Changeling Illusion (Thirteen Realms Book 3) Read online

  “What will stop them is that I am back, and they have no excuse, however flimsy, for their actions,” Rothbold said, a hint of steel in his voice. The king was obviously still mightily pissed about the whole affair. “If they were to pull such a stunt, the Lords of the other Realms would turn on Kellith, and even his sister couldn’t save him from their wrath. He would be deposed, and his family stripped of their titles. You can be sure of that. I would lead the charge myself.”

  “That’s all well and good, but not much consolation to us, is it? We’d still be dead.”

  The king looked taken aback. He probably wasn’t used to such plain speaking. But Morwenna was no noble, schooled since childhood in the ways of the nobility. My opinion of her rose a couple of notches.

  “Then we will find some way to guarantee Summer’s good behaviour.”

  “Hostages, perhaps?” Kyrrim suggested, a gleam in his eye.

  “Perhaps.” Rothbold didn’t look keen. It would probably cause him all sorts of diplomatic issues. “That’s something I will have to think on.”

  “It would have to be something like that,” Morwenna persisted, “otherwise Kellith will do whatever he wants. You can’t trust him.”

  “I assure you, dear lady, nobody knows that better than me.” The king sounded a little exasperated, as well he might, given how he’d spent the last twenty years.

  They talked a little more, but there didn’t seem to be much we could progress on. We needed to consult with Yriell and the Air fae and get them on board, and someone needed to tell poor Eldric that he was in charge of organising some kind of memorial feast for half the Realms. As soon as possible.

  Eventually, my stomach rumbled loud enough to be heard by the others, and Raven laughed and suggested we should finish with some of the delicious cakes the poor cook had been slaving over in that hot kitchen. The king agreed on another meeting in two nights’ time, and the tense meeting dissolved into a more social affair.

  Raven brought me a plate piled high with food, and offered it with a mocking bow. “Please eat, before that dragon in your stomach wakes fully and destroys us all.”

  “Very funny,” I said, but I jammed the first little cake into my mouth all the same, delighting in the sweet taste that hit my tongue. It was true what they said: the food really was better in Fairyland. Fortunately, the bit about how it would bewitch you and turn you into Rip van Winkle wasn’t.

  Though I guess that didn’t apply to me anymore, anyway. It was easy to forget I was fae, now, with as much magic as anyone in the room.

  The king joined us, his plate piled nearly as high as mine. All that statesmanship must work up an appetite. “It’s good to see you again, Allegra. No ill effects from your brush with the assassins, I hope?”

  Lack of sleep, maybe? Certainly not loss of appetite. I bit into another cake, more decorously this time so I could actually answer the king. “I’m fine, thank you. A little worried about my friends, maybe. They’re like family to me.”

  By now, Nevith’s body would have been carried home to Spring. I hoped Willow and Sage were staying holed up in the sith, though, knowing Willow, she’d go out if she wanted to. I tried to remember when our next gig was booked for, but drew a blank. I realised with a shock that I’d even forgotten all about my own work schedule, and had probably missed more than one shift by now.

  Dammit. Would I even have a job anymore once this was all over?

  “And what of your new family? You have some relatives on the island here, I believe.”

  Raven almost choked on his cake.

  I glanced at him curiously before answering the king. “Yes, Morwenna and Tirgen are my aunt and uncle.”

  “Actually,” Raven said when he’d finished coughing, “that’s not exactly true.”

  “What do you mean, not exactly? It either is or it isn’t.”

  He glanced at Morwenna, but she had her back to us and was chatting animatedly to one of the other townspeople.

  “Go on,” said the king, frowning at Raven’s hesitation.

  He sighed heavily, in a kind of why me? “Okay. It isn’t. She’s no relation to you at all.”

  “Are you drunk? Of course she is. She’s my mother’s sister.”

  “That’s the problem, see.” He took a deep breath. “She’s Anawen’s sister all right, but Anawen is not your mother.”

