“The last thing I want is to become some kind of tyrant over the Middle Worlds,” she spoke with a calming, reassuring tone. “I don’t plan to do that. You know yourselves better than I do. You know what your world needs and how your people function. Unfortunately, with the sudden resignation of eight of the council members, there is no one qualified to rule as monarch; even if there was, we would risk them taking advantage of their power as Minerva did. So-”
“This is all a fucking show.” My head whipped away from Myrcedes and toward the voice, which was coming from Bahz. He had stood from his seat and was sneering at us all. “You killed the real Queen. You come in and send some elven reaper to spy on us for you until we get so desperate you think we’ll just agree that you’re the new ruler?”
I tried to silence the man I used to consider my closest friend in the army. “Bahz-”
“Your disgraced General has been feeding you horse shit if you think the fae will stand for this kind of deposition-”
“I can prove it!” Myrcedes shouted over him. As Bahz had been speaking, the hum of the crowd increased as everyone weighed what was being said. Before Minerva’s death, I was considered a lackey for her, but I was highly respected. Everyone knew me as honorable, loyal, and powerful. Now that I’d been banished, that same respect had fallen onto Bahz’s shoulders, earned or not. Even those who disliked Minerva had very little reason to believe Myrcedes over the Seelie Lieutenant.
I watched her hold up the brown journal. “Tawney is one of your Seers, a fae whose life is dedicated to speaking the truth. I got this from her. This is the log of a Seer from thousands of years ago who wrote of my existence before I’d ever been born.”
“Why do we trust that you didn’t write that moth-eaten piece of trash yourself?” Someone else from the audience, egged on by Bahz’s opposition to Myrcedes, stood up and shouted.
I must have known better, but I could almost have sworn that I saw Tawney smile, like she’d been waiting for that question to be asked. Before Myrcedes could answer, the old fae Seer held up her hand. This didn’t silence the commotion of the room, but it brought it down to a significantly quieter lull.
“My dear ones,” she spoke as loudly as she could for someone as old as she was. She was a xana, a small subset of fae that possessed strong magic but were known for their unwillingness to use it to save people. Xana lived longer than a lot of fae creatures, but their lifespans were still only about eight hundred years, though some made it to a thousand if they were lucky. Tawney was somewhere around seven hundred fifty or sixty, and she’d been a Seer for the fae for almost that long. Not all Seers were xana, but when one was, they were always trusted. That was certainly an asset to Myrcedes’ claim.
“I recognize how difficult it is to believe the Queen’s claim,” she continued. “But I can confirm what she says. This is the log of Alless, a Seer whom Minerva tried to erase from history after she foretold of the rise of Spirit. Before she had ever heard it, this Queen knew my name, because Alless’s soul spoke to her and revealed to her these secrets. Alless wrote in the ancient language, the one we have all seen, but so few of us remember. I’ve kept this log for more than seven hundred years and never understood a word of it. After I showed it to Spirit, however, she was able to read every word.”
Tawney turned to smile at Myrcedes with pride. “She is a pure-hearted woman. She doesn’t seek to take advantage of us as the Unseelie Queen did-”
“All this means is that she’s turned our own Seers against us for the promise of power,” Bahz glared, cutting the old woman off. Everyone in the room was shocked at his claim. It was practically common knowledge that Minerva had tried to persuade the Seers to manipulate people or their visions to suit her and that nothing she offered them worked. So why were so many of them nodding their heads as though the soldier had a point?
Tawney began to defend herself. “I would never-”
“I don’t believe she reads the ancient language, I don’t believe that she spoke to some dead Seer, and I don’t believe she’s meant to be our Queen!” he shouted. I turned to see Myrcedes breathing heavily as though she was trying to calm herself down, all the while slowly widening her feet below the podium as if she was preparing to get into a defensive stance. I frowned to myself. There was no way a fight would break out over this. People would just assume she was lying and move on, right?
Daath and Syrion were shooting looks at all the audience members who seemed to voice dissent, but stayed silent. Myrcedes had made them promise to let her take care of everything if anyone tried to argue.
“If you don’t believe me, I’ll prove it.” I finally heard the embodiment of Spirit’s voice ring through the room.
“No one speaks that language anymore,” one of the younger soldiers with Bahz jumped up. He was an Unseelie with bright green eyes and dark brown hair, and I remembered him as having a penchant for trouble. If I remembered correctly, his name was Fie. “You could make up anything you wanted. There’s no way to confirm it.”
“That’s not true,” Tawney began, but before she could continue, she was cut off once
