Sari’s teeth crack as she snaps her mouth shut and glances at Malia, but when her maid doesn't return her gaze, her eyes flick toward the guard.
The contempt on his face doesn't melt away as he looks at the regent’s daughter. Instead, his hand drops down to rest on the hilt of his sword, and he jerks his head to direct her forward. She gets moving, her lips pressed tightly together and every last trace of joy wiped from her pretty features. As the group continues forward, the dead spots appear more frequently until we're forced to ride over them, no longer able to maneuver around them.
The ache of earth becomes so loud in our minds that Sari begins to clutch at her cloak, wrapping it tighter around her shoulders as though she can chase the terrible feeling away if only she can get warm enough. The soldiers are primed and ready to fight, silent through the carnage until finally we find the first dead body on the ground.
The witch’s eyes have been plucked out by some opportunistic bird of prey, its mouth open in one last scream, forever gaping up at the sky.
Sari tries to smother a gag, but it bubbles out of her regardless, and she gasps and chokes as she presses a handful of her cloak against her mouth.
I'm drawing my sword before I hear the first war cry ahead of us, only minutes away from the river and no way to get to the regent without first facing the enemy between us.
CHAPTERTWENTY-ONE
Rooke
Hours after Prince Soren bids Tyton farewell and leaves him with the command to watch me while he’s gone, I’m startled by the door at the top of the staircase bursting open but no footsteps following.
Tyton straightens with a scowl and strides over to see what the hell happened, but he stops abruptly just out of my line of sight. Whatever is said to him is too quiet for me to hear, but I catch his answer perfectly.
“Send a messenger out to Prince Soren immediately and one up to Fates Mark to Roan. Clear the castle of any visitors and triple the guard duties. I’ll remain here until Soren arrives, unless Airlie needs me. Keep me updated.”
The labor has begun.
I squeeze my eyes shut before Tyton returns to his post, my gut churning as bile creeps up the back of my throat. This might be the most effective torture so far, to be forced to sit here and wait while tragedy unfolds in the castle above me. I can’t open a connection to the earth, not while my mind is in such chaos, and it takes all my focus not to vomit.
The minutes crawl past, slowly ticking into hours, and nothing changes, not the loaded silence in the room or the violent revolt of my gut, not even the intensity of the curse as it sings its bleak victory in the air around me. I wonder how long it’s been since a high-fae baby was taken by it. By the hunger within the magic, the glee of the evil around me, it must have been years, if not decades. The curse aches for life the same as the earth does, though for unnatural and unconscionable reasons.
It’s impossible to tell what the time is here in the dungeon, but as I let my own magic out around me, I find the sun is still sleeping, hours away from rising. There’s nothing else here that could have woken me, no signs of changes in the dungeon, but the slick feel of the witches’ malevolent magic on all high fae within the kingdom is so thick in the air that it chokes me, and all I can hear is despair.
It’s here to take the life of the baby.
I could stay right here in the dungeon, where I’ve been left to rot by my Fates-cursed mate. I could do what I set out to do when I returned to the Southern Lands, merely sit back and let my fate come to pass around me, as the Seer had told me.
The words that were spoken to me repeat again in my mind, and the Fates begin to play wildly under my scar once more. Saving the kingdom could mean that I pour my magic into the earth to give back to it…and it could also mean breaking the curse laid over the high fae.
My treatment here in the castle says I should stay here and leave them to figure it out on their own.
I look at Tyton and find him staring back at me, his face drawn and guarded as he listens to the chaos above us. My own ears aren’t sensitive enough to pick anything up, but the curse is running riot with my senses, my magic leaking out all over the cell, until the picture in my mind of what’s happening is so clear that I might as well be up there in the room with Airlie.
“Soren will kill you for doing this to her, Fates be damned,” Tyton spits at me, his face a vicious replica of his surly brother’s, but whether I want to admit it or not, I’ve made up my mind.
His raw magic might be strong by high-fae standards but it’s nothing compared to mine. I push into his mind in a rush, breaking past the barriers he’s so feebly erected there, and put him into a deep sleep, as simple as blowing out a candle. A net of power catches his body as he slumps, easing him onto the ground and positioning him to be sure he won’t do something stupid and inconvenient for me like choke on his own tongue while I’m busy upstairs.
I stand and brush the dirt from my pants as best as I can and let my magic flow out of my body, wrapping around the iron bars of my cell, and then I pull it back into myself in a sharp action, breaking the cell door until I can push it gently with my hand to open it, ignoring the slight sting of it as my bare skin touches the horrid metal.
My legs ache a little from sleeping bunched up against the stone wall, and I take a moment to shake them out before I climb the treacherous staircase back up to the castle. There’s every chance I’m going to be discovered by maids or servants, and I’ll have to decide then how badly I want to intervene with what evil is about to take place here.
The princess may still refuse my help.
My guess is she will, but I was raised in the Ravenswyrd Forest as the Maiden of the coven, to someday be the Mother, and to give help to any who need it, selflessly and without ever asking for payment. Nothing has taken that away from me, neither my time in the Seelie Court nor my mistreatment here at the hands of my mate and his family.
I won’t wallow in my misery when there’s a chance I can help her.
My feet on the stone staircase are silent to my own ears, but the high fae can hear a mouse's footsteps from ten miles away if they try hard enough, so I move quickly. I know the basic layout of the castle, thanks to my rare trips out of the dungeon, but I don’t need to know the exact way to know where I’m going.
I let the curse lead me.
Three long hallways, another set of stairs, through two more doors, and then finally I’m led into a wing of the castle that looks like a home, all while using my magic to side-step and hide from the inhabitants. It’s slow going, and my skin itches with impatience, but I find myself staring at a large set of wooden doors, white oak and inlaid with silver filigree, beautiful and throbbing with death.
