Total pages in book: 141
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132138 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 661(@200wpm)___ 529(@250wpm)___ 440(@300wpm)
“Your Highness?” A throaty voice breaks through the quiet. Una. One of my hags bursts into the room.
And just like that, Seamus is gone. There is no doubt in my mind that my brother is still hanging about, listening in and gathering information to torture me with later.
“What is it? Do you have the spell?” They’re working on a spell to kill the sluagh. I need to be rid of my troublesome brother.
Una is one of the singularly least attractive women I ever saw. Even in her human form, there’s an air of decay that hangs about her no glamour can ever mask. On the surface she’s in her middle years, a plain woman with fair skin that no one should really notice, but once I stare at her for too long, the wrongness can’t be denied. Her sister Liadan was the most skilled at glamour, but she’s dead, and the hags suspect the renegade royals did her in.
Una shakes that salt-and-pepper hair of hers. I notice there’s blood on her hands.
My head aches. The wailing won’t stop. Glannis, Una’s remaining sister, joins her. Like the other hag, Glannis has streaks of blood marring her clothes and hands. Why are the stupid fucking brownies wailing when their torturers aren’t busy torturing them?
The noise sounds like it’s coming from the walls themselves. “I’m making a new rule. Cut the prisoners’ tongues out before you start torturing them. I can’t stand to listen to the bastards scream anymore. Why is it so loud? They’re in the dungeon, are they not?”
Glannis wipes her hands on her skirt, seeming to not care that blood soaks the cotton. Her hair hangs in clumpy strands, sweat dripping from her brow. “It would be rather hard to get any information out of them if we cut their tongues from their heads. Do you be expecting them to talk out of their arseholes?”
I don’t hesitate. I slap her, adding to the blood on her clothes. Her head snaps back and a brutal cut opens on her lip. “You will watch your tongue around me, hag.”
“Aye, Your Majesty,” the hag replies, her tongue coming out to swipe at the blood on her chin.
The wailing reachs epic proportions, threatening to shake the walls. I put my hands to my ears. “Go down to the dungeon and shut them the fuck up! Or I’ll have your tongues.”
Una shivers a bit. “It ain’t the brownies.”
I think about plowing a fist into her face, but I still need the bitches. “Then shut the goblins up. I don’t care who it is.”
Glannis points out the balcony toward the river that runs by the White Palace. “I think you should care, Your Majesty. It’s why we came up here. One of the guards saw her.”
I looked out, a cold chill invading my limbs. There’s a single woman standing by the water’s edge, a piece of clothing in her hand, a wash basin at her side. She gets to her knees, soaking the garment in the river water.
“What in all the planes is that dumb bitch doing?” I turn away only to see my brother standing in the background, a wicked smile on his face. I ignore Seamus. “Get the guards. Tell them to shoot that woman and hang her corpse up for all to see. And shut that wailing up.”
“The guards won’t go near her,” Una says. She won’t come out on the balcony. Una isn’t afraid of much. Her magic is based in blood. She kills with a perfection I see in very few, but she is scared of a single woman washing her clothes?
The wailing. The washing. That eat-shit grin on my brother’s face.
“Bean sidhe?” The words come out on a hushed sigh. Even speaking the name makes my stomach revolt.
“It can’t be too important.” Unlike her sibling, Glannis doesn’t seem impressed by the legendary washer woman. “There’s only one of them.”
Una is nearly out the door now. “But they only wail for royal lines when death is near.”
For royal lines. I know the washer woman’s tale. She’s legendary across the planes. Some called her banshee, but here she is bean sidhe. The bean sidhe has three forms, the virgin, the mother, and the crone. Three forms of the same woman. She shows up before tragedies. She sings her song when a royal death is coming. I was smart enough to have my hags cast a spell over the palace three nights before the coup. The washer women came—all three, but no one heard them.
Three would sing for a king. One for a prince or princess.
Or a pretender. Seamus’s voice seeps into my head. The bean sidhe know what you are.
Could it be possible? Could the washer woman’s wail be for me?
“Three would likely come for the outlaws. It’s only one. It’s a prince or princess. But we killed the girl.” Glannis waves off the bean sidhe. “It’s most likely the queen she sings for. ’Tis no great loss. You can take a new wife. A fertile one. The rebellions might die out if you had an heir of your own.”