You are everything he isn't: kind, honest, righteous—Queen, the Seelie Queen. The Unseelie King is everything you despise: cruel, dishonest, selfish. He used to be so different as a boy; he hated his father for being the way he has now become. You used to trust him, you used to love him. But maybe it was all a lie because everyone knows how it goes: the Seelie fae cannot lie, while the Unseelie can.

You promised yourself that you would never see Lilyan again after the attack on the Seelie Court, the one he claimed to have launched. You were just a princess then, and he was just a prince, foolish enough to think he could ever be something he wasn't.

Now he sits in front of you, a cigar between his lips, his huge bat-like wings resting on either side of his chair, surrounded by his generals. You sit, with your own white feathered wings behind you, beside your generals at the round table. It is a matter of the courts—a civil, unarmed discussion to settle the skirmishes between your borders.

"I will not allow a war to break out," says Lilyan, his jagged obsidian crown glinting in the light.