My stomach knots. I don’t know how Jas maintains so much hope when everything about our life should have beaten it out of her by now. “If she really cared, wouldn’t she have checked on us sometime in the last nine years?”
She swallows. “Then we’ll use guilt to our best advantage. Maybe she doesn’t care but will feel obligated to help us. We have to try. We can’t keep living like this.” She takes my other hand this time and frowns at the bandage. “You can’t keep living like this.”
I bite back an objection. She’s right that something needs to change, but I’m not the kind of girl who looks to Faerie for answers. I turn to Sebastian. “You’re being awfully quiet.”
He stands and attempts to pace in the three feet of space between the bed and the door. If his face weren’t creased with worry, it might be comical. “It’s dangerous.”
Jas throws up her hands. “Thousands of humans are going to be there, dying for the chance to be a faerie prince’s bride.”
“Dying being the key word,” I mutter. But she’s right. Though some will sneer at the girls planning to go, at least twice as many will put on their finest clothes and line up in hopes of becoming a faerie princess.
“The golden queen is powerful,” Sebastian says, putting his hands behind his head in his typical thinking posture. “She’ll use her magic to protect the humans in her palace, but I don’t like the idea of you two going to Faerie and poking around looking for your mother. There are too many creatures over there who would love to snatch you at the first opportunity to fulfill their nefarious cravings.”
I giggle at the ceiling and roll to my side to look at my sister. “Remember the time Cassia snuck into the golden queen’s solstice celebration and that goblin stole all her hair?”
Jas laughs. “Oh gods, she could not pull off a bald head. And the wigs V bought her while it grew back . . .”
“Atrocious.” I sigh. If it makes me shallow and catty to talk about my cousins this way, I don’t care. They’ve made our lives miserable from the moment Mother put us under Uncle Devlin’s charge. They’re cruel girls who wish the worst for everyone but themselves. It’s hard not to delight in the occasional poor fortune of someone like that.
“I’m talking about creatures much worse than goblins,” Sebastian says. He knows goblins don’t scare us. They’re the messengers between the realms, the only creatures from either who are allowed to freely travel between them. We’re used to goblins. Even Madame Vivias has a house goblin who lives under the second-story stairs. He’s a greedy little thing who holds secrets ransom and has a disturbing collection of human hair.
“I know,” I say, because he’s right about what lives in Faerie. Evil fae, wild beasts, and monsters we’ve never imagined. There’s a reason our realms are kept separate—and maybe even a reason our mother left us behind.
In a lower voice he adds, “If a faerie from the shadow court got his hands on you . . .”
“Make no bargains or ties with the silver eyes,” Jas and I singsong together. Because, yes, the shadow fae are so dangerous that they teach children songs about them.
“I think we should risk it,” Jas says. “I know it’s dangerous, but it would be more dangerous if I had blind faith in the queen’s protection. I’m going to go with my eyes open, and I’m going to find Mother.”
“Do you really think you can find her in the middle of the masses that’ll show up for this thing?” I ask.
“It’s only one castle to search rather than an entire realm.” She shrugs. “And even if we can’t find our mother there, imagine what treasure we might find, Brie.”
So much of what I know about Faerie comes from the bedtime stories Mother liked to whisper as we drifted off to sleep.
Once upon a time, a golden faerie princess fell in love with the shadow king, but their kingdoms had battled for hundreds of years and her parents were sworn enemies of the king and his kingdom . . .
The rest of what I know about Faerie comes from legends everyone knows—pieces of truth and superstition that humans pass through the generations. One of those pieces is of the Seelie queen and the jewels she hoards.
“You’re crazy if you think her sentries will allow you anywhere near her treasures,” Sebastian says, spotting the smile that’s curved my lips.
“They won’t allow anyone,” Jas says, her words measured as she studies me. “I know only one person who could search her grounds undetected.”
Sebastian shakes his head. “Impossible.”
I smile. “But it would be so fun to try.”
He arches a brow at me then turns to frown at Jas. “You see what you’ve done?”