Page 106 of Crown of Roses
A tiny, insignificant detail flared to life from the darkest corners of her mind. From the place she didn’t want to go, from the truth she feared most.
Maeve shoved up from the ground and her accelerated movement sent her careening across the cell. She lurched forward and grabbed onto one of the bars in an attempt to hold herself into place. On the other side, Casimir stood and faced her. He didn’t move. He didn’t speak. He just watched her watch him, and she hoped he burned under the heat of her gaze.
“Are you free from Carman’s soul bond?”
Casimir shoved his hands into the pockets of his loose black pants. Silence emanated from him.
Maeve’s grip on the bars tightened. The cold metal burned into her skin and she rattled them until she ground her teeth against the clanking racket. Bits of stone and pebble shook from the ceiling.
“Answer me, you bastard!” Her arm shot out between the bars, and her fingers snared into the collar of his shirt. She dragged him, crushed him to the bars, so their faces were less than an inch apart. His hands flew up and captured her wrists, but it was all for show. He wasn’t applying any pressure. He didn’t fear for his life. He wasn’t even threatened by her.
“Yes.” He nodded sharply. “I am.”
Maeve released him and pulled back, recoiled away like he was diseased. Blemished. A hammering noise echoed in her head, and she realized it was probably her heart. “So, my mother, is—”
“Is not Carman.”
There it was, out in the open between them. The bewildering truth of her darkest hope. She was not Carman’s daughter. For years she’d wondered, maybe even imagined…but now the confirmation was almost just as terrifying.
Maeve looked up at him. “If not Carman, then who?”
Casimir straightened, and when he spoke, he sounded eerily detached. The emotion from before now gone, leaving him empty. “You are the youngest child, and only daughter of Dorian and Fianna, the former High King and High Queen of the Autumn Court.”
“What?” Maeve blanched. She searched his face again, but now he wasn’t looking at her. He was looking through her. Like she was nothing. Like she was the enemy. Maeve shook her head. She didn’t believe him. “No. You’re lying. I would know if I was fae. I’m cursed. You know that, Cas. You know it. You were there, remember? You told me—”
“What I told you was a lie.” He pointed to the murky puddle on the ground. “See for yourself.”
She rubbed her lips together and peeked over. The reflection gazing up at her was not the same woman from before. Her ears were long and pointy, her hair fell in pink, strawberry blonde curls, and her face was without blemish. The curve of her body was more defined, more voluptuous. She was different, yet the same—a quandary to her kind, though she wasn’t too keen on calling herself a fae just yet. Her eyes however, were the most discerning change. An endless sea of gray-green, speckled with fiery gold.
“Look at you,” Casimir murmured. “You are fae incarnate. Sunshine and moonlight. The fire of Autumn, the lifeblood of magic. There is no denying your birthright.”
The lifeblood of magic.
Her heart sank and seized, and that feeling, that drowning sensation of angst clenched around her. The beat of her heart quickened and jumped, pulsed with vengeance. Her chest was tight, like she’d been wedged between two brick walls, and with every breath, her lungs squeezed even more. It was the gut-check feeling, the one that slammed into her with such force, she wasn’t sure she would ever recover. If Casimir plunged a blade into her chest, she would’ve been no less surprised.
He stepped closer, but the lines of his face were hard. There was no trace of remorse or regret. “You were still in your mother’s womb when Carman ruled Faeven. So new, such a fresh beginning of life, that not even Dorian knew his wife was with child. So Fianna, wonderful as she was, glamoured herself as a human. She told no one. She abandoned her husband, her sons, and her throne, all to save you.”
Hot tears welled in Maeve’s eyes and she furiously blinked them away. Her heart. Oh, stars, but her heart was ravaged with uncontrollable despair. The truth hurt, it physically pained her. She’d been flayed open, left raw and defenseless, her entire world flipped upside down. Everything she thought she knew, everything she thought to be true, was a lie.
“Fianna made a human king fall in love with her,” Casimir continued, oblivious to her inner torment. “And then she safely birthed you.”
“How?” The word ruptured from somewhere deep inside her. “How do you know all this?
His face remained impassive, his warm eyes, now cold. “Because I’m the one who slayed them. I killed the human king. I killed the Autumn queen. And I conquered what is now Kells, under Carman’s order.”
Maeve gasped.
“I didn’t have the heart to slaughter an infant, so, I brought you to Carman.” His gaze dropped to the floor. “And she raised you as her own…you were barely a year old when we overtook Kells. ”
“You sentenced me to a life of suffering!” The effects of the tea were fading and her fury was rising. But her magic, no matter how many times she called to it, no matter how many times it moved inside her, ready to burn down the world, it remained just out of reach. “How could you have kept this from me?” she snarled.
Casimir shrugged. Careless. “I didn’t realize you were anyone special. I knew you were fae, or at least partially, because of your pointy little ears. The strength of your magic didn’t show right away, and for awhile, I believed you to be a halfling. You were young and harmless, I thought nothing of it. Then that one winter the snow fell for so long, and you were so small, and so tired of it. You created a crown of roses out of thin air and I knew you were powerful. I convinced Carman to put you in cuffs, claimed she could wield you as a weapon once you fully came into your power.”
“You should’ve let her kill me.” Maeve stormed to the opposite side of the cell, away from him.
“I could have, I suppose. But I’d grown fond of you. At the age of five, you were already wielding a dagger while most little girls your age played with dolls.” He slumped, and leaned against the bars. “The cuffs were never meant to be permanent. But I believe the older you got, the more Carman feared who you would become. Especially when Rowan arrived.”
She reeled back. Parisa hadn’t been lying. She had sent Rowan to hunt her down like an animal.
