I moved without thinking. Time and distance fell away, inconsequential compared to my wounded anger. When I found myself standing before a
wall of black stone, I did not remember coming here.
The black stretched up to the misty sky. Carvings adorned its surface, flashing bright silver where the light struck them the right way. Windows and balconies interrupted the sheets of darkness. I knew somehow that once, long ago, they would have been lit with lanterns, bright and warm with the activity of the people who lived here.
No longer. The cliffs had partially shattered, sections of it ripped apart so its silhouette resembled a jagged mountain peak. Massive cracks stretched across its surface like lightning.
My head was now pounding. I remembered this place.
Once you felt belonging here. Thousands of other souls and you, connected to the same earth.
I had lived here. I was a ruler. A— a Teirness.
No. No you were not. You were tainted.
I remembered my father’s hands around my throat. Remembered those stares of disapproval.
A part of me wanted to leave the past behind me, pull my hand away from the biting flame. Maybe it was easier not to remember what I had lost.
And yet, I found myself walking through the doors.
 |
ONCE THERE HAD BEEN lights in the black stone walls, like stars over the night sky. Now, they were dim and dusky. With every step through these halls, the past surrounded me.
I walked up and up through spiral staircases of mosaic glass, all the way to the private quarters of the royal family. The damage was worse up here. Some cracks in the ground were impassable. I barely noticed them. I saw only this place as it had existed half a millennium ago.
Here was the throne room where I would kneel before my own family, begging them to love me.
Here I saw the banquet hall where I would sit with the Blades, in the position I earned, not the one I was born into.
Here I saw my childhood bedroom, where my father tried to kill me.
Where my mother, my poor, mad mother, saved my life.
And here…
I stopped at this door. It was closed, the mosaic tiles adorning it crooked and broken.
Orscheid. My lovely, beautiful, sweet sister, who was everything I was not, and who still loved me for all that I was.
I threw open the door. A bedchamber had been here, once. Now there was crumbling stone, shattered glass, the sun-bleached remains of a bed, and a chasm in the floor that revealed the distant forest, dizzyingly far below.
I could throw myself over it. Rot in the dust of my old home. The earth called to me, so far below.
You will never escape this place. “I thought you might come here.” I had not heard Caduan approach. “Orscheid,” I choked out.
Silence. Perhaps I was growing better at understanding all the things living beings did not say. Because I knew, even in his wordlessness, that he did not want to give me an answer to the question I did not ask.
Gone. She was gone.
“Come back, Aefe,” he said, softly. But I remained there, gripping the doorframe. Specks of silver fell to the abyss below—tears I didn’t realize I was shedding.
No one could survive this. How could anyone, human or Fey, live this way? Feeling so much?
I just wanted to rest.
“Even then I was nothing,” I said. “My father wanted to kill me because I did not deserve to live. I was nothing but what I stole from others.”
“You always deserved to live,” Caduan murmured.
When I was Reshaye, living a thousand lives inside a thousand strangers, I could dream that I was once something more. I was envious of the lives I invaded. I squeezed myself inside their minds and marveled at the depth of everything that thrived there.
I did not know what I was, but I could dream that perhaps once I’d had those things, too. Now, the truth came crashing down around me like these shattered cliffs. Even then, it had been the same.
“Aefe,” he said, again. Was that fear I heard in his voice? I turned away from the door, and, at last, I faced him.
“I need to know what happened here.”
I thought he would argue with me. Instead, he said, “I will show you if you want to see. But know that it will be difficult.”
The past was jagged glass. But I was drunk on the way it tore me up.
“Show me,” I said, and Caduan gave me a strange look. This, I understood now, was tenderness.
“As you wish,” he said.
 |
WE WENT to what was once the throne room. It was badly damaged. The ceiling, once high and curved and etched with silver-dipped engravings, was torn up as if a beast with massive claws had shredded it to pieces. The floor was dust-coated and fissured. Upon the shattered dais stood two thrones. My father’s, destroyed, the two halves of it caving in on each other. My mother’s, bent and broken, the delicate silver warped nearly beyond recognition.
Orscheid’s was simply gone.
Dried violet spilled over the dais steps in an elegant waterfall. I stared at
it.
Death. This place reeked of death.
“I came here,” Caduan said, “after I recovered from my injured from
Niraja. I came to speak to your father when I heard that he was about to
launch a massive attack on the House of Wayward Winds. I knew, especially after seeing what happened to Niraja, that war between the two most powerful Fey houses would be catastrophic.”
