The Iron Crown (The Darkest Court)

“Goodfellow wouldn’t have let you escape easily.”

“No. I broke free with others’ help. Later I’ll tell you everything.” My brother takes a breath and adds, “If you want me to, that is.”

A tentative offer of peace. Not an apology for our past, but an opportunity to try to reconnect. I don’t know if I’ll like my eldest brother any more now than I did as a child. But I’m curious how Goodfellow destroyed our Summer cousins so easily, and how Sláine survived it. “I’ll think about it.”

Mother’s bored by our pleasantries. “Lugh,” she calls, making no move to rise. “What fortuitous timing.”

I swallow against the bile rising in my throat and look away from her and the bevy of shades hovering at her back. They’re ancient, flaking and paper-thin, staring about the room with hollowed eyes. They’ve been trapped here so long, they’ve no words left. If they offered their memories to me, or spoke of how Mother created them, I don’t know if I could stay here another moment. If I could look her in the eyes again.

Keiran’s warm hand at the small of my back grounds me enough to take another step forward. He nudges me toward the last empty seats at the opposite end of the table to Mother as Roark announces, “We need to delay the attack.”

“What attack?” I ask.

“Why?” Sláine asks Roark. There’s no real challenge in his voice. He’s curious, not defensive, and I’m not sure how to feel about that change. The candlelight falls across the scar on his face. “There isn’t time to delay.”

“What attack?” I repeat.

My brothers both turn to me. They wear twin expressions of weariness, as if I’m too slow to understand a problem they’ve already solved.

“Goodfellow landed on our shores this morning,” Sláine says. “He was following your Sluagh.”

“It’s a small group, probably for scouting while the rest of his army catches up,” Roark adds, settling into his seat next to Smith. “We intend to keep it that way. Cut the head from the snake, if you will. What you’ve learned could help us. Tell them what you told me about Goodfellow.”

The draugr offers its memories to me again and I know if I accept, if I take hold of them, I’ll be lost to those flashes of the past once more. They’re too powerful, too consuming thanks to the draugr’s strength. Instead, I rely on the bits it’s shown me, the impressions it’s left. Pacing the floor behind Keiran helps distract me from looking too deeply. The stones here are slightly uneven, easy to count and memorize as I cross back and forth over them.

“Lugh,” Keiran murmurs from his chair, and I stop mid-stride from his gentle redirection.

“Goodfellow has betrayed Faerie,” I say.

“We know,” Sláine says. “He took the Summer Court first because it was the easier target. Nearly took Seb too, after learning he was the Green Man.”

“Seb?”

A dark-haired man steps forward from one of the corners of the room. I don’t know how I didn’t notice him before; his glamour glows despite casting no light. But it’s the sight of his face that makes me clutch at my head against the sudden explosion of the draugr’s reaction.

The last time I saw this man, he hung above a marble floor, bleeding out.

The last time I saw him, I thought I’d die from the pain of inhabiti

ng Goodfellow’s body as he murdered an innocent fae.

Seb is a shade, and I don’t know how Sláine can see him.

“You’re dead,” I declare. Keiran swears.

Seb gives me a strange look. “Was. Green Man though, so rebirth and all that.”

“You’re the...” I trail off, staring at this unassuming man. There’s no indication that he is the wellspring of all power in Faerie. He’s young and kind-looking and far, far too relaxed to wield so much magick. At least, that’s what I think until our eyes meet. I have to look away first, too unnerved from his eldritch gaze to dare to question his presence further. Far easier to accept it and move on. “Fine. You’re the Green Man. Goodfellow bled you out.”

Seb and my mother are the only ones at the table who don’t flinch. Even Roark, for all his careful dissembling, can’t hide his reaction. This time, Seb’s inspection of me is much more thorough. “He did.”

“He wanted your power.”

“Yes. And he succeeded in getting it, for a brief time.”

“Sebastian has told us this already. But how do you know? We haven’t heard from you for months.” Mother’s fingers have tightened around the arms of her throne, the only obvious sign of her unease.

“I learned who Goodfellow was at the beginning,” I tell her. “He grew up in a cottage on the Mainland. His mother was Seelie, his father was Sluagh. She’d been cast out by the Summer Court for falling in love with an unaffiliated fae and getting pregnant. She came to the newly established Winter Court for help.” I meet Mother’s gaze. Some of the leftover whispers of the draugr’s presence stir. Its bitterness seeps out when I continue, “You refused her aid. She returned home and gave birth. She died. A magickal child was left alone with a Sluagh father passing for human. There was no one to help, no way to hide his child’s strangeness.”