Darque Wants (43 page)

              “I learned enough, Mom,” Anna said as she shook off her adrenaline rush and stood up straight to confront her mother. “What I didn't learn, obviously, is what the hell you have been up to,” Anna said pointing at the exposed tattoo on Meredith's leg. “Why didn't you tell me?”

              “It is complicated, Honey, and there was a good chance you wouldn't have been an Heir anyway,” Meredith said as she leaned against a tree for support and looked off towards the river. “At least I was hoping there was.”

              “You should have known better than that, Meredith,” Fiona said. “Our luck never ran that way.”

              “Yes, our luck usually ran screaming.” Meredith said with a grin.

“OK, OK, enough with the walk down memory lane. Who is going to start telling us what the hell is going on here?” Anna demanded.

“Well, we might as well get comfortable. It looks like Iris is about to fall over, and this is going to take a while,” Fiona said as she grabbed the side of Iris's head roughly and tugged at her to examine the scratch down the side of her scalp. “So who's going to do the honors, Meredith?”

              “Oh, by all means,
‘My Lady,’
you are the Queen,” Meredith said with a smirk and a slight bow. They all dropped to the forest floor and got as comfortable as they could. Kat was snuggled up tightly against Iris, picking the leaves from her long red hair as the Queen began her tale.

              “So, obviously we all know one another, but what you girls don't know is that I was once a child of the same house as Meredith,” the Queen began. “We grew up together. Meredith, her sister Drew, and I were best friends back in the day. But, as always, life happens. I met and fell for a young man who turned out not only to be a Hunter, but who was also apparently very much in love with my best friend here.” Fiona tossed a harsh glance over towards Meredith who simply raised her hand with a slight wave. “Anyway, I married into the Hunters while Drew and Meredith married Guardians.

Drew became Queen when the old Queen reached the end of her life. What I didn't know was that Meredith was still sneaking around to see William, my husband and your father Iris. When I did find out, things got more complicated. But then, something else happened to make it even worse.”

              “Fiona, are you sure you want to tell them that?” Meredith asked. “That's the secret that got us all screwed in the first place.”

              “If we are going to end the charade and point this battle in the right direction, we have to bring the Great Houses together. Meredith, you and I are getting far too old to do it on our own.” Fiona said.

              “Yes, well, look how well that went last time, Honey,” Meredith said as she looked at Fiona. “How many of us lived through that again?”

              “Enough of us,” Fiona said. “How many of the Elders lived through it is the question. Just one, by my count, and we both know his time is coming one way or the other. Now where was I? OK, yes. So my husband and Meredith were sneaking around having this affair.”

“We were in love, Fiona,” Meredith piped in defensively.

              “They were in love and sneaking around having an affair. One evening they were hiding in the woods fucking, I mean making love, when they noticed two groups of men coming together in that little grove right over there.”

              “We were fucking sure, but it was still love,” Meredith said in defense again. “In fact that's the spot where we conceived you, Anna dear.” Anna looked at Meredith for a moment as the information sank in. The she suddenly turned and stared at Iris. She looked at the curve of her lips, the shape of her jaw, and it started to be clear. Their bodies, their faces were so alike, despite the hair color. “That's right, Anna. That's your sister,” Meredith said as she watched the realization creep across Anna's face. For her part, Iris simply stared at Anna for a moment and then cast her glance at Fiona in a hard, cutting gaze.

“Yes,” Fiona said as she knew that look very well. “She is your sister, and you can have a fit and bitch me out later, but there's a lot more to it, or I would have told you already.”

“Wait! So you're my sister-in-law?” Kat asked as everyone rolled their eyes at the question.

              “Kat, Baby, shut up,” Anna said as she gave Kat a little shove. “You just feel like a perv for grooving on your sister-in-law.” Kat responded with a quick shove back and the two girls swatted at one another briefly before realizing that everyone else was looking at them like idiots.

              “As I was saying,” Fiona interjected when the group became quiet again. “The two of them watched and listened as the two groups of men met. They were representatives from both the Guardians and the Hunters, and they had come together to discuss the Great Secret as they called it. As it turns out, the history we have all been taught about our origins is a lie. Ceridwen, wife of the King, was in fact the daughter of Talisin and the Forest Nymph, as Arwin was the daughter of Lug and the Nymph as well. But the curse was cast equally on us all by both Talisin and Lug. The two had captured the Forest Nymph and tormented her for her powers in an attempt to steal them and open the doors between the worlds. Each had forced the Nymph to bear a child, and each child was a key between the different worlds. Ceridwen was the key that kept the doors locked while Arwin was the key that opened it. But there was another element the evil magicians needed to make the keys work that they did not know about. The King had long loved the Forest Nymph, not for her powers or her beauty but for her soul. The two had been bound together in the moonlight before she was stolen away by the magicians. The King fought and rescued his bride and stole away with her and Ceridwen. But he was not able to escape with Arwin.  She had been locked away separately as the magicians struggled to use her to unlock the doors between the worlds. Without the secret element, however, the experiments went wrong. Arwin opened the door but only into herself, and the evil of the other world poured into her and filled her with rage and hatred.”

