“If I may, I'd like to explain some of our traditions, politics, and a bit of history so you can better understand my true purpose here today. I am not sure how much you have learned from Ryder and his men over the past few weeks; however, Adam has been going through an intense crash course in everything he missed out on since he has been gone. If our speculations are correct, it is important to bring you as up to speed as fast as we can.” The Dark King took a deep breath before he continued. “Synthia, if you are the Light Heir, it stands to reason that you’ll gain the crown. Normally, children of royal families in Faery are betrothed early in life, and some even before birth.”
I nodded.
“I believe you met Adam, and he became your familiar, at one of the Harvest Festivals. It's a huge celebration held on Samhain where truce is declared, and all castes of Fae come together for a few days to celebrate the birth of new children, riches, and other developing things such as strength of a realm. At least it makes sense that you and my Adam became linked there, based on everything I have heard about you and your history.”
“Why would she take me there if she planned on ditching me?” I interrupted, pointing out the obvious.
“I don’t think your mother did. She has many children. I think she wouldn’t have cared who the father was, but I do think if the Light Heir was birthed of another caste, the Light King would have wanted you gone immediately. You see, an Heir is first identified when a Fae child of royal birth begins using magic at a very early age, usually under the age of one. Most Fae children do not begin showing magic until they are older, about ten or so. You can feel the magic’s presence within Fae children, but they are unable to use it until they are a little older. She may have intended to keep you, as she has done with her other illegitimate children, until you showed signs of being the Heir. Once that happened, they would have wanted your death at the first opportunity. Placing you in a human setting would have assured that you would perish without having the blood of their child on their hands. Or it should have; but the people who raised you, took certain steps to keep you thriving, which the Light King couldn’t have counted on. I think when he found out you hadn't died, he sent those Fae in to kill you.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Because another heir wouldn't be born until I was dead.”
He smiled. “Smart as well. Impressive. Not many born outside of our world would have put that together.”
“I've spent a large part of my life learning anything I could to kill those who killed my parents.”
“I don’t blame you for that. I do blame the Light King, as his actions stole Adam from us as well. He disappeared from his bedroom one night—one minute he was there, and the next he was gone. The pain you felt had to have been tremendous for you to take him. It breached the barrier of Faery to bring him to you, and could have killed him at that age. It would be easy to blame you, but you were no more than an infant yourself at the time.”
I watched him, and nodded as he continued.
“You must keep in mind that we knew Adam was our heir. He showed promise from the beginning when he began bursts of controlled, deliberate magic at seven months of age; anything from materializing toys to summoning his mother if he was peckish.” The Dark King chuckled at the memory, and Adam looked slightly embarrassed. “I knew he'd become a familiar to one of the children in attendance at the Harvest Festival about twenty one of your human years ago, but it would have been impossible to pinpoint which one with the hundreds of children that are brought to the Harvest.”
“Fae like to fuck each other over, so I'm going to take a gander, and say that this festival is more a look-see to figure out who they wanted to dish out trickery the most to that year.” He smiled as a sparkle similar to one Adam often had lit in his eyes.
“That would be spot on my dear. We do love to play games. As it was, after Adam disappeared, we searched, but we just couldn’t find him. I never stopped looking for him because the chances that he'd sustained injury from sifting at such a young age were very high, and we refused to believe that it killed him. He was so small when he disappeared, almost ten in human years when he went missing, and I knew it had to be one of the other heirs who had claimed him. We kept it very quiet, only family and trusted servants who were sworn to secrecy knew he was gone. The last thing we wanted was to jeopardize his safety by announcing that my heir was somewhere out there unprotected. The Blood King was in attendance that year, as was your mother. Light was the most sensible option, since the Blood King is alpha, only surpassed in strength by the Horde King who normally chooses to skip the Harvest,” he said, watching my face.
“Why would the Horde not attend when they have more strength than the other castes? It would stand to reason he'd want to get in on the games that would be played.”
“The Horde doesn't need to play games. The Horde is more inclined to stand back and watch as we destroy ourselves. He knows he can take any caste down, so no reason to see who is coming up when he knows he can easily tear them down.”
“Why couldn’t I be Horde? I’d take them any day over the Light Fae,” I asked, striking one caste off the list. Out of the castes I had to choose from, the Horde was the only one that accepted everyone. Ryder had said as much anyway, and, right now, they were looking like the one in which I’d fit in best.
“You have a remarkable resemblance to the Light Queen, but not the Horde. The other option was that you could be from the Blood Fae, but the only female infant of royal birth born around that time died. She was given funeral rites at the second Harvest of her life. Her parents would not speak to anyone that year and handled everything through emissaries. I did, in fact, see the small darling before she was given funeral rites and entombed.”
“So, not only is it a celebration, but they also bury their dead at the Harvest?” I asked, letting the curious little monster inside of me out to play.
“Sometimes, we struggle to keep children alive inside of Faery. It has become much worse and far more dire over the last thirty or so years. In short, Faery is dying.” My heart must have stopped at that moment.
