I wave him off, wincing at the movement, and carefully make my way to the bathroom to wash my hands of any remnants of the poison. ”I don't understand why high fae are so fussy about lodgings within castles. The room is clean and dry. The bed is large, and the sheets appear to be clean. The bathroom is well maintained and stocked with everything I’ll need to bathe comfortably. What else matters?”
Reed grumbles under his breath, stepping to the large window and giving me his back while staying close, offering privacy but with my protection as the priority. “You’re their future queen. Any disrespect they show you is for Prince Soren as well, and all those who back your claim to the Unseelie throne. We left Yregar to bring Yrell aid when no one else would, and they want you to sleep up here? It’s disgraceful.”
Pressing one of the hand towels against the ravaged flesh of my hands, I step back out of the bathroom to join him at the window and find that it’s actually a door of sorts. The glass panels run all the way to the floor and pull open to reveal a small balcony. There’s no furniture or decoration, and the slabs of stone are in desperate need of a good scrub, but the view of the city and outer wall is far better up here than it was even on the inner wall, the perfect vantage point.
When I mention that to Reed, he moves two of the armchairs out there, muttering unhappily about the state of them and then refusing to allow me to sit until he’s sure the chair I’ve chosen is in better condition than the other.
Even once I’m comfortable, my hands cradled in my lap and my ankles crossed to relieve some of the discomfort of wearing shoes for such a long time, the Outland soldier doesn’t take his own seat. Instead, he rests against the wall beside the open glass door panes, staring out at the advancing armies of Kharl’s loyal witches. There’s a surly air about him that wasn’t there before, one that reminds me of the last time we waited for an oncoming battle together.
As tempting as it may be, I don’t want to linger in the past and on the actions that led us here. It doesn’t serve Reed or I to remember the dungeon or the seething fury he directed at me before Airlie arrived to free me. I’m still not convinced he was actually angry at me and not just furious at the witches for once again threatening the kingdom.
Distracting him is easy enough, relating to the soldier within him is second nature at this point. “I once slept in the wreckage of N’Tyri, a city in the Northern Lands. There was dust and debris everywhere, the bodies of my friends and innocent fae folk around me, and I wore clothing that had been on my body for a week. A few little holes in a chair older than I am because a moth made a meal of it? I’m not concerned, Reed. Better for Prince Mercer and his household to show us their true intentions now than to fall victim to acts of their dissent later.”
Silence follows, and I take a moment to stare into the darkness at the first glimpse of the army marching toward us, their torches and the glow of their magic lighting up the night. The clouds that followed us here, heavy with a threatened downpour, still hang low, another obstacle to factor into the battle ahead. It’s miserable to do anything in the rain, fighting for Yrell and all those within will be a misery for the soldiers to endure.
Reed takes a hesitant step forward, his eyes shifting between me and the advancing armies, before he finally takes his own seat. He’s positioned it so he’s covering the door and can keep me in view as well as the marble and glass balustrades of the balcony, in case some creature climbs up here intent on my demise. My brother did the same back in the Northern Lands no matter where we were or who was with us, and a familiar pain blooms in my chest.
“Prince Roan’s mother was from N’Tyri. Princess Nayda followed the war closely before her death and grieved the loss of it deeply.”
My gaze meets Reed’s. “I didn’t know she was an Auron high fae. Roan still has kin in the Northern Lands who survived, though they all reside in the Golden Palace now.”
He nods back, his head tilting as though he’s listening to something, but he keeps up with the conversation well enough.“He still speaks to his aunt Princess Sabyl often. She begged Nayda not to visit even when the princess was homesick and desperate to see them all. Her family thought Fates Mark was safer for her than the war in the Northern Lands.”
Grief digs its claws a little deeper in my heart, all that we’ve needlessly lost for the whims of others, but I turn my attention back to the murky outlook before us once more. Now isn’t the time to get lost in the past, not while the horrors of the present advance steadily.
Reed’s eyes narrow, and when he catches me watching him from the corner of my eye, he begins to describe what extra details he can see.
“The numbers are greater than what Fyr estimated… or maybe their numbers have grown. There's at least one more extra battalion’s worth of soldiers than we were expecting. Prince Soren is moving his soldiers to where they’ll be most useful amongst Mercer’s and dousing the last of the wall with the witcheswane. Yrell has enough in their stores to mark a full perimeter, and the wagons went out an hour ago.”
