Page 6 of Dark Sun (Wicked Lovely 6)

Her guards came in again, spilling into the room like grains of sand caught in an angry tide, and her rage that she’d dismissed them was entirely directed at herself as Urian walked to the door and left as quietly as he’d arrived.

ChapterThree

Urian

He’d expected more of a reaction—and not just from his niece. She was a child compared to him, barely old enough to be an adult as a faery. For a mortal, though, she was equivalent to a person only slightly younger than him. That was one of the oddities of being caught in a space between mortal and fey. Age was extremely relative.

Urian was well under two centuries or so. Adult for a faery, but not exactlyoldlike his father or the current Dark King. Aislinn, because she’d aged as a mortal, was almost his equivalent age.

Of course, faeries born oftwofey parents thought little of age. Eternity changed thinking in ways that were hard to comprehend at times. It was hell on ethics, as well.

He strolled out the door of the home of the Summer Queen just as a wave of sunlight started to glow. Then he made his way through the wretched town of Huntsdale with a speed that he’d practiced incessantly in his childhood. His tutor, his auntie, had taught him things that most faeries never knew. As he became a man, he’d realized why: she knew he’d go after his father one day, and she was preparing him.

When he came to the gate to Faerie, he parted the veil and stepped into the place of many of his happiest memories. The veil between Faerie and this world was locked. Urian had no idea why his aunt insisted on maintaining that closure. The war between the courts had passed, and his aunt had no logical reason to insist on that continuation. There were those who had a key, though.

Seth--the consort of the Summer Queen--was able to visit Faerie. In fact, Seth was a son-by-choice of the High Queen. And of course, the monster who was Urian’s father could come and go freely. Irial was almost as old as Sorcha, and for centuries, he’d been her balance. He was the Dark King for centuries upon centuries. The High Queen’s affection for him was the reason Urian’s mortal mother had been able to live here.

But neither Seth nor Irial had the same access that Urian did. There were no rules, no protocol, no exceptions where he was concerned. He was a child of the High Court; as a boy, these strange spaces had been his home. He’d lived there for several decades, and he was ever-welcomed in Faerie.

Tonight, Urian opened the air to his side and stepped into the land of the fey.

He walked without pause to the gardens where he’d played as a child. And there, awaiting him as she always was, stood his aunt. Sorcha. The High Queen.

“Child.” Sorcha opened her arms for an embrace. She looked far from the millennia-old creature she was, but she was one of the first faeries, born into a world that was of her own making.

Today, she looked merely mortal. Her hair was in some complicated upsweep; fire-red curls cascaded like waterfalls to her hips. And she wore a pair of jeans and a loose pale green blouse. Her feet were, as always, bare.

“Auntie.” Urian swept her up in a hug that lifted her into the air for the express purpose of hearing her laugh. As a boy, he’d always found her tendency to swing him into the air joyous, and as a man, he wondered if she’d once done so to hear his laughter.

“Ask me no questions,” Sorcha whispered as he lowered her back to her feet.

Urian stepped back, ignoring her words. “No dragon today?”

Sorcha laughed again. “I pondered it. So much more comfortable to avoid speech if I am shaped that way. Dragons are not much for words.”

“Youarethe loveliest dragon in the world,” Urian assured her.

But the High Queen wasn’t easily charmed. “I am theonlydragon since your father left—”

“No,” Urian cut her off. “No tales of what he was like when the world was new. No tales of the magic that loved me.”

“He did. He might not have met you, but he loved you even before he knew you existed. He used to watch your sister and your mother as if the world was nothing more than the frame around them.” Sorcha smiled, not at Urian but at the memory of his besotted father.

Urian had seen that look often enough that he hated his father even more. She clearly cared for Irial—but Urian was too selfish to want to share Sorcha’s affection, so he never remarked on it. Perhaps he ought to feel guilty, but Urian wanted possession of the love the queen had held for his father.

He considered trying to seduce either the current Dark King or the mortal that functioned as the Dark Queen for the two men who controlled the Dark Court. The cold truth was that Urian wanted to steal everything his father had.

“You know his supposed love matters not at all,” Urian argued to the High Queen, reverting to a more stilted speech in her presence. “That man killed my mother.”

“He loved her.” Sorcha stepped closer and rested her hand on Urian’s arm.

Urian, well-used to his aunt’s ways, lifted his arm and offered her his elbow. “Maybe. He also killed her.”

“Mortals die. All of them.” Sorcha began to walk. The ancient faery had developed the habit of strolling through gardens that came into existence as they walked. And Urian realized as a boy—admittedly because his mother told him—that Sorcha had taken to telling him secrets by way of the worlds she built as they walked.

On rare occasions, the shapes of people walked in the shadows around them—stories or memories or threads of future-seeing that took shape to tell him secrets she wasn’t able to capture in words.

“Have you seen anyone of interest?” Urian prompted.

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