When I reach the healer’s quarters, I take a seat on the small wooden chair there and blow out a breath as I rub a hand over my face. No amount of scrubbing will wipe away the aftermath of the rite, but I try anyway.
Reed huffs. “So it did affect you, then? Tyton looked like he just faced the full brunt of a death curse while you were unaffected. I thought for a moment maybe you’d directed all of his power into the rite to spare your own.”
Stupid high-fae male…but he has a point, if not the one he intended to make. This is a fine dance I’ve found myself in, a ruse I’m enacting to ensure they don't suspect me of foul play while hiding my vulnerability.
I lean down and pull off my shoes, an action I usually take only at the end of the day when I'm spent, and he knows it after all his shifts guarding me. His eyebrows creep up his forehead as he watches me sigh in relief, my toes blistered and throbbing. Keeping up the pretense of a complaisant prisoner has never been less appealing to me, and every last pair of high-fae shoes should be sent to the very depths of Elysium on the fires, never to grace my feet again.
“The rite has weakened Tyton so severely because it's his first time channeling his power, and he has no idea how to control the raw magic within him. He’d feel the same way after any magic act, not just a sacrifice. Think of magic like fire, useful and vital to our survival but damaging if handled incorrectly. He doesn't yet have the resilience within him to withstand that fearsome power yet without being burned.”
I look at my hand, the calluses there proof of my own work within the Sol Army to find resilience within myself. I have no doubt Prince Tyton could be trained in magic—any soldier could—because perseverance is the hardest skill to learn, and he’s already honed it well.
Reed’s eyes fill with recognition as his gaze traces over the same roughened skin of my palms. He nods as he steps toward the small fireplace and places a few logs on the dying embers for me. He's never attempted to help me with any of my work, and I send him a speculative look.
He clears his throat, tone grave as he murmurs, “I felt the earth’s magic for the first time while you both fed your power into it. I felt the hunger, and the way it’s been abandoned by us all. When Prince Roan and Princess Airlie spoke to me about the rites, I wasn't convinced by your stories or the passages of those old books. I thought there was a good reason it had all been long forgotten.”
His eyebrows pinch together, and he stares out the window at the small garden there, thriving beautifully due to my magic and tender care. “Fates Mark has changed a lot since I was born there. The War of the Witches had only just begun when I was a faeling, but the land has grown colder and dug deeper into its dormancy as the years have gone by. I never understood how they could be affecting our land so much if none of them ever stepped foot in the Outlands, not since the last healer was driven out by the elder Prince Roan after the curse took effect.”
Something about his tone stops my temper from flaring. Maybe it's the extra days I've had to process the motives behind the high fae’s stupidity and malicious ways, but I'm able to sit and listen as the words spill out of him, a sad story of the fall of the high fae.
His pose is relaxed, but his eyes are just as sharp as the sword at his side. “I had no idea that life was flourishing elsewhere in the kingdom. The winters are colder in the Outlands now. The trees in the Stellar Forest are mostly dormant too, never truly waking up in the spring, and the deer that once lived there in abundance are gone. I almost forgot what they looked like until we saw that one in the Ravenswyrd, and I remembered the winters when we hunted them for food…all of this came to be because we stopped using our magic and giving it to the land?”
Sitting back in the chair, I ignore the uncomfortable support of the wood and wiggle my toes as I finally gain some sensation in them once more. Fatigue and exhaustion eat away at my bones as I tilt my head at him, considering my answer and just how honest I can be with a high-fae male like him.
Without the passing of knowledge and an open and willing heart to accept it, nothing will change.
“When the First Fae came to the Southern Lands, all the land flourished with magic and life. The witches were already here.”
His eyes narrow as he listens, but he doesn't refute my words or interrupt, and that's enough encouragement for me to continue. These are important lessons that need to be passed on, but only to those willing to learn.
