Epilogue

Alona Cahill The constant drip, drip, drip noise drove Alona mad. Some days she counted the drips until she fell asleep only to wake up to another day of nothing but darkness, damp walls, and the constant drip.

Alona had never thirsted for magic the way some of the serving class did. But right now, she’d give almost anything to have been born with magic just for the ability to create fire for warmth and light.

“What does Regan want with me?” she asked the walls of her cell. “I am nothing but a useless princess destined to become a maid. I have no value as a bargaining tool beyond my mothers’ love for me.” And they would never compromise the future of Eldur just for her. That was too high a price to pay for their daughter’s freedom. Regan had to know that.

The drip, drip, drip faded at the sound of footsteps approaching her cell. Alona hadn’t seen a soul since her arrival in the dungeon. Her food and water appeared once a day on the table in the far corner of the cell. That was perhaps the worst part of her captivity. The solitude and the drip, drip, drip.

“Let’s go, Princess. The queen has summoned you.” A Fargelsi servant scraped a key in the lock and opened the heavy wooden door of her cell.

Alona scrambled to her feet, eager to leave the dungeon behind, if only to hear Queen Regan’s grand standing about her plans for Alona.

The man was silent as he escorted her up the winding stairs to the servant’s quarters and past the kitchens. Alona’s stomach growled at the savory aromas wafting into the halls.

The Fargelsi palace was beautiful but a far cry from the one she grew up in. There was a cold, almost sinister quality about the palace that made her uneasy. Like the very walls were watching her every move.

The servant guided her into a throne room where the queen waited for her. Alona couldn’t fathom what Regan could possibly want with her. Still, she stood proudly in front of the queen, refusing to bow as befitting her station. Alona was the princess of Eldur—at least for a few more months—and she regarded the queen as a rival and not a superior.

“You wanted to speak with me?” Alona was proud her voice didn’t shake at all. The Gelsi queen was known for her cruelty and her ruthless magic, and here stood Alona, powerless in front of her. Her traveling clothes stained and torn.

“Welcome to Fargelsi, Princess.” The queen’s voice held a note of amusement.

Alona noticed the man seated beside the queen. “Callum O’Shea,” Alona addressed him. “It surprises me to see you here in attendance of the Gelsi queen.”

“You will address me as King Callum of Iskalt.” His demeanor was every bit as cold as the kingdom he stole from his nephew.

“I will call you nothing of the sort. Eldur recognizes no King of Iskalt other than the true heir, Lochlan O’Shea. You may have allied with Fargelsi, but your nephew will never allow it.”

“You do not speak for Eldur, child.” Queen Regan peered down her nose at Alona. “You are nothing to Eldur or any fae realm. You have no magic. You have no voice.”

“Until I come of age, I am a voice of Eldur.” Alona squared her shoulders. “And you have committed a crime by taking me from my kingdom.”

“What do you know of the girl, Brea Robinson?” Regan asked.

“Who?” Alona hadn’t known what to expect of this summons, but this wasn’t it.

“She doesn’t know.” Another voice joined the queen’s. Alona’s eyes fell to the man standing in the darkness behind the queen’s throne.

“Griffin?” She’d always felt sorry for Lochlan’s brother, raised in the Gelsi court. If he was anything like his brother, he wouldn’t condone any of this. “You know she can’t be trusted, Griffin.” She begged him with her eyes to end this. To help her escape whatever the queen had in store for her, but he refused to meet her eyes.

“She raised me, Alona.” Griffin stepped forward. “Queen Regan is the only mother I’ve ever known.”

“Speaking of mothers,” Regan interjected, patting Griffin’s hand as if to tell him he was a good boy. “Did you know you were a changeling, dear?” Regan batted her eyelashes.

“A changeling?”

“Of course, you little fool. Your mother is a weak queen, but even she would have given birth to a child with magic. She knew I would stop at nothing to take my brother’s child so she switched her with a human girl. Her daughter has lived in the human world, leaving you, a human, to stand in as her only child who could never inherit her throne. She would have me believe Brandon’s child was a weakling.”

“No.” Alona’s legs trembled beneath her.

“Brea Robinson is the true heir of Eldur. The daughter of Queen Faolan and my late brother, King Brandon O’Rourke. She was to be betrothed to Griffin before she escaped the palace.”

Alona gasped, realizing in an instant what the queen had planned. “You can’t be serious?”

“You are smarter than your mother. Well, the woman who raised you.” Regan smiled a cruel smile.

“I just don’t get how this works in your favor.” Alona stood straight. She could freak out later. “If this Brea girl is your niece and she marries your ward, Griffin, then Brea’s child—a child who would share blood with you—would be your blood heir.”

“Correct.”

“You’ve gone a very long time without a blood heir, Regan.” Alona smiled, crossing her arms behind her back. “This future child you’ve planned for would strengthen your reign and your hold on Fargelsi for years to come. But you’ve never been satisfied with just Fargelsi.