  8

  You could have heard a pin drop. I looked down at my clenched fists, reliving that earth-shattering moment in the castle on Arlo. The look of fury on the king’s face, the sympathy on Tirgen’s, the complete shock plastered across the features of my usually unshakeable knight. That last one had been mirrored in my own expression, I was sure. I’d felt as if my heart had stopped beating and all the blood had frozen solid in my veins as a cold chill shuddered over me.

  Then Sage exploded. “He said what?”

  As if her words had released a spell, everyone started shouting at once. The four of us were gathered in the garden of Willow’s sith—Willow, Sage, Rowan, and me. Kyrrim had delivered me there, numb and shaking, an hour earlier, before returning to the king and his duty. I waited out the storm, the tempest raging in my own heart still fresh, the hurt still sharp as a knife. I wished that Kyrrim could have stayed. I felt unmoored, adrift in the world.

  I looked at each of them in turn, then drew a deep breath. “He said that I wasn’t my mother’s child,” I repeated. It still sounded surreal, no matter how many times I heard the words.

  “Then whose child are you?” asked Rowan. He was so shocked that he’d lost control of his glamour, and his antlers kept flickering in and out of existence.

  “Apparently, I’m the only surviving child of Orlah and Turloch.” I licked my lips. My mouth was drier than a desert, though my eyes were filled with tears. I’d already lost my mother once, and now I was losing her all over again. The pain was almost unbearable.

  “Orlah?” Willow’s eyes were huge. “You don’t mean the sister of Lord Perony?”

  I nodded miserably, unable to speak. But after another stunned moment of silence, my friends put two and two together and came up with the goods.

  “That means—no, it can’t.” Sage was shaking her head, horror in her eyes.

  “That means she’s the heir of Illusion,” Willow finished for her, her voice grim. “Everyone else is dead. Oh, honey, what a bloody disaster.”

  “What a bloody bombshell, you mean,” Rowan said. “And you had no idea?”

  “Of course I had no fucking idea!” I shouted. “I grew up in a cottage in the woods, for the Lady’s sake. I trapped rabbits for food and my mother made all our clothes. We grew our own bloody vegetables, Rowan. Does that sound like a noble upbringing?” My voice rose with every word. Did he really think I’d been hiding this from him all these years? “You must think I’m the world’s best actress. How can you possibly ask me if I had any idea?”

  “Sorry, sorry.” He flapped his hands at me in distressed soothing motions. “I’m just shocked.”

  “Not as shocked as she is,” Sage said, shooting him a dirty look. “Honestly, Rowan, use the brains you were born with. Or do those antlers go all the way through that skull of yours?”

  “Then who was Anawen if she wasn’t your mother?” Willow asked gently.

  “My nurse, apparently. When the attack started, she grabbed me and fled across the river in a little rowboat. The rest of my family was at the feast, and they were all killed. I had a brother, a few years older than me. But he was considered old enough to go to the feast with the adults.”

  A bleak silence greeted this news.

  “No wonder Morwenna hates me,” I continued. “If her sister hadn’t been working as a nurse on the other island, she would have been home safe on Arlo and escaped with the rest of them. For years, Morwenna assumed she was dead. When she finally turned up again after I had left for the mortal world, Morwenna could hardly believe her good fortune. And then Anawen left again, despite Morwenna begging her to stay. You
should have seen her face when she was telling us this. She blames me for Anawen’s death. She told me so, straight out. Said that Anawen put me before her own family.”

  “But you were her family,” Sage objected. “That’s a shitty thing to say. You don’t have to give birth to someone to be their mother. She had the raising of you since you were a baby. She loved you and cared for you, gave up everything for you. Don’t go thinking that she wasn’t your mother. She absolutely was.”

  She’d even killed for me, so she could take Livillia’s identity and provide us a safe home, and the woman I knew was no killer. That must have been hard for her. But she’d done it, determined to protect me at any cost. I nodded gratefully at Sage. Her conviction made me feel a little better.

  “What did the king say when Raven dropped this bombshell?” Willow asked. Of course her mind would go straight to the political ramifications. She was the heir of a great Realm, after all. She’d been trained to think that way.

