Page 16 of Promise of Darkness
The Unseelie horde capers along behind them. Unseelie fae with black bat wings and horns that hint at their impure heritage; leering hobgoblins covered in warts; pale-faced Sorrows with black hair and long claws; trolls and redcaps and beastlike, twisted banes. They’re all ugly, vicious creatures who live for blood and flesh.
Some say that millennia ago, the Seelie and Unseelie were one people, but I can’t see any resemblance in the capering, howling mob.
The queens finally arrive on the mound. A tall, impossibly gaunt fae male slams his staff against the stone at his feet, and silence echoes as the Unseelie’s howls and screams cut off all at once.
“Angharad brought her favorite pet sorcerer,” murmurs a masculine voice at my side.
Someone’s determined to haunt me tonight.
I glance at the prince. “That’s Isem?”
“Fresh out of the grave by the look of him.”
“Let us treat,” says Angharad, smiling a devil’s smile.
* * *
“There have beenincursions into Unseelie lands,” Angharad says, wasting no time as she settles onto the thronelike seat that is set out for her. “Fae warbands that ride with goblin warriors in their ranks. Many of our border villages have been burned, their occupants slaughtered.”
“The goblins rule their own clans,” the Prince of Evernight interrupts smoothly. “We hold no treaties with their people. We do not ride at their side.”
“Do you call me a liar, Prince?” the Unseelie Queen snarls.
He spreads his hands. “I only claim that the Seelie Alliance holds no bargains with the goblins. Whoever is raiding your villages does not belong to us.”
“Truth,” rasps Isem, his milky white eyes staring at nothing. “Or the truth as the prince believes it.”
Isem is a truth-seeker and was born with the gift.
It’s still creepy.
And a reminder that lying in this moment might be a precursor to war.
“The goblin clans wouldn’t dare strike us of their own accord,” Angharad bites out, her clawed hands curving over the arms of her throne.
My stepbrother, Edain, lounges by Mother’s feet, rolling grapes between his beringed fingers. Ever since his father died in a hunting accident, he’s been serving Mother in bed, though some say the timelines overlap. “The goblin clans remain leaderless with the loss of their king. Without him holding their reins, who is to say some clan does not ride at its own whim? They’re violent, greedy creatures, after all.”
Angharad cuts him a furious glance.
“The boy speaks truth,” says Lucidia, the Queen of Ravenal. She’s ancient and has proven counterfoil to my mother many times over the years. “King Rangmar held his goblins together. None dared step outside his edicts, but he is gone, and the Unbroken Crown is without a head to sit upon as the goblins squabble. Perhaps some clan decided to seek its own fate outside the mountains.”
The other Seelie queen, Queen Maren, lifts a goblet to her lips. “Perhaps you should strengthen your borders, Angharad. If the goblins are riding, then I intend to.”
Angharad seethes, but she has no option to explore. The Seelie Alliance has swiftly shut her down.
They move on to other topics.
Edain settles in beside me, brushing my hair off my shoulder. We aren’t friends, and in other circumstances, I’d punch him in the balls, but he’s also aware of that. Pasting a smile on my lips, I lean in to him.
“Interesting,” he murmurs, his lips brushing my ear. “Angharad’s grasping for reasons to fight. It wouldn’t surprise me if these ‘goblin incursions’ ride at her directive.”
The goblin clans are more likely to ally themselves with the Unseelie, after all, and I cannot say I blame them.
“You think she intends upon a war.”
“She’s been hungering for one for centuries.”
I glance down at my hands. The Seelie Alliance is ill-equipped for war at this moment. Though they present themselves as a united front, they’re anything but.
