them with his good one. White shadows on white light.
“It’s everything I could have dreamed, Mother,” Somhairle said to remind himself he had a purpose he couldn’t abandon. “A wonder of the long-lost world. I intend to—”
“Oh, fledgling.” Somhairle felt, rather than saw, her solemn, searching gaze. “You share our will, if not our constitution. Such strength, for such a little bird. Come. We have told you every tale but one. Will you sit with us to hear it?”
There was power in knowing when to kneel. Somhairle had no body here, no true form, but as he melted closer to the Queen, it was difficult not to feel like a boy again. Sitting in his mother’s lap awaiting a nursery story before bedtime.
“Once upon a time,” Catriona began in her flute-sweet voice, “there was a beautiful young woman, cursed by Oberon Black-Boned to wander a barren desert. She would have suffered this fate willingly herself, but she had many other mouths to feed, and many other hearts to guard against evil.
“The good woman built shelter. Every day, she tilled the bleak land and watered the mutinous soil. With her strength and cunning, with her refusal to be bested by the black-boned fae king, she brought abundance to the valley.
“In time, with great personal suffering, her labors bore fruit, and her crops grew tall in the sun. But some were sickly, stunted, damaged in the seed before they passed through the soil. They would never provide the sustenance she required for her children.”
Somhairle’s brow wrinkled. His tongue rested heavy and thick in his mouth.
His mother’s gaze came from twin silver eyes—a result of the mirrorcraft—when she turned it on him, gone in a flash. Perhaps this column of relentless light was his mother’s true form, not the woman’s body she wore over that core.
What a treasonous thought.
“The young mother culled the weak season’s growth,” Catriona said. “She pulled each out at the roots before it had a chance to flourish and poison her other crops, though she loved each one the moment it was planted, and mourned each loss terribly. Because I would not see my children suffer for anything, Somhairle. Not even life may have that privilege, not now that I am her master. Do you understand what I am telling you?”
Somhairle’s throat worked. His body, distant but real, burned and tingled as if he’d been thrown into a thicket of glorynettles.
He’d always assumed he was his mother’s final attempt at procreation. That his less-than-perfect appearance had been deterrent enough against more children.
She hadn’t culled him as a poisonous crop.
But there had been others.
“Mother,” Somhairle began. “I have something to tell you, too.”
If he believed there were others born crippled, like him, who she had culled, then he had no excuse for sudden boldness. Now was the time for meek acquiescence. But Three was on his mind. In his heart.
They didn’t have to fear the fae. He could make Catriona understand that she had spared him for a reason. To give her an incomparable gift. To mend this rift, to heal this wound.
“There’s more than beauty in the Folk,” Somhairle said with pure feeling, no desire to calculate his remarks, although speaking extemporaneously in front of his mother felt uncomfortably like baring his neck for the executioner’s greatsword. “I’ve felt it—”
His mother’s sharp ha shattered into a thousand brittle pieces, her laughter echoing in the dark space. Their features had always been similar enough that sitting near Catriona was like looking into a broken mirror. Now he felt like a moon staring in terror at an exploding sun.
He fell silent until she subsided, lifting her golden head.
“We would call that talk treason on any other’s tongue. Remember this: we will always protect you. We will not have Morien the Last use mirrorcraft on your royal person, as he has with others.” Her cold fingers caressed Somhairle’s cheek. He bit his tongue as they grazed his throat. “Know this also: that the fae ruin all that they touch. Do not give in to their trickery and deceit. For we would not hesitate to cut the head off the snake if a fae were to corrupt even the most precious flesh of our flesh.”
A promise and a threat. Gold and iron.
How very fae, Mother, Somhairle thought. He was glad he could be seen as little more than a shining silhouette. Just now he didn’t trust himself to hide his expression.
“Thank you, Mother,” Somhairle said.
She was smiling when the illusion dissolved, throwing Somhairle