Chapter 88

“Sit… there…” An authoritative voice came out from the back of the throne room.

The queen was pointing at a spot on the edge of the rune formations. Mom glanced between her and then me, and gave a smile and a nod. Other than Baba, Mother, and the Queen, Lucilla and Olivia were the only other two in the room. This was an extremely private affair, and the fewer people who knew about what was being attempted, the better. Even Saria and Bala were left in the dark about what was going on with my mother and the queen, let alone Aeryn and the rest. Olivia and Lucilla were only invited because they were already aware of their mother’s true condition.

“Let me check the formation then…” Baba declared, stepping forward toward the magical drawings.

“Do you doubt my work?” The queen asked, an immediate coldness filling the room.

Baba snorted. “Are you saying I shouldn’t? The spell you’re trying to do is one I’ve never seen attempted before. Can’t I be curious?”

“I don’t need someone who doesn’t know what they are doing screwing it up!” The queen’s face turned ugly for a moment.

I couldn’t help but feel a flash of surprise. I knew that the queen could be overbearing, but it seemed like she had a personal grudge against the grand magus. It was clear she was putting pressure on the other woman who had the body of a loli, but the grand magus didn’t seem phased at all. Instead, she formed a ridiculing smile on her face and looked right back at the queen, their eyes meeting and creating sparks.

“I was making spells before you were put together from Celestial scraps.” Baba snorted.

“Insolence!”

The queen had complete control of this domain. It was clear she wasn’t used to anyone showing her any level of disrespect. Few people in this world could be considered at her level. Perhaps, that was the reason there was so much tension between the two of them. There seemed to be an electricity building in the air like the pair of them might break into a magical battle at any moment.

Mom quickly held up her hands to placate the queen. “She didn’t mean to offend you, my queen. We only have one chance to complete this spell, so isn’t it better if it’s checked over by others? Aren’t two eyes better than one?”

The queen glanced between Mom and Baba, but she didn’t seem to be backing off at all. If anything, the energy around her seemed to grow, and even Olivia and Lucilla had to back away, shielding their bodies as if the mere pressure was too much for them to tolerate. Baba lifted her hands as if she too wanted to fight.

“This woman should never have been allowed in this room. She is not an ally.”

“She is my friend, and I asked her to be here,” I spoke up.

“Yes, my son!” The power disappeared as quickly as it had started, and the queen spun away with a blush on her face, quickly moving to a column where she had been painting even more magical runes.

The building pressure and sense of danger that had filled the air disappeared as it had never even been there. My two sisters let out loud gulps of breath, nearly falling on top of each other. A single word from me had changed the queen’s mind in only a second. I had spoken up, but I didn’t think it would be so effective. I found my cheek twitching slightly. The queen might be unstable, but part of that instability came from her nearly obsessive love for me. I supposed that it did have some perks then.

Although the queen might love me, I still wasn’t sure how I felt about her. I had been very deliberate about bringing Baba to check after her work. I didn’t want her issues to cause any problems. Although, I was starting to understand what she had meant when she said talking to the queen was a challenge, and that everything had to go through my mom.

“Why is there so much tension between the pair of you?” I whispered to Baba.

“Oh? You don’t know?” She raised an eyebrow toward me. “Your mother and I go way back. Is it so surprising that we don’t get along? She was created by the Celestials, whose plans don’t necessarily coincide with my plans. She was furious when I chose to live in the capital. She believes I am her enemy. It’s not surprising though. She was programmed to believe that I was her enemy.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

She glanced over at the queen who was pointedly ignoring her and smirked. “She is…”

“Baba, that will be enough,” Mom spoke up, even her voice sounding a bit tight.

She had never really interacted with Baba much on the journey. She had mostly treated the woman like she wasn’t there. I never would have guessed there was some deep-rooted enmity between the two of them. Those feelings must have ended up on the queen’s side of things.  I was a little surprised by that. If the queen did distrust Baba, then wouldn’t she want her child to be protected by Baba’s influence? I ended up meeting with her and becoming close to her because of this negligence on the queen’s part.

“If you wish to keep the truth from your child, suit yourself.” Baba shrugged, taking a swig from a canister at her belt that likely contained alcohol and then starting to study the magic circle that the queen was still finishing.”

Mom made a face before approaching me. Her eyes were misty and resistant. I could tell that she didn’t want to tell me whatever Baba was hinting at. However, I wasn’t the sentimental type. If there were any factors that I needed to know, I couldn’t spare even my own mother’s feelings and risk not understanding the entire situation.

“Tell me,” I responded in a voice that offered no-nonsense.

She cringed slightly, shooting me a weak look. “My love, how old do you think that I am?”

