Page 106 of Under the Iron Sky

Ikarus leaned against the stone wall. “Yes.”

“But I thought …”

“So did I.”

Malakai glanced between the two of them. “All right, I’ll bite. What’s going on?”

Ikarus pointed to the corpse. “This is Felim.”

“Okay?” Malakai said slowly, clearly not following. “I remember him. Pyromancer. Bit of a prick—used to get off torching fairies’ wings if they turned him down.” He looked to where the human was crying in Theron’s arms. “She felt bad about her first kill—so what? She clearly got over it.”

Aeris looked up, his eyes burning like two solar eclipses beneath the shadows of his hood. “But she didn’t kill him. Felim died during a raid above, remember? His helmet cracked because of some new weapon the Vordellians were testing and he choked before he could get back to a checkpoint.”

Malakai’s brows lifted. He looked back to the corpse with sudden excitement. “Well … fuck me sideways,” he said when the walls faded to black and they were back in Aeris’s room. “What does this mean? That the human altered her memory?”

Ikarus gazed out at Illieck. “Memories don’t lie. You can hide and shadow the truth, or only show someone the parts of a specific memory that you want, but you can’t conjure something new. Everything we just watched is what she saw that day.”

“Why don’t we ask Felim’s wife?” Malakai asked. “I’m sure she’ll know which memory is real.”

“She died in the same raid he supposedly did,” Aeris replied.

Malakai blinked, uncharacteristically lost for words for a moment. “But why would the Ancient One lie?”

While Aeris and Malakai fell into a heated discussion, Ikarus sank onto the sofa, unsure whether to be relieved or anxious that neither of them had spotted the other thing wrong with this memory.

That when Felim had crawled over the human’s legs before she’d put that blast of Light through his chest, his sharpened nails had scratched a hole into the side of her leg.

And when she’d pushed the corpse away, there was a puncture mark and blood on her trousers, but no wound.

34

Morana was making an awful racket.

Soraya sat at the edge of the balcony, wet hair dripping down her back, and watched the fairy spit yet another order to a passing soldier who’d been unfortunate enough to get too close, her smile widening as the seething woman took that whip dangling at her side and cracked it against one of her guards’ faces.

That was the fourth one in the last fifteen minutes.

The guard quickly peeled himself off the ground and fluttered away, clutching what looked like a rather nasty cut on his cheek. He’d gotten off much lighter than the others, who still lay on the ground because all the other soldiers were too scared to move them for fear of inciting Morana’s wrath. One had an arm missing, one had a wing sliced in two, broken dolls she had lost interest in playing with.

If she kept this up, she’d likely have murdered a whole battalion before the week was out.

Soraya picked up a grape from the cluster on her lap—Golla was taking this no tray without his supervision rule very seriously—and popped it into her mouth as Morana cracked that whip again—

Something shuffled behind her.

Soraya’s head snapped toward the source, sour juices from these strange Belvadorian grapes sliding down her throat, and frowned at the small piece of parchment that’d been slipped under her door.

Silently placing the grapes down, Soraya slowly got to her feet and inched across the room. She unfolded it carefully, half expecting it to sprout a mouth and teeth and bite her hand right off.

Only three lines of writing marred the page, sprawling across the parchment beneath the symbol of a rising sun.

Five days.

Be ready.

M

Ma’varea. He was here.