Page 55 of A Court of Hearts and Hunger
While Lir was gone, the royal intelligence network fell into complete disarray, and it hasn’t recovered. Still, we should have known how bad the situation in Unseelie has become. We should have had more information about the Heartless. If Lir had known, I doubt he would have left on his goodwill tour with his new bride.
I press the candy into the child’s gasping mouth and push his jaw up, forcing him to crush the sweet between his teeth.
“Your brother?” I say to the girls. They nod, their eyes wide. Two of them have smooth ebony scales, while the other has the ears of a bat, the flickering tongue of a serpent, and a pair of blue antlers.
“Make him finish chewing the candy. It will save him.” I hesitate, noting the deep scratches on the little girls’ limbs. Groaning inwardly, I dole out more of the precious healing sweets to each of them. “Eat these, so your wounds will heal.”
I leap up, plunge into the nearest cottage, and make swift work of the Heartless inside. There’s a dark-skinned, bat-winged Unseelie male lying in one of the rooms. He is shredded half to pieces, but he’s alive, with his heart still intact.
“My children,” he gurgles, blood on his lips. “My wife—the beasts dragged them outside.”
“The children are alive.” I hesitate, but I can’t help asking the question. “You have four of them? That is rare among our kind.”
“Two of them belonged to our neighbors, the triad in the cottage next door. The parents were killed by the Heartless last month, while hunting for food. Please, my wife, is she—”
“Ah, your wife. She has passed on to the stars,” I say gently.
“Then I will join her. I will fade. I want to fade. Cut my head off so I can’t heal, please, please—”
His desperation breaks my heart, because I know how wretched I would be if someone brought me news of Clara’s death.
Wretched? No, I would go fucking insane.
“What will happen to the little ones if you fade?” I ask. “You must live for them. Take them somewhere safe.”
“There is nowhere safe!” he chokes. “Not anymore. This new Queen—she cares for no one. She wants all of us to bleed.”
“But why? What does she want?” The question has been plaguing me. The Unseelie are lawless, murderous, cruel, wanton, and wild. They’ve had their share of horrible monarchs, but never a ruler so bent on forcing this kingdom to devour itself.
“I don’t know what she wants.” The male slumps against the wall. “Her own amusement, I would guess, at the expense of every living thing in Faerie, on both sides of the border.”
A faint fragrance reaches me, and I glance over my shoulder to where Clara stands in the doorway. Seeing her in Fae aspect still startles me a little.
“I checked the other cottage. There was only one Heartless,” she says. “We’re clear, for now. I’ll bring the children inside.”
As I give the Fae male a healing candy, I glance down at the red scratch on the back of my hand. Still red. I suspect it will heal, but slowly, like a human’s body would.
Clara shepherds the Fae children inside, while they stare at her curiously.
“You’re Seelie,” says one of them.
“I—yes,” Clara replies.
“What’s it like there? Why are you here?” asks the child.
“We have to go,” I say, cutting off the flow of questions. “Here you are, little ones—something to cheer your hearts!” And I conjure a hail of sparkly black candies shaped like spiders and beetles. The children squeal with delight.
“What’s wrong with them?” Clara whispers to me, scandalized. “Their mother just died. Why are they cheering for candy?”
“They are Unseelie children. They’ve already seen and done terrible things,” I murmur. “They will grieve, but differently than Seelie children or human children do. A Seelie might observe this and think they have no emotion over the loss at all. But trust me, they do. It is simply submerged more deeply—which makes the grief more dangerous.”
She eyes them warily. “At least we saved their lives.”
“At least there’s that. And now we must go.” I hand over a couple of defensive spells to the bat-winged male. “These should work better than those doodles I saw on your walls outside.”
He frowns. “We paid handsomely for those protective charms.”
“How unfortunate. They’re completely useless.” I smile brightly at him. “You were cheated. But you can count on these spells. Few crafters are as skilled as I am.”
