Moloch closes his eyes. He imagines the look on the face of the Seelie fae king when Moloch hands him this gift. He imagines the outpouring of admiration from the Seelie fae. He sees himself restored to the bright, light world of his past, all his sins forgiven. Moloch smiles.

He stands and strides through shadowy hallways, on his way to beg an audience of the Seelie king.

*   *   *

The Seelie king remains silent while Moloch speaks. When Moloch is finished, the king rises and says, “Let me think on the best approach.”

Moloch pauses, confusion clear in his remaining eye. “I’m willing to go at once.”

The king turns his back on Moloch and says in a tone both short and sharp, “I need to assess.”

Moloch asks, “My boon, then? Restoration?” He sounds desperate.

“If all goes well,” the king answers cryptically. He doesn’t want Moloch to believe he’ll ever be accepted again.

Moloch disgusts the king. His courtiers hide their eyes when Moloch passes by. He’s grown repulsive over time and now carries the sluagh stench of rot, and his wings—once variegated and brilliant, like colored glass—have become hard and leathery. Even his remaining eye, once the green of Seelie fae, has turned sluagh red. After centuries of exile with them, Moloch has taken on the aspects of the Unseelie. Of the sluagh, although Moloch doesn’t seem to realize how unpopular he’s become.

The bright Seelie fae reject him completely.

Once Moloch returns to his exile, the king calls his most trusted spy. “Find out what you can.”

*   *   *

At first, Moloch doesn’t want to believe it. He’d expected an immediate yes, a readmittance. “They wouldn’t,” he mumbles. “They couldn’t.”

But he saw their expressions when he approached the king. Saw their revulsion. The pain in his heart is sharp and bright, and a fresh anger rises inside him at their rejection.

Moloch uses his mirror this time not to spy on the human world but to spy on the Seelie king. His instincts, what he felt from the king and court, prove right. The Seelie fae are lazy and unwilling to do the searching Moloch has done. But they are quite willing to take the fruit of Moloch’s efforts for themselves, even while they laugh at him, revile him behind his back. The superficial Seelie.

His breath comes short as he sees that the king himself intends to find the Guardian now that he has Moloch’s hard-won information. The Seelie king will steal Moloch’s glory. Prevent Moloch’s redemption. Prohibit his return to the Seelie court.

The king and his court will leave Moloch to rot with the sluagh.

Moloch begins to shake with the realization that he’s been used and is despised. Anger floods Moloch and he lets out a sluagh-like scream.