Page 100 of Memory of Ashes

“Unite us how?” Casyl asked.

“Tiryn interpreted it to mean unite us with this world, our ancestral lands.”

“No,” Elthar said, shaking his head. “It meant unite us. Our people have been divided too long over this. We don’t even know how our ancestors reached our lands.”

“What if the survivors escaped through a fracture?” Amelia asked. “The same way I entered your world. That would explain why the fae vanished from ours without leaving any record of where they went.”

They stared at her.

“Perhaps…” Eleandor murmured.

“We need to seal the mine. Humans need protecting from themselves,” Elthar said.

Footsteps echoed in the mine.

Amelia made a strangled noise, and they all turned to look at her.

She swallowed as the cold edge of a sword bit into her skin. If she moved, he would spill her blood.

“I can’t let you do that,” Salkin said. His sickly-sweet breath was hot against her ear. “None of you understand what it is like to be deprived of your birthright. Now, I’m going to take as much of the Lifesource as I can carry and leave. If you try to stop me, I’ll slit her throat. She is human after all.”

“We already failed once; the gods won’t forget. Do not continue what your ancestors started,” Eleandor said.

“I don’t believe in your gods,” Salkin replied vehemently.

Amelia looked at Casyl. This might be the last time she saw him. His expression burned with a cold fury.

“Do it,” she said.

Chapter 23

Amelia

“Shut up,” Salkin snarled at her. Casyl and Ruven moved like lightning, but she wasn’t going to wait to be rescued again. Salkin expected their reaction, but not hers. She twisted his sword arm and kicked him to the ground, wrenching the weapon from his grasp.

Then Casyl was upon him, pummelling his face with his fists. If he could die, Casyl would have ended him there.

The ferocity of Casyl’s onslaught scared her a little.

“Stop!” she yelled at him. “I’m alright.”

He stood, his fists bloody and his lips drawn back in a snarl. “Restrain him. Keep him that way. I know what to do with that weasel.”

Salkin lay on the floor, his face bleeding and swollen. He would still be able to feel the pain of it.

“How are we going to destroy the mine entrance?” she asked.

“We can use the explosives,” Ruven said, his mouth twitching. “There’s something poetic about using it.”

The others agreed. They left Elthar and Tharos at the mine with part of the army and returned to the city to retrieve the explosives.

Salkin had been shackled, along with his traitorous men. Casyl considered an attack on her an attack on himself. Treason.

“What are you going to do with them?” she asked as they approached the city.

“You’ll see.”

They came to the hole in the earth where the creatures were trapped. Their shrieks echoed endlessly from the depths.