

His stare simmered as it held mine, but whoever the women were—or had been, based on West’s comments about Ramana—he still wasn’t telling.

Finally, he said, “I’ll do it because I must. For faekind and for my family. To save whatever’s left to save of the mirror world. To have a chance to return Embermere to the glory of the Golden Forest.”

“Well, you’re on your way. Tomorrow the queen will name you winner of the Gladius Probatio.”

“That’s not what concerns me.”

“What is, then?”

“What she might try to do to you to make me winner.”

I snorted nervously. “Surely you won’t follow through when she asks you to behead me?”

“No, of course not,” he assured instantly. “But the queen’s more dangerous than she looks.”

“That’s hard to believe.”

He waited until I was once more holding his stare. “Trust me on this, whatever horrors you’ve seen her do and command, she does worse, so much worse.”

I swallowed thickly.

“After Odelia died—” An unspoken question arched my brows. “Odelia Catalina Corisande was the queen’s eldest sister. King Erasmus had five daughters when all he’d wanted was a son, a fact he didn’t hide from anybody. Though Erasmus wasn’t happy his heir would be a female, he groomed Odelia for the role, and man, did she step into it.

“I was only a young child when this all happened, but the crowned princess Odelia grew so fierce and strong that Erasmus decided she’d do well when she inherited his throne. At that time, see, Prince Borromeo’s bloodline ran through him, not his wife, the consort queen.

“The king, your father, was a drake of the Leantos clan, and he was selected to wed Odelia. They quickly fell in love, which is a rare gift in arranged marriages.”

“But they never married,” I whispered, the tragedy of my father’s story hanging in the air around us like the cloying incense that was wafted around the dead.

“No,” Rush said. “Odelia fell ill, eventually losing her mind, and died a slow and agonizing death. Our current queen Talisa was the next in line. Erasmus married her and Oren soon after, and when Talisa became more powerful than him, she was crowned queen and the king retired until his death.”

“How sad.”

“Not Erasmus retiring. He’d grown dark, too dark.He’s the one who changed everything for Embermere, and his decisions rippled out across the entire mirror world.

“But that’s not why I was telling you this. King Oren grieved Odelia for a long time, and a part of that grieving was him making his way through a long string of lovers, most women, some men even, anything to distract him from the loss of Odelia and the new marriage he suddenly found himself in.”

“You sound sympathetic.”

“I am—to an extent. In recent years he’s stood by and done nothing as the queen destroys our world.”

“He seems very weak.”

“But he wasn’t always. He was chosen as Odelia’s match because of his strength. Of all the eight drakes of the clans, he was the best choice.”

“Hmm,” I said, unwilling to distract Rush. I no longer minded the interruption to our sleep and snuggling, not when I was learning so much.

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