Page 35 of Captive of Secrets and Storms

It’s not fair.

Life’s not fair.

I force my shoulders back and wipe my face. Crying won’t change my fate. There’s only one thing I can do.

I slip out of my boots, point and flex my toes to stretch my aching feet, then draw my legs up onto the bed. I pick up my satchel and remove the Fae tome. The leather cover is smooth and undamaged despite my travels. The emblem indicating that it is a text from the royal library gleams back at me.

I clutch the book to my chest. I don’t know how Juniper managed to get it back from General Ironheart after my capture, but I thank the Gods for their intercession in allowing the banned text to be returned to me.

I open the front cover. My fingers trail over the Fae language I can read thanks to an impressive concoction Jaxon gave me back in the Forbidden Forest. I’ve already scoured this text for information to help me cure Darius’s curse. I learned about light magic and applied the information to my own power.

Perhaps this text will tell me more about the Shadow Fae’s other abilities. Abilities like altering someone’s mind and creating incredible tonics.

But that can wait.

I close the book and reach for the second heirloom my parents left behind after fleeing Verdanthia all those years ago.

The small journal sits in the palms of my hands. Unmarked. Unadorned. Simple. Though, from the brief entries I’ve read, that bland word does not describe its author.

I unlace the leather string holding the diary closed and flip through pages until I settle on one dated as Midsummer.

Finally, a time and a season that makes sense. There are so many Fae references in the journal that even Jaxon’s tonic cannot help me decipher.

I begin to read.

I can scarcely believe what I am about to write, but if I do not, I am convinced Father and Mother will attempt to convince me I misheard them. That today’s conversation was all just a fanatical dream. That I imagined it all.

But no. I will not be dissuaded from the truth.

The humans are coming. Here. To Aetherwyn.

My pulse quickens. It’s the first time the author has mentioned humans. I read faster.

I know so little of the creatures who live on the other side of the Veil, but tales of their magic and invention have inspired so many daydreams.

What would it be like to live a human life? To know the beauty of the world with such limited time? I imagine it would make everything much more cherished. Valued.

Their magic, itself, is said to come from the earth’s beauty. Elemental powers that call on the strength of the natural world to improve their circumstances. To create medicines. To build incredible homes. To forge weapons and art from the metals and water in the ground and sea.

But despite their abilities, humans have never crossed into our lands. They can’t. Their weak constitutions don’t allow them to survive the journey. They need a Fae of royal blood, the blood sacrificed when creating the division between our worlds to grant them passage.

My father’s blood.

Or mine.

A gasp tears from my throat.

I read the last lines over and over again, struggling to believe what the words spell out plain as day.

But there’s no denying the truth.

The diary’s author… She is royalty. Fae royalty.

She is related to Rian.

And I’m in possession of a journal containing her most private thoughts.

Gods!