  The king’s face, tight-lipped with fury, swam before my eyes again. “Oh, it’s fair to say he was pretty unimpressed. ‘And when did you plan on revealing this information?’ he said to Morwenna, and if looks could kill, she would have been dead where she stood.”

  “Seems reasonable,” Rowan said. “It’s not as though it doesn’t affect anything.”

  “Well, it certainly affects me.” I couldn’t keep the bitterness from my voice.

  “The whole thing’s bizarre.” Willow shook her head. “Why on earth didn’t someone say anything before? Like, as soon as you turned up on Arlo? And how long has bloody Raven known?”

  “That must be why he was watching over you,” Sage said, in the voice of a woman making a great realisation. “All that time when Thing One and Thing Two were hanging around your garden, spying on you. He could have said something months ago.”

  It infuriated me, too, that Raven knew so much more about me and my business than I did myself. So many people had made decisions for me, decisions I’d had no part in. Decisions that had changed my life.

  “Apparently, he sent the ravens to watch me after Anawen turned up on Arlo. There was some discussion about bringing me in, but they decided between them that it was best if I stayed where I was. My mother was adamant I should be left alone to enjoy the life I’d made for myself, so he kept an eye on me through his pets instead.”

  “And that upsets you,” Rowan said, half-question, half-statement.

  “Oh, for God’s sake.” Sage leaned over and punched him in the shoulder.

  “Yes, it upsets me, Rowan. Bloody autocratic fae, thinking they know best about everything. Pushing people around like pawns. Present company excepted, of course.”

  “You needn’t except me,” Willow said drily. “I quite enjoy pushing people around like pawns. It’s one of my specialties.”

  Sage punched her, too.

  “Ow.” Willow rubbed absentmindedly at her arm as she contemplated me. “But Rothbold must be happy, at least, that there’s someone of the noble house left, even if they left it to the very last second to tell him so. Imagine the shit fight if he revealed Illusion still existed but it had no Lord.” She shuddered. “Nature abhors a vacuum, but fae nobility abhors one even more. There’d be no end to the jockeying for the position. This way, it’s all neat and tidy.”

  “Except no one asked me if I wanted to be the ruler of Illusion!”

  “It wouldn’t exactly be a terrible lifestyle,” Rowan said cautiously. “I mean, it’s not as if Kellith can hate you any more than he already does, and you’d be rich, have an important place at Court”—he waved his hand airily—“all that sort of thing.”

  “All that sort of thing that I have no idea how to do and even less interest in trying? I’m just a guitarist in a band. I work at a service station, Rowan. What do I know about running a whole Realm? I would have to be the least-qualified person for the job they could possibly find.”

  “Except your blood qualifies you,” Willow said. “And a lot of people have gone to a lot of trouble so that you could live to take this role.”

  “Oh, my blood. Like that’s got anything to do with it. Morwenna would make a better Lady than I would—that’s probably why she couldn’t bring herself to say anything. Who wants to watch a newcomer make a mess of everything when you’ve been doing fine without them for the last twenty years? Hell, half the people on Arlo would probably do a better job than me. This fae system of inheritance is ridiculous. What’s wrong with picking people on merit?”

  They all stared at me, even Sage, with varying degrees of shock on their faces. I was preaching heresy.

  “I think you’ve been in the mortal world too long,” Rowan muttered.

  “Why don’t we all have a drink?” Sage suggested.

  “And something to eat, too,” Rowan said, looking around hopefully. “I’m starving.”

  “There’s plenty of food in the kitchen,” Willow said. “But Zinnia is still in Spring, so you’ll have to help yourself.”

  Rowan frowned. “How about we go to The Drunken Irishman instead? We could all do with some cheering up. We need to get out and have a good time.”

  “It’s probably safer if we stay here,” I said, thinking of Nevith. “There could be assassins lurking anywhere. Better to be safe than sorry.”

  “Oh, come on,” he urged. “It’s not as if the Night Vipers are going to be staking out the street outside.”

  “That’s true,” Willow said. “Do you know how much it costs to hire those people? They’re not street thugs. They only work when they have a carefully orchestrated plan.”

