Kat looked at Rowena. “Does she speak the truth? Is your gift mental coercion?”
Rowena’s brows drew together over her fine, pointed nose. Blue eyes blazed. “You would believe her lies about the claims of an ex-Fae over what I have told you? Och, and I thought you wise, Kat. Perhaps the wisest of all my daughters. You have never failed me. Do not disappoint me now.”
“My gift is emotional telepathy,” Kat said. “He was right about that.”
“The best liar knows to salt his deception with an occasional truth, to lend the flavor of credibility. I have not coerced my daughters. I never will.”
“I say it’s time for truth all around, Grand Mistress,” Jo said. “There are only three hundred fifty-eight of us left. We weary of losing our sisters.”
“We’ve lost more than our sisters,” Mary said. “We’re losing hope.”
“I agree,” said Clare. “Yes,” murmured Josie and the rest.
Kat nodded. “Tell us what Darroc believed about the origin of our order, Mac.”
Rowena glared down her nose at me. “Don’t you dare!”
I felt it then—a subtle pressure on my mind—and I wondered if she’d been using it on me whenever I’d been around her since the night we’d met. Regardless, it was no threat to me now. I’d learned to resist Voice, and the pressure coming from her was nothing compared to that. I’d been on my knees, cutting myself, with Barrons. I’d had a hell of a teacher.
I ignored Rowena and addressed the sidhe-seers. “Darroc believed it was not the Seelie Queen who brought the Sinsar Dubh to the abbey to be interred so long ago—”
Rowena shook her head. “Don’t do this. They need faith. They’ve precious little else. It is not your place to take it from them. You’ve no confirmation of his claims.”
I felt the subtle pressure grow stronger as she tried to cow me. “You knew. You’ve always known. And, like so many other things, you never told them.”
“If you believe a seed of evil exists within you, it may consume you.” She searched my face. “Och, surely you understand that.”
“One might also argue that if you believe a seed of evil exists within you, you have the opportunity to learn to control it,” I countered.
“One might also argue ignorance is safety.”
“Safety is a fence, and fences are for sheep. I would rather die at twenty-two, knowing the truth, than live in a cage of lies for a hundred years.”
“You sound so certain of that. Were it put to the test, I wonder where you would truly stand.”
“Illusion is no substitute for life,” I said.
“Allow them their sacred history,” Rowena said.
“What if it’s not so sacred?” I said.
“Tell us,” Clare demanded. “We have the right to know.”
Rowena turned her head away and looked at me from the side, down her nose, as if I were too distasteful to regard directly. “I knew from the moment I saw you that you would try to destroy us, MacKayla—or whoever you are. I should have put you down then.”
Kat inhaled sharply. “She’s a person, not an animal, Rowena. We don’t put people down.”
“Right, Ro,” Dani said tightly, “we don’t put peeps down.”
I glanced at Dani. She was staring at Rowena, eyes narrowed and filled with hatred. Oh, yes, it was long past time for truth in these walls, whether we liked those truths or not. Maybe Darroc was wrong. Maybe what he’d written was mere conjecture. But we couldn’t question something we refused to face. And unquestioned suspicions had a nasty tendency to grow. Didn’t I know; One was expanding exponentially in my head, in my heart, even now.
“Rowena has a point,” I conceded. “I don’t know whether or not Darroc was right. But you should know that Barrons suspects it, too.”
“Tell us,” Kat demanded.
I drew a deep breath. I knew how this had affected me, and I hadn’t spent my entire life indoctrinated into the sidhe-seer credo. I’d skimmed Darroc’s notes again before I’d brought them. Farther into the pages, he’d written it not as a bulleted supposition but as a fact: The Unseelie King created the sidhe-seers. “Darroc believed it was the Unseelie King himself who trapped the Sinsar Dubh and created a prison for it, here, on our world. He believed the king also created prison guards.” I hesitated, then added grimly, “Sidhe-seers. According to Darroc, it was the last caste of Unseelie the dark king created.”