much, but I felt the blood drain from my face at his confirmation of my fears. ‘I thought that I cured the curse by marrying you.’
He nodded. ‘You cured me, and I thought you had cured my blood, but the faerie who laid it upon the sons of our house was blood kin and a curse of blood against blood is very powerful.’
I stared at him in disbelief. ‘The faerie who cursed your ancestor was a relative?’
‘She was the daughter of the king, but she was not the daughter of his wife.’
‘She was an illegitimate daughter?’
He nodded, his expression sober. ‘I did not speak of the curse before this, because there seemed no reason to dwell upon such dark matters. My mother had a vision as you lay sleeping in the Princess Chamber, which told her that the princess spell you wrought would be very strong, and that you would end the curse upon our blood. I ought to have understood it would not be so simple, for nothing in Faerie is simple. Perhaps it is in the nature of men to always think that they have found the ultimate princess.’
My face and heart flamed with wrath at his cruel words, but he turned from me to announce his decision to quest for a means of ending the curse upon his son and his line once and for all.
‘You would go away again, now?’ I screamed at him.
He looked down his nose at me, reminding me with his cool eyes and manner that we were in a formal audience chamber. Then he said very gently, ‘My love, listen to me. There is truly naught for me to do in what will unfold now. Our son must hunt a girl and bring her to the Wolfsgate Valley where she will be tested as you and other princess brides were tested. This is not a matter for a king, but for mothers and sons.’ My husband took my hand and kissed it, and I was so frightened and weary that I allowed his tenderness to soothe me as he told me that I must learn from his mother what was required of me in the bride hunting, for a queen had a vital part to play. There was no time to waste, he said, then he bade a servant lead me to his mother. I had no choice but to go, although I could not face visiting his mother immediately, so I dismissed the servant and went back to the King’s Palace to tell my son that he was to wed.
I had expected him to snarl that he did not want a bride, but he blushed and scowled at his feet, and my heart battered against my ribs in grief, for here, all unheralded, was the end of my supremacy in his life. He was ready to become a man when I had not finished having a child. I bit back sorrow and jealousy to say calmly that I would speak with his grandmother in the morning, to learn what was required in the matter of hunting a bride. I said nothing to my son of the curse, but I was determined to have the whole truth of it from my mother-in-law.
She was in the garden training a new falcon the next morning when I returned to the Summer Palace. She was feeding the vicious little creature bloody strips of meat, and the sight of her fingers black with dried blood made me queasy. I was ever shocked and shocked again by the visceral and almost casual brutality in Faerie, yet was it not there, hidden in between the lines of the oldest faerie tales? Is that not why the children of my world woke in terror and screamed after hearing a faerie tale, to the astonishment of their parents?
Seeing me, the queen gave the bird into the hands of one of the other queens, and laved her fingers in a bowl of petal-strewn water to clean them. Then she dismissed everyone and invited me to sit with her in a perfumed arbour.
She began by informing me that her son, the king, had sailed away at dawn and that he would likely not return for some time. I bit back my rage at the thought that he had done what he said he would do, wondering what sort of fool I was to have thought it would be otherwise. Nevertheless, I was angry enough to ask her if faerie kings had no