  “How do you know so much about the way the Night Vipers work?” I asked.

  She shrugged. “I’m my father’s heir. My education has included a lot of things that aren’t public knowledge.”

  Rowan sat forward, his eyes lighting with interest. “Does that mean your dad has ordered a hit before?”

  She regarded him coolly. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

  “Let’s lay off the assassin jokes, okay?” Sage said with sudden fierceness. Of all of us, she’d been closest to Nevith, and she was right.

  With his death so fresh, it wasn’t in the best taste to be joking about killing people, but Willow just shrugged one elegant shoulder. Everyone had different ways of coping with their grief.

  “Come on. Look at you all,” Rowan said. “Not a smile among the lot of you. And we haven’t had a night out together that wasn’t performing in months. It’ll be fun.”

  In the end, we agreed, just to shut him up. But by the time we arrived at The Drunken Irishman, my stomach was rumbling, so maybe it hadn’t been such a bad idea after all. Willow pulled into the car park, which was only half full, and we all piled out of her big four-wheel drive and headed inside.

  The usual roar of voices greeted us as we entered. No band was playing tonight, so Randall had the jukebox on, blasting out the dulcet tones of AC/DC. It was a popular spot with the local fae community, so there were a few familiar faces here, and we said hello to various people as we threaded our way across the room to an empty table. Sage went to the bar and came back with our usual orders: Chardonnay for Willow, beer for me and Rowan, and a gin and tonic for herself.

  “Anyone else hungry?” Rowan asked. “My shout. What would you like?”

  He took our orders and headed off to the bar, where he was soon deep in conversation with a blond girl I vaguely remembered seeing at our last gig. When he eventually returned, he brought the girl with him.

  “Hey, everyone, this is Atinna. She’s Winter.”

  “Hi, Atinna,” we chorused in unison.

  Atinna blinked in surprise. She was pretty, of course, being fae, in that pale and delicate way common among Winter fae. “Whoa, are you guys sisters or something?”

  “Only in crime,” Sage said, and Willow snorted as Rowan introduced the three of us.

  Atinna’s eyes widened as she realised who Willow was, but she soon got over her n
erves at being in such august company and snuggled up against Rowan at the table with us.

  Several people around us were already eating, and the smell of food was making my stomach rumble even louder. Fortunately, AC/DC’s “Back in Black” was up to the challenge of drowning it out.

  Atinna was quiet, but Rowan talked enough for both of them, and he and Sage got into one of their regular arguments. In the middle of a long and impassioned rant from Sage, I noticed Atinna’s gaze had snagged on something over by the door. Was she checking out Tony, the bouncer? I looked over my shoulder, following the line of her gaze, and saw Kyrrim in the doorway, scanning the room.

  I waved wildly and smiled as his eyes met mine. A thrill of happiness settled on me like a warm blanket as he made his way towards us, though no answering smile lit his face. The crowd parted for him like the Red Sea for Moses. He always seemed to have that effect on people.

  He loomed at my side, scowling down at me. “What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting for dinner,” I said.

  He bent, bringing his lips close to my ear. “This is not a safe place for you. You shouldn’t be out in public like this. Come with me.”

  “Whoa, whoa, wait a minute there,” Sage said as his hand closed on my arm, ready to haul me bodily from my seat. “Dinner’s nearly ready. What’s the rush?”

  “This is a mistake.” His face was cold as he glared down at her. “Allegra shouldn’t be here.”

  “Relax! Who’s going to attack her in front of all these witnesses? Here.” She snagged an empty chair from the table next to us and shuffled over to make room for him next to me. “Sit down and pretend you’re a normal person for a change. You might even like it.”

  Reluctantly, he took the offered seat, and Rowan smiled encouragingly at him.

  “Have you eaten?” he shouted over the music. “Our food should be just about ready.”

  As if his words were a summoning spell, Cathy appeared carrying three plates. “Chicken burger with the lot?”

  “That’s me,” I said, and she plunked the plate down on the table in front of me, then set the others in front of Willow and Sage before going back for the other meals.