It takes me seconds to realize I've seen this place before. I've been here... and as the memory hits me, I gasp and pull my hand from hers, wincing with discomfort from the bite.
The yard below is exactly where Deimos and I first stepped out of a portal when he brought me to this realm.
I can't breathe.
I've teleported myself into Ash Court.
Fuck!
The woman smiles. “You remember, good. I watched you arrive that night from up here and have been keeping an eye on you ever since.”
“How?” My knees wobble. The last time I came here, the king's mother tried to kill me, and well, will this woman do the same?
“There is so much I have to tell you. We don't have a lot of time—no one must find you here.”
“Please tell me what's going on?” I hug myself.
She steps toward me, and I retreat.
“Let’s take a seat.” She waves for me to follow her back to the couch, where she sits and pats the seat beside her.
Not like I have many other options right now, and she hasn't threatened me, so I go and join her. She sits with her back straight, hands in her lap on the opposite end of the couch, facing me.
“I know who you are because I recognize the scent of your magic,” she says. “I always knew you were powerful, with abilities like opening portals, like affecting other fae’s abilities or vice versa. To me, you are beautiful, but your presence scares many others. You are a threat to them.”
I wait quietly for more information, taking it all in, eager for the punchline to understand how all this ties together.
“What I was forced into doing to you has destroyed me.” Her voice chokes. I don't even know this woman, but I lean closer and place a hand on her arm. She trembles under my touch.
“What do you mean?” I whisper, almost afraid to find out the truth.
She lifts my hand and kisses the back of my fingers tenderly. Not in a creepy way, but with a loving nature like I'd expect from a family member... a parent...
Then I see everything clearly, like a door has been opened in my mind.
The similarities I’m looking at are mine. The hair, the body shape, her tenderness. The agony that burns behind the gaze when she looks at me.
Tears prick my eyes. “Are you my mother?” My breath catches in my throat as her fingers tighten around mine.
“Leaving you in the care of the Women's Refuge on Earth was the hardest thing I've ever done, and I still haven't recovered.” Tears slip freely down her cheeks. “You were just a baby, and if I didn't hide you, my husband and his mother would have killed you.”
My head spins. I can't even respond at first from the shock of what I've just discovered. I try to hold myself strong, but my chin trembles. I shuffle closer, and she hugs me tight against her. I cry against her chest, and she's sniffling, both of us emotional wrecks. I always imagined laughing and smiling crazily when I finally met my parents, not crying.
But to discover I lost my father was devastating enough, and now... I found my mother. Is this why the portal brought me here when I asked for my room? It delivered me to where I belonged. To my mother.
Sorrow and unbelievable happiness twist inside me, tugging me in different directions until I don't know what I feel anymore.
I draw away from her and wipe my eyes with the back of my hand, then remember her last words. “I'm confused by so many things. You say my father wanted me dead, yet—"
“I didn't say your father, but my husband. I am married to the king of the Unseelie in Ash Court, but I never loved him. It was a forced marriage to unite two powerful houses.”
“You’re the queen of Ash Court!” I gasp and blink at her, processing everything I'm learning. “And you had an affair with the king of Shadow Court?”
Fresh tears gleam over her eyes at the mention of my real father, and she nods. “I loved him, but there was no way we could ever be together. Seelie and Unseelie don't mix.”
I loathe that saying. I am a result of both, so I must be the most hated person in the world. I hold onto her arm and think how much it hurts to have Ahren taken from me, and I can see that same excruciating ache in my mother's eyes.
“Listen to me very carefully, Guendolyn.” She leans in closer. “You are more powerful than any of us. The fairy blood that runs through my mother's family bloodline is the purest, from the queen of fairies herself. It’s laid dormant in every generation since her demise, but when you were born, the fairies surrounded the castle in the hundreds of thousands, chanting the word Eirian.”
“Fairy queen,” I whisper.
“Yes, my little one. You carry the fairy queen's power inside your veins. It’s one of the reasons the king and his mother wanted you dead. Your power is too great. It's why the king's mother put a curse on you when you were born, unbeknownst to me. She made it so that if you did somehow come back to our realm, your presence in our kingdom would unleash hell on the Shadow Court. A fitting punishment to King Tibout, my husband would remind me.”
“So they knew you had an affair with the enemy king?”
She nods. “It’s why I've been living under constant security for most of my life.”
There's so much information coming at me that I sit back and try to sort through it all. Things are starting to make sense now... like the fairies’ attraction to me, why everyone would hate me, and how I ended up on Earth.
“There’s something else you need to
