Starkeeper of the Fractured Crown

“Talons,” Cole warned as I pointed the arrow directly at her eye.

She laughed. “You gonna shoot me now?”

“Talons,” Cole tried again, his voice hard.

I took a step forward, ignoring him, but also wondering why I was pointing my weapon at her. She didn’t deserve that, not yet. “If basing people off the mistakes of their predecessors is what you do, then no, I was never one of you.”

“It’s in their blood!” she shouted. “It’s who they are!”

My blood was boiling, my vision turning red. Whynow? Why did she bring this response out of me now? I had dealt with worse. Why was this my reaction now?

“You don’t have to defend me,” Cole mumbled.

It wasn’t him I was defending, not anymore.

“Yeah, don’t defend him, he knows what he’s done,” a male called.

I spun around, finding a crowd gathering before us and I felt that anger rage through me as my arrow lowered.

My hands shook with anger, with desperation for them to see what I saw. I felt betrayed that after all these years, they still hated me just as much as I hated me.

I sneered and shook my head, forcing myself to disarm, wondering why I had immediately resorted to it. That wasn’t who I was. “If you want to compare war stories, then fine, let’s compare war stories,” I replied venomously and turned back to Carissa as she joined the group. “Carissa, shall we talk about the night Zekerios Rain slaughtered the entire Unseelie Court because one man said the wrong thing, convincing him that they wanted to take him to war?”

Her eyes turned to glass, her magic sparking in her hands. “War was coming. That threat was real. Allthey’vedone is murder and rampage. Rape andtorture.”

My lip curled. “408 years ago, Garith Lorde of the Unseelie said he wanted to unite the two courts. He wanted peace and Zekerios gave him war because Dem misheard Garith. Dem thought Garith said he wanted to fight. So, in your thought process, that means that your species is cruel and evil and should be condemned too. If we’re blaming the people now for what the species didlong ago, that’s what that means, right? According to you?”

“It isnotthe same thing,” she stated, voice shaking in anger. “They have an entire history based in blood. They were bred of nightmares and darkness.”

“We all share blood, you people are just too fucking ignorant to admit it. Our royals want us to forget every bloody truth unless it benefits their cause. Wars and battles and secret massacres. Just because Penny Rain wears a smile and kindness as her crown does not make that any less true.That’sthe cost of the crown. No one can escape that. The wolves and the slaughter that happened just 200 years ago. The slaughter of an entire pack of their own, circumstances don’t matter.

“Or how about we talk about the warlocks and Sacrent Merkice? The vampire Jace Orin? Or shall we bring up Quence Hezy? He was a great pixie lord, wasn’t he? Drowned over a dozen Fae ships in the Frozen Sea, killing men, women, and children. Oh, I know, let’s bring up what Brent Balverez did. How about we talk about him? Since you want to keep bringing uptheirrape and murder,” I gestured to Cole.

Carissa’s eyes sparked. “That wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

I lifted and dropped my hands. “But he was Fae, right? The Fae who murdered dozens of womenin their bedsover years. Who wasn’t caught until some kid managed to Jump from his house to the High King and tell him what was happening.Stopjudging people for the choices of the few and stop basing an entire race off the blood in their veins. Hypocrites. All of you.”

Carissa was shaking her head. “You think you know everything because you’ve asked us a lot of questions,because you’ve read our books, but you don’t, Astraea. You have no idea the truth behind our people, what we stand for. You have no idea the truth behind theirs,” she gestured to Cole. “The Fae are better than the Fallen. We are good. We are light and life. The Fallen are savages, born and raised in blood. Killed in wars. He’s the General, no? Ask him. Ask him his body count and then I’ll tell you Karim Patell’s and we’ll see who the true monsters are.”

I laughed, but the sound was chilling even to my own ears. “It’s not about the number of kills, it’s about why. The Fae may be born of light, but that means shit in this world. Light can set fire to the world, shadows can cool it off. It’s not about titles, labels,stories, it’s about perspective.”

Carissa scoffed. “Well, we can all clearly see where you stand now. You’ve clearlyfuckedthem. A Fallen Sympathizer. It was a mistake letting you onto our street.”

“Sympathizer, Sympathizer,” my mother’s voice sang. Taunted. But why was that so bad? That I sympathized with other species’? It couldn’t be bad.

“You only sympathize with them because you fucked them.”

No, no, that wasn’t right. That was false. “Wasn’t your mother Georgia Melonk?” I asked, trying to drown out my own inner voice. I shouldn’t have done it. It was cruel, cowardly, some might say. I should have kept the name to myself, but I wasso angry.

Her eyes widened as several people turned to her.

“Who is Georgia Melonk?” someoneasked.

Carissa’s eyes shined, her anger shifting to pleading. “Don’t.”

“Why?” I asked, hand tightening around my bow. “Afraid they’ll judge you for the sins of your mother?”

“Shut-up,”my rational voice begged of me.“Please!”