T he messenger led us to Caduan’s private wing of the castle. The double doors were closed. Some awareness lingering beneath my fragile mortal
senses shuddered as we approached—something that nagged at fragments of old memories.
I hesitated, and Caduan noticed. He paused, his hand on the door. “I can have someone return you to your room,” he said.
I wasn’t sure why this felt like an insult. “I do not want to return to my room.”
“You do not want to see what is in here, either.”
I knew that he was likely right. Whatever I felt emanating from within reminded me far too much of the nightmares that plagued me at night. And yet… it called to me, too.
“I will stay,” I said.
I thought Caduan might argue with me. But instead he gave me a long stare that I could not decipher and said nothing more before opening the door.
I had never seen this room before. It was circular, with many windows and few decorations. The floor was white marble. The combination of the waning sunlight spilling through the window and the gleaming bright tile made the pools of violet blood seem to glow.
There was so much blood.
All of it dripped from a single table at the center of the room. Upon it lay a Fey man, a once-white sheet pulled up to his neck. Luia, Vythian, two healers, and a soldier surrounded him. A nauseating wave rolled over me, as if something in the air itself was rotten.
Caduan’s face was grim. He approached the table and pulled back the sheet. Luia let out a shocked curse.
A massive, savage gash ran from the man’s navel all the way up to the base of his throat. Someone had stitched the wound, but the blood still pooled and dripped from it. Black and purple mottled the flesh around it. Dark veins spread beneath the Fey’s skin, reaching out over the golden skin of his chest and abdomen, almost to his shoulders.
The man was weeping. When the sheet moved over him, he let out a wordless cry, body lurching. The healers held him down.
I couldn’t move.
The strange sensation I felt in the air grew thicker. My stomach threatened to empty. My ears filled with a high-pitched scream, though I recognized what I was hearing was not a “sound”—it was not coming from the disfigured man’s twisted lips, but somewhere deeper.
“How did he make the journey back alive?” Caduan muttered.
“We made sure that he lived,” the soldier said. She was covered in violet, her face pale. “You needed to see firsthand what the humans are doing, my King. What they are doing to those of us they capture.”
“He was recovered from Ara?”
“By the shades. Yes. He was a soldier assigned to send a message to our Threllian allies in the south. Shortly after his assignment, he disappeared.”
“He went too close to Ara’s Threllian outposts,” Luia said.
“We did not think we’d recover him, but…” The soldier’s eyes fell to the man on the table, and words seemed to escape her.
Luia’s lip curled with hatred. “That Aran bitch is a vile beast. Who knows how long she had kept him alive like this? All for her twisted experiments.”
Caduan leaned over the figure, solemn. “He won’t live.”
A new voice came from behind us. I turned and went still.
For a moment I was looking at another person, one that I knew long ago. A man with golden hair who I hated so much it burned me alive. The man who had betrayed me.
The past and the present collided, until I realized… No—no, it wasn’t him.
This was a different man. His eyes were a bit larger, features sharper, and his hair shorter, skimming his shoulders. And one of his wings— silvery-gold—was hacked off at the joint, leaving a ragged edge.
Still, I stiffened, and out of the corner of my eye I noticed Caduan flick a vigilant glance to me.
The man approached, a lopsided smile at his lips. It struck me as a deeply unhappy expression.
“Apparently I’m late. I apologize if I missed the message.” “You don’t need to be here, Meajqa,” Caduan said.
“I’m your second. I should be here.”
Meajqa stood beside the table, and the smile faded as he watched the man writhe.
“It was cruel to keep him alive long enough to bring him back,” he said, quietly, as if to himself.
“It was their duty to see if he could be saved,” Luia replied, but the healer gave her a pitying look.
Even I knew it. There was no saving this person. His soul stank of rot. Caduan leaned over the man.
“Look at me, friend.”
The man’s eyes opened slowly, as if he had to fight for it.
“Ela’Dar is deeply in your debt,” Caduan said. “I will never forget the contributions that you have made to our home. Our people are safer because of you. Do you understand?”
The man nodded, a minuscule movement.
Caduan’s voice was firm, gentle. “You are going to die. But do not fear death. Death is a door, and though none of us can follow you through it today, you will cross its threshold knowing that the mark you have left behind will be a worthy one. This is not an end.”
The man’s trembling had subsided. Even the agony that I had sensed in the world beneath seemed to still, as if soothed by Caduan’s words.
“Do not be afraid,” Caduan said, again, quietly.
The man swallowed. Nodded. Tears rolled down bloodstained cheeks. “Are you prepared?”
Again, the man nodded.
Caduan bowed his head. “Thank you.” He brought his hands to the man’s temples.
The man’s body jolted violently, and his limbs suddenly went slack.
Meajqa turned away.
Several seconds of silence passed. Caduan straightened. He did not look away from the corpse on the table, and he did not wipe the blood off his fingertips.
“Make sure his family are provided for. Tell them that he was killed in battle. There’s no benefit in them knowing how he suffered.”
“Perhaps the people of Ela’Dar should know,” Luia said. “If they truly understand what the humans are capable of, they’ll be clamoring to take up arms against them.”