“In the meantime, the King vowed to raise Ceridwen as his own and to place her on the throne to prove his love for her and the Nymph. But when Arwin discovered that Ceridwen would sit on the throne, and she was left abandoned to pain and torment, her mind finally snapped. The evil that had flowed into her through the open doorways consumed her, and she became a demon bent on destroying her family and opening the doorways between the words to completely destroy everything. She waged a vicious war that ended in the death of the King and her mother, with only Ceridwen surviving. To protect Ceridwen, the King ordered his personal guard and his best hunters to escort Cerdiwen to safety - hence the original Guardians and Hunters. In her madness, Arwin assumed that the throne itself was the missing element to unlock the ability to work the Nymph's magic. When, in fact, the throne was originally the symbol of the King's love, the true secret element to make the magic work. From that day on, the minions of Arwin, both human and beast alike, have stalked the descendants of the Great Houses trying to destroy the bloodlines and free the throne for her to assume. But as long as there is always a Queen of the Ceridwen bloodline on the throne, Arwin cannot assume it for herself and neither can her descendants.”

Somewhere down the line, the Hunters and the Guardians began to argue over how best to protect the Heirs, and the Great Houses split apart. The reality is that we all face the same enemy. We are all bound by the same destiny, and yet we pick each other off in skirmish after skirmish with no understanding of our own history. All the while the forces of Arwin go unseen, for the most part, and their attacks are blamed on one of us. Over time, the Guardians had developed a stricter lifestyle around the Heirs, while the Hunters had a more open one. So each continued to fight to protect their lifestyle as much as the throne. But the Elders all knew of the secret to ensure the throne was never bare too long, but to ensure the throne was never bare long enough to risk it being lost to Arwin, all the Elders knew the secret.”

“When Meredith and William heard this, they knew they had to do something. So Meredith went back to tell the Queen, while William came back to tell us. But the Elders, of course, already knew. So, who was William to tell, really? He told me, of course. But when the Elders found out he knew, we had to flee the farm. We met with Meredith in the woods further down the river and planned our escape. But before we could get out of the woods, they were on us, Hunter and Guardian alike. As the battle raged, we were caught in the middle, and the Queen herself was struck down. Meredith and I found her on the ground, dying of her wound. She begged Meredith to finish her off, to end the suffering, and to ensure she would be Queen. But Meredith didn't have it in her to kill her sister, so Drew turned to me. It was the most difficult thing I have ever done, but I took responsibility and ended her suffering. Unfortunately, when I did, I assumed her power and the throne. The process is deeply painful, even if it's not one of your best friends you've just killed. I was unconscious when it was over. The fighting had stopped, and I was back at the farm with Meredith and William gone. It took a few years to figure out what had actually happened. And that's where I believe Meredith should explain the rest.”

“Yes, the rest,” Meredith said, stretching out under the tree she was leaning against. “Well, there was a burst of energy, when Drew passed, that knocked William and I back. By the time we collected ourselves, everyone else had seen what happened and had assumed Fiona had killed the Queen and taken the throne. The Hunters had already scooped her up, and there wasn't much the two of us could do. William and I ran, honestly. We went back to the Keep and gathered a few things and disappeared.”

“A few things, Meredith?” Fiona looked at her sternly. “Tell them what you took, old friend, besides my husband.”

“I'm getting there,” Meredith snapped back. “Drew had a daughter of her own. After her fall, I didn't want either the Hunters or Guardians to get their hands on her. So when William and I ran, we took both the girls. We knew if we stayed together, we might all be caught. So we hid my niece in a nearby orphanage.”

Kat, who had been only paying half her attention to the tale and the other half to grooming Iris, suddenly stiffened.

“The orphanage at Derry Pointe?” she asked as she felt the chill of it run through her.

“Yes, Kat, darling,” Meredith said. “That's the one.”

“You left me there, alone?” Kat asked with a mix of anger and resentment filling her. All those years she hated living there, hated feeling abandoned and alone, and apparently she had a huge family - a huge family of assholes, apparently, but family none the less.

“Anna, meet your cousin,” Fiona said with a slight smile. “Try and sort out our family tree, and you'll go dizzy.”

              “Shut up, Fiona. It's not like yours is much better.  Technically, your daughter is married to her cousin,” Meredith chided back. “Anyway, after that William and I took off and settled down to a normal life like real people. Well, until my father found us. At least I assume it was Malcom that tipped Arwin's people off to our location. Though I have been trying to figure that one out for years. But when they attacked in the night, William was killed, and I barely made it away with you, Anna.”

“My spies feel the same way. It was Malcom who sent the message to Arwin's Raiders, but we have no idea why,” Fiona said as she considered it. “It doesn't make sense for him to attack you if he wanted his bloodline to regain the throne. You were his last heir.”

“There was still Kat and Anna. He didn't need me anymore,” Meredith said. “And like my mother, he would simply cast me aside as soon as consider me.”

              “Nice to see the whole family back together again,” Malcom said as he stepped out from behind a large oak tree. All the women sprang to their feet as he approached. Kat held tight to Iris, who was still a bit unsteady on her feet. Anna moved up as Meredith stepped in front of her, cutting off Malcom's approach. Fiona, of course, stepped up beside Meredith with her chest out and her head held high.

“Speak of the devil,” Fiona said as she stood before him. “What brings you out in the woods today, Malcom?”

              “The devil, you say?” Malcom asked with a sly grin on his face. “Is that who I am now, little Fiona?”

“I'm far from little anymore, and the social niceties flew out the window when you had my husband killed,” Fiona scowled at him as he slowly walked back and forth before the two women. “Don't think we don't you well enough to know you're sizing us up. Whatever you are up to you, you won't get these girls, and you won't get the throne.”