He opened his hand and revealed a mound of rose-colored powder. He blew into his palm, sending the powder scattering into the air in thick puffs of smoke. When it faded, I was in the past. The dais was intact. A younger version of Caduan stood at the center of the room, dressed in simpler, dirtier clothing. My father sat in his throne, my mother beside him on one side, and my sister on the other.
To see their faces made it difficult to breathe. The image was intangible, slightly blurry, and yet so real that I wanted to reach out and touch them.
The other Caduan, the younger one, did not kneel before my father. My father sneered at him, familiar hatred in his eyes. He rose to his feet.
“You come to a grieving family and disrespect us this way?”
“Do not insult me by implying I do not know grief.” Caduan’s voice was thick with anger. “It is only out of respect for Aefe that I come here at all. I come to appeal to you, one king to another. Your desire for power has killed countless, but you can still stop. I beg you to, before your warmongering destroys all of us.”
My father scoffed at him. Darkness bracketed his eyes. “Warmongering? I am fighting for my House. You should understand that, after I took in your people. I gave you your crown. I am avenging your people.”
“You’re sacrificing lives in search of more power for yourself. If you think no one sees that, you’re more foolish than I thought you were.”
Orscheid’s eyes had gone wide. My mother, too, looked increasingly uncomfortable, shifting in her chair like a flighty bird desperate to take off.
I had never seen such fury on my father’s face. For a moment, he was still—and then he crossed the dais steps in two strides and struck Caduan with enough force to send him to the ground.
Caduan recovered easily, coming to his feet with such grace that the fall seemed as if it could have been intentional. The only tell was his trembling right leg, which was visibly injured.
“You traitorous, ungrateful snake!” my father roared. “Who are you to challenge me? You don’t even have a House to rule. I’ll have you executed for treason, and your own people will not even mourn you.”
Caduan was so deadly calm. His eyes slid to my mother, who sat quivering in her throne.
“Sareid,” he said, addressing only her. “You could put a stop to all of this. Surely some part of you must know that.”
No one ever spoke to my mother like that—with more sophistication than that of a small child. She wriggled in her seat, shaking her head.
“You understand this,” Caduan said, firmly. “This house is yours, Sareid. Yours. You let your husband take your crown. Now you let him destroy your house. Stop him. I know you can.”
My father whirled to her, teeth bared in a snarl, but I stood at just the right angle to see the glimmer of fear in his eyes.
“Do not address my wife so disrespectfully,” he spat. “Blades! Blades!” Guards in black Blades uniforms slipped from the shadows,
approaching Caduan. But he stood his ground.
“Sareid,” he said, voice harder. “He killed Aefe. Your husband killed your daughter.”
My mother lurched to her feet, one ungraceful jolt, as if she had been struck. But she went no further—she did nothing more. The Blades surrounded Caduan, who ignored them.
“Please, Sareid. Act. You failed your daughter in her lifetime. Don’t fail her now. Act, if not for her, then for the countless lives that will be lost if your husband’s command is executed. But do it for her. She should be enough. She should have been enough.”
I found myself holding my breath. Once, my mother protected me from him. And then she spent the rest of our lives offering me to him, feeding him all the power he desired.
I did not realize how much I wanted her to fight for me.
But she did not move. Instead, her wide eyes slipped to my father. She let out a whimper and reached for him, not in a strike, but in a caress.
I had never seen such hatred across Caduan’s face. Such disgust. “She deserved better,” he snarled.
The Blades grabbed him and started to drag him away. But Caduan refused to move, his face calm but shoulders heaving. My father seized the sword from beside his throne and whirled to Caduan—
“Look away,” Caduan whispered to me, urgently. But how could I? How could I not watch?
Blood sprayed. The sun flashed against steel.
It was not Caduan who fell.
It was my father, as Orscheid leapt forward and cut his throat, wielding the little dagger I had given her long ago. Tears streamed down her face. “You killed her—” she choked out, her voice gurgling slightly.
And then, seconds later, she collapsed—as my father buried his sword through her delicate form in his final burst of strength.
I let out a strangled sound, stumbling forward. Caduan caught my arm.
It was the only thing that kept me from falling through a crack in the floor.
In the past, Caduan broke free from the stunned Blades who held him and ran to Orscheid’s side. My father died without a final word, hatred on his face. How easily he discarded his love even for his favorite, perfect daughter.
