A Court of Innocents

15: Time

Everyone was staring at us—at me. Something flickered in Zachariah's eyes, as if he hadn't been able to place me until I made it clear who I was to him. It made sense: I'd left for Prythian when he was barely five years old.

I could feel Tamlin and Lucien frowning at me, unable or unwilling to put the pieces together, but it was James—my great grandson, I supposed he was—who finally broke the thick silence. "You're Yara Faechild." And though Tamlin had announced that a minute ago, James said it like he finally understood the full meaning of my name.

I finally brought my attention to him. "Yes, I am. It's a pleasure to meet you, James Fae—er, Freeborn." I held my hand out to him, remembering the customary way humans introduced themselves.

James just stared at my hand—at the thinness of my fingers, the strength of my wrist, and every other feature that revealed my fae heritage.

"I've been looking for you for a long time," Zachariah told me. "Since the moment you left."

I turned back to my grandson and felt a knot form in the back of my throat. "I never wanted to leave you, child—"

But I couldn't get out another word, because the next second Zachariah revealed a dagger he'd hidden up his sleeve, and I held his gaze as he slammed it deep into my gut. I felt the poison enter my bloodstream almost instantly.

The dagger was made of ash.

I frowned at my grandson, unable to understand why he would try to kill me, unable to understand what I had done to him to make his gaze be so full of hatred as he stared me down.

And then I was on my knees. Lucien was on Zachariah in a second, but my vision was already spinning and fading, and I could just make out Tamlin's boots nearing me before the ash poison pulled me under for the second time today.

***

I was in the darkness for a long time. Only when I came out of it did I realize... that's what death must have been. Nothing but darkness.

When I finally dreamed, it was of a beautiful pair of sky-blue eyes, too perfect to belong to a mortal, yet somehow they did. Those eyes... I hadn't let myself dream of them for several decades. But now, after seeing those same eyes on another's face, I was lost in those sapphire hues, unable to think of anything else. The man those eyes belonged to had a smile just as breathtaking. The rest of him— the exact shape of his body, the specific placement of his freckles—I couldn't remember the details of. It was horrifying to realize that his exact image had already started to fade from my memory without my knowing it.

In the dream, he said my name, and the way he said it made it seem like a prayer, like a breath of fresh air. He said it with more love than anyone had ever said my name before.

That was the first man I had ever given my heart to.

***

I wasn't fully conscious, but I had enough strength to walk inside the mind of the person closest to me in distance: Tamlin. I saw everything from his point of view, through his eyes:

He and Lucien were at my bedside. I was asleep in a bed in a part of the manor I hadn't been to yet, but I knew from glancing around that it was an infirmary. I was pale and still, and if it hadn't been for the slow but steady movement of my chest, I would have thought I was dead.

Tamlin inwardly recoiled at the sight of me like that. I felt his rage towards Zachariah grow the longer he stayed by my bedside. His thoughts swarmed with questions about who Zachariah and James really were and when I'd had the time to make a family—and with whom. And I could have sworn those thoughts had a touch of jealousy swarming around them, too.