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Whispers die and bodies go still. Even the endless reflections seem to freeze around us. Careful blankness settles over the courtiers’ faces, and the gathered fae suddenly become absorbed by anything but the confrontation unfolding before them.
Nyctarian’s attention snaps to Kelaros as Theron goes rigid beside me.
My hand drops to my dagger, ready to draw. “You know nothing of what marked me.”
“Don’t I?” Kelaros approaches but stops at a careful distance with one eye on my daggers. “I was there when you exchanged yourself for the Silver Prince. I am a healer. I sensed the change in your body.”
Theron shifts, positioning himself between us. “You were warned what would happen if we were given cause to publicly recognize the rift.”
Kelaros answers with infuriating calm. “I believe we passed that point when your brother failed to return from it.”
A muscle jumps in Theron’s jaw.
“No.” Nyctarian rises from his throne.
One softly spoken word silences the room.
He descends the three steps from his dais, but his attention remains fixed on Kelaros. “You were not given liberty to speak of this in front of our guests and your peers.”
Kelaros lifts his chin in defiance, leaving me to wonder what understanding they reached in private and why he is so willing to cast it aside now.
Nyctarian lifts two fingers. “Leave us.”
The courtiers rise without protest. Those already standing bow and turn for the doors, moving with enough speed to tell me this isn’t a request. Seats empty around the hall, reflections streaming toward the exit until the army that surrounded us dwindles to only Kelaros, Nyctarian, a handful of Dark guards, and us.
The double doors close with a heavy thud.
Only then does Nyctarian turn back to Kelaros. “You have spent too long away from the spire if you have forgotten which truths we allow other sithes to acknowledge.”
Kelaros inclines his head. “My apologies, Your Majesty.”
Nyctarian lets the silence stretch before his attention shifts to me. “I have heard Kelaros’s accounting of how you came to carry an Opal shard within you.”
The crystal fragment responds to his approach with increasing agitation, cold fire spreading through my chest and down my arms. The sensation reminds me of plunging into icy water, when the body can’t decide whether it’s burning or freezing.
Nyctarian circles me, studying me from every angle. “How curious that it does not show in your outer appearance, when Kelaros claims the transformation was quite obvious on Prince Elionn.”
His nostrils flare as he leans closer.
My skin prickles with unease, and I’m thankful for the glamour.
Nyctarian’s head cocks, as if he can see right through my disguise. “Tell me, do you have enough Nyt’Fall blood to heal?”
My head snaps up, and I glare. “I claim no such familial links to that snake.”
“Yet family he must be,” he murmurs, “or the court would not have let you in.”
“It took Elionn as well,” I point out. “Or will you claim he is also a Nyt’Fall?”
Nyctarian’s lips twitch with amusement, and he whispers for my ears alone. “The last Dark King being of the Nyt’Fall line is common knowledge, as is the decade a princess of his loins spent in the Silver Sithe, during which the Silver Princes were born. Did you not learn your history, darkling?”
Right. In this world, princesses are traded between sithes, or even courts, to bolster the low birthrate of the fae. It’s what created the whole mess the last time I was here, when the Silver Princess wished to break her betrothal to the Gold King so she could run off with the Lord of the Wild Wood.
But if a princess of the Dark Sithe spent time in the Silver Sithe…
My chin jerks back, and my stomach twists as I turn to keep Nyctarian in sight. “Caelan and Elionn are Nyt’Falls, too?”
The Dark King chuckles. “Do not worry. The Silver blood is dominant, and they are not of the same line as you. That branch died with the birth of the twins, a hundred years before you came into existence.”