I blinked, not expecting such a question. However, my brain immediately began to reason things out. Based on what I had heard, faery, in general, had a long life.  To my understanding, there was a long line of faery queens, and the queen in front of me was the last in their line. She ended up being tasked with marrying my father when she should have ended up marrying someone like General Duheart.

Thus, she had my sisters and me, but no heir to her throne. On top of that, she has issues regarding her broken soul, which made her leadership even more unsteady. However, that had only been the last few decades, and she likely had gained some stability during her earlier years. After careful consideration, she probably was a couple of hundred years old, but seeing as this was my Mother, I decided to answer more conservatively.

“Perhaps…  forty.”

“Oh… sweetie…” Mom put her hands on her cheeks, blushing. “I’m a bit older than that.”

I felt some eyes on me, and I turned to see the queen was watching me too. Her face was expressionless other than two red patches on her cheeks. It didn’t matter what world you came from, women enjoyed being told they were younger than they were.

I smirked. “Fifty?”

“You…” She pinched my arm. “Are you teasing your mother?”

“Is mother perhaps older than fifty?” I decided to play clueless.

“Yes… we’re… quite a bit older. You probably know that the faery queen is particularly long-lived. Most faery have a lifespan of a thousand years or so, but for the faery queen, this lifespan is even greater.”

“I’d presume if you were a thousand, you wouldn’t look so youthful.” This wasn’t an attempt to flatter her, but a simple observation.

“That’s basing things on the assumption that we… age.”

My eyebrows went up, and something Baba had spoken earlier started to strike me. “You were created… by the celestials?”

She nodded. “We have passed down the belief that the fairy queen is a lineage that has been passed down for millennia, but the truth is that there is and has only ever been one faery queen.”

“What?” I was truly shocked by this revelation. “You mean… you’re it?”

“We are around 10,000 years old.” She admitted. “Although the grand magus is technically our senior, she as continued her existence through rebirth and renewal. We have remained unchanged over the years.”

I could feel the queen watching me again, and even mother was looking at me anxiously.

“That would mean… if you died…”

She nodded. “The entire faery race would be without leadership. However, it is more than that. If the faery queen died, then the entire faery race would die with us.”

“How can that be?”

“Although a faery can create offspring with a human or a demihuman, that offspring will inevitably not be a faery. However, when it comes to faery having relationships with faery… well, I’ll put it this way, besides the queen, have you ever seen another female faery?”

My eyes widened, seeming to spin as I thought about what she was telling me. I truly hadn’t ever seen a female or girl faery. I had assumed that was because I was dealing with soldiers, but it never occurred to me that their society would have been built up like a beehive. The faery maintained a single queen that controlled them all, and the rest were merely drones, unable to have offspring. Well, there was one way they got around that, they had

This was a big secret, one that existed at the national level. No one but the faery and celestials would have known this secret, likely even my father was in the dark. Wait, if all of the faery were male, didn’t that mean…

“Are you the mother of all faery?” I asked.

She winced. “Every few years ago, we must bring about the next generation of faery. One particular exceptional male is selected, and he becomes our mate during the next mating cycle. This cycle was disrupted twenty years ago when the queen was sent to the human realm to marry the king. A new brood of faery hasn’t been created since. This normally isn’t a particularly big deal given the lifespan of faery, but it still has caused a great deal of worry amongst the faery population.”

“Duheart is looking to become the next mate?” I asked.

She nodded. “The queen’s reproductive cycle usually works on a four-year schedule. She’d go entire an extremely fertile state, and then the best males would compete to father the next generation of faery.”

“Wouldn’t this father be… um… I mean…”

“It would be one of our offspring, yes. We unite with one of our children to create the next generation. His characteristics would become integrated into the next generation.”

It was truly an alien concept to me. Then again, I was talking about a world with demons, devils, faeries, and gods. Why would every species continue in the traditional way that humans procreate? Faery were created completely separately from humans, and they truly only showed similarities when it came to appearance. It made sense why they were so loyal to the queen even though she was insane, and from a military standpoint, having such a clear command also made sense.

I shook my head after a few moments of thought. “Why are you telling me this now?”

Mother bit her lip, hesitating for a moment, but then continuing. “The devil blood that you exposed to your pregnant mother wasn’t the only issue that the queen faced back then. At that point, she had also fallen into her fertile state as well. During this time, she doesn’t just become more fertile, but she becomes consumed with lust. She didn’t just cut up her soul without thought. She also did it to interrupt her cycle.”

“I see…” I was already pretty sure what Mother was getting at, but I waited for her to continue. “What is the consequence of that?”

“We are living the consequence now. Twenty years without a cycle, and the faery in a frenzy. They’re demanding a new generation, and if we don’t provide it, then our cover will be blown. Once our souls reunite, the biological process we put on hold will begin. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

“This is why the queen wishes to send us away as soon as you’re combined again,” I spoke my thoughts out loud. “You’ll be selecting a mate and creating a new brood of faery.”