“That’s around the time that the Fae made their big announcement that they were in charge of the Otherworld creatures and that the humans were no longer alone,” I said, remembering back to what we had been taught.
“Otherworld is just another name for Faery,” he mused with a small smile. “It was easier to encourage the humans to believe that there was a world other than Faery that Shifters, and other creatures, were coming from, rather than one world. Feeling that you are under attack from one front is less intimidating than feeling like you are being overwhelmed from multiple fronts. We knew there would be fear; however, we wanted to avoid the whole Inquisition or Salem Witch Trials type of backlash if we could.”
“But Ryder told me that the ruling castes were against interfering with humans—it’s like one of the number one rules.”
“That was my doing. I forced the other castes hands in this matter, as we no longer had any choice but to become more active in human affairs. Synthia, Faery is at least triple the size of this world. Many of Faery’s denizens are very hazardous to this world. If Faery dies, where do you think all of the inhabitants of that world are going to go?”
“So that is what Ryder is doing, he’s here trying to stop this?”
“Yes, but until we can figure out all of those parties threatening our world, we cannot stop them. Healing the land is important, since it is rejecting the infants when they are presented to the Goddess Danu. If Faery does not accept an infant, then the child’s lifespan is limited, as any ailment can kill them. Not only has Faery stopped accepting them, the world itself is dying. Huge tracts of land that are ruled by the Dark, Horde, and Blood are withering and showing signs of death.”
“And you think it has something to do with the Mages, or the Changelings who you all thought weren’t a threat before,” I supplied, wondering if this was why Ryder would be sticking his nose into i
t.
“We suspect that they are at the root of it, but I didn't come here just to discuss the problems of Faery, Synthia. I came here to discuss you.”
“What about me?” I asked, feeling my walls close around me as my defenses went up.
“Please, hear me out before you say anything. When one Fae is bonded to another, as you are with Adam, we betroth them or handfast them to one another. Adam was betrothed to the Light Princess by proxy when Ryder agreed to marry Arianna. I don’t want to go into all of the details, but it was my hope that it would draw Adam, or the people I thought might be holding him, out of hiding. At this time, he is to marry the Light Princess, Caitlín, to unite the kingdoms.”
“It would make sense since an alliance is usually made through marriage to broker peace, or, for gain.” I replied, finding the logic in it…
“Exactly,” he said watching me carefully.
“So—wait, what?” I asked as my head started spinning with what he had just said.
“Adam will marry the Light Princess, Caitlín, which is the true name of the Light Princess that Arianna was impersonating. If you are the missing princess…that would be you.”
I choked and then laughed until I snorted in a very unladylike matter. I alone was laughing. “Oh holy mother of fuck buckets, you're serious!”
“Syn,” Zahruk warned in a stern tone.
“He's like a brother to me. This is crazy! You understand that, right? Adam?” I looked at him for help and found nothing but acceptance. He just sat there and watched me. “We’ve been friends forever, and I think of you as my brother, dammit.” Marry Adam? The one who I counted on because we worked together? We were as close as any siblings, and now I was supposed to marry him? No flipping way.
“Would marriage to me be so bad? We know each other inside and out. You grew up with Adrian, and, yet, you developed feelings for him. What happened between you two could happen with us. We would be a strong, steady couple.”
“Adam, I love you, you know that. But marriage? We don’t even know for sure if I’m the Light Heir; it is all just speculation right now. It could be possible, yes, but we don’t know for sure.”
“I get it, Syn. I do. But if marrying you will bring peace to an entire kingdom, and save them in the process, I could marry you easily,” Adam said, staring me down in challenge.
“And if we got married and I wasn’t the Light Princess? What then?”
“Dammit, Syn, I don't know. I just know you ripped me from a life I should have had, and I have a family that I don't even know. You owe me. We could help Faery. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
I felt my heart drop to my stomach. “You've been with them this week, with your family.”
“Yes,” he replied, tightening his grip on my hand.
“I'm glad—or happy for you. Still, I can't marry you because I don’t love you in that way. I'm not sure what you guys came here for today. But if this was it, I'm sorry that you wasted your time.”
“Synthia, there is more to it than just uniting two kingdoms,” the Dark King began. “You were raised in the human world, so this will be difficult for you to understand. At least this is what Adam has told me. Sometimes we have to rely on the most improbable course when looking for answers to our problems. Some call this faith. We are all children of Danu, and she does not want Faery to die any more than we do. Being a Goddess, it is not like she can just tell us outright what we need to do, as the journey is just as important as the answer is, and sometimes you have to have faith that she knows what she is doing. She has given us several prophesiers and seers who have had visions to help guide us to heal Faery. There is one prophesy about a child born of the Dark and Light Heirs who will complete the healing of the world that the returned relics began.”
“No pressure, right?” Adam said, with the first genuine smile I'd seen on him today.
