He calmed as I said, “I believe you.”
“You’ll… you’ll send me back?”
That wasn’t the first time an exile had asked me that. I squatted down to eye level and gripped his shoulder. “I wish I could. But even I cannot go back.”
Niall jerked from my hold and sat back on his heels. Through gritted teeth he said, “You are as evil as they say you are.”
I jerked back as if he assaulted me. That was the first time any of the exiles knew who I was when they were sent over. A pixie must have made it through a barrier. After years of nothing, we finally have something. “I am evil?”
His chin jutted out, either in bravado or defiance. I would say the former with the shudder he fought to hide. No one was ignorant enough to stand against me once they felt my power hungrily lick against them.
“I am not responsible for you being here. Your queen is.” Niall’s focus slipped off somewhere past me. I gave his cheek a rough pat. The skin turned pink and warmed as I regained his attention. “How does your queen know about me?”
Niall’s eyes flicked again.
I pursed my lips. “What catches his attention, Lark?”
“The lamps, sire.” The wary redcap stared off in the same direction. His bloody axe rested on his shoulder. “They are flickering.”
Still squatted, I turned to the side on the balls of my feet. The lamps reminded me of the lightning bugs in the human realm, and how children bottled them up for fun and then left them to die. Only mine were pixies, and my magic kept them alive. They would live eternally in their solitary glass prisons, forced to endure every pang of hunger and driven mad by their sleeplessness.
Their lights dimmed and brightened at a furious rate. I had never seen this before. I looked at Niall over my shoulder. The resolve in his stare sent a jolt of warning through me.
Did I miss something? Was there something about him that I couldn’t sense? I scrutinized him. “Why are you truly here?” I twisted my wrist and opened my hand palm up in his face. One of the glass orbs appeared within my grip. The light dimmed and the pixie plastered itself against the sphere to get closer to him.
Niall leaned toward it, features etched in a sorrowful grimace as he took in its eternal suffering. Pain radiated from him. “Is this what you want?”
“I beg of you, let it go,” his voice cracked. “I’ll do anything.”
I turned the ball in my hand. The sickly pixie dimmed under my questioning stare and refused to look at me. “What would I gain by doing so?” I looked back at him. “What do you gain?”
His wide eyes met mine. “I–I….”
“Ah, of course. You gain nothing.” The fear wafting off him made me chuckle. “You are nothing. Not to your queen. And yet you lay your life at my feet and beg me to set it free. To what end?” When he didn’t speak, I roared, “To what end, Niall?”
“Your end… master.”
I rose to my feet. The goblins hissed and laughed at the trembling man cowered before me. I didn’t like what I was about to do, but I would do it all the same.
“I am the master of none.”
The bulb dropped to the ground in front of his resting knees, shattering on impact. A cry tore from his throat as I crushed the pixie beneath my boot.
“FRAAAAAAACK!” I roared. The closest thing to me launched across the room and slammed into the stone wall. Then another, and another. None of it tempered my rage.
I dropped down onto a chair and ran my hands over my head, smoothing back the strands that freed themselves as I fought for control. No answer was an answer. That’s what I grew to believe. Mergle clung to a hope I could neither see nor feel. They all did. They believed the truth would be revealed, and when it did, we needed to be ready. I wasn’t entirely sure what the information Niall gave us meant yet or where it fit in the puzzle. It would’ve been nice for it to reveal itself since it interrupted my reunion with Calista.
Closing my eyes, I unfurled my magic and searched for the stone, releasing a breath of relief when I felt her through it. She still had it. I manifested the mirror I viewed the human realm through and imagined her face. The surface blurred for a moment, and then she appeared. Pink tinged her cheeks as she rushed around a humble space. She swiped her strangely colored hair out of her face and stared at something. Little lines deepened between her brows as she focused.
“Your Highness.”
I signaled Mergle to enter as I watched her and coaxed my anger to cool. He ignored the mess from my tantrum and stopped next to my chair. He didn’t dare speak first for fear of having his lips sealed again.
“I grow tired of this, Mergle.”
“As do the rest of us.”
I steepled my fingers and rested my chin on my thumbs. My nose rubbed against my fingers as I ran through all the facts in my mind. “He is the tenth fae to be exiled this year.”
