I glanced up at Bayard and Kaelen and whispered, “Just you.”
“No.” Bayard crossed his arms. “I am not leaving you alone in here, Rhys.”
Rhys arched his eyebrows at his guard. “She is shackled, weaponless, and as weak as a newborn hama. If I am not able to defend myself against her then you, my friend, are a very bad trainer.”
Bayard’s scowl slipped for a second, but it was back in place when he looked at me. “We will be right outside the door.”
I waited until after the door closed to speak. I didn’t agree to talk to Rhys because I thought he could save me from the queen. He might try, but he was not strong enough to go against her and her guards. I did it because I knew I would probably die here, and there were things I needed to say to him before it was too late.
“I was caught at the temple, but not trying to steal the ke’tain. I can’t tell you why I was there, only that I was trying to help Faerie. I understand if that’s not enough to convince you I’m telling the truth, but it’s all I can say about it.” I paused to take a sip of water. “It’s true that Bauchan questioned me in Unseelie, and he was angry when I wouldn’t answer all his questions. But that’s not why he arranged to have me kidnapped and brought here.”
Rhys was hanging on every word. “Why then?”
I hesitated for a moment and plunged forward. “He did it because when I was in the temple, I overheard one of the queen’s guards talking to someone about how to get past the wards to steal the ke’tain. He had to get me out of Unseelie before I told someone what I knew, so two of the queen’s guards snuck into my cell and took me. They made it look like I escaped and used a portal to go to my world.”
Rhys inhaled sharply. “Bauchan wants to steal the ke’tain? I have to tell Mother.”
He started to rise, but I snagged his sleeve to stop him. “The queen knows. Bauchan is acting on her behalf.”
“No. You are mistaken.” Rhys shook his head.
“I’m not,” I said firmly. “She told me so herself. Just like she admitted she had the ke’tain stolen the first time.”
He shot to his feet before I could stop him. “That is impossible. My mother would never do anything to harm Faerie.”
At his outburst, the door opened, and Bayard leaned in. “Is everything okay?”
I looked up at Rhys’s agitated face and waited for him to say no. He surprised me when he said, “Yes.”
He paced to the other side of the room and back. “Tell me this. What possible reason could the Seelie queen have for stealing our most sacred relic and endangering our world?”
I heard the challenge in his voice, but in his eyes, I caught a flicker of uncertainty. It was enough for me to keep going. He either believed me, or he didn’t. What did I have to lose?
“I don’t think she ever intended to harm Faerie,” I said. “But it was her actions that led us to where we are now. I’ve known that since long before I came to Seelie.”
He stopped pacing and spun to stare at me. “How?”
I wasn’t sure if he was asking how the queen had stolen the ke’tain or how I’d known all this time. I also didn’t know if he was ready to hear all of this, but I was running out of time.
I patted the pallet beside me, and he sat. Then I moved so I was facing him. “It all started when I went on a job at a black-market dealer’s house the Agency had raided.”
I told him about Lewis Tate, the dealer whom the Agency suspected had the ke’tain, and how I’d connected Tate to Davian Woods. That led to the party at Davian’s where I’d seen one of the queen’s guards create a portal and speak to her about the ke’tain. Rhys tried to interrupt me at that point, but I put up a hand to stop him. He could ask all the questions he wanted when I was done telling my story.
Rhys fell silent as I talked about Faris and what he had suffered after he’d discovered who had taken the ke’tain. Rhys’s eyes widened in horror when I described Faris wrapped in iron in that basement and Faris’s own account of it.
Rhys hadn’t been in the human world long, but like every faerie, he knew how deadly iron was and what long-term contact like that would do to a Fae body. The queen’s men could have killed Faris, but they chose instead to torture him for months. Kind-hearted Rhys struggled to process that level of brutality from people he knew.
I continued my story, telling him about Gus and how he’d had the ke’tain inside him all that time. I recounted how Davian’s men had kidnapped Conlan and me, and Davian had told me about his deal with Queen Anwyn. How I’d been shot by one of Davian’s men during our escape and would have died if Lukas and his men hadn’t attempted the conversion.
“What I could never figure out was why the queen would take the ke’tain from Faerie,” I said half to myself. “Today, I got my answer. She told me she did it to upset the balance of magic just enough to show everyone how dangerous it is to keep the barrier open. She wanted to use it to convince Unseelie to seal the barrier for good. But then the ke’tain was lost, and things got out of control.”
Rhys looked like I’d punched him in the gut. “My whole life, Mother has talked about sealing the barrier. At times, I felt like she wanted to do something about it, but I did not think she would take it this far.”
“She’s going to try again. This time, she’s not taking the ke’tain out of Faerie, but she’s going to use it to force Unseelie’s hand.” I paused. “And she’s planning to make it look like I was the one who stole it.”
“How could she? She has to know you will tell them the truth about her and…” He stared at me for several seconds, and then he vigorously shook his head. “No. She may be guilty of those other things, but my mother would not resort to killing an innocent. I cannot believe that of her.”
My stomach twisted as it did every time he called Queen Anwyn his mother. His real mother – our mother – was a good, strong, loving, fiercely protective woman who had been robbed of her son by that monster.
I looked into his blue eyes, identical to our father’s, and I was suddenly overcome with longing and grief. I was never going to hear my dad’s laugh again or feel the warm security of his hugs. And my mom would never recover from losing another child. My death was going to destroy our family, and Queen Anwyn’s victory over us would be complete. And there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I reached for Rhys’s hand and clasped it between mine. I might not be able to change my fate, but I could give something back to my parents before I died.
My father and I had been wrong. We’d thought the only way to protect our family from the queen was to keep the truth about Caleb a secret. What we should have done was tell our story to anyone who would listen. Most would not have believed us, but enough people would have. If we had exposed her and something had happened to us, then people would know who did it. More importantly, Rhys would know.
“There is something else I have to tell you. I believe it’s the real reason Queen Anwyn is trying so hard to seal off Faerie from the human world.”
He frowned. “I know her reason. She has talked about keeping our world free from the impurities of the other realm.”