had ordered the palace decorated with fae motifs and fae art when she so hated the Folk.
“Dear boy.” The Queen rarely called her sons by name, for she had too many to keep track of. Yet when she was with Somhairle, sadness clouded her eyes—a sadness he knew, even as a child, was reserved personally for him. “There is beauty in cruelty. Beauty is what survives when everything ugly is stripped away. And one must be cruel to triumph against ugliness.”
It was then that Somhairle had first understood how someone could fear the Queen.
He hadn’t been certain if she was talking about him, or the fae. Her own child, or her most hated enemy.
In the end, Catriona had triumphed by doing what no Ever-Bright queen had done since the Fair Wars ended: she had borne blood heirs.
Despite her triumphs, her people feared her. It was believed that the spell the sorcerers had mirrorcrafted to return life to Catriona’s womb had unnaturally extended her life-span in the process.
It was true that although Somhairle’s mother had not borne her first heir until the fiftieth year of her rule, she still looked as young as the day she’d taken the throne. Her reign had lasted nearly two hundred years now, more than twice that of any Ever-Bright queen before her.
Fourteen hale and healthy sons had come into the world before Somhairle arrived, one side of him withered from head to toe, piercing the royal fantasy of perfection. Queen Catriona might have been able to cheat death, but there was no cheating Oberon’s curse.
Fourteen sons who allowed the kingdom to believe the curse had at last been broken—and Somhairle, whose existence implied otherwise.
Catriona’s world was a diamond that would sustain no faults.
While Somhairle’s half brothers resembled their respective fathers, Somhairle alone took after their mother. Perhaps this made it worse for her: that, looking into Somhairle’s face, she saw only a warped reflection of her own.
If the Queen and her youngest son had ever posed together for a portrait, their artist would have painted two rosebud mouths, full and unsmiling, and two pairs of pale blue eyes the color of summer rain. Somhairle’s round cheeks made his face less of a blade than Catriona’s, but the same curling gold hair framed their faces. He shared her long lashes, too.
This resemblance only made his flaws stand out more starkly. The muscles in Somhairle’s right arm and leg were shriveled and useless, similar to a book left out in the rain, its pages wrinkling toward the spine.
His first memories were of nurses with averted eyes, of hushed whispers cupped behind the same dough-soft hands that had wiped his tears and dressed his scrapes. He was a message. A token. A symbol more than a boy. Somhairle understood this early on. He watched and listened as his brothers brought accolades and honor to their mother’s legacy.
The Queen trusted Adamnan, her eldest son and a natural diplomat, to hold stewardship of the Hill whenever she was absent. Diancecht had founded the city’s archival restoration, dedicating himself to scholarly pursuits, dredging lost histories up from the muck and into the light. Each year the twins, Coinneach and Comhghall, climbed higher through the ranks in the Queensguard. And Laisrean was popular at court, always dancing late into the night with someone beautiful from one of the Ever-Lasting Houses, netting gossip more precious than pearls.
Of these, it was only Laisrean who was more than mere stranger to him. Owing to their mother’s unusual longevity, Somhairle had half brothers old enough to be his father or even his grandfather. He’d been schooled alongside those princes closest to him in age: Laisrean, Prince Murchadh, and Prince Guaire. Among them—in their little cadre Somhairle was the youngest, Murchadh the eldest—the greatest gap was a mere five years.
Another seven years between Murchadh and the next-eldest prince, Prince Lochlainn, who was the only playmate Murchadh had considered worth his time.
In the end, age wasn’t the dividing factor, but health, Somhairle’s failing and his brothers’ hale. Five years ago, after his thirteenth birthday—and his thirtieth life-threatening fever—Somhairle had finally been sent away from court, beyond the far reach of his mother’s Ever-Bright corona. The Ever-Land manor bristled with lavish gifts like unburied treasure: a carousel nestled in the woods; a silver skiff in the shape of a dragonfly docked in the boathouse; a hidden cave beneath the cellar with only gemstones buried in the walls for light.
Reminders of the Queen’s affection, in the only way she knew