“I do find pleasure in them. In both.” Her hands were shaking so fiercely that she gripped herself even tighter. “But I’ve known, since I was little more than a child, that I prefer females. That I’m … attracted to them more over males. That I connect with them, care for them more on that soul-deep level. But at the Hewn City … All they care about is breeding their bloodlines, making alliances through marriage. Someone like me … If I were to marry where my heart desired, there would be no offspring. My father’s bloodline would have ended with me. I knew it—knew that I could never tell them. Ever. People like me … we’re reviled by them. Considered selfish, for not being able to pass on the bloodline. So I never breathed a word of it. And then … then my father betrothed me to Eris, and … And it wasn’t just the prospect of marriage to him that scared me. No, I knew I could survive his brutality, his cruelty and coldness. I was—I am stronger than him. It was … It was the idea of being bred like a prize mare, of being forced to give up that one part of me …” Her mouth wobbled, and I reached for her hand, prying it off her arm. I squeezed gently as tears began sliding down her flushed face.
“I slept with Cassian because I knew it would mean little to him, too. Because I knew doing it would buy me a shot at freedom. If I had told my parents that I preferred females … You’ve met my father. He and Beron would have tied me to that marriage bed for Eris. Literally. But sullied … I knew my shot at freedom lay there. And I saw how Azriel looked at me … knew how he felt. And if I’d chosen him …” She shook her head. “It wouldn’t have been fair to him. So I slept with Cassian, and Azriel thought I deemed him unsuitable, and then everything happened and …” Her fingers tightened on mine. “After Azriel found me with that note nailed to my womb … I tried to explain. But he started to confess what he felt, and I panicked, and … and to get him to stop, to keep him from saying he loved me, I just turned and left, and … and I couldn’t face explaining it after that. To Az, to the others.”
She loosed a shuddering breath. “I sleep with males in part because I enjoy it, but … also to keep people from looking too closely.”
“Rhys wouldn’t care—I don’t think anyone in Velaris would.”
A nod. “Velaris is … a haven for people like me. Rita’s … the owner is like me. A lot of us go there—without anyone really ever picking up on it.”
No wonder she practically lived at the pleasure hall.
“But this part of me …” Mor wiped at her tears with her free hand. “It didn’t matter as much, when my family disowned me. When they called me a whore and a piece of trash. When they hurt me. Because those things … they weren’t part of me. Weren’t true, and weren’t … intrinsic. They couldn’t break me because … because they never touched that innermost part of me. They never even guessed. But I hid it … I’ve hidden it because …” She tilted back her head, looking skyward. “Because I live in terror of my family finding out—and shaming me, hurting me about this one thing that has remained wholly mine. This one part of me. I won’t let them … won’t let them destroy it. Or try to. So I’ve rarely … During the War, I finally took my first—female lover.”
She was quiet for a long moment, blinking away tears. “It was Nephelle and her lover—now her wife, I suppose—who made me dare to try. They made me so jealous. Not of them personally, but just … of what they had. Their openness. That they lived in a place, with a people who thought nothing of it. But with the War, with the traveling across the world … No one from home was with me for months at a time. It was safe, for once. And one of the human queens …”
The friends she had so passionately mentioned, had known so intimately.
“Her name was Andromache. And she was … so beautiful. And kind. And I loved her … so much.”
Human. Andromache had been human. My eyes burned.
“But she was human. And a queen—who needed to continue her royal line, especially during such a tumultuous time. So I left—went home after the last battle. And when I realized what a mistake it was, that I didn’t care if I only had sixty more years with her … The wall went up that day.” A small sob came out of her.
“And I could not … I was not allowed or able to cross it. I tried. For three years, I tried over and over. And by the time I managed to find a hole to cross … She had married. A man. And had an infant daughter—with another on the way. I didn’t set foot inside her castle. Didn’t even try to see her. I just turned around and went home.”
“I’m so sorry,” I breathed, my voice breaking.
“She bore five children. And died an old woman, safe in her bed. And I saw her spirit again—in that golden queen. Her descendant.”
Mor closed her eyes, breath rippling past her shaking lips. “For a while, I mourned her. Both while she lived and after she died. For a few decades, there were no lovers—of any kind. But then … one day I woke up, and I wanted … I don’t know what I wanted. The opposite of her. I found them—female, male. A few lovers over these past centuries, the females always secret—and I think that’s why it wore on them, why they always ended it. I could never be … open about it. Never be seen with them. And as for the males … it never went as deep. The bond, I mean. Even if I did still crave—you know, every now and then.” A huff of a laugh that I echoed. “But all of them … It wasn’t the same as Andromache. It doesn’t feel the same—in here,” she breathed, putting a hand over her heart.
“And the male lovers I took … it became a way to keep Azriel from wondering why—why I wouldn’t notice him. Make that move. You see—you see how marvelous he is. How special. But if I slept with him, even once, just to try it, to make sure … I think after all this time, he’d think it was a culmination—a happy ending. And … I think it might shatter him if I revealed afterward that … I’m not sure I can give my entire heart to him that way. And … and I love him enough to want him to find someone who can truly love him like he deserves. And I love myself … I love myself enough to not want to settle until I find that person, too.” A shrug. “If I can even work up the courage to tell the world first. My gift is truth—and yet I have been living a lie my entire existence.”
