The queen cut him off. “Do not worry about your friends, Rhys. You will see them as soon as all of this is over.” She waved at her guards. “Escort my son to his quarters, and see that he does not leave them.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Aibel said. He inclined his head, and two of the guards came to stand on either side of Rhys.
Rhys looked at me with devastated eyes. “I will find a way to help you. Do not lose hope.” He held his hand out to me, and I clasped it in mine for a second before he was led away.
Queen Anwyn rounded on me the second the door clicked behind them. Her slap was so hard my cheek went numb and my ears rang. “I should have had you disposed of the moment I heard of my son’s interest in you. You have caused me nothing but aggravation.”
I straightened and gave her a look of such hatred she took a step back. Bauchan and Aibel were immediately on either side of her. How brave would she be one-on-one without her guards to protect her?
“He’s not your son,” I said through gritted teeth. “You can drop the act. Everyone in this room knows what you did.”
She sneered at me. “He is my son. I gave him my blood. I gave him immortality and a life few could ever dream of. What could your human mother have given him that I did not?”
“A real mother’s love.”
“That is another human flaw I despise. You are so sentimental.” She turned her back on me and crossed the room to her chaise.
“Why did you do it?” I asked, desperately needing to know why my family had suffered so much. “Why did you take my brother?”
Queen Anwyn sat and took time to arrange her skirt before she answered me. She spoke as casually as someone talking about what they had for breakfast. “I needed a strong infant boy, and Aibel found one for me.”
Her apathy nearly left me speechless. “And the dead baby he left in the crib? Did he kill someone else’s child to help cover up your crime?”
An emotion crossed her face, but it was gone before I could figure out what it was. “No. That baby was already dead.”
I had the answer to Bayard’s why. There was only one reason Queen Anwyn could have for stealing a human baby and passing him off as her own after she had given birth to a son. The real Prince Rhys had died, and she’d switched him with another baby so no one would know.
Snatches of my conversation with King Oseron came back to me. He’d told me Onagh and Asherah couldn’t provide a strong heir, and they knew someone would challenge Onagh for the throne. So, he’d abdicated to Oseron.
That was it. Queen Anwyn had feared a challenge if people found out her son had died. She had covered it up to keep her throne. She’d taken my brother Caleb and put her dead son in his place. It would have been easy enough for her to glamour a dead Fae baby to look like Caleb. That was why they’d destroyed his grave and the body in it. If my parents ever claimed the prince was their son, an exhumation would prove the child they’d buried was a Fae changeling.
“I should allow Bauchan to carve some parts off you for causing me this strife with Rhys,” she said. “But I have other plans for you that require your body to be intact.”
A shudder went through me, and I didn’t know whether to be relieved or terrified.
She paused, savoring whatever she was about to tell me. “I no longer need to know your secret of how to pass through the temple wards. In two days, I will have the ke’tain, and you will have outlived your usefulness to me.” She tapped her chin with a finger. “I think I will have Aibel go to your world tomorrow and pay one last visit to the James family. Should I send them your love?”
Blood roared in my ears. I didn’t make it two steps in her direction before Bauchan caught me. He spun me around, and there was no time to prepare before his fist plowed into my stomach. I doubled over, gasping for air and heaving at the same time. A punch to my side sent me to my hands and knees where I threw up every bit of the meat pastry Bayard had given me.
A boot struck my shoulder, and I curled up in a ball with my hands over my head. The last thing I heard before the final blow came was Queen Anwyn’s bored voice.
“Try not to kill her, Bauchan. I have one more use for her.”
Chapter 22
“Get up.”
I jolted awake to a sharp pain in my lower back. Suppressing a moan, I rolled onto my back and pushed down the blanket I was burrowed under. Above me stood Bauchan looking ready to kick me again if I didn’t move fast enough. He liked to kick people when they were down, something I’d learned well during the last two days.
I staggered to my feet, letting the blanket fall to the pallet. Bauchan had visited me once each day in the two days since he’d beaten me unconscious in front of the queen. On his first visit, he’d demanded to know where my parents were after Aibel reported they were nowhere to be found. Laughing at him probably hadn’t been my best move. He’d bashed my head against the door a few times until I nearly blacked out. When I collapsed to the floor, he’d kicked me twice for good measure.
On his second visit, he came in while I was asleep. Sharp pain in my side had awakened me, and I thought someone had stabbed me until the boot struck me again. He didn’t speak as he kicked me over and over, and I was too weak to do anything but lie there and take it.
I tensed my body for the first blow and faced him. If he expected me to cower, he was in for disappointment. I was past fearing him, and the way his jaw hardened told me he knew it.
He held up a pair of leg shackles. “Your presence has been requested.”
I stood still while he locked the shackles around my ankles. It was the first time they’d bound my feet, and it filled me with dread. It was also the first time I’d seen him wear a sword since they’d brought me here.
This was it. Whatever Queen Anwyn had planned for me, it was happening now. I would have been lying if I said I wasn’t scared, but I was going to face it with my head high. Before I died, I wanted her to know that all her attempts to break me had failed.
We left the tower room, and Bauchan held my elbow in his hard grip as we descended the stairs. It wouldn’t do for me to trip over the leg shackles and break my neck before the queen got what she wanted from me.
At the bottom, two of her other guards waited to accompany us. We took a different route through the palace and stopped outside a set of tall wide doors with two guards posted outside. The guards each grasped a handle and pulled the heavy doors open.
The room was as big as a church with a high glass roof and a row of windows along the upper half of two sides. The floor was polished white stone, but the walls and ceiling were covered in intricate murals depicting the lives of past Seelie monarchs. Along two sides of the room were chairs, half of which were occupied by the queen’s advisors and other people I didn’t recognize.
At the far end of the room was a dais on which sat a magnificent throne made of eyranth with a back that was at least ten feet tall. On the throne sat the Seelie queen in a royal blue dress and a glittering crown that looked too heavy for her slender neck to support.
On either side of the throne were two smaller ones. The throne on her right where her consort should sit was empty. On her left sat Rhys watching me with an expression of helpless anger as I was led into the room.