Page 93 of Flirting with Darkness

“No.” Valdred’s word isn’t denial so much as shock.

“Such a child would have been hunted,” Aedron continues. “If they’d known, the lords of the realm would have done everything in their power to destroy it. For that reason, one of the queen’s friends, in the known, took the stone across the world to the mortal realms, knowing the little girl born under an ill-fated star would eventually awaken, and be drawn back where she belonged.”

He can’t mean this.

He can’t mean me.

I shake my head. “This makes no sense.”

“No?” Aedron chuckles. “I don’t suppose there’s anything strange about you. You’re not restless and frustrated, plagued by the knowledge that you’re meant for more.”

I remain silent.

“Where did you grow up?” Valdred asks again.

“San Francisco. I was—” I hesitate. “I was adopted.” I can’t believe him. I can’t. Yet… “My parents found me one day in the woods, when their own child was just a month old.”

“They couldn’t have resisted. Our children are to be protected—it’s written in their entire self, like a spell. The child of the high queen…she would have been so charming they wouldn’t have any choice but to take her in,” Aedron explains, to Valdred, I think. “And she adapted. Fairy children always do. She’d have subtly glamoured herself to resemble her family.”

I remember how everyone was surprised when I grew to look like them, though we share no blood.

Now I see.

Despite logic, my own eyes, and a feeling in the pit of my stomach all seeming to agree, I can’t quite believe it yet. It’s just too much.

“So, I’m your old queen’s heir? She was some sort of overlord, right? That means I rule you?” I can’t believe I manage to say that with a straight face in front of those two men.

One is a prince in his own right and carries himself like he could be so much more. Jaynus said he ruled all of Ilvaris.

And the other… I’ve known him for the space of an instant, less than an hour, but Valdred shows him deference. Even if it weren’t so, I could have guessed he was important. Powerful, even. It is in the way he carries himself, like a predator and a leader.

Like a king.

“The high queen ruled above all,” Aedron replies. “And this is what you will be once you wear the crown.”

I find myself smiling.

Earlier today, I wouldn’t have thought myself capable of ever smiling again. Now it comes with ease at my impish mischief. “Then kneel.”

The shore is still and silent—even the least of ant, the smallest night bird, and the rats in the woods still and watch.

Valdred is the first to lower one knee to the ground and bend his head.

Aedron looks at me with something like pride, or approval.

I lift an eyebrow, challenging him.

He either lied to trick me into believing this farce, or he must lower himself like the prince of the court of bones, before a five foot three instructor and flute player.

My mouth falls open as he bends his knee.

In my heart, I accept it then, with this man at my feet.

I am a fairy queen.

The End

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