The Headmistress sighed deeply and rubbed her temples with her long, white fingers, as though she was getting a headache. It was a very human gesture, I thought.
“Your father was the one who set up the trust which pays your scholarship,” she admitted. “And he charged me never to tell you the details, but things have changed considerably. You have changed, Miss Plunkett.”
“Where is he?” I asked. “Please tell me, Headmistress. And my mother—my real mother—where is she? Who is she? Do you know?”
She leaned back against her desk, as though a heavy burden was resting on her shoulders.
“Miss Plunkett, I should not be the one to tell you this,” she said slowly. “But I very much fear that both your natural parents…are dead.”
72
“Dead?” I stared at her blankly. “But…but you just got finished admitting to me that you knew my father—that he set up my scholarship! How can he be dead?”
“When he came to me, your father was already dying,” the Headmistress said. “He told me he had been fatally poisoned and that your mother had already succumbed to the same poison. He knew he didn’t have long to live, but he wanted to provide for his baby daughter—for you—before his inevitable death.”
“So they’re dead. Both dead.” I had only known that I was adopted a few short weeks, but already I had begun to wonder about my birth parents. I had even fantasized about meeting them and finding out why they had given me up.
That was never going to happen now.
“I’m so sorry, Emma,” Headmistress Nightworthy said gently, surprising me by using my first name. “I know this can’t be easy for you to hear.”
“Can you at least tell me who they were? My parents?” I asked numbly.
I wasn’t even surprised when she shook her head.
“I’m afraid your father declined to give me any information other than your name when he set up your trust. He seemed to think that knowing who he and your mother were would put you in danger.”
“I don’t see how being ignorant of who I really am is any less dangerous than not knowing,” I said bitterly. “I might be half troll for all I know.”
“Your father did not strike me as the type who would be attracted to a troll,” the Headmistress said dryly. “He was a strikingly handsome man—even for a Fae—with golden hair and eyes very like your own.”
“He must have come from the Summer Court,” I muttered. “But who was my mother and where did she come from?”
“Alas, I was not given that information.” Headmistress Nightworthy shook her head. “I wish I could tell you anything at all besides what I already have, but you now know as much as I do.” She spread her hands.
“What should I do now, then?” I asked, feeling bewildered and dejected.
“I’m afraid you must prepare yourself to enter the Realm,” the Headmistress said soberly. “I do not think Miss Starchild was making an idle threat and her mother, Lady Starchild, truly is high in the Fae Summer Court.”
I felt like I was going to be sick.
“But what will they do to me?”
“They will judge you,” the Headmistress said. “You must tell the truth, just as you have told me. If the trial is just and fair, they will see that you are not to blame.”
“But what if they’re not just and fair?” I demanded. “What then?”
“I have heard that the Queen of the Summer Court is bound by her own law to see both sides of every case,” the Headmistress said firmly. “As long as she is acting as your judge, your trial should be fair.”
And with that, I had to be satisfied. I could see that the Nocturne Headmistress didn’t have anything else to tell me. So I asked permission to be excused and went back to class—which was almost over by that time.
I was hoping against hope that Morganna’s threat was an idle one, or that I would at least have some time to prepare myself before the summons to the Fae Realm came. But neither one of my hopes came true.
I got the summons in the middle of the Dining Hall at lunch that very day.
73
“Wow, you really have had a shitty morning, Emmers,” Avery said sympathetically, when I finished telling everyone at our table exactly what had happened. “And I mean that literally as well as figuratively.”
“You’re not kidding,” I said glumly. “First I get into it with Morganna, then I find out that my real parents are both dead—though I still don’t know who they were—and now I have to worry about getting a summons to appear at a trial in the Fae Realm.”
“It really sucks,” Megan agreed, nodding. “But maybe you’ll have a little time to prepare before the trial.”
“Guess again,” Griffin murmured and nodded his head at something behind me.