My baby. Where is my baby?
Something close to hurt threatens to puncture the finest of holes in my heart. Is this Nox’s way of retaliating against me for betraying him? For keeping from him my intentions to die? Did he share with the queen my darkest pain as a means to punish me?
“It hurts, to feel betrayed by him, doesn’t it?”
The queen’s voice shakes me from my fog.
“I suppose we all betray each other in the end,” is all I can find to say to match my shrug.
The slightest of smiles lines the queen’s white lips, but there is no pleasure in her voice when she speaks. “My son has not betrayed you. It was your stepmother who told me of the child, when she offered you to me.”
It’s strange the way I can feel my ears tilt at the new information, the way they betray my full attention. “I suppose she thought she’d barter you the additional information at a price. In case you wished to snatch my child from happiness as well.”
The queen folds her hands in her lap and lets out a deep breath. “Yes. I do suppose that could have been her intention. She claimed the information might be useful in encouraging your cooperation should you prove difficult to control.”
My heart gives a gentle push against my chest. “So this is the point you’ve decided I need to be controlled, then.”
Something like the shadow of dread curls in my stomach.
The queen deigns not to answer my question. Instead, she says, “I do not know where your child is. Your stepmother did not grant me that information. I suppose she wished to keep that bit of bartering power close. But I do know where your stepmother is, and it seems to me that now that you’ve come into a different sort of power, you might succeed in coaxing the truth out of her.”
Unease drips from my cheeks and pools in my gut as I recall what it felt like to be smothered in Nox’s compulsion. The intense urge to please him above all else.
I’d have to douse myself in the throes of bloodlust for it to work, of course. It seems that we vampires can only compel our prey once we ourselves relinquish the reins of control.
But perhaps I wouldn’t have to push that far. Perhaps the fear of me would be enough.
I’m too distracted by the logistics of the plan to notice the kernel of hope the queen has planted in my chest.
“I’m afraid you’ve overestimated how useful I’d find this information,” I say with as much venom in my tone as I can muster. Having actual venom dripping from my exposed canines seems to help. “I’m already aware of the knowledge my stepmother possesses.”
“This is true, but are you aware of your stepmother’s location?”
My ears flick in response. “My stepmother resides in my father’s manor—”
“Which fell into disrepair within a month of your departure from Dwellen. I must say, I’m rather impressed by your stepmother’s ability to run through the sizable sum I offered her in exchange for your charge. That being said, the eyes I have in Othian informed me that your stepmother’s debtors, given her inability to pay, have seized the manor.”
This is the point when my mouth would typically go dry. Now it waters instead, saliva wetting my tongue as the fury that I feel toward my stepmother for losing my father’s manor morphs into hunger in my blood.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because,” the queen says, and though I expect a humored grin upon her face, a lilt to her tone, I find none. “I know what it is to lose a child. And I know just what we are willing to leave behind to get them back.”
I go still with the preternatural stillness I’ve witnessed so often in Evander, Jerad, Nox.
But now I’m the predator. Worse, I’m a mother.
“Let me guess. You know where my stepmother is.”
The queen’s blue eyes darken. “You’re more clever than you’d like others to believe. I have eyes on the streets of Othian. They’ve kept note of her location. If you leave now, perhaps you might find her before she leaves yet again.”
“Ah.” There it is. The reason she’s offering me this bargain. Because she wants me gone. “And why, my queen, if you want me so far away from Nox, don’t you just kill me?”
The queen adjusts in her throne ever so slightly, and I wonder if it’s from the discomfort of hearing Nox’s true name. For a moment, I wonder if she’ll answer at all, given her inability to lie. But then she settles on, “If I harm you myself, my son will never forgive me.”
It’s strange to me how the queen can claim Nox as her son, and even call him Farin, without invoking the fae curse.
It makes me wonder if to her, these things are true.
If the curse can’t distinguish between reality and what the fae envision reality to be.
It’s an unsettling notion.
Either way, the queen cares for Nox. Even if it is in some twisted, morose manner.
“If I agree, you have to honor your bargain with him,” I say, and the queen’s shoulders relax, because though I haven’t directly responded to her offer, this is answer enough. “It’s not his fault the parasite disappeared. He extracted the parasite from my body, just as you agreed. He did his best. If I do this, releasing Nox’s sister from her curse is part of the bargain. And you can’t go after him when he leaves with her.”
She pauses, scraping her fingernail against the engraved swirl in her armrest. “I suppose I should have expected as much,” is all she says with a flit of her hand.
In a slight hint of rebellion, I say, “I, Blaise, agree to leave the palace in exchange for information on where my stepmother resides and for you to consider Nox’s side of the bargain fulfilled.”
The queen quirks an eyebrow. “You agree to leave, and never again return for my son.”
A cry rings out in the back of my mind, the gentle sob of the human girl I once was. The ache of knowing I’ll never see him again.
It’s just not as loud as the sound of my baby crying, the only thing at all that feels as though it might steer me through this dark and dreadful world of night.
My throat catches, but I force out the words anyway. “I agree never to return for Nox.”
