Shadowborn Royals - G. Bailey Page 0,3

you start explaining what you’re doing here.” My voice is hard, the question more of a demand.

“It’s a long story,” she replies and I arch an eyebrow. It’s hardly like we have anywhere else to be. She steps closer and a flicker of emotion shows on her face, a hint of concern. “I’ve been a High Warden for so many years, as you well know, but I have always hidden the extent of what happens at my work. Every single day I pass judgment on shadowborns for terrible crimes they have committed.”

“And you decided to turn them into Light Fae by using me?” I snarl at her, venomous emotion pouring out of every word. She’s my mum, someone I always thought was on my side, but it turns out I was wrong about that.

I can’t trust her, that much is clear.

She’s a fucking traitor.

My own mum!

“No, no, no,” she says, placing her hands on my shoulders. “I never wanted them to touch you, or even know about you! You have to believe that! I made a plan with Gold to get you out. Even your warden was hired by me and was part of the escape plan, but… it went wrong.”

Hearing that Luke and Gold were in on all this makes me even angrier. Tears of rage and pain sting my eyes. I thought they just liked me. Turns out they were paid to be on my side. By Selena, can I trust anyone anymore?

“I can see that,” I dryly respond, rubbing my arms which feel sore for some reason. I pull away from my mother and take a few steps backward until my wings graze the wall. “Why are you here?”

After a moment, she takes a sharp inhale and parts her lips. “Shadowborns are a curse on this beautiful forest and they need to be cured. We are finding the cure, and with Eva on the throne, a Light Fae army at her back, we can change the Enchanted Forest for the good.” Her eyes brim with so much hope and joy as she looks at my wings that it makes me sick. “We are so close.”

“You think I’m a curse? That I need to be cured?” I spit out, shaking my head. Who the fuck brainwashed my mother? I never thought she’d be one to follow the herd. She was always so strong-minded. But now I see it was just a facade. She was right up there with the front of the herd all along.

“No!” She steps closer to me and I try to move away, my back hitting the wall again. It’s crazy to think that for the past year all I’ve wanted was to hug my mum, tell her I love her and that I was going to escape the Shadowborn Prison somehow, but now I don’t want her near me.

This…this isn’t the mother that I know. She sounds like a monster.

“When you became a shadowborn,” she says in a whisper, “that was the worst day of my life. It never should have happened.”

“If I wasn’t a shadowborn, I would be dead,” I remind her.

“Yes, well, now you are exactly who you were born to be. A light fae,” she proudly states and I cough out a laugh, backing away towards the door.

“Shadowborns are not in need of a cure,” I all but shout at her. “Being a shadowborn is something I will always be proud of because there is a lot of good in the shadows. Without them, there wouldn’t be any light. You just aren’t seeing it because you’ve been brainwashed and I doubt anything I say now will help change your mind.”

A whole race of people is not a curse. It’s impossible to think like that. I was once scared of being a shadowborn and going to the academy, but it was the best thing that has ever happened to me. My soul knows I was meant to be born in the shadows, to die in that water, and be reborn as a shadowborn. But now all of that is gone. I’m just light now and I don’t know how to feel about that. Violated, betrayed, and pissed off are a few that spring to mind.

“You say that now, but without my cure, you would be nothing more than a slave to the magics world and we both know that,” my mother snaps, her cool facade breaking as an ugly snarl twists up her face. “Without my help, you could never have been