Page 100 of The Mortal Queen

Aisling cursed the leaping of her heart. She’d feared they’d forgotten her, they’d forsaken her. But thus far, her anger rivalled their glowing praises. The child in her, the princess who’d desperately sought her father’s approval, sweetened at the praise. For never had he complimented her so and now that he did, Aisling couldn’t help but swell with pride. A fact she damned herself for internally for she knew it was, if not entirely, partially, smoke and mirrors.

“Yet you ignored my correspondence despite such sacrifices,” Aisling said, chewing her father’s charms and spitting them back out. “So, tell me, why keep the Unseelie a secret from the North? Why misrepresent the enemy? Why condemn libraries of knowledge that could’ve prevented the death of so many of our kind if only they knew? Knew what really lay beyond their mortal walls?”

Silence crashed into the room like ice in a storm, frosting everything it touched. The dripping of the candles was nearly audible in such potent quiet. But Aisling forbade herself from speaking further. From rambling on. From recoiling at her father’s cryptic expression as even his fingers stopped theiridle stroking of the fraying seams.

“You blame me for the brutality of the Aos Sí?”

“I question your intentions knowing of the brutality of the Sidhe and sending your only daughter regardless.”

“What you did was an honor, a sacrifice the mortal kind has been blessed because of.”

“Blessed by who? The Forge of Creation that never existed? The gods that are nothing more than tales?”

Nemed stiffened, his smug expression collapsing into something darker.

“Ash—” Iarbonel opened his mouth to speak but Aisling ignored him.

“The Sidhe who devour our children, rape our women, live beneath the earth? Or the Unseelie that are never mentioned? The Lore that is forbidden?” Behind her, Aisling could feel Galad’s own rage at such tales rippling from him. Centuries of hatred for the men who inhabited this tent were brought to the forefront and he could do nothing but stand as still as death.

All eyes darted between the mortal queen and her father, Nemed, whose veins snaked and bulged across the center of his forehead.

“I told you that?—”

“That the Sidhe spin lies like they spin their thread? Yes, I remember. I remember everything you taught me. Everything that contradicts the world outside of Tilren’s walls.” Aisling levelled her voice. The rush of blood pulsing through the veins in her ears. “And all of you.” Aisling turned to her brothers. She asked Dagfin, “You knew all of it, didn’t you?”

The five princes hesitated, tongues catching in their throats.

Dagfin took a step nearer to her, a step met by Galad’s sliding of his sword halfway from its scabbard. And in turn, the princes reached for their neglected weapons lest the fae knight unleash the chaos visibly stormingfrom within.

“We were each informed some years ago, when we turned sixteen”—the Roktan prince confessed, guilt spreading across his handsome features—“told everything once we were of age to accept the throne should anything happen to either of our fathers or, in Iarbonel, Annind and Fergus’s case, the direct lineage.”

Years. They’d known for years.

Aisling’s skin burned the longer she realized just how blissfully ignorant she’d been. So complacent, so stupid to have not sought the truth of her own accord. To have taken that agency and wielded it for herself. The power, the control she’d happily let slip through her fingers all these years, the thought of it maddened her. Made her hands blister with heat as she gripped the arms of her chair, scratching at its wood with her nails.

Iarbonel ran his fingers through his hair. “Ash, you were the youngest. The only northern princess, you were to be protected?—”

“Protected and then sold at a price you deemed sufficient?” Aisling shook her head, tears threatening to spill from the corners of her eyes. She wouldn’t let them. Wouldn’t show them weakness. Wouldn’t prove herself to be the volatile, naive, spoilt girl they believed her to be. So, she levelled herself but didn’t calm the anger within her. Merely tempered it, chained it to the walls within herself, and commanded it to be obedient. To bite at her command and hers alone.

“I’ve never lied to you, Ash,” Nemed said, schooling his expression. “You’ve merely allowed the fair folk to twist my words, to manipulate the past, to poison the truth. Clodagh warned me you’d be susceptible to their deceit.”

Not now, she commanded thedraiocht, pushing and pushing.

“Man was born first,” Nemed continued, “was born of nothing, as I’m sure they’ve educated you.” Born of a curse and not cast in a Forge. “Manhascarved himself into theearth. The Aos Síareaberrations, perversities of nature for they hold onto what’s been stolen from man. And the godsarenothing more than fanciful tales. They’ve abandoned all that they created. Left us to spill one another’s blood while they sleep. They’re gone, forsaken both Aos Sí and man alike.”

In Aisling’s periphery, Galad’s knuckles grew white where they wrapped around the haft of his blade. A blade she’d witnessed him wield and knew the bloodbaths it’d tasted.

“There’s more than one side to the tale, Ash. More than the account of the Aos Sí,” Annind piped.

“And now you wish to teach it to me? Only now that I’ve been sold?” Aisling ground her teeth together.

“The information was useless to you until now,” Annind snapped, but the mortal queen was far past anger to listen to her brother’s petty jabs. So, Aisling ignored him.

“I’m assuming no one other than the highest-ranking nobles are aware of these secrets. Do the common people, do they know any of it? The history, the truth of mankind’s origins. That we are born of a curse? That we were once Sidhe? The truth of what lies outside the iron and stone walls of the mortal kingdoms? The Unseelie who not even the Aos Sí can fully control?”

Starn, Iarbonel, Fergus, and Annind each turned to one another, hesitantly trading glances.

“No,” Dagfin confessed, his expression a muddle of anger and torment. None of which Aisling cared about given the fires clawing their way up her throat and demanding to be let loose. She wouldn’t let them. Couldn’t let her family witness herdraiocht. So, Aisling twisted the skirts of her gown into her fists. Her cheeks flushing.

---