Page 94 of The Faerie Morgana
“Ygraine was your foster mother.”
“What?” Morgana repeated. “My foster mother? But then who was my father?”
“I have never known who your father was.”
“Then who— By the hand of the Lady, sir, pray tell me who my mother was!”
The look he gave her was so full of sorrow, of regret, that her heart clenched, and she pressed a hand to her chest. “Morgana,” he said. “You are the daughter of the Lady herself.”
She stared at him, her eyelids stretched so wide they burned. “No. Sir, that cannot be.”
“It is true.” The Blackbird’s voice grew soft. “I am aware that this is a shock.”
“But why did I not know this? I believed I was the daughter of a queen. A daughter she rejected, but still—”
“You are still the daughter of a queen, Morgana. The Lady was a queen among her own people. In her own country.”
Morgana wrapped her arms around herself to stop her shaking. She feared she knew what he meant, but she had to know for certain, to fully grasp the truth. “The Lady—the—the Lady was fae,” she faltered.
“Yes. She was a queen of the fae. She came to offer her service to Lloegyr, but after a time—a very, very long time—she grew weary of the world and returned home to fae country.” In a near whisper, he added, “I met her there, years ago, but I never thought I’d see her again, after I left. She came to me just once, with you in her arms, before she disappeared beneath the lake. That is why, when we divined your calling to the priestesshood, the stones told us you were water-born.”
“But—that would mean—” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. It had been the insult thrown at her by jealous acolytes, girls who barely understood what the word meant. Fae. She really was fae. She was not a human woman with unusually strong gifts. She was faerie. It was yet another thing—it was thegreatest thing—to make her different. To set her apart. A wave of loneliness and sorrow gripped her, and it made her voice hoarse. “She did not want me.”
“Shedidwant you,” the Blackbird said. “She wanted you more than you can imagine. She would not have borne you otherwise. But her great plan, her grand design, was for you to take her place. To do the work she no longer had the strength to do.”
“They say she still dwells beneath the lake.”
The Blackbird lifted one palm. “I think her spirit does. She no longer wanted her body.”
“Why—why abandon me?”
“She was the wisest creature I have ever known. She wanted you to be fostered at Camulod, where the true king would be born. She foresaw everything, except…”
Morgana tried to focus on what the Blackbird was telling her, but her mind spun away from the trickle of words, losing itself in the awful realization. Fae. She was fae. How could that be? Why had she never known?
“Do you understand?” he said.
“What? Understand what?”
“What the Lady did not foresee.”
“I—I can’t—” She put her hands over her eyes.
“You need time to take it in.”
She dropped her hands and gazed bleakly at his lined face, at the resignation in his black eyes. “To take it in? Sir, I am not certain I even believe it.”
“You will, once you accept it.”
“But—am I fully fae? Or was my father human, and I—I am hybrid, half-caste, neither one nor the other?”
“The Lady never spoke of who fathered you, Morgana. I wondered myself if you would be fully faerie. Knowing that you shapeshift at will answers that question. I have always believed your mother chose your father in fae country, and now I know I was right. It was the way she did things. Nothing in her actions was ever accidental.”
Morgana let her gaze wander over the divination tools on the table, brush across the high-backed, magically carved chairs, linger on the one that belonged to her. She asked dully, hardly caring, “And what was it that the Lady—my mother—did not foresee?”
“That even her most devoted servant might make a mistake that would undo everything.”
“And what was that?”
