Once upon a time, there was a woman who was so beautiful that none could resist her.
That was how Oriana told the story of Liriope to Oak once he crowned Cardan as the new High King. It sounded like a fairy tale. The kind with princes and princesses that mortals told to one another. But this fairy tale was about how Oak had been told a lie, and that lie was the story of his life.
Oriana was and wasn’t his mother. Madoc was and wasn’t his father.
Once upon a time, there was a woman who was so beautiful that none could resist her. When she spoke, it seemed that the hearts of those who listened beat for her alone. In time, she caught the eye of the king, who made her the first among his consorts. But the king’s son loved her, too, and wanted her for his own.
Oak hadn’t known what consorts were, and because it was Faerie and sex didn’t embarrass them, Oriana explained that a consort was someone the king wanted to take to bed. And if they were boys like Val Moren, it was for delight; if they were girls like herself, then it was for delight, but also might yield babies; and if the lover were of some other gender, that was for delight and the part about the babies could be a surprise.
“But you didn’t have the king’s baby,” he said. “You only have me.”
Oriana smiled and tickled him in the crook of his arm, making him shriek and pull away.
“Only you,” she agreed. “And Liriope wasn’t going to have the king’s child, either. The baby in her belly was sired by his son, Prince Dain.”
Once upon a time, there was a woman who was so beautiful that none could resist her. When she spoke, it seemed that the hearts of those who listened beat for her alone. In time, she caught the eye of the king, who made her the first among his consorts. But the king’s son loved her, too, and wanted her for his own. When he got a child on her, however, he was afraid. Although the king favored his son, he had other sons and daughters. His favor might change if he knew that his son had taken the king’s consort to bed. And so the prince slipped poison into the woman’s cup and left her to die.
“I don’t understand,” said Oak.
“People can be greedy about love,” Oriana said. “It’s all right if you don’t understand, my darling.”
“But if he loved her, why did he kill her?” The story made Oak feel strange, as though his life didn’t quite belong to him.
“Oh, my sweet boy,” his mother told him. His second mother, the only mother he would ever know. “He loved power best, I’m afraid.”
“If I love someone—” he started, but he didn’t know where to go from there. If I love someone, I won’t kill them was a poor vow. Besides, he loved lots of people. His sisters. His father. His mother. His other mother, though she was gone. He even loved the ponies in the stables and the hunting dogs his father told him weren’t pets.
“When you love someone,” Oriana told him, “be better than your father was.”
Oak shuddered at the word father. He’d accepted that he had two mothers and that he might act like or look like Liriope because he inherited part of himself from her, but until that moment, he’d never thought of the villain of the story, the “king’s favored son,” as someone with whom he shared anything other than blood.
He looked down at his hooves. The Greenbriars were noted for their animal traits. Those must have come from Dain, along with his horns. Maybe along with things he couldn’t see.
“I—”
“And be more careful than your mother. She had the power to know what was in anyone’s heart and to say the words they most wanted to hear.” She gave him a look.
He was silent, afraid. Sometimes he knew those words, too.
“You can’t help what you are. You can’t help being charming. But look into too many other hearts, and you may lose your way back to your own.”
“I don’t understand,” he said again.
“You can become the embodiment of someone’s—oh, you’re so young, I don’t know how to say this—you can make people see you the way they want to see you. This seems harmless, but it can be dangerous to become everything a person wants. The embodiment of all their desires. And more dangerous for you to twist yourself into shapes others choose for you.”
He looked up at her, still confused.
“Oh, my darling, my sweet child. Not everyone needs to love you.” She sighed.
But Oak liked everyone loving him. Oak liked it so much that he didn’t understand why he would want it to be otherwise.
