She draws a breath, her chin lifting with visible effort. “It was a trap, brother. They knew you would come. They needed you away from the Grove.”
“Why?” Orios demands. “Why not face us here?”
But I already know. The truth curdles cold in my gut.
“It’s notusthey want,” I say softly. “It never was.”
“They want the Grove,” Zyphoro breathes. “They want Amara.”
My voice lowers, heavy. “And the Golden Son. Did he do this to you?”
She shakes her head, weak but certain. “They threw us in shackles the moment we arrived. He was a prisoner, like me. I don’t know where he is now.”
I glimpse Orios.
He shakes his head. “He is not here, Rook.”
I look down at Zyphoro, brushing a thumb against the bruises at her throat. “We’re returning to the Grove. Can you fly?”
She nods faintly, rubbing at her neck. “I’m already stronger. Free of that collar, I can feel my magic stirring again.”
“I haven’t seen one of those in centuries,” I mutter. “I can’t believe the Legion dared use them.” Then the memory strikes, sharp and sudden. “But only a Fae can enchant such a collar.”
Zyphoro bites her bottom lip, a snarl bleeding through. “Yes, brother. That is true.”
“Then who?”
“The Legion has a new leader. It was under his command that we were imprisoned. He is the one who fastened the collar around my throat.” Her gaze spears mine.
I shake my head, refusing the truth even as it settles like ice in my veins. “No. It cannot be.”
But she nods, a harsh certainty in her eyes.
“Yes,” she breathes. “Anethesis is here.”
Chapter 41
Daed
What a fool I am to have underestimated the Legion.To have forgotten that even the great Fae Houses, eternal, unbending, ancient as the stars, fell to these humans in the blink of an eye. How easily I dismissed them, believing time itself had made me wiser. As if age alone could make me clever. As if centuries of watching the sun rise and set could teach me more than the desperation of a mortal soul.
My arrogance will cost me everything I swore to protect.
I thought I knew speed. Thought I’d felt the limit of my wings, the ache of air turned to fire against my face. But not until now. The wind lashes my skin, sharp as needles. My wings blaze through the night, and the sky screams around me.
Orios, Zyphoro, and the Blades are at my back, voices carried thin on the wind, shouting for me to slow, to wait. But I cannot. Every heartbeat, every mile between me and the Grove is another life lost to the Legion and if it’s true, if Anethesis has returned, if he commands them now, then his hunger for Amara must be endless.
Does he know she sleeps beneath the earth? Does he understand what he’s meddling with? Or will his impatience drive him to drag her from the soil before she is whole? Before magic can anchor her to life again?
And if he does… if his blasphemous presence defiles that sacred ground, if he provokes the faeries, the Souls who guard her, will they abandon their work and leave her to fade? What if Mirael and Erania, and the Tenders who remain, are swallowed into that same darkness? What if the Grove dies with them?
The forest rises on the horizon. The haze parts, and the silence I once called sacred is gone.
Now the night is alive with screams and the wind carries the stench of blood.
We break through the treeline into a cacophony of chaos, and it takes me a moment to be sure my eyes are not deceiving me. A golem of living stone towers above, its granitefists slamming through ranks of Legion soldiers. Each strike sends men flying, armor crumpling like paper. Their screams echo through the Grove, drowned by the thunder of the creature’s roar. At its feet, mauling bears, beasts of vine and fur, hold the line. Their stone claws tear through human steel, powerful jaws rip flesh from bone.
I dive low, wings slicing the air. Legion soldiers scatter below me like startled insects.
