“Shall we what?” I asked uncertainly, stepping up to the wide silver bowl.
“Find out your parentage, of course,” Queen Elia said to me. “My scrying bowl can tell us.”
I looked into the silver bowl again and saw my own reflection wavering there. After two weeks, it still gave me a start to see myself looking so different. I tried to concentrate instead on the bowl itself. It was filled to the brim with clear water—I mean, so filled it looked like it ought to spill over at any minute—but somehow it didn’t.
Surface tension, I thought, remembering the words from a long-ago science class. I wondered uneasily if I would ever take another science class. Would I get to go back to the human world to Nocturne Academy and finish taking AP Biology or was this it for me?
“How does it work? I don’t see anything,” I said, trying to push my fear away.
“Of course not—we’ve not given the scrying bowl anything to work with yet,” the queen said reasonably. “Come, my dear, we must each give it a drop of blood.”
Reaching into the bun of silver hair at the back of her neck, she drew out a long golden pin with a real diamond at the end of it. The diamond’s many facets winked and threw rainbows in the dim room. She pricked her pointer finger and let a single drop of crimson fall into the silver basin. Then she offered the diamond pin to me.
“Thank you,” I said politely. “But if you don’t mind, I have my own.”
I drew the hairpin with the red pearl at the end of it, out of the back of my collar, glad that it hadn’t transformed into something else when Lachlan had changed my uniform to a dress. It was the same one Megan had loaned me when I had Marked Bran and Lachlan as mine, what felt like a million years ago. When I had tried to give it back, she’d refused to take it.
“Keep it,” she’d said, winking at me. “For when you choose which of your guys you want to Blood Bond to you.”
I had thanked her and kept the hairpin in my clothes ever since—though I had to be honest—just thinking of choosing Bran over Lachlan or Lachlan over Bran, made me feel sick to my stomach.
But I didn’t have to choose right now—I just had to prick my finger. Which I did and then I let a single drop fall into the silver basin, like Queen Elia had.
For a moment, our two drops of blood just sat there on the surface of the water. It was odd that they didn’t diffuse into the water, I thought, frowning as I watched them.
But just as I was about to ask the Queen what was supposed to be happening, things started to change.
First, the two droplets merged together, like two balls of Mercury running together and sticking when you break an old-fashioned thermometer. Then they began to sink to the bottom of the bowl like a rock—or more like a small, round, red pebble, I supposed.
“Ah…good!” I heard the Queen murmur. “Not a by-blow then.”
“Uh, does that mean I’m not a, uh, bastard of the King?” I asked, wanting to be sure I was getting it right and hoping I wasn’t offending her.
“That is exactly what it means, my dear.” Queen Elia smiled at me. “If you and I were not blood related in some way, the droplets would have avoided each other rather than running together. So you are related to me. The question is, how?”
She waved her hand over the broad silver bowl and murmured some words in Gaelic or Celtic. A flash of purple light lit the bowl from within and then the blood droplets, which had merged into one, began to change.
First, they put out tendrils of blood, diffusing into the clear water—which was what I would have expected to start with. As the tendrils drifted upwards, they began to form patterns and then faces.
I saw the queen’s face and then an older Fae man I assumed must be King Tyr. He had golden hair and purple eyes, just like mine.
“Ohhh,” I breathed. “Amazing!”
But the blood droplets weren’t done yet. Another tendril rose into the water and another face formed—this face was a young, handsome man with golden hair and eyes like mine and the king’s.
I stared at him, amazed. Was this man my father? Was the silver scrying bowl showing us some kind of family tree, drawn in blood?
“Ah, my son.” Queen Elia sounded sad. “My sweet Tarren—how I miss him!”
But the blood wasn’t done yet. It formed another face which was connected to the young man but unconnected to Queen Elia or King Tyr. I stared at it as it took the shape of a young, beautiful woman with long, black hair who didn’t look so different from me, except that she had pure gold eyes.
Was she my mother? And if so, who was she? I noticed that Queen Elia didn’t say anything about her, but she didn’t look surprised at all as the woman’s face formed in the scrying bowl.
Another tendril of blood reached out from the young man’s image and met one which was reaching from the young woman. Between them, a new image began to take shape. After a moment, I recognized the face it was forming as my own.
“Those are my parents,” I whispered, understanding what the bowl was showing me. “Which means that you…you’re…” I looked up at the Queen. “You’re my grandmother! Is that what the bowl is saying?”
She looked up from the bowl and there were tears in her blue ringed eyes—tears of joy, I realized.
“Yes, my dear!” She took in a sobbing breath and reached for me, hugging me tight. “After so many years I had given up hope! But yes, you are my granddaughter and the rightful heir to The Summer Court!”
I hugged her back, barely able to take it all in.
“I…I’m a fairy princess?” I asked at last. How strange the words sounded, spoken out loud! It was the kind of thing you dream of as a little girl but who would ever believe that such a dream could come true?
“You are, my dear. You are a princess of the Fae.” My grandmother, the Queen, pulled back and held me at arm’s length, looking me over from head to toe. “And so lovely, too! Oh, I’m so happy to have found you! At last I have an heir!”
“I’m really happy too—to know who I really am. And to finally meet my family,” I said, smiling at her. “So your son was my father?”
“Yes.” She sighed sadly. “He ran away from the Court and his responsibilities many years ago, I fear, and has never been seen since.” She hung her head. “I fear that he is dead.”
I bit my lip, uncertain how to tell her what Headmistress Nightworthy had told me.
“Um…you could be right,” I said hesitantly, not sure how she would take the news.
“How do you mean, my dear?” The queen looked at me sharply. “Please—tell me what you know.”
Slowly, I told her what the Nocturne Headmistress had told me about how my father had said he had been poisoned and that my mother had already died of the same poison.
“He also said I would be in danger if anyone knew who I was,” I added. “I think he must have been the one to put the geas on me that hid my true identity.”
“Oh, my poor boy!” Tears filled the queen’s triple-ringed eyes and ran down her cheeks. “I feel terrible that he didn’t feel safe enough to come to me and hand you over to be raised properly!”
“Well my mom—my human mother, I mean—did a pretty good job,” I said, a touch defensively. “I mean, she did the best she could. We’ve never had much money but she loves me and she’s always been there for me.”