The Goblin's Crown

Chapter Seventy Four: Sacrifice

Yes, his child was mine now. Mine. Even if she spent the rest of her life detesting me, I would raise her. I would do all that I could to ensure that her life was better than the one I had lived for far too long. I would give her a life where she was safe and cared for, a home where she was valued for more than her beauty and where people actually might love her.

Jasper made a move like he was going to kick me again but his muscles seemed to tense. The tendons in his neck fluttered and bulged as if he were struggling against a restraining hold. "That's quite enough, My Dear. I'll give you your chance to rip her apart once I'm through with her." Mab stepped towards us, dragging Bran along with her. She stepped over Ib's body as if he were a puddle in her path. Insignificant filth.

She knelt beside me and tenderly moved my hair from my face, tucking it behind my rounded ear. "Before you die, I suppose you should know my little secret. How Bran came to be." He followed her lead and knelt beside her. The pressure against my back grew. I grit my teeth against the unpleasant sensation, resisting the urge to press my brow against the stones.

Mab smiled at him. "Ten years ago, I went into the hole in the sky, seeking a power that might ensure that the Unseelie kingdom would never fall again. I sought out the creatures within and found instead something else. Something within the darkness, that nothing, spoke to me. It offered me all that I asked for in exchange for a meager price. A vessel." Touching my chin, she lifted my face. She leaned in, whispering against my skin, so close all I could see was the colorless ring of her eyes around a cat-like pupil. "I was carrying my lover, Cael's, child at the time. It was that child that the...darkness wanted. That child I freely gave. The..that...great shadow fell over me, seeped into my skin. I carried him the remaining months and gave birth to him there alone in the dark. However, when I returned I learned that though it had felt like mere months in that place, over a full year had passed here in my absence. It caused much confusion among my court. There were whispers rumors of who had actually fathered him. And I laughed at every theory I heard. Bran has no mortal father. Not anymore. What he is now, is not the same as what was taking form in my womb all those years ago."

Cael.

I thought of Oona and Finn in their little house in The City of Thorns. The boy with wild black hair and blue freckles dusting his nose and I noticed for the first time how thickly Mab had greased Bran's hair to make the inky black tresses lay flat against his scalp, keeping it from curling. As if even this small resemblance to his father she were trying to erase. "You let one of those...things take your son's body?" I hissed. I cried out as my head was shoved down into the stones. I felt my skin split and blood wet my hair.

"Don't touch her!" Knut growled, inhuman and feral. His chains clanged loudly as he struggled to free himself, to save me.

Mab ignored him as if he were already dead. "No. I gave it a mortal child and was given a god in return." Mab laughed lowly.

My eyes shifted towards the boy beside her. He wasn't looking at either of us but towards Knut with a strange expression on his face, like he was listening to someone, straining to hear a faint voice.

Mab pressed my face harder into the stones, her fingers icy and clawlike against my skull. "The darkness took my unborn son and made him into more than he ever could have been. A god. And with that god's might, we will not only take the entirety of the Branches but the Underground and the human lands as well. The entire world will bow beneath my banner and after me, Bran will begin an endless reign. He will rule this pitiful world until the end of time." I sensed it as I glared up at her, the fear that still lingered behind her toothy smile. That fear was what fueled Mab. It dictated her every motion, every decision she ever made. She had grown up in a fallen empire, seen her father killed by his enemies, his great city saved only by his dying spell. She feared it happening again, of losing everything she'd built. If she raised the greatest army, if she made deals with demons and turned her son into one of them, she thought she could prevent it, that inevitable fall.