Seven Black Diamonds (Seven Black Diamonds #1)(59)

“I doubt you’d have agreed to that willingly,” Eilidh said.

Torquil was sitting across from her, staring at her with wide eyes. “Attenuation? That gift is all but a myth.”

Eilidh offered him a weak smile. Healing made her tired. For a brief few moments, she felt weakened. “It seems that the union of the two courts has had unexpected results.”

“Do your parents both know?” Rhys prompted.

She didn’t want to discuss that topic, but she couldn’t refuse to answer him. She nodded. “They are aware.”

While neither parent had overtly spoken to her about her affinity, they had both—in their ways—let her know that she was not to use it. Leith had said only, “My grandfather once spoke of a fae his grandfather had known who was cursed with an affinity for attenuation. Lessening the injuries of others weakened him until he was so frail that he died. It is not an affinity I would wish on any but those I despised.”

At the time, Eilidh had bowed her head in silence.

It was one of the rare moments of affection that the king had shown her when he tucked his fingertips under her chin and said, “You are my child, Eilidh. I want you well and safe. If I or your mother ever were mortally injured, even then I would not wish that you had such an affinity. Do you understand me?”

And she had. She knew that she was not to use this affinity. Her mother had said similar things in less subtle terms: “If I were to find that you had used this affinity, Daughter, I would not be pleased.”

None of those details changed the fact that she’d used it time and again to heal Rhys. There were others she’d healed—including both Torquil and Lilywhite—but it was something she did rarely. Rather than enter a conversation filled with unpleasant admissions, she told her brother and betrothed, “Tomorrow, I need one or both of you to come with me to the mortal lands. I will explain more, answer your questions then, but I do need at least one of you.”

“I am yours,” Torquil said.

“I will be with you,” Rhys added.

Eilidh had expected lectures from both of them, but neither chastised her on anything, not about her secrets, not about standing up to the queen. They held their silence for several moments. Torquil sent a nervous look at Rhys that she didn’t understand. Rhys still looked wan, but there was no danger in that.

When Rhys finally opened his eyes, he looked from one to the other, and then—in the sort of casual voice that made clear that what he was revealing was anything but casual—he said, “Tell me, Eilidh, what do you know of the king’s affinities.”

“Fire, compulsion, and air,” she recited.

Torquil stood and glared at Rhys. His posture was such that Eilidh expected swords to be unsheathed. Clearly there was something here that was not known to her, something her betrothed knew and Rhys wanted her to know too.

“Do not do this,” Torquil ordered.

The only son of the Queen of Blood and Rage wasn’t known for taking orders other than the queen’s. He met Torquil’s gaze straight on and asked Eilidh, “Did you know that the king has a fourth gift, one not known to many?”

“As does the queen,” Eilidh said quietly, drawing the boys out of their stare.

Rhys rewarded her with a proud smile and said, “You have known and not spoken if it! You are better suited to the Hidden Throne than I realized, sister.”

“Secrets are currency.” She repeated their mother’s words of wisdom.

“Indeed. One I would use to pay you now for your gift of health.” Rhys glanced back at Eilidh’s betrothed and said, “Dreams. The Seelie thought it a vanished gift. Very few have it. The king does, but there are whispers that the son of Aden is a rarity too.”

Eilidh looked at Torquil, her dearest friend, her only confidant for many years. “Truly?”

“Eilidh . . .”

Slowly the import of this revelation began to settle on her. “So the dreams I had of you for all of these years, were they . . . my dreams or your manipulations?” Eilidh’s voice shook with the effort of restraining her anger and hurt. “Do you give dreams or can you see others’ dreams?”

“Both,” Torquil admitted. He stepped toward her, took both hands in his, and held tight to her as if she would flee. “I saw one of your dreams by accident when you were younger, and when I realized that you dreamed of . . . what you dream, I didn’t look again. It’s why I couldn’t stay near you sometimes. You were too young, Eilidh. The queen’s daughter, the heir, I couldn’t let myself see you that way.”

“I fell asleep in your arms last winter,” she pointed out, not asking, not sure she could stand to know.

“You were of age by then, and I needed to know if you still dreamed of me,” he whispered. “The queen ordered that I would wed, and I couldn’t do that, not while I was waiting on you.”

“So you looked,” Eilidh finished.

He nodded.

“And?” Rhys prompted.

Torquil glanced back at Rhys with a scowl. “That is not yours to know.”

“She is my sister.”

Instead of answering him, Torquil turned back to face her. “It was not until these past months that I’ve influenced your dreams. I swear. I would’ve waited, but if there was a chance, if there was a glimmer of a hope that you could be mine, I needed to know.”