The Faerie King

by Ash Fitzsimmons

  “Mother was protecting me. She loved me,” Moyna whispered.

  At that, Toula threw back her head and laughed. “Bullshit,” she chuckled, and Moyna flinched. “Kid, you were the means to an end, nothing more. I’m sorry to be blunt, and I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s the truth. You know what Colin was worried about, all that time after the realm sealed?” she continued, leaning toward Moyna. “He was panicking about Meggy, sure, but he was also afraid that Titania would be upset that you’d come without him and kill you out of spite. That’s what drove him—not killing her, but rescuing you. Now, you want to talk about this like an adult, or are you going to keep pouting like a toddler? Ball’s in your court, babe.”

  By then, Moyna had abandoned all traces of her feigned apathy. “And what do you know?” she spat back at Toula. “Mother didn’t love me? Moon and stars, how could you presume to know the first thing about that?” she said, then laughed bitterly. “So, to be clear: Mother cared nothing for me, but she gave me the world. Coileán and his whore ‘love’ me, so they bind me—again—and lock me in this stinking hole. Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Pretty much,” said Toula, impassive in the face of Moyna’s anger. “Looks bad, I know, but Moyna, I’ve got a few years and a hell of a lot of experience on you.”

  “Don’t you mean Olive?” she smirked.

  “No. You want to be Moyna, so be Moyna. Names bring a lot of baggage with them—believe me, I get it,” she muttered. “I’m not trying to make you someone you’re obviously not.”

  That seemed to mollify the girl for the moment, and she shifted backward on the bed, moving out of Toula’s space. “Fine. But don’t sit there and tell me they love me. If this is their idea of love,” she said, glaring at the damp walls, “then I’ll take whatever you think Mother felt for me any day.”

  Toula absently cracked her knuckles. “I think we can agree that this is about as far from ideal as it gets, yeah?”

  “Are you going to help me?”

  “I’m going to try, but first, I want you to understand something.” With a little grunt, she pushed herself out of her chair and moved to the bed, the better to stand over Moyna. “You think you have it bad?” she asked quietly. “My mother didn’t want me for me. She got pregnant in order to have another experimental pawn, and my father decided to go along with it because he thought I might be a get-out-of-jail-free card. I failed on that count,” she added, folding her arms. “So since my mom couldn’t be bothered to raise me and my dad was incarcerated, I was raised in the Arcanum silo among people who’d just as soon have seen me dead because of the shit my dad pulled. I got passed around a lot,” she murmured. “Got a lot of side looks when folks didn’t know I was on to them. Got my share of abuse, got the hell out of there as soon as I could. Long story short, I was never loved. I’ve never been loved.”

  I cut my eyes to Valerius, who stood in the corner of my office, silently watching. He’d adopted a stance nearly identical to his sister’s, down to the wrinkle between his brows, but there was something different and unreadable in his eyes.

  “Now,” Toula continued, pinning Moyna to the bed with her stare, “your parents are about as far from perfect as they come, but they’re trying to do right by you. This—all of this,” she said, twirling one finger to encompass the room—“was the absolute best idea they could come up with in these circumstances, seeing as you tried to kill that wizard. That’s Aiden’s sister, by the way, so yeah, maybe not the smartest move on your part, but whatever, you’re angry, I get that. Anyway, they want to work something out with you, maybe some deal whereby you get to leave the cellar and don’t immediately try to kill anyone.”

  “And the bind comes off?” Moyna muttered.

  “Not right away. Think of this as probation.”

  The girl huffed and glowered at the wall. “If they’re going to keep me bound, why not be merciful and kill me?”

  “Speaking as someone who spent the first thirty-five years of her life mostly bound, I do sympathize,” said Toula, and Moyna whipped her head back around in surprise. “Yeah, you heard me—I got to grow up with a bind on because dear old Daddy went on a killing spree and my darling, absentee mother was Mab.” She smiled grimly as the shock on Moyna’s face deepened. “Oh, yes, little lady, I’m messed up in ways you can’t imagine. We’re not so different in that regard, I suppose,” she added, watching the girl try to shift her expression back to neutral. “But enough about me. Look, Moyna, I might not know Colin all that well, but I’ve known Meggy for years. She never gave up on you,” she said, slowing for emphasis. “Meggy didn’t have a fucking clue where you’d gone or even if you were still alive, and she kept hoping. She kept trying. That woman would die for you, and if that isn’t love, I don’t know what is.”