The archers have begun filling in the sections of the wall they have access to, and each holds quiver after quiver of arrows, an endless supply, and all of them coated in the poison. Once it hits the bloodstream, even a small nick can be enough to cause death as the body struggles to fight off its effects and weakens over time. Any witches that flee this battle but have been struck may very well die on their journey back to the Witch Ward.
How Soren has acquired so much witcheswane is a mystery to me, one that eats away at the back of my mind, along with a dozen other unanswered questions about my own mate. The lands have been depleted for centuries, long enough that the high fae had stared in wonder at deer in the Ravenswyrd, and yet somehow my Fates-blessed mate could provide his ally with thousands of gallons of this poison?
When I finally murmur this to Reed, he scowls hesitantly back at me before I shake my head at him. “If you're betraying your people by answering me then save your breath. I don't want you getting into trouble again.”
Bitterness leaches into my tone, my headache and the frustration of the pain in my hands sharpening every last one of my edges. Reed clears his throat, then again more insistently when I ignore him until I’m driven to look at him. Holding up a finger, he circles the two of us and my brows furrow at him for a moment before I realize what he's asking me for.
The moment my magic encases us, he speaks. “Stellar Forest. The witcheswane grows in the Stellar Forest in abundance. It’s Seelie magic, and a secret known only to Prince Soren’s most loyal supporters. Prince Mercer doesn't know where the supply comes from or where the plant grows, but Prince Soren has been stockpiling the poison in Yrell for decades in preparation of Kharl’s advances.”
Seeliemagic.
For it to be such a secret confuses me, because the entire kingdom should be grateful of any protective measures that are able to be taken against their enemy, but Reed scowls down at his boots for a moment, fury rolling off him in waves.
“Princess Nayda still held her magic—the Seelie Court never forgot their ways.”
I nod, knowing that better than any within this kingdom, and his brows pinch together as he works to find the right words for the dark and blood-soaked history carved within him like a wound.
“Kharl has sent witches to Fates Mark on scouting missions relentlessly since he took Yrebor from Prince Venyr, just as he sends them to the goblin lands and every other seat of high-fae power within the kingdom. The witches first scaled attack hit a dozen villages at once, and the Outland soldiers were forced tospread out. Prince Roan and his father were ambushed, pinned down trying to save the fae folk at the edges of Irongrave, and it was clear the witches weren’t concerned about losses to their numbers. They would happily lose a hundred just to kill one high-fae soldier while the Snowsong princes were loathe to lose a single lower fae villager. After days of this assault, Princess Nayda felt the call of the Fates. She heard them better than any other, heard her son’s fate in their whispers, and she left the safety of Fates Mark immediately. No one could stop her, not even Princess Airlie.”
He stops for a moment to collect himself. “Princess Nayda rode into the Stellar Forest, her magic spread out like a beacon calling the witches in after her, and they followed as though possessed by the allure. When they caught up to her, deep amongst the trees, we were riding out to meet her, but it was too late. Her magic killed an entire battalion of the stinking witches, but the power tore her apart.”
The raw pain on the elder Prince Roan's face flashes into my mind, his murmured promises to honor his late wife as he stared into the little prince’s golden eyes like his grandson is a gift from the Fates. The child who wouldn’t be here if it weren’t for his grandmother’s sacrifice, life and loss twisted together in a joyous agony, as it so often is.
“I don't know the words for such magic, but it was as though Princess Nayda laid a death curse on the earth as she died, on the witches and the forest itself.”
I glance at him, my own eyes narrowing at his choice of words, and he stumbles over them to explain himself. “I think her death, and the witches she took with her, became a sacrifice to the land. Anywhere that the enemy fell, witcheswane sprang forth in abundance. No matter how we harvest it, it always returns. It won’t grow anywhere else, no matter how hard we’ve tried. Princess Nayda’s final act to save her son and the line ofSnowsong was a curse on the witches and a gift to the kingdom she grew to love like her own.”
I've never heard of such a thing happening before, but the way he describes it makes me nod in return. “Dying acts of magic within the high fae are unpredictable. The most power any will ever hold is always in a time when the veils to Elysium open and the souls begin their journey. The magic returns to the earth, but it’s still formed by the spirit that held it. If she died in such a violent and desperate way, for the love of her son… that’s a powerful act of magic and a gift she has given us all.”
