Page 7 of When Ashes Fall

My voice rebounded off the white walls, where more dark wood beams created patterns along its surface. It had come out louder than I anticipated. The heads of the other eternals swiveled toward me as my mother smirked.

“Don’t poke the bitch,” Gizzi said.

I shoved my hands into my pockets to hide my fists as I ground my teeth together. Gizzi was right, I should have kept my mouth shut; instead, I’d given her what she sought by reacting to her.

She’d probably anticipated one of the shifters becoming incensed when she dared to touch the creature she’d cursed, but they’d maintained control. I hadn’t.

Knox’s eyes narrowed on me as Dromon, who I suspected was still mad at me for sneaking beyond the wall while under his watch, lowered his head and whispered in my ear.

“Keep your mouth shut.”

I glowered at the shifter, but he was right. I had to stay in control, or I wouldn’t get through this.

And if they decided to send me back with my mother, I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of watching me scream and fight against the injustice of it all. I’d go, but the first chance I got, I’d kill myself.

Escape was impossible; my ten years trapped there had already proven that. Death was a better fate than the one awaiting me at her hands.

When I didn’t speak again, the attention returned to my mother as she continued to fondle the flower while smirking at me. Gods, I hated her, but I kept my lips clamped together.

CHAPTER FIVE

Briar

“Let us all sit,” Alwin said from his seat at the table.

Most of the other leaders had already settled around him, but my mother and Knox remained standing. My mother caressed the rose once more before striding over to join the rest of the tribunal. Knox joined them but remained standing.

With the leaders of the kingdoms settled around the table, those who’d accompanied them to Wildwood took up positions behind them. Devnair stood directly behind Alwin while the other two elves flanked him.

Pierce grasped my arm and led me over to Knox. Pierce positioned me close to the stage and remained beside me while Lyra and Dromon took up positions behind Knox.

The eternals who remained standing wore swords at their sides; many rested their hands on their hilts as they studied the others. For thousands of years before I was born, peace had mostly reigned in the kingdoms.

While some kingdoms engaged in skirmishes over land and power, the tribunal had kept things mostly peaceful since the destruction of Aethelgard, the kingdom of the fallen demigods, thousands of years ago.

Standing in this room, I could feel how tenuous that peace was. The hatred simmering between my mother and Knox was nearly palpable as they stared at each other.

I’d never met most of the men and women at this table, but it was easy enough to figure out who they all were. Petra, the queen of the gorgons, wore a red scarf over her hair. Despite the covering, pale gold strands shimmered in the light, but her snakes remained calm and her features relaxed. In this form, she was absolutely striking, but the gorgons could transform into hideous beasts who stunned and killed their prey.

Alwin, the king of the elves, sat beside her. Zarmen, the cyclops’s king, had carried a bench over from another table and plopped it at the end of the table.

He sat on it by himself, but I questioned its ability to hold him. The cyclops were far larger than the rest of the eternals, with an average height of at least ten feet; Zarmen was bigger than that.

Standing at nearly eleven feet, his shoulders were broader than a draft horse’s. His one blue eye surveyed the room; when he shifted, the wood creaked ominously beneath his considerable weight.

When it held firm, he leaned his spiked mace against the table and clasped his hands before him. His brown hair hung in curls around his handsome features, and a scar sliced his left cheek from his forehead to under his chin.

I assumed the man with the spear and blond hair flowing to his chest was Caspian, the merking. It was rare for the merfolk to get involved in anything; they far preferred to stay at sea or in their kingdom of Nauticus.

Nauticus was the smallest kingdom, as the merfolk spent most of their time in the ocean, but they did emerge from the water to stroll the streets of their land. The homes in Nauticus were communal and often unoccupied. The true home and kingdom of the merfolk was beneath the waves, and no one, outside of the merfolk, knew what it looked like.

The merfolk had gifted the elves with a conch shell that could call them from the sea if necessary. I didn’t know if Alwin used it to draw Caspian here, but the merking intrigued me.

I couldn’t imagine how amazing it would be to live beneath the waves, exploring places few others would ever see and swimming amid the dolphins, whales, and other sea creatures.

Had he ever seen a kraken? Did he know how to find the dragons’ home? How many secrets does he have? How many shipwrecks has he seen? What’s it like to live in a kingdom beneath the sea?

I longed to ask him all these questions, but the one I most wanted to know was whether it was true they could speak the sea creatures’ language. While I’d read the merfolk spoke with the animals in their language and that it was aloud, the books could be wrong. Maybe they could somehow communicate with them telepathically like I could with Gizzi.