“Every forest in the Southern Lands had a coven living within it, and some more than one. There are too many different accounts of how they came to be there to ever truly be sure, but the Ravenswyrd lore says we came from the trees themselves. They had need of caretakers and loyal servants to cultivate and tend to them as they rested, so through an act of the Fates and the trees’ own devotion, the Ravenswyrd Coven came to be, the first Crone, Mother, and Maiden of many generations to come.”
I press a hand against my mouth for a moment, taking a deep breath and letting my body calm. The emptiness within me is an echo of the ache within the ground, mourning together at the despair that cloaks us.
“The high fae came to the Southern Lands and left us to our forests. They formed the kingdom and ruled over the lower fae who followed their journey, promising a good life and a peaceful kingdom in this land that flourished. When they came to the forests for supplies and aid, they made an agreement with the trees. A sacred oath of sacrifice, and that gift, given freely, would always be honored with abundance from the land. The sacrifice was always given as blood, magic, or life itself, but when the high fae forgot their promise, it became a cycle of taking, each harvest slowly eating away at all resources, until the land had nothing left to give.”
I glance at Reed, and he’s listening intently, his gaze shrewd.
I continue, happy the lore of my people isn’t falling on ignorant ears for once. “The Ravenswyrd stays lush and green because the coven died there, all but two of them, and that was enough of a sacrifice to sustain it all this time.”
The magic still dances there amongst the trees, in the river as it rushes past and the fae flowers that grew as a memorial. The spirits that spoke to Tyton were echoes of the witches who died there, remnants of their magic that the earth had soaked in as a sacrifice accepted. I’d wager that there are many centuries left for the Ravenswyrd before that sacrifice wanes.
I smile sadly at Reed’s expectant look, collecting myself to continue. “Everyone but my brother and I died there. We were on our way to see the Seer to find out my fate, to learn Prince Soren’s name and of our unlikely union. You're right, though, the Ravenswyrd has thrived thanks to all that power our coven once held returning to it.”
He swallows and glances away, looking out the window again so he doesn’t have to see the raw grief in my gaze. “Doesn't that make you angry? That the forest let them die and then used their power for itself?”
I shake my head at such an arrogant way of thinking, and so unlike my own mind. “The power was the forest’s to begin with—it simply returned home. My family lived and died exactly where they wanted to be, at home in the trees.”
I take a deep breath, the truth tumbling out of me so quickly that I couldn’t stop it even if I tried. “The forestdidn'tlet us die—it was betrayed. Kharl used that story to turn the hearts of many witches, to convince them this war is about returning the lands to the glory of the time before the First Fae and taking back the forests. He's lied to thousands of them, and now, after so many years of distorting our traditions and building his army of madness, he no longer needs to spin his web of lies. He already has what he needs from the covens—all that’s left is the high fae, waiting the Unseelie Court out while you fight and squabble amongst yourselves. He’s proved himself a patient male. The time of the high fae is drawing to an end, and there’s no one but yourselves to blame.”
Reed blows out a breath and scratches the back of his neck, his eyebrows pinching together once more. “How were you not convinced then? Why are you immune to this promise of a return to the old times and restoration of the land? You care for it deeply—Tyton said you sat in a cell and bled onto the stones there just to give it crumbs of your power. Why don't you want the forests filled with witches once more?”
The smile I give him in return is a cold promise of death, and I watch as he gulps at it, a shock to his system after the quiet and peaceful tales I wove throughout the room. The promise of retribution I wear so boldly is a stark reminder that even the most docile of prisoners is guarded for a reason.
“The Ravenswyrd witches were living peacefully in the forest for millennia. Kharl deceived the trees with his intentions. He could have left us alone, and yet he hunted for centuries to find a way into the trees, desperate to kill us all.
“Even if he were the last witch left in the Southern Lands and our only hope for survival, I would hunt him down. No matter what the high fae choose to do in this war, Kharl the Betrayer's death is mine alone.”
That man owes me lives, dozens of them, and the Fates have promised him to me. Heartache and ruin may follow in the wake of my ill-Fated marriage, but I will see my coven avenged.