Orscheid was such a delicate creature. She fell like a handful of flower petals. My mother wept. Caduan tried to stop her bleeding, tried to mend the wound, silent in utter concentration. Her blood and my father’s ran down the stairs together.
The image froze. Wavered. Faded.
“I tried to save her,” Caduan murmured. His voice felt too real, too close, compared to the memory.
“Her life was worth too much to die alongside him.” Why was my voice so strange? It cracked over the words. “Why would she— how could she
—”
Orscheid didn’t know how to fight, save for the few simple movements I had once taught her. Surprise alone allowed her to land her strike on my father, but she did not have the skill to evade his vengeful last act.
“You would have killed him,” I whispered. “She did not need to…to…” “I would have. I came here to do it.”
Needless. So needless. “And my… my mother?”
“She lives, though she does not know that you do. If you would like to see her, I—”
“No. Never.” My eyes fell to my mother’s face, contorted in agony, as she sank to her knees beside my sister. She had failed to fight for me. Failed to fight for Orscheid. I never wanted to see her again.
Slowly, the image of Caduan leaning over my dying sister faded, leaving nothing but a broken throne and dried blood.
“I was too late,” Caduan said. “Your father’s order had already been placed. He had launched his invasions against the House of Wayward Winds and their allies. The ensuing war destroyed all of the remaining Fey houses over the next two hundred years. For centuries, I regretted it. If I had gotten there two hours earlier, so much could have been different.”
For a moment, I hated him for it, too.
“But there is only so much I can blame your father for what happened then. It was all too easy to turn us against each other. One small push, and we tore ourselves apart. We weren’t strong enough. I often thought of you and how different things could have been if you had been allowed to take your rightful place. You would have made an extraordinary leader, Aefe.”
I didn’t believe him. And yet, in that moment, I could almost see myself differently, as he saw me.
“I didn’t bring you here to use you,” he murmured. “I didn’t bring you here to be a weapon. You were right in what you said yesterday—there was no lie. You were never given the chance to be more. I’ve seen countless injustices in six hundred years, but that, Aefe, is one of the greatest.”
Injustice. Could that single word encompass everything that had been taken from me, everything that had been done to me, everything that had been beaten into me?
Caduan placed his hands over mine. I realized I was trembling.
“Our people have managed to build something better than what came before us. But it’s fragile. I am fighting to protect our home, to make it stronger than any civilization that preceded it. And I can think of no one more deserving to help shape it than you. I am asking—not forcing—you to help me. And I will not stop you if you choose to leave. I was wrong to say I would.”
My throat tightened. I had to force the words out. “And once you find these—these magics, what then? What will you do?”
“Even one of them holds tremendous power, though it comes with great risks to the one who wields it. But all three unlock limitless possibilities. If I were to find them and a place where I could use them…” His voice faltered. “I could create a new world for us. One free from the humans and their influence. A place where no one could ever be victimized by them again.”
I thought of my sister’s lifeless body on those steps—such a senseless death. I thought of Meajqa’s shattered smile and his missing wing. I thought of a room of endless white and all that had been inflicted upon me there.
I thought of the queen of Ara, and how she was inflicting such pain upon so many other Fey, every day.
“If I help you,” I choked out, “we will put an end to all of it. No one else will suffer like I have suffered.”
“Yes.”
My mind wandered elsewhere, to darker parts of my memory—to the minds I had shared. “Will we kill Tisaanah and Maxantarius?”
After a moment of hesitation, he said, “Perhaps. Yes.”
I did not have a name for the feeling that answer brought me. Was that regret? Uncertainty?
They had abandoned you. Abused you. Used you for their own selfish needs.
But… there had been love in them, too. They had once shared my soul. Even now, I felt that there was a part of me left inside of them and a part of them left inside of me. How much was that worth, though, when weighed against the horrors I had endured? The things Meajqa had endured, and countless others?
It was easy to drown love beneath hatred.
“Will it mean killing the queen of Ara?” I asked. This time, there was no hesitation. “Yes.”
I cast one final look at the wreckage around me, and the bloodstained dais.
I could not take revenge upon my father for what he stole from me. I could not take it from the hundreds or thousands of humans who had abused me over centuries. I could not scorch their bones.
But here, now, killing the Queen of Ara seemed like enough. “Yes,” I said.
One word. One word, and it tasted like blood. It tasted like vengeance.
