Page 44 of His Dark Delights
Lilly
The air wavered with ancient magic, a palpable force that thrummed through the chamber like a living thing.
My insides trembled at the truth unfolding before me.
The palace breathed, humming with power, each note resonating through her and into my bones.
A symphony of the unknown and the familiar, a song that both frightened and called to me.
The Queen swallowed, taking another step into the hall. Her chest heaved with each breath she took, and her features twisted with distress. She licked her lips once, blinking as if she didn’t believe her own eyes. To Lunaric, she said. “My daughter… she’s my daughter and your sister.”
He laughed incredulously, gaping at her. “What? You’ve no other children but me. You were wed to my father.”
She tore her eyes from me then, smoothing her features. “I had her before you were born, Lune. Before I wed your father.”
I watched them interact, frozen and stunned into silence.
My skin went taut, and my stomach dipped.
If not for the biological recognition in my veins, singing that she was my mother, I wouldn’t have believed it.
How could that powerful, commanding woman be my mother?
How could the Queen of Fae be the same woman who birthed me, then left me with my father?
“I’ve had a sister my entire life, and you never told me?” he returned. Then he vented a laugh. “Oh, the gods have fun with fate, don’t they?”
“You knew how your father was, Lune. I was young back then. When we were betrothed, I couldn’t let him know.” She turned her glistening silver eyes on me. “I left you with your father to keep you safe.”
“My father’s dead,” I blurted, some petty part of me wanting to hurt her as much as I’d hurt.
Her brow twitched, and her unreadable expression wavered. She choked back agony and grief so quickly I almost missed it crashing through her. “I’m sorry, Lilliana. I’m so sorry.”
“I don’t need you to be sorry,” I retorted. “I need you to unlock my fae essence.”
She reeled back as if I’d smacked her across the face. “No. I won’t do that. I locked your essence up as a baby to keep you safe. I won’t undo it now.” She crossed the floor until she stood on the other side of the table. “You must return to the farm away from the war.”
“It’s too late for that now,” I squeezed through a tight throat. Sobs clawed up in my chest, and I refused to let them free.
Lunaric stepped in. “I’d have to agree with… my sister,” he said almost sarcastically before his tone became earnest. “Lilliana saved my life from the Butcher. She’s the only reason I’m alive right now, Mother.”
Her eyes widened a fraction, and she peered at me, almost in a new light.
“We made a deal. If she got me out, I’d ensure her essence was unlocked. Lilly jumped in front of the king’s blade at a very public execution and set me free. Now I owe her more than my life.”
“Damn the gods,” she ground out. Her hand swiped over her face, leaving a smear of blood on her high cheekbone—human blood.
“They seem to have an odd sense of humor.” Lunaric’s head angled to me, and his wings quivered. “Well, it seems I have my older sister to thank for saving my life. As much as I’d love to stay and continue this family reunion, I think you two need a moment, yes?”
His mother—our mother—nodded. The prince vented a breath through his nose, then his wings fluttered, carrying him into the air. When he vanished through an open window, the buzzing of wings vanished, leaving me alone with the Fae Queen.
I looked into the face of the woman I’d wondered about my entire life. I’d felt her love for me like a passing breeze, and now I stood before her.
“Father was always there for me, and you never were.” I didn’t know what I was saying, but the words tumbled off my tongue.
“You were never there for me. I never knew you. Not who you were, and not even your name. It took an odd twist of fate to bring us together. Now my father is dead, and I don’t know you—”
“Ellaria,” she said. “My name is Ellaria. And it broke my heart to leave you behind.”
“Yet you still did it.”
She winced and a wobbly sigh escaped her.
“I had to. I was engaged to the former Fae King. He would have killed us both if I’d returned to the Fae Wild with you in my arms,” she continued. “Your father was the safer option.”
“You chose a crown over me, a throne over my father. All those years he still loved you, you know?”
“And I loved him,” her voice broke. “I never stopped loving him. Your father, my Eddard, he was the only man I ever truly loved. But Oberyn was a possessive, vengeful man, and he wouldn’t have let me go for anything.”
I sank into my seat, swept away by the emotions wreaking havoc in my chest.
“How… How did you meet my father?” I asked in a daze. My eyes cast to the table and the crumbs from dinner.
