Page 92 of Flirting with Darkness

“You—” Valdred says, turning on him. “You’re behind this. You took her. How could you?”

“And you tried to fuck her knowing she was spelled. How could you?” Aedron asks with a casual, cruel laugh.

Now’s not the time for their pissing contest. I stomp my foot like a petulant child clamoring for attention. “I don’t understand a thing! Speak plainly. Why do I look like this? Please.”

It works. Both men turn to me.

Valdred isn’t inclined to answer. “Where were you born? When? How long ago?”

My lips thin, in anger more than frustration. “I asked a question first!”

“You look like this,” Aedron says, “because it’s your true form.”

My lower lip quivers, and he immediately shrugs off his rich velvet jacket, handing it to me.

Iwasfreezing a moment ago—so cold I could have died of hypothermia. Now, the temperature is vaguely unpleasant, but not harmful, though my clothes are still drenched.

If I shivered, it’s at the fear his words evoked.

My true form? He can’t mean that.

I ignore the jacket, and press, “Mytrue form,whatever that means, isn’t supposed to be that of a cast member fromLord of the Rings!”

“Lord of what?” He’s thoroughly confused.

Good.

That makes two of us.

“Don’t be upset, little star. I’ll explain. I needed a moment to decide where to start. But there’s no cutting this tale. A little over a thousand years ago, we were ruled by a queen—justly, fairly. She had to ride to war against her eldest child, who wanted to take power. And she died, poisoned by a traitor.”

I don’t miss how the stars in his eyes dim at those words.

“She named an heir, so her firstborn and his acolytes hunted her down, along with all of his siblings, convinced he could rule if no other child of Morrigan lived. But when came the time to take the high throne of Ilvaris, he too was killed. And so the story is told through the land.”

It’s strangely familiar to me, although I’ve never heard it.

Then it comes to me.

The song.

The damnable song that called to me for days before I was brought here.

I remember some of the lyrics Cissa’s enchanting voice had sung.

Tall is the tree,

Gold is the wine,

And both rest by Queen Mor’s side,

Her tomb covered in vine.

“What does any of that have to do with me?” I sound testy to my own ears.

I’ve had enough of stories. I want a straight answernow. And if I sound peevish, it’s because I look like a blue haired Christmas elf.

Aedron isn’t done rehashing fairy history. “What the story doesn’t say is that the queen gave birth to a child before heading to war—a child she kept secret, weak and frail as fairy newborns are. And as the queen died, she made a single wish. The wish of a woman of such power is law in the land of the folk. So the child turned to stone until the day she’d be needed again, to take her place on the high throne of Ilvaris.”

---