Rowen Fómhar
"Don't keep her locked in that room. Go about your day as usual and have her tag along. I want you to get her to lower her guard, fool her into thinking she's not a prisoner. Play the good guy. Become her friend. Then, get her to loosen her tongue and reveal what she's hiding. Hopefully, it's something that can shift the scale of power in our favor when it comes to our alliance with the Winter Court. If there's another war, I want our Court leading the Unseelie, not the Winter Court that's still reeling from the loss of one of their Princes."
If she wanted me to do all that, she shouldn't have killed two fae in front of her. The troublesome human was scared sick. The haunted look in her eyes told me that the Queen had gone too far. She had been afraid before, but now she was utterly terrified. Not only of the Queen, but, going off of how she flinched away from me and struggled to meet my eyes, of me too. The Queen had already set me back with her display this morning.
I didn't share my thoughts with the Queen, knowing doing so would not result in anything productive.
"Why do you suspect she's hiding something?" I asked, keeping my eyes trained on the scene that had been playing out before us for the last hour. It had started before we had arrived.
The human... May had been answering all her questions with little to no hesitation and she seemed to be telling the truth as far as her knowledge went regarding why she was here. Yet... even I could see the secrets that lurked behind the fear in her eyes. She had something she didn't want us to know.
"Her fluttering heart. It sang of her secrets earlier. I've heard enough hearts sing to recognize different kinds of fears. When she saw me kill the traitors, she feared that she would be next, but when she sat before me and managed to look past the death in the room to see that I was watching her, I saw a different fear flash. She was afraid I would discover whatever it is that she is hiding."
"It could be nothing," I suggested.
I felt her glare cut my way rather than catching sight of it, my eyes still trained on the reason we were gathered in this old and musty section of the castle. "I'll determine it's significant once you've discovered what it is."
I kept my mouth shut and gave the Queen a swift nod, keeping my head lowered until I felt her pointed gaze lift. Only then did I lift them, just in time to catch the blow that had the fae's streak of silence breaking. He tried to muffle a strangled grunt as a lash of air sliced across his chest like a whip. It had his skin splitting to release another steady stream of blood that joined the others to bleed him.
"That's enough for today," she said, stopping the soldier in the cell from delivering another strike meant to convince the fae to answer the Queen's Questions. "I want him alive."
How unfortunate for him.
Fortunately for him and me, that meant our little mother-son torture session was over. We were done for today and I didn't have to bear the Queen's presence for much longer.
Sweeping one last disappointed glance around the space that was now perforated by the scent of fresh blood, she turned and made her way down the hall toward the stairs that led up to the castle's main floor. Sconces lit her path down the underground hallways and cast shadows into the corners of the secure cells. Updated components made sure that those locked within them wouldn't make their way out. That included the fae cuffed to the wall.
Once the Queen was far enough that I could no longer smell her sickly sweet perfume or hear her clipped steps, my muscles began to relax.
"You're dismissed," I informed the Guard soldier as I stepped inside the cell, moving from where I had stood unmoving at the Queen's side and watched him inflict pain on the fae that was halfway to dead.