“Flower nymphs often travel to different lands. We attune ourselves to the plants and flowers we find. It strengthens us, you see. I got injured in the mountains near Eddard’s village. He found me, nurtured me back to health, and not long after I discovered I was with child.”
I watched, listening carefully. Ellaria, my mother, the queen, walked around the edge of the table, peeling off chunks of her armor as she went.
Her pauldrons, her bracers, her breastplate all thunked on the floor while she talked.
Eventually, she was down to her padded clothing and dropped into a seat at the end of the table, a few chairs away .
“But the future queen of the fae can’t have a bastard with a human man,” I suggested.
“No, she can’t.” Ellaria took a half-empty cup of wine on the table and chugged it down.
Her eyes stayed on the wisteria chandeliers as she continued.
“Flower nymph pilgrimages can last years. It gave me enough time to birth you, feed you, ween you, lock up your essence, then leave.” Her head turned, catching my gaze.
“It broke me the day I had to leave you and your father. Never doubt that, Lilliana. It was the hardest thing I ever had to do.”
“I understand,” I assured. As much as it burned me inside, I truly did. “I knew you loved me. All those years, I knew. And now that I’ve seen more of the world and how cruel men can be, I understand more than I’d like.”
“I still do. I always will. You were my first babe. I carried you, birthed you, just as I did your brother. And you have your own story to tell, my darling, and I’m sorry for it. Tell me, how’d you come to be in the presence of the Butcher?”
My heart yearned for an ear to listen to my tale, to unload the burden plaguing my chest. Somehow it meant more that it was my mother listening, and more still that she might understand. We had an unfortunate love for the wrong man in common.
I told her of the man I found in the woods and who I assumed him to be, then of the gradual love that grew between us. How Ren was kind and selfless and helped me when he didn’t have to. And I told her of the knights who came to take him away and the realization of who he was that broke my heart.
I told her of my time in the palace, scared yet hopelessly in love with a man who’d kill me if he knew the truth of my heritage.
She remained silent, but at some point, she moved into the chair next to mine.
Her hand was warm, and I didn’t mind the dried blood because my mother was holding my hand .
And I finally wept. Tears broke the stunned barrier within me, spilling down my cheeks and dropping into my lap as I cried through my tale. Gods, what a fucking tale it was.
By the end, the wetness gleaming in her eyes broke free, streaking rivers of sorrow into her elegant cheeks. Her silver eyes were lit with magic and fire but dimmed with grief and empathy.
“Thank you for sharing your burden with me, my sweet rose. I’m sorry that you met with this fate.
Yet I am so grateful that you were there to save Lunaric.
” My mother grabbed my face and swept away my tears with her thumbs.
“If you still wish for it, I will honor the deal you made… I will unlock your essence.”
I grabbed her arms, breathing sharp and shallow breaths. “I do. Give me my power, please. I want to live up to my full potential.”
She brushed a strand of hair behind my ear.
Her eyes followed the shape of my ear and her eyes glistened as she stroked her fingers through my hair.
Cherishing me and comforting herself with my presence and the fact I didn’t flinch away.
She admired me as if she’d longed to for years and wanted to weep anew from the freedom to do so.
“It will hurt, Lilly. More than childbirth, and more than dying—it will hurt,” she warned.
“I’ve been hurt, and I’ve wished I was dead. I need this,” I said, urgently.
And inside, I whispered to myself that I needed that power to end the war. When the time came, I’d need that strength to face the Butcher, because he was coming. He was crossing the Mistwood, and he’d reach the Fae Wild soon.
Soren was coming for me, and by the time he arrived, he wouldn’t recognize me anymore.
The mood shifted rapidly over the next day in ways I had no words to explain. A gradual, familial thread wove through me, tying me to Ellaria and Lunaric. It was strange to find myself in the presence of the mother I’d always felt just out of reach, and a brother whose life I’d saved.
We spent a day together, planning to unlock my essence and coming to terms with one another. Ellaria and Lunaric already had an established mother-child relationship. I was the outsider once again, but they didn’t make me feel like one. I felt embraced and whole-heartedly welcomed among them.
And the whole of the Fae Wild came to know who I was. The odd part was when passing, the fae would respectfully dip their head. Stranger still when they titled me “princess”.