“The last thing we need is for individuals to make rash, stupid mistakes out of anger.”
“She will not stop doing this, Caduan. She will not stop taking Fey from our southern reaches. And the rest of her people are no better. Humans have done nothing but destroy. Even the Threllians do such horrific things to their own. Yet we just lie here in bed with snakes. With every passing day, that bitch gets closer to doing something that could be catastrophic to all of us. What happens when this no longer fails?”
She thrust her palm to the table. Already, the corpse looked… odd, formless, like it was beginning to break down.
“Letting a hundred thousand Fey die on a battlefield will not change any of this,” Caduan said.
“We don’t need to let a hundred thousand Fey die,” Luia shot back. “Not if you stop refusing to utilize all of the power that we have in our possession.”
Caduan looked at me, and then looked away, as if he didn’t intend to allow himself to do so. The others were not as subtle.
Many people here treated me as if I was stupid. But I was not stupid. I understood exactly what Luia was saying. A snarl tugged at my lip without my permission. I hated how this mortal face did that—moved on its own.
“Everyone talks about her, and yet no one asks her.” Meajqa’s smile had returned. I met his stare even though the familiar shade of his gold eyes speared me with unwelcome memories. “You and I have lived the worst of them, Aefe. If you had the opportunity to punish them for what they did to you, wouldn’t you want to take it? We deserve our vengeance. Just as those who never made it out of their grasp do.”
Vengeance. The word awoke something in me, like a scent from an old memory.
“This is not about vengeance,” Caduan said, coldly.
I nearly laughed. How could he say such a thing? I understood little about mortal ways. I could not read the expressions on their faces or the inflections in their voices. But I understood vengeance, understood how hunger for it devoured all else, and I saw that hunger shining in Caduan’s eyes every time he looked at me.
Everyone wanted revenge.
Tisaanah had desired it to sear her mark into a world that refused to acknowledge her. Maxantarius had clawed for it as a means of obtaining the power he so desperately craved. The ones who came before had begged for it, too, even if those memories had long ago withered.
As Reshaye, I was nothing but wrath and desire rushing through another being’s veins. And now there was no one here but me, and that left only flesh, blood, and fury.
At least Meajqa seemed to see that in me. Perhaps because he saw it in himself, too.
“They will be punished.” Caduan’s words were quiet but full of promise. “By the time we are finished with them, the human race will be nothing but the scars they left behind. Question my methods, but do not question that.”
He wasn’t looking at Meajqa. He was looking only at me.
Footsteps rushed into the room, shattering the tense silence. A messenger leaned against the doorframe, panting.
Caduan’s face fell, as if already bracing for bad news. “What is it?” “The wayfinder,” the messenger said. “It has been stolen.”
The room collectively muttered curses.
“How?” Luia barked. “How did we let that happen?”
“Who took it?” Caduan said. I watched his fingers curl. His face and voice were calm, but his knuckles were white.
“The humans,” the messenger said. “Which humans?”
“The Threllians must have double-crossed us,” Luia muttered, but Caduan shot her a warning glance that made her go quiet.
“It was not the Threllians,” the messenger said. “It was the rebel slaves.
Tisaanah Vytezic.”
I stopped breathing. The sound of Tisaanah’s name shook me. There was still a part of me that felt like a part of her. I craved the rare moments I
felt close to her, and yet, the thought of her brought with it a wave of hurt, too. She was one more person who had abandoned me.
Every line of Caduan’s body tensed. He reminded me of an animal cringing in pain, trying not to let their discomfort show to predators.
“Humans absolutely cannot hold that power,” Luia said. “If they get their hands on what it leads to—”
“I know.” A muscle fluttered in Caduan’s jaw. “I know.” “What is it?”
Even I surprised myself with the question. Everyone looked at me as if they didn’t realize I could speak.
“A key,” Luia said, at last. “A key that leads to manifestations of magic even more powerful than you.”
More powerful than me? I wanted to correct her—perhaps once I was powerful, but now I am nothing.
“Was she alone?” Meajqa asked, in an odd, flat tone. The messenger seemed unsure if he should answer.
“No. Your father helped her escape.”
Meajqa’s lips went thin. He went to the window, his back to the rest of the room, and said nothing more.
Luia turned to Caduan. “It is one thing for the rebels to have it. That’s bad enough. But if the Arans capture Vytezic and come into possession of it…”
“I may be able to track the key. Imperfectly, but… there must be…” Caduan’s voice trailed off, as if it couldn’t keep up with his thoughts.
The words were on the tip of my tongue—I could find it. I had felt Tisaanah, after all. I knew that I could follow the thread that connected me to her, if I wanted to.
But I said nothing.
Caduan turned to the messenger. “Send word to General Sai’Ess. I will get them information about the key’s location as soon as possible. Tell them to do whatever they must to get it back.”
“And the Arans?” Luia motioned to the dead body on the table. Caduan flinched, the motion there and gone in less than a second. “I will send shades.”
“We don’t have more.” “I can make more.” “My King—”
Caduan was already striding across the room. “You can protest later. I have work to do.”
