Excalibur's Seven | ✓ [LGBT]

~ 43 ~

QUEEN ATLA WAS A very cold woman, but very beautiful. Eurion struggled to keep her eyes anywhere else, and she was hardly grasping the conversation happening around her. Last time she saw her, Eurion was too scared to really realize how beautiful she was.

"Yeah, it's weird," Mab said. "The Grand Unseelie Queen had a child and didn't bother to hide her. You know, your perception of things would be a lot different if you put in the work to find out what really goes on."

"The Seelie Queen has children," Atla said, pulling the attention of the others. "She has them all with poor men and offers them youth if they keep the child and hide them."

"I hear her version of 'youth' means killing them," Morgana poked. "I didn't think she actually had children, though."

"She's been alive longer than time has existed," Mab said. "The real phenomenon would be if she never had a child in all those years. I have plenty of children myself, but Atla is the only one that came from my loins."

"Why doesn't she want people to know of her children?" Eurion asked.

All the faeries in the room turned to look at her, and she shrunk in embarrassment.

"She's a queen. If she has a child, she would have an heir. And if everyone knew she had an heir, they could get tired of her and insist the heir take the throne. The last thing Titania--"

"Mother, that name," Atla hissed. "Don't say it."

"Right. The last thing the Seelie Queen wants is to be dethroned. If she ever died, she'd take the entire Seelie Court with her, and try to take down mine. She can't stand not being the one in charge, even in death," Mab explained, tearing apart a golden citrus fruit, one Eurion hadn't seen since she was home in the South.

"But you didn't get dethroned," Kit said.

Mab laughed. "Oh, they sure tried it. But when the regions split into their own separate states, no one wanted to rule the Winter Kingdom. It wouldn't have been fair of me to be a Grand Queen while also ruling the winter, because I knew the Seelie Queen would try to do the same with the Summer Court."

"So I stepped up," Atla said. She looked like ice, the blue tinge of her skin and the perfect sculpture of her bone structure, the chilling look of her silver eyes. Eurion couldn't look away. "It was a fair trade. Most people listened to me, and we let Mab fade. No one knows who she really is, and it's a good thing."

"What do you do all by yourself?" asked Eurion. "Surely you'd get bored."

Mab laughed. "Dragons," she said. "Lots of them. They're my other children. Sometimes I ride them, sometimes I tame them, sometimes I just play with them."

"We're lucky we didn't kill that one," Kit muttered with a shudder.

Mab pointed a fork at him. "You are correct, I'd have your collective heads for that. Your thief friend here was smart."

Eurion blushed when everyone turned to look at her, and she held up a hand. "It's nothing," she said. "I didn't want to hurt such a beautiful creature. I hope his little horn is alright, tell him I'm sorry about that."

"Ah, he'll be fine, he's a big boy," Mab said.

She had her plate cleared before Kit, but not by much. She stood up from her seat just as Kit was shoving the last of his meal into his face like an animal.

"Would you all like a tour?" she asked.

Morgana stood eagerly. "I would love one," he said.

The prince fidgeted in his seat. "We really need to get back--"