"Oh, yes," she said in a croon. "And on the hundred and first year, it was Sarcaryn who called me to the woods. I was so full of relief and joy, knowing in my heart that I had finally won his approval. I followed him, the beautiful white stag, and when he told me that I would have the child I longed for, I stripped for him, and got on my knees for him."

The pain in her voice transfixed me. I heard it because I had heard it in Dain's voice so often. For all that she hated him, she was still his mother, and her patterns had infected him through the years.

Of course Dain despised sexual assault with every particle of his being. He was a child of rape, someone born of a brutal, cruel punishment, whose mother could never look at him without remembering. He knew the cost, not only to the victim, but to those around them, with an agonizing intimacy.

"He asked me again, if I would do anything for that child. I had already sworn, but I said yes again."

The knife pulled tighter to my neck, and I leaned away from that sharp edge, my pulse jumping and my lungs trying to hyperventilate.

Her mouth touched my ear as she crooned, "Sarcaryn, to whom I had devoted myself utterly, gave me to his enemy. It was Faerqen who fucked me in those woods, and it was Faerqen's son I whelped, whose claws tore me as I birthed him." She laughed, low and bitter, and resumed stroking my hair. "I suckled a monster at my breast. I have scars there from his teeth, and from the claws of those wing-hands you let him touch you with. It took him nine years to learn to stand on two feet, and fourteen to speak. He struggles towards the half of him that is fae, but the kiss of the full moon has always stripped it from him."

That dead hand stilled on my braid, her cold fingers touching the back of my neck. "I tried to love him, you know," she said, almost conversationally. "I tried to make him into something worth loving, and never could. It's fascinating to see you look at him as if he's something more than a monster."

My lips trembled. "He is."

The Queen laughed, a low rolling sound, and the movement of her hand began again. "We shall see, dear girl. Have you divined yet why I have done these things?"