I squeezed her hand once more. “You’ll tell them when you’re ready. And I’ll stand by you no matter what. Until then … Your secret is safe. I won’t tell anyone—even Rhys.”
“Thank you,” she breathed.
I shook my head. “No—thank you for telling me. I’m honored.”
“I wanted to tell you; I realized I wanted to tell you the moment you and Azriel winnowed to Hybern’s camp. And the thought of not being able to tell you …” Her fingers tightened around mine. “I promised the Mother that if you made it back safely, I would tell you.”
“It seemed she was happy to take the bargain,” I said with a smile.
Mor wiped at her face and grinned. It faded almost instantly. “You must think I’m horrible for stringing along Azriel—and Cassian.”
I considered. “No. No, I don’t.” So many things—so many things now made sense. How Mor had looked away from the heat in Azriel’s eyes. How she’d avoided that sort of romantic intimacy, but had been fine to defend him if she felt his physical or emotional well-being was at stake.
Azriel loved her, of that I had no doubt. But Mor … I’d been blind not to see. Not to realize that there was a damn good reason why five hundred years had passed and Mor had not accepted what Azriel so clearly offered to her.
“Do you think Azriel suspects?” I asked.
Mor drew her hand from mine and paced a few steps. “Maybe. I don’t know. He’s too observant not to, but … I think it confuses him whenever I take a male home.”
“So the thing with Helion … Why?”
“He wanted a distraction from his own problems, and I …” She sighed. “Whenever Azriel makes his feelings clear, like he did with Eris … It’s stupid, I know. It’s so stupid and cruel that I do this, but … I slept with Helion just to remind Azriel … Gods, I can’t even say it. It sounds even worse saying it.”
“To remind him that you’re not interested.”
“I should tell him. I need to tell him. Mother above, after last night, I should. But …” She twisted her mass of golden hair over a shoulder. “It’s gone on for so long. So long. I’m petrified to face him—to tell him he’s spent five hundred years pining for someone and something that won’t ever exist. The potential fallout … I like things the way they are. Even if I can’t … can’t really be me, I … things are good enough.”
“I don’t think you should settle for ‘good enough,’ ” I said quietly. “But I understand. And, again … when you decide the time is right, whether it’s tomorrow or in another five hundred years … I’ll have your back.”
She blinked away tears again. I turned toward the camp, and a faint smile bloomed on my mouth.
“What?” she asked, coming to my side.
“I was just thinking,” I said, smile growing, “that whenever you’re ready … I was thinking about how much fun I’m going to have playing matchmaker for you.”
Mor’s answering grin was brighter than the entirety of the Day Court.
Amren had secluded herself in a tent, and would not let anyone in. Not me, or Varian, or Rhysand.
I certainly tried, hissing as I pushed against her wards, but even Helion’s magic could not break them. And no matter how I demanded and coaxed and pleaded, she did not answer. Whatever the Suriel had told me to suggest to her about the Book … she’d deemed it more vital, it seemed, than even why I’d come to speak to her: to join me in retrieving Bryaxis. I could likely do it without her since she’d already disabled the wards to contain Bryaxis, but … Amren’s presence would be … welcome. On my end, at least.
Perhaps it made me a coward, but facing Bryaxis on my own, to bind it into a slightly more tangible body and summon it here at last to smash through Hybern’s army … Amren would be better—at the talking, the ordering.
But since I wasn’t about to start shouting about my plans in the middle of that camp … I cursed Amren soundly and stormed back to my war-tent.
Only to find that my plans were to be upended anyway. For even if I brought Bryaxis to Hybern’s army … That army was no longer where it was supposed to be.
nding beside the enormous worktable in the war-tent, every side flanked with High Lords and their commanders, I crossed my arms as Helion slid an unnerving number of figures across the lower half of Prythian’s map. “My scouts say Hybern is on the move as of this afternoon.”
Azriel, perched on a stool, his wings and back heavily bandaged and face still grayish with blood loss, nodded once. “My spies say the same.” His voice was still hoarse from screaming.
Helion’s blazing amber eyes narrowed. “He shifted directions, though. He’d planned to move that army north—drive us back that way. Now he marches due east.”
Rhys braced his hands on the table, his sable hair sliding forward as he studied the map. “So he’s now heading straight across the island—to what end? He would have been better off sailing around. And I doubt he’s changed his mind about meeting us in battle. Even with Tamlin now revealed as an enemy.” They’d all been quietly shocked, some relieved, to hear it. Though we’d had no whisper of whether Tamlin would be now marching his small force to us. And nothing from Beron, either.
Tarquin frowned. “Losing Tamlin won’t cost him many troops, but Hybern could be going to meet another ally on the eastern coast—to rendezvous with the army of those human queens from the continent.”