“If what you say is true, then Brea is my mother’s blood heir. You intend to have her take Eldur and do your bidding? No, wait, that’s not good enough for you. You’ve always wanted Eldur for yourself.” Alona turned on her heel and paced across the room to pour herself a glass of wine, hoping Regan couldn’t see the way her hands were shaking.

“By all means, help yourself.” The queen chuckled. “I’m curious to see where you’re going with your assumptions.”

Alona took a sip of wine to strengthen her resolve. “With Brea and Griffin’s union you get a firmer hold on Gelsi and a foothold in Eldur. But we’re forgetting Iskalt.” She turned to the king and a cold sense of dread swept through her. This wasn’t about Gelsi and Eldur. “You have an alliance with Callum, who has no heir.” If she was right, they had a deal to make Griffin Callum’s heir, and by default Griffin and Brea’s child would be the future ruler of Iskalt as well as Fargelsi and Eldur.

“No wonder my mother went to such lengths to hide Brea Robinson from you. What an ingenious web you’ve spun for the future of our world. Your grand-niece or nephew will inherit half the fae realm. But what does that give the mighty Queen Regan?”

“Your speculations are quite impressive.” Regan smiled, giving nothing away. “I called you here to make a bargain with you. You are a human without magic, caught up in the fae world where you can’t hope to come out on top.”

“What do you think you can offer me that I would accept?” Alona crossed her arms over her chest.

“I will set you free, and in exchange for your freedom, you will bring me Brea Robinson.”

“Why would I ever do that?”

“Bring my niece home and I will allow you to return to the human world where you belong.”

Alona shook her head with a grimace, her heart hammering in her chest. “I visited the human world once and I didn’t care for it too much. I did meet a nice girl there though. She was good to me. It would be a shame for me to betray her now.”

Alona chanced a glance at Griffin. He stood silently behind his queen, looking quite grave and uncertain. He might not be a lost cause just yet.

“If Brea escaped your clutches, you can bet Lochlan has taken her to Eldur by now. She is beyond your reach, and I’ve grown weary of this discussion that doesn’t interest me.”

Without magic, Alona couldn’t help her people fight against Regan’s plans, but she could do one thing. She could be a prisoner. A prisoner who refused to be used as a pawn in Regan’s schemes.

“Take me back to my cell.” Alona turned to leave the throne room.

“Very well, show our guest to her new quarters,” Regan called to Alona’s escort. “We’ll see how well she’s ready to cooperate after she’s grown accustomed to life in the bowels of Fargelsi.”

The trip back to the dungeon was another silent one. But they continued down the stairs, far past the cell she’d spent her first week in. It was darker and colder. The smell of mold and rot made her gag as she slipped on the slimy stones beneath her feet. The walls closed in around her, and Alona began to panic. This would be far worse than the musty room with the constant drip, drip, drip.

The roar of the falls and the rush of the river sounded overhead. They were deep under the palace when her escort reached for his keys to unlock an iron grated door.

“I must follow my orders, you understand?” the man finally spoke, shoving the iron bars open.

“I hold no ill will for you, sir.” She stepped into the larger hall on the other side of the door, and the stench of unwashed bodies assaulted her nose. Row upon row of filthy cells lined the corridor. Pitiful looking prisoners huddled in their tattered blankets and turned their dead eyes on her.

The queen’s servant opened a cell door, and Alona stepped inside. The room was hardly bigger than a closet. More of a cage than a cell. A bucket sat in one corner, and moldy straw covered the muddy floor. There was barely enough room to sit, much less lay down.

Alona flinched as the iron bars clanged shut behind her. She sank to the floor, clutching her hand over her mouth to still her sobs. In one fell swoop, she’d discovered she was never fae born, and her mothers weren’t her mothers after all. She would likely spend years, if not the rest of her life in this cell, paying the price for Faolan’s attempt to save her true-born daughter from Regan’s grasp. She was nothing more than a human stand-in daughter. But Regan couldn’t take everything from her. Alona knew without a doubt in her heart that the mothers who raised her loved her every bit as much as they loved their true-born daughter.

A hand reached through the bars from the next cell and grasped hers. “Don’t let them hear you cry, Alona.” The filthy hand squeezed hers.

“Who are you?” She peered into the darkness, trying to make out the face of the woman beside her. She leaned against the bars, grasping the stranger’s hand like a lifeline.

“My name is Neeve. I served the Lady Brea while she was here, and I helped her escape.”

“She’s in Eldur now?”

“I sent her through the southern Vatlands to Lochlan’s camp,” Neeve said. “It’s only a matter of time before that girl gets her head on straight and strikes back.”

“In the meantime, we need to plan our escape.” Alona choked back her tears. She might be imprisoned and feeling lower than she ever had before, but Alona Cahill was a fighter and she wouldn’t go down without an explosive battle.

“Fargelsi is no longer just a kingdom of the fae world, Alona. It is a prison. Those born of Fargelsi are prisoners of its queen—she holds our magic, only allowing us the faintest use of it. There is no joy here, only fake smiles and hidden agendas. For those without magic, there is no escape.”

“Maybe for those born of Fargelsi and those born without magic. But I am human. I am not bound by the laws of this world, and I will find a way to fight back.”

~~~