Lorcan’s heart dropped. “They’re innocents. They have nothing to do with this.”
“You’re right, of course, but we have our orders,” the male replied. “Your choice, bastard.”
Lorcan ground his teeth together, hating them all in that moment. “That is no choice at all.”
3
Lorcan soon discovered how the shadow fae had managed to sneak onto the continent when they led him across the rolling hills and to the sea. Somehow, they had a boat. In the distance, the hulking black ship glistened beneath the light of the twin moons. It looked like an old warship, one that had seen better days. The wood appeared rotted; the paint was flecked. But it was a ship all the same.
“How’d you manage to get this?” Lorcan asked with a frown as they clambered into a cluster of row boats anchored to the sandy shore. “My mother told me the shadow fae didn’t have any ships. They all got blasted apart in the exile.”
“We stole it,” the cloaked female replied, who he had since learned was named Nollaig. Her familiar, Holas, never vanished from her left shoulder. Every now and again, she would feed him a worm from her right hand, always gloved.
“From whom?” Lorcan asked.
“Some travellers who made the mistake of being too curious about our exiled court.” Her voice held the hint of a grin. “We think they were on their way to the Empire of Fomor. They never made it.”
At the name of the ancient empire, Lorcan shivered. He had not spoken its name aloud. Not since that night. None of the other fae in his village had seen the Fomorians themselves. All they saw was the blood and destruction.
“Surely no one is misguided enough to think they might sail to Fomor and live,” he answered, climbing into the row boat along with the others. He did not protest. There was no point. If he didn’t go along with the shadow fae, all of his friends would end up dead.
These fae might be able to lie, but he did not doubt their brutality.
“They were humans. The poor idiots did not know any better,” Segonax replied, the commander and leader of the group. “They probably thought they were off on some grand adventure they could brag about to their mates back home.”
“Humans?” Lorcan could not help but be surprised. Very few humans ventured this far west. With the great serpent beasts in the Mag Mell Sea and the fear of otherworldly fae magic, humans tended to remain in their own lands.
“Yes, they are now the playthings of your father,” Nollaig said flatly, followed by a tsk of clear disapproval. Lorcan’s brows shot up, but he did not ask her to elaborate. He knew exactly what she meant. So, his father had not changed in all these years.
“And when you procure another ship, you’ll allow them to return home?” he dared to ask.
Nollaig sighed. “They were on their way to Fomor. Your father believes they were dead men walking. At least in the shadow lands, they’re alive.”
Lorcan frowned.
Oars struck the water as they spun away from the shore. Lorcan sat brooding in the boat, staring out at the shifting waters. In the night, they were as dark as the cloudy sky, and the winds that bore across the air fae lands vanished behind them. The waters were still and calm. And eerie as hell.
“If you disagree with his decision,” Nollaig spoke up after several silent moments, “then perhaps you should bring it to his attention. He might listen to you.”
Lorcan let out a bitter laugh. “Why in the name of the Dagda would the king of the shadow fae listen to his unwanted, bastard son?”
“Careful,” she warned. “You shouldn’t invoke the Dagda’s name in front of your father.”
“You Unseelie lot are awfully sensitive if you cannot even handle a spoken name.”
“Not all of us are followers of Unseelie,” she said quietly. “And you are far more influential than you think.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Segonax turned to smile at him, a glint in his eye. “Our king has a plan for you.”
Lorcan did not like the sound of that.
“My son.” King Bolg Rothach was a squat little thing. He rather looked like a bug that had been squashed beneath a giant’s boot. Lorcan’s mother had always told him that he had Bolg’s dark hair and eyes, but that was the extent of it. Everything else, he got from her.
Lorcan was glad of it.
The male who sat before him now held nothing of the strength that he’d expected. It took a certain kind of fae to seize control of a throne...someone commanding, someone harsh and rough and...well, Bolg Rothach just looked small and hunched. He had a large nose and small eyes that shifted from side to side suspiciously. His simple black scale armor seemed to swallow him whole, as well as the plain black chair he’d decided to call his throne. Behind him, the ominous red light of the mist-enshrouded sun poured over the strange court, casting the dreary Olc Fortress into vivid shades of crimson.
Lorcan forced himself, through gritted teeth, to kneel. “Your Grace.”
He did not call him by a title greater than that. Bolg Rothach was merely a king. Only a High King was a true majesty. Lorcan bet that drove his father mad.
“None of that ‘your grace’ nonsense here,” his father said with a chuckle. “I know I’m not your king. At least, not yet. You serve that air fae. What’s his name, the old one withering on his throne?”
“High King Sloane Selkirk,” Lorcan replied. But of course, he did not need to tell his father that. Bolg Rothach would know exactly who ruled over the Air Court. The Selkirks had been the one to exile his kingdom, after all.
“That’s right,” Bolg said, smiling. “Sloane. I hear his bones are turning to dust. He will be lucky to live even twenty years more.”
Lorcan frowned. “Is that why you brought me here? To ask me questions about the air king? Because you’ll be gravely disappointed, I’m afraid, Father. I’m just a villager who plucks wheat. I know nothing about court and very little about the king himself.”
“You’ve got fire.” Bolg grunted. “Like your mother. She was always my favorite.”
A chill swept down Lorcan’s spine. He doubted that very much indeed.
“Do not speak about my mother,” he said through gritted teeth. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nollaig and Segonax shift closer to the king.
Bolg merely waved them aside. “My advisors tell me she wasn’t in your village when they collected you.”
“No, she wasn’t. She died ten years ago.”
Bolg had the decency to look surprised. “From old age? Ten years ago? She would have been scarcely thirty, if that. Even with the Fall, surely she should have lived—”
“Our village was attacked,” Lorcan cut in. He could not bear to listen to his father discuss his mother’s age and her lost life like it was nothing more than the weather.
His father cocked his head. “Attacked by whom?”
Lorcan remained silent. He would not lie about this, even if he could, but he would not admit the truth to his father either. The king would either think Lorcan mad or he would demand to hear every last detail about that night. And he would not relive it. Not in front of this king.