Read Online Child of Darkness-L-D-2 by Jennifer Armintrout - Free Book Online

you feel you are stifled by life at Court, but if life at Court had truly clipped your wings, you would not have been able to fly from the Palace at a whim.” She stood and came down from the throne, down from the dais. Malachi stayed behind, watching the exchange from beneath his dark, furrowed brows.
    “I fear I have not taught you the discipline you need to grow into your full potential as the Royal Heir. And I’ve come to accept that I am not the one to teach you. The influence of someone more experienced with Court manners and life, but someone who has also managed to balance the demands of Court with the demands of a happy life, is what you need.” Her mother reached out, touched Cerridwen’s face briefly. “That is why I have chosen Cedric to be your mate.”
    Individually, all of those words made sense to Cerridwen. She knew what it meant to choose something, knew what it meant to choose a mate. She understood that, occasionally, Faeries decided to bind their lives to each other for reproduction and mutual gain. What she did not understand was the concept of someone making this choice for another person. The idea that her mother had chosen a mate for her. And that the mate she had chosen was…Cedric.
    The room seemed far warmer than it had a moment before, and her feet did not rest easy beneath her. She pressed a hand to her stomach and took a step back, hoping her balance would return. She closed her eyes, but it only made the feeling worse, so she opened them again.
    “It seems that, despite your confidence, the Royal Heir does not see it from your perspective,” Malachi said and laughed bitterly.
    “Shut up!” Cerridwen shouted, hearing the tears in her voice. That he had uttered his opinion, that he’d been privy to this humiliation at all, was more than she could bear.
    “I did not make this decision to punish you!” Her mother held out her arms, as if to comfort her.
    Cerridwen backed away. “No!” Her breath burned in her lungs, and no words, no matter how hurtful she might be able to make them, would put out the fire. “No! You do this to…to push me off on someone else! To get rid of me!”
    “Cerridwen, please.” Queene Ayla did not look so queenly now. Just pathetic and sad in her daughter’s eyes. “You cannot understand—”
    “No, I cannot understand!” Cerridwen’s fists pounded her thighs of their own volition. “I cannot understand how you think I could love him. That I could…lie with him. It’s disgusting!”
    Her mother’s expression grew hard at this. “To become Queene, I had to do a great many difficult things.”
    “I do not wish to become Queene!” Her shrill scream rang off the stone walls of the throne room. “And yes, you did a great many difficult things! How difficult was it to kill my father?
    If he were still alive—”
    “Your father is not still alive, and thank the Gods I saw to that!” Her mother’s words, dark with rage, rang out even over the loud crack of her palm colliding with Cerridwen’s cheek. She expected the blow to her pride to be greater than the physical pain, but the intensity of the sting shocked her. Tears sprang to her eyes, and though she wanted desperately to stop them falling, they poured onto her cheeks.
    “I hate you,” she spat, and turned to flee the room.

    Her hand still throbbing from the slap, Ayla stared at the closing doors her daughter had fled through.
    “You did not have to strike her so hard,” Malachi said quietly from his place on the dais. Ashamed, Ayla could not face him. “I should not have struck her.”
    The sound of his descending footsteps echoed through the empty hall, but they did not drown out the searing memory of her daughter’s invective. “No, you were well within your right to strike her. I’ve wanted to, myself, on occasion.”
    “I am a poor mother.” Self-pity was not becoming of a Queene, and Malachi certainly did not allow her to wallow in it in his presence, but she did not care