“This isn't fair. This freaking sucks! We just barely found out we were Fae and now we get this tossed into our laps?”
The Dark King continued. “The only other option for your heritage is that you are a second heir—which has happened before, but it’s extremely rare. We have no way of knowing, since the Light Fae, like any Fae, only allow us to know what they want us to, and of course what information they allow can always be misinformation. A good example of this is the situation with Arianna. The Light Fae offered the Light Princess, Caitlín, to us because they knew that we had been looking for her as part of the prophecy. They said that they couldn’t completely vouch for her because she was illegitimate and, therefore, the paternal bond between Fae father and child couldn’t be used to verify her identity. Of course we thought this was a bit off, with the huge uproar and accusations that were flying around after she went missing; that miraculously, after all these years later, she would suddenly turn up and they immediately offered her to us. When you combine this situation with all of the rumors of the Light King sending assassins out for her, you can understand why we were quite suspicious of her. Now, we did accept her as it suited our needs at the time, and our plans did work by the way, but you can see how the chain of misinformation can be problematic.” He rubbed his chin thoughtfully for a moment before continuing. “You can't be part of the Horde, because you show no signs of their brands. Blood Fae yes, you carry their brands, but, at the same time, yours are unique. Almost too unique. No, once you add up everything, it makes the most sense that you are Caitlín. We have many royal Fae, Synthia, every caste does. We don't die easily once Transition is complete so you can understand why we'd have so many. However, heirs are a very small percentage of royal Fae as the Goddess herself chooses them.”
“Maybe they should find some Fae birth control,” I mumbled under my breath.
“Nature takes control of that my dear. Our females can only breed within the first year immediately after our Transition, and every ten to fifteen years after it. Time is of the essence, which is why you would only have a short time to consider Adam's offer.”
“Adam's offer?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. Adam hadn’t made an offer, and I was afraid of him making any offers now.
“Syn, we've been friends since the day I came to be with you maybe even before that and I'd like a chance to court you; see where this could go. If you are the Light Heir, you and I can help save Faery. If Faery dies, they will come here. We need to consider the consequences, and we need to make the right choices to protect both worlds. We are part of something that could save thousands of innocent children.”
“So, you want to make a baby?” I replied bluntly. Brilliant! “Can’t we just do like some Fae ritual, put a funky headdress on, and call this Goddess down for a chat or something? Anyone?” I looked around at the faces in the club. Yup, no one was going to say yes to that! Damn.
“No, I want to save the world, and maybe save Faery while we are at it. And I don’t think you can just call a Goddess down to have a chat,” The Dark King replied sternly, even though his eyes flashed with a hint of suppressed laughter.
“Okay, this is too much. One, I don't want a baby with anyone. I'm not mother material, period. I'm screwed up, and everything I love ends up killed, or tortured. Adam, you already know that, so why the hell would you want me?” I asked, confused and a little panicked that this wasn't an offer but a demand. Sure they could say it was an offer, or call it anything they wanted to, but this was still a demand.
“You're not cursed, Syn. Bad stuff happens in life. You taught us all that. You know what the Fae coming into the human world could do to it, probably better than anyone. Is that something you could allow to happen because you think you're cursed, or is it because you’re scared?”
Damn right, I was scared! I wanted to scream that this wasn't fair. As if finding out I wasn't a Witch—that I was one of the creatures I hated most—wasn’t bad enough, but now this? “Adam, in the last month alone I have found out that I was adopted, and I got the two humans I loved and cherished the most killed, and my ex-boyfriend came back fro
m the dead. I had to work beside the enemy to bring down a serial killer, which resulted in getting my best friend killed. My other best friend and I turned out to be the same race as the enemy, and we both went through Transition. My house got blown up. I'm jobless, homeless, and I have lost everything. You can't just walk in here and drop this on my head, and expect me to say okay.”
“You left out the part where you were tortured,” Adam said, pulling me closer to him. “Syn, I can give you things I couldn’t before. We can be together, and this need I feel for you might finally go away.”
“You feel it because you're bonded to her, Adam, not because you love her in that sense,” Adrian said from across the table, finally speaking.
“It could be, but what if I actually love her? If we can save the world, then isn't it worth a try?” Adam growled.
“You just said children were dying, right?” I asked as I turned to the Dark King.
“Yes, and you can call me Kier.”
“Okay, Kier, so say we have a baby and it dies because the land rejects it…What then?”
“I don’t think that will be the case, but if that happened you would need to try again until one lived,” he said with a sadness set deep inside his vivid sky and sapphire blue eyes.
“So we just keep trying, going until we have one that lives. I can't lose anyone else. I'm sorry, I really am, but I couldn't do it.”
“Fertility is not as big of a problem as getting them to Transition alive is. We have every available resource being put into a cure. Even the reclusive Blood King has begun to send healers and scholars to help in the fight for the cure while still battling the Horde.”
“Why is the Horde battling the Blood Fae? I mean, if their king is missing, who is leading them?” I asked.