Mom’s eyes became extremely misty. “We don’t have any choice in the matter. This is something that cannot be controlled. For your sake, we have to combine, but the cost will also be great.

“This is already something you’ve done a thousand times, right?”

She winced. “This was before you were born. This was before we knew love.”

“Love?”

“We have mothered many children over the years, and we have lived a long time. Our outlook on existence had long grown dull and meaningless. We only existed to serve the celestials. Then, you came along, and we decided to try to change our fate. However, in the end, our fate is bound. The best we can do is sacrifice ourselves to change the fate of the one we love. This is what I… what we hope for you.” Tears were already pouring down mom’s face as she spoke, but she tried to force a smile on her face.

My sisters were sitting a distance away, listening in while trying to pretend that they weren’t. I understood now why this was something Mother didn’t want to tell me. It seemed like her life was a bit tragic. She had always known that her time with me was limited, yet she had risked severing her soul just to get a short period with me. I had thought that when they merged, I’d be losing a mother, but gaining a mother queen. It turned out I’d end up losing all of it in the end.

“All of the magic seems sound.” Baba walked up to us, dusting off her skirt like she had been working hard, even though she had only been walking around and looking at stuff.

The queen shot her a sneer but otherwise remained quiet. She put down her brush, and then walked over to the throne, sitting down on it quietly. Mother looked at her nervously and then sighed.

“It’s time.”

My heart clenched in my chest. “Is there no way around this?”

“David… it has to be this way. This has been her… our plan since you were born. I only told you this much because I couldn’t bear to hold it back from my baby any longer. Please don’t interrupt things.”

“I understand.” My voice sounded a bit hoarse to my ears.

Mom turned to the queen, who glanced at me with that cold expressionless face. “Blood.”

Mom nodded, turning back to me. “We will need some of your blood to complete the ceremony.”

She pulled a small vial from her sleeve. I took my long nail and cut my arm, letting it drip until it filled the vial. When I was done, Mom took it away, walking into the center of the magical formation where the queen was sitting. Lucilla grabbed my arm and began bandaging the cut, but I barely noticed it. My eyes were on the ceremony.

Mother took my blood and then painted some kind of magical rune on the queen’s face. She then did the same to her face. It was only after she was done that the queen stood up, and with that, the runes on the floor and the columns started to glow all at once.

“Is this going to work?” I whispered to Baba.

“You expect me to know?” She responded.

“Who else would know?”

“As I said, I’ve never done anything like this. It likely involves magic similar to the magic the Celestials used to create the faery in the first place. Just because I was created by a goddess, doesn’t mean I’m all-knowing.”

I let out an annoyed sigh, but I continued to watch anxiously as the power continued to grow. The magic in the room became stifling. Most of the runes written on the walls had nothing to do with their binding, and everything to do with blocking out the magical power that was being used. So much power was something that could likely be felt everywhere, just like the dragon dying, so they had gone to great lengths to keep anyone in the castle from feeling it until it was already done.

The pressure grew to the point where my sisters were having some trouble. I was forcing myself to remain to stand, but they had already fallen to their knees. Before absolute power, there was no choice. I was just about to send them out of the room, but Baba raised her hand, and the pressure on all three of us instantly reduced. The two girls let out breaths of relief, and I stood up straighter.

While this was going on, the light in the middle only seemed to grow brighter and brighter. Mom and the queen had their hands held together. They started to rise into the air, white light shining between them. No, there were two halves of light, and they were slowly being drawn out of the chests of each woman, merging a little at a time. For a brief moment, the palace shook, as if the very world was fighting against this union, but then the lights snapped together, and the light became blinding.

I wasn’t able to keep looking at it, and I held up my hand over my eyes as my Mother and the queen were consumed by light. A few moments later, the light winked out like it had never been there. Dark flecks swam in my vision, and it was another minute before I could regain my vision. Just as I managed to get my eyes on my mother, I saw chains suddenly form around her neck and her arms. These chains weren’t tangible. They appeared to be some magical spell.

I frowned as Mother looked in my direction, a sad and melancholy expression on her face. “Guards!”

The doors suddenly burst open, and a dozen faery soldiers burst into the room. The one who was leading them was none other than Lord Duheart. They immediately grabbed Baba, my sisters, and me.

“What is the meaning of this?” Lucilla cried out in shock, still trying to recover from the magical pressure she had just been under.

“Her soul is whole again… and so are the bonds the Celestials put on her,” Baba responded bitterly. “Her breeding cycle wasn’t the only thing that was restored.”

“My queen!” Duheart fell to one knee, bowing. “Reporting that the Celestials are visiting the palace. They will arrive this evening.”

“Good…” The queen responded, her eyes falling to me. “Then let’s prepare a tribute, a devil prince.”