  “So torturing me?” Moyna retorted. “This is love, then?”

  “They’re not torturing you, they’re trying to keep everyone safe while you get your head on straight.” Toula stepped back and found her chair again. “The bind’s a precaution for them while you’re still feeling stabby, and it’s a safeguard for you. I mean, going with some punk you barely know into the Gray Lands?” she asked incredulously. “Sure, your brain is still developing, but come on, that’s a textbook stupid idea.”

  “He loves me,” she mumbled.

  “If he’s what I think he is, then I strongly doubt it.” She paused, waiting while Moyna’s face shifted through half a dozen expressions, then lowered her voice and said, “I know this is tough, and no one wants to feel like a fool, but Titania didn’t love you. She couldn’t. Hell,” she muttered, “Oberon’s your damn grandfather, and his great idea was to kill you and be done with it. Don’t you get it?” she said, staring Moyna in the eye. “Full fae can’t love. You know that, right?”

  Moyna stared back at her, biting her lip, then pulled her knees to her chest. “She loved me,” she whispered in the gloom.

  But Toula shook her head. “All that hurt you’re feeling right now, all that anger…you loved Titania. I get it, it’s okay. That’s the closest thing to a mom you’ve had, and I…well, I’m sorry that we had to do what we did. For you, I mean. I’m not—you know, never mind.” She flicked her hand at the air as if brushing a fly from her face. “The important thing, honey, is she never loved you. She may have treated you well, but you were a means to an end.” Seeing Moyna continue to retract into herself, Toula stood once more and, after a moment’s hesitation, sat beside her on the bed. “Those two out there, you may hate their guts right now, but they love you, kid. This so-called torture is a way they can avoid locking you up or worse. They’re doing the best they can. Work with us, hmm? Stop trying to kill them, and they’ll take the bind off. Easy.”

  They sat there together, neither moving, while Moyna mulled this over. I was beginning to think she had reverted to her earlier tactic of ignoring anything that displeased her when she glanced at Toula, rested her cheek on her knees, and mumbled, “I’m thirsty.”

  Meggy let out her held breath beside me, and I reached over to squeeze her hand.

  “No problem,” said Toula with a snap of her fingers. An empty glass appeared between them on the bed, and she asked, “Water? Juice? Something stronger?”

  “Root beer,” Moyna said in a half-whisper, and the glass filled as she watched. She snatched it up and gulped it down, and Toula refilled it twice until Moyna put it aside and stifled a belch. “Anything to eat, or are they starving me, too?” she asked.

  A familiar flat box manifested beside her, and she yanked the lid open to get at the pizza within. Toula took a piece once Moyna had a slice in each hand and ate slowly, biding her time while the girl gorged herself. Moyna chewed ravenously and licked her fingers clean, then went back for seconds and thirds. Within minutes, the box was empty but for a fragment of gnawed crust, and Toula sent the mess back into the ether. “So,” she said, handing Moyna a paper napkin, “who’s this G character, anyway?”

  Moyna he
sitated, but her full stomach seemed to have mellowed her mood toward Toula, and she flopped back on the bed with a little sigh. “He’s my boyfriend. My lover.”

  Toula sprawled beside her, propping her head on her hand. “Uh-huh. And what would you know about taking a lover, little miss?”

  She looked over and rolled her eyes. “I’m not a child, you know.”

  “Didn’t say you were—just trying to figure out where you two stand. Now, I’m at a loss here,” she said, scooting closer and lowering her voice. “How the heck did you meet up with a guy from the Gray Lands?”

