“What kind of rumor?” I asked Jasper.
“One about you and Liam being engaged.” He picked a piece of lint off of his Gucci jacket.
My mouth dropped open, and Liam froze next to me.
“No way.” I shifted uncomfortably. “Why would we do that?”
Jasper waved me off. “Listen, people don’t like seeing you together yet. If they all thought there was a royal wedding to look forward to—”
“No.” My voice was firm. “Let’s stay on task. How are we going to tear down ‘New Faerie’ and get the crystals back while also protecting our borders here back at home?”
Leave it to Jasper to say something so ridiculous.
Trissa chewed on her bottom lip, and it was clear my mother’s guard was thinking. “Trissa, what’s on your mind?” I asked her.
She looked at me with a gaze I couldn’t quite interpret. “What?” I pressed her.
“You’re not really a full-fledged Queen. If you were, you’d have twice the power and be better able to take on our enemies,” she hedged.
“But I don’t want to take power from the Queen while she sleeps, lest she fall deeper,” I explained.
Trissa nodded. “But, traditionally, after the Spring Queen is crowned, she receives an activation of sorts from the Spring Tree.”
The Spring Tree… that was a myth… right?
“Yes!” Jasper clapped his hands. “And you’ve given some of your power to the Life Tree, so you’re weaker than you should be.”
“Gee, thanks.” I rolled my eyes.
“It’s a good idea,” Mara chimed in. “The Spring Tree is at the Spring Castle. The activation would give you enough power to set up the perimeter protection dome again.”
Relief melted through me; setting up the protection again meant we could go away for long trips without having to worry about the village being attacked. “Well, why didn’t you start with that?” I nodded. “Let’s do it. Right now.”
I stood to leave, and Trissa stopped me, reaching out to place a hand on my shoulder.
“There’s a catch.” Her voice held a sadness, and my stomach sank. “If you take the power activation from the Spring Tree, it will weaken the Queen because it will pull the power from her.”
Of course, because nothing could be easy.
Great.
The last thing I wanted to do was weaken the Queen further. What if I took too much power and she never woke? As of right now, Kira thought that she might be able to awaken naturally once we had more than six crystals. Would taking more power mean I would need all twelve to wake her? I needed to know more about how she fell into this coma, to begin with, and I had an idea.
“I need to think on it. Let’s break for the day,” I told everyone and stood.
Liam shot me a sympathetic glance. “Raincheck on our date?”
My heart plunged even deeper into my stomach, and I nodded. “Yeah, sorry. Sounds good.”
Reaching out, he grabbed my hand and squeezed. We were just trying to find our way back to each other, and life kept getting in the way.
I couldn’t stop thinking about what Trissa said. Take the activation from the Spring Tree and weaken the Queen in her already weakened state? I just couldn’t conceive of that. What if it killed her? It would help to know what was even wrong with her. If she’d fallen into a restorative sleep after putting too much energy into saving Faerie and the protection domes, like Indra said, or something else… I just couldn’t believe anything Indra said anymore. There was only one way to find out. Reaching out, I grabbed the book I’d placed Indra’s hair in and walked back to my room, leaving everyone else to sit there in silence.
The time of my tiptoeing around Indra and hoping the Queen would awaken and deal with her had passed.
I was the only one right now with the authority to deal with this. I had to put on my big girl panties and face the truth, deliver the consequences. Because if Indra really had done all the shit my mother said she had in her journal, there would be consequences, and I had no reason to doubt my mother. But I felt, to be a just Queen, I had to see for myself.
I was a pro at the memory spell by now. Mixing the paste, grinding the mortar and pestle, it had a soothing quality to it. When I split open the book and pulled the long, orange hair from its pages, the first tremors of anxiety rolled through me.
What if she had done things even more horrible than I’d originally thought?
With a shaky breath, I lay back in my bed… her bed… and rubbed the paste over my eyelids, thinking instantly of my mother and wanting to pull a memory with her.
Instead… I saw blackness.
What the fae?
I thought of the Queen and, for a slight second, felt a pull but then hit blackness as well.
Indra… she’d… hidden her memories?
Anger surged through me at the thought. Just how powerful was she? I’d have to ask Jasper how this was possible. She was less like a regular powerful Summer fae and more like a…
“Witch,” I hissed into the open room. Now that I’d said it out loud, the realization dawned on me, and it felt like I’d been struck with lightning.
Indra was a fucking fae witch. Witch fae were pale, tattooed, had a certain look, and not usually allowed this close to royalty for fear of betrayal. Jasper advising me was one thing. Indra posing as an elder of our people, the right hand of the Queen, making policy, was another. How did she hide her true nature so that she looked like the rest of us?
Magic.
The anger started to pulse through me, causing light to emanate out of my palms. I could see it lighting up my room from behind my closed eyelids.
How fucking dare she. How dare she mask herself as a common Summer fae and worm her way into the Queen’s
