* * *
Sunlight glistened off my sister’s flaxen hair as she stared out the window. “The gardens are almost gone,” she murmured, no inflection in her tone.
I’d been thrown across the settee in the family room for the last hour, contemplating my choices, and yet I was no closer to making a decision. “It’s not fair.” That the Queen should have so much power she could damn an entire country over her own prejudices.
My sister sighed and turned away from the withered gardens beyond the windowpane. “I know.”
Was there no justice in this world? Did good truly have no hope of triumphing over evil?
Was there no room for negotiation? For finding common ground? For giving people a chance to change their minds?
I’d been like the Queen once. Not as murderous, but certainly as hateful.
And it wasn’t until I spent time with Tadgh that I learned better. Until I realized Padraig, a man I’d known and loved my entire life, had been one of the people I had feared all along. That I’d only feared them because that was what I’d been taught. Because of my ignorance. Because I hadn’t known any better.
How could these people know better if they didn’t see humans capable of doing good as well as evil? I thought of those men rotting away in the dungeon. Their hearts so full of hate that they had stormed the castle intending to do me harm. They didn’t even know me. If they’d given me a chance, perhaps I would’ve surprised them.
Perhaps I still could.
“Do you know how to get into the dungeon?” I asked Aveen.
Her brows jumped in surprise. “Why would you want to go there?”
If I told her my plan, would she try to stop me? Better to keep it to myself for the moment. “I would like to speak with the prisoners.”
Like the brilliantly supportive sister she was, Aveen asked no more questions. She simply glamoured herself before bringing me through the kitchens and out the back entrance of the castle to where the dungeon door loomed. With a flick of her wrist, the door flew aside.
What I would’ve given to have such power.
Down the stairs we went, firelight flickering from the torches on the wall courtesy of Aveen’s magic. The foul smell of coppery blood and unwashed bodies permeated the air in the skinny hallway.
All manner of wicked looking instruments hung from hooks on the wall, their sharp blades shining. The men had been penned in like animals, five or six to a cell. I searched their haunted faces for one I recognized. Near the back of the third cell crouched the pooka who had come to the great hall that day.
“You there,” I called. His golden eyes raised to mine. “What’s your name?”
He blinked a couple of times before responding. “Cormac.”
“I would like to speak to you in private, please.”
Aveen’s slender fingers gripped my elbow. “Keelynn—”
I ignored the warning in her tone. My mind was made up. “Please let him out.”
“Perhaps we should get Tadhg…”
“My husband is busy.”
The murmuring started, like the quiet buzzing of bees inside a hive, as everyone watched Aveen fetch a large key from behind some iron contraption. Those in the cell parted, letting Cormac to the front. The key turned in the lock, and the pooka slipped through the gap before Aveen slammed it closed once more.
I motioned for the key. Although her lips pursed with disapproval, she set it in my palm.
“I’m here, human,” Cormac spat, holding his blood-and-dirt-smeared hands out at his sides. “What do ye want from me?”
“My name is Keelynn.”
He lifted a shoulder. “Don’t care.”
He’d learn to care if he knew what was good for him. Such contempt when I held his fate in my mortal hands.