  Moyna’s eyes narrowed. “I didn’t say—”

  “You didn’t have to. There was a spike in dark magic when you disappeared with him, and when you surfaced again, you had your snake, and we all know that wasn’t native to the mortal realm. Obviously, he took you into the Gray Lands—that would kill the bind on you, even if he weren’t strong enough to do it on his own—so what gives? What’s a nice girl like you doing with a guy like that, hmm?”

  Her lips began to curl. “You think I’m a nice girl, do you?”

  “Figure of speech.”

  That earned a proper smile, and Moyna rested her head on her arms. “G found me at one of the football parties. Told me I was special, I had a secret. He promised to help me figure it out. We talk all the time…” Her voice drifted off, and she turned back to Toula. “He showed me magic again, made me start to remember. Helped me fight the bind. He’s incredible.”

  “I bet,” she said, managing to sound sincere. “What’s G short for?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Just curious. If someone introduces himself by a weird nickname, I have to assume there’s a terrible name behind it.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” she replied, rolling over and propping herself up to match Toula’s position. “You said Mab was your mother, yes? She was G’s, too. You don’t know him?”

  Meggy hissed sharply beside me, but Toula kept her composure. “I’ve met exactly one of my siblings,” she said, “so no, I don’t know him. And now I’m really curious,” she added in a tone promising conspiracy. “How bad is his name?”

  “Not that bad,” said Moyna. “Geheret.”

  “Geheret,” she repeated, rolling it around in her mouth. “Well, not great, but I’ve heard worse—there are some fantastically bad family names floating around the Arcanum,” she confided. “How old is he?”

  “Little older than me.”

  “Gotcha. But I’m still wondering what a guy out of the Gray Lands was doing in Rigby, of all places.”

  Moyna’s eyes, suddenly shifty, narrowed in thought as she considered Toula. “If I told you,” she finally replied, “and if the information proved useful, what would be in it for me?”

  Toula, to her credit, displayed a remarkable talent for maintaining a poker face. “I suppose,” she said with deliberate slowness, “that if it were sufficiently interesting, and if you gave it of your own free will, the powers keeping you bound might consider loosening their hold on you. That’s not a guarantee,” she stressed, “but I’d put in a good word for you.”

  “And you have Coileán’s ear?”

  “As much as anyone does.”

  After weighing this information, Moyna seemed to come to a resolution and sat up on the bed. When Toula followed suit, she leaned closer and murmured, “G told me this once we were safe in the Gray Lands. A few months ago, one of my uncles came to him with a proposition.” Her pale eyebrow arched, and Toula nodded in understanding. “If G got me out of the picture,” she continued, “then once Coileán was removed, the new king would be generous and remember G’s friendship.”

  “And let him into Faerie?”

  “Perhaps. He’d at least have recognition of his court.” She watched Toula’s face for a clue, then gave up and pressed on. “But once G met me, he couldn’t go through with it. He loves me. So the plan changed, you see.”

  “Oh?”

  She nodded emphatically. “We were going to do it together, G and me. Take out Coileán, and the court would be mine. We could have ruled together,” she said, sounding almost wistful. “But since I suppose I’m to be kept prisoner here…”

  “You may as well save yourself?” Toula suggested.

  “Yes, that. And change the plan.” Moyna straightened and clasped her hands in her lap. “Overthrowing Coileán would be difficult in my present circumstances. But if he should know who’s plotting against him, perhaps he’d be willing to work with G. We’d be doing him a favor, after all.”

  I had to strain to hear their conversation over the rush of blood pounding in my ears, but Toula was serenity personified. “Makes sense,” she told Moyna. “So it was your uncle, you said?”

  “Doran,” I muttered. “I knew I couldn’t trust him, I knew—”

  “That’s what G told me,” Moyna replied, oblivious to my mounting rage. “Huc.”

  I never saw how Toula’s visit ended. Shocked, furious, and fighting a rising wave of paranoia, I cut the feed, picked up my coffee table, and threw it against the wall, where it exploded into splinters. Meggy remained in the safety of the couch, sitting silently as I paced the office and railed against my siblings with every profane term I’d accumulated in eight centuries. Even Valerius kept his distance—I caught him out of the corner of my eye as I made my circuit, poised against the wall with all the subtlety of a compressed spring and shifting his gaze between Meggy and me.

