Home > Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever #11)(7)

Kingdom of Shadow and Light (Fever #11)(7)
Author: Karen Marie Moning

       Hence this clandestine meeting.

   She glanced first at Azar, his skin the color of autumn sun glancing off chestnuts, eyes glittering with the saffron and mandarin of twin Samhain fires, then at her summery antithesis, the voluptuous, gilt-skinned Severina, with her ankle-length golden hair and molten gaze.

   She would never be able to glean truth from their faces, nor they from hers. Royalty were the most obdurate of the Sidhe, capable of concealing and withstanding much. Unless—Ixcythe shuddered imperceptibly at the thought—their condition continued to deteriorate.

   “Why have you summoned us here?” Azar demanded imperiously.

   “How,” Ixcythe countered icily, waving a hand to banish her long white ermine cloak, too warm for the sultry grove, “did you know where here was?”

   Memories erased by the Cauldron, they’d long ago forgotten they’d once lived in the empyrean orchard. That they’d been able to find it told her much of what she wanted to know, and she felt a flash of spiteful satisfaction that their memories, too, were restored. Suffering was so much more bearable when it was done with company.

   Her query was met with silence.

   “It happened to you as well. Your memories have returned.” Memories too long, too burdensome to tolerate. Ixcythe had stolen the Cauldron from Aoibheal’s kingdom and tested it on several of her subjects, hoping it might restore order from calamity. It hadn’t worked. It was broken, useless. Old feuds had reawakened, and there were countless ancient quarrels among the race of immortals, endless grudges, eternal grievances. “As has emotion,” she added flatly.

   Azar said coolly, “I have no idea what—”

       “I’ve shown you my hand,” Ixcythe snapped. “Dare you disrespect the honor?” Royalty observed rigid formalities. They were too powerful to behave otherwise. To eschew courtesies was to incite war.

   After a long moment, he inclined his head and said stiffly, “It is as you claim, both memory and emotion have returned.”

   Following suit, Severina nodded. “The Summer Court is…” She trailed off, compressing her lips to a thin metallic line.

   “Chaos,” Ixcythe finished coldly. “They can’t kill, so they indulge in other amusements, using their powers against each other in horrific ways.” The inhabitants of the Winter Court had become abominations, better suited to the Unseelie prison. If either memory or emotion alone had been restored, the effects wouldn’t have been so catastrophic. And if only memory had returned, they’d have learned to deal with it. It was the emotion fueling their actions that was so deadly. The two combined were toxic to beings that had suffered neither for an eternity.

   Azar was silent a moment then said tightly, “I’ve had to seal my castle against them. My own court refuses to hear, much less obey, me.”

   It was a damning admission for him to make, that he feared his subjects; an olive branch offered by a desperate prince. No less desperate, Ixcythe accepted it. “I’ve done the same.” She could raise no army against humans, rally no troops, enforce no orders. Her court had devolved into mindless, emotional savages that she could no longer bear to hear or watch. If not for the strength innate to those who ruled the royal houses, she’d be in that dreadful courtyard herself, at this very moment, as gruesome as her subjects.

   After a moment, Severina joined the delicate truce. “As have I. My court is vile as Unseelie, all of them!”

   Not quite all. The lesser castes were younger, possessing shorter memories. Some had even been conceived in this Elysian grove, before the Elixir rendered the Seelie barren. The last born caste, the Spyrssidhe were unaffected by the insanity afflicting the Tuatha De. Ixcythe despised and envied them for it. When the changes had first begun to escalate, her court had hunted them, driving the tiny Fae into hiding. “You speak as if it’s only your court suffering. You feel it, too. The same desires. The hunger. The need.” Obsessive. Consuming. Mind dulling. Painful for beings who’d not suffered pain for time eternal.

       Azar’s face tightened. “Unlike those fools, I control it.”

   Void of emotion, the Fae had long toyed with impassioned beings, to feel some shallow sensation. But they hadn’t always been empty husks.

   Severina shrugged. “We will learn to manage our passions again, and once we do, our existence will be richer for it. The Song hasn’t undone our immortality.”

   Ixcythe seethed, “Yet. It has not undone our immortality yet. Are you fool enough to believe these changes will abruptly stop for no reason?”

   The species from which they’d stolen the Elixir warned them they would regret it, as the price for immortality was the destruction of the soul. They’d deemed it a fair exchange. Why gamble on reincarnation or an elusive, illusory, never-once-glimpsed deity, when they might guarantee eternity with a sip?

   Belatedly, they’d discovered the body was the house of passion, not the source of it. Souls slowly scorched to ash on a forbidden pyre, they’d traded a vibrant, impassioned, up to five-century-long lifespan for an eternity of shallow sensation. Still, they’d considered it a worthwhile trade.

   Ixcythe knew now that they were feeling emotions again, mortality couldn’t be far behind. The Song wasn’t restoring them to the height of their power.

   It was taking them back.

   All the way back.

   To what they’d originally been.

   Mortal.

   Despicably, vulnerably killable.

       Soft-bellied and pathetically weak as mortals.

   The Song had destroyed the Unseelie.

   It was remaking the Seelie.

   Both the Light and Shadow Courts had been deemed imperfect to varying degrees.

   None knew where Aoibheal had concealed the Elixir of Life. Or how much was left. Whatever remained, Ixcythe vowed to have the first drops. She would not become mortal again. She despised these memories, these feelings. She’d torn apart the queen’s bower, searched every glade, brook, and glen around it, every inch of the High Queen’s castle seeking it. She’d dispatched scouts far and wide, to search. None had returned.

   If the Goddess who’d seeded this grove had encountered the Tuatha De Danann at any other point in their history, she’d have destroyed them. But they’d met when the Fae had recently imbibed the Elixir, were celebratory, joyful, still fertile, not yet starved for sensation, and were benevolent, nurturing the land upon which they dwelled.

   “How are we to take back what is ours from the human that holds it, if we cannot control our courts?” Ixcythe hissed.

   Her royal counterparts said nothing.

   Was no one thinking clearly but her? “The three of us must use the Elixir, force it on our subjects!”

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)