  A few laps later, I realized he had readied himself to jump to Meggy’s aid—and that the look on her face was not shock, but fear.

  I forced myself to end the march and breathed until the red in my vision cleared. “I’m sorry,” I heard myself mumble as I surveyed the damage: the broken table, the shards of porcelain vase mixed in with the rubble, the chips in the stone. “I don’t…I…”

  “Want a drink?” she asked quietly.

  “No.” I pushed my hair from my eyes and sat opposite her, ignoring the space the table had recently occupied between us. “My entire family wants me dead. Johnnie isn’t going to fix that.”

  “All she said was Huc—”

  “Who isn’t acting alone.” I held up my hand and started counting off my fingers. “The only one of them who stands to immediately gain if Moyna and I are gone is Doran, who’d inherit. There’s no reason for Huc to plot against us unless Doran’s promised him a substantial reward…and he probably doesn’t breathe unless Syral knows and approves,” I continued, pushing three fingers to one side. “Doran and Syral have been at each other’s throat—or at least have pretended to be at each other’s throat,” I admitted, “for months, and Ji and Nanine have partly taken sides. The odds of them being left out of this little conspiracy are slim to none.”

  “Which leaves Aiden,” Meggy pointed out.

  “All right, one. And his sister probably wants me dead by now, too, not to mention my damn daughter.” I slumped back against the couch and closed my eyes, hoping the oncoming headache would subside on its own. “Of course, that’s assuming Moyna’s telling the truth about this cretin.”

  “So find out. Pick her brain and be sure.”

  Surprised at the sudden coolness in her tone, I looked at Meggy and found her cheeks blazing. “And if she is?”

  When she spoke again, her voice was velvet flowing over stone. “Then you kill them. Slowly. Painfully. You bind them and throw them in a pit together, and when there’s only one left, you leave him there with the corpses until he starves. That is what you do with them.”

  Words failed me as I gawked at the unknown creature wearing Meggy’s face, but I managed to cobble together a response a moment later. “I can’t execute them. The realm—”

  “They tried to kill my daughter,” she interrupted, implacable as an oncoming glacier. “I don’t give a damn how the realm feels about it. Get rid of them and do it now, or so help me, I’ll do it myself.”

  “Meggy,” I said, trying to find something familiar in her eyes, �
��do you hear yourself? Remember Stuart? You said—”

  “I know what I said,” she snapped, rising from the couch. “And if you love me, you’ll protect our child.”

  I winced when the door slammed behind her, then looked to Val for a rational voice. “What am I supposed to do?” I asked. “Tell me there’s an option besides fratricide.”

  A knock at the door cut short his reply, and he opened it to reveal Toula on the threshold. “Hey, sorry to interrupt,” she began, letting herself in, “but I got Moyna to talk, and she told me something you need to hear—”

  Before she could launch into a recap of what I’d witnessed, Val embraced her, whispered something in her ear, and let himself out of the room. When the latch clicked behind him, I studied Toula, who absently rubbed her arm as if trying to comprehend the sudden physical contact. “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “I…don’t know,” she mumbled, then noticed the broken table and knick-knacks. “What the hell happened in here?”

  “I watched your conversation,” I confessed, waving the table back into shape. “Lost my temper, needed something convenient to punch.”

  “Ah. Makes sense.” Her mouth twitched, and the wall repaired itself. “Did Val listen in, too?”

  “Yeah.” When that merited no further response, I turned and saw an odd sheen in her eyes. “Something wrong? Besides my homicidal clan, I mean.”

  Toula’s hand returned to its place on her arm, and she bit her lip for the space of a few breaths before she spoke. “He told me I’m loved,” she said, sounding perplexed. “Why would he say that?”

  “Perhaps you are.”

  She stood there, holding herself through her sweatshirt, then nodded. “Excuse me,” she said, turning for the door. “I need to have a word with my brother. Do me a favor and butt out of this one, okay?”