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“Dyonisia accused Her Majesty of selling your mother as a hostage.” Aggie nodded fervently. “Alongside tens of thousands of human slaves.”
A hostage? Human slaves? I pinched my necklace between two fingers, trying to imagine what could have caused Dyonisia to come to that conclusion. “Who’d she think Mydusia was selling them to?”
Aggie spread her arms wide, as if to indicate the entire island.
“King Jagaros. That’s why we came here after she was exiled.”
Jagaros’s name thudded to a standstill inside my eardrums. My body flashed with heat and cold, panic and dread, all at the same time. Even Rodhi shifted his position from where he was leaning against Aggie’s table, clearly disturbed.
“Jagaros wouldn’t—” I started. “He didn’t—”
“Of course he didn’t.” Aggie swatted at the air. “That much became apparent when we sailed here, demolished most of his empire, and found no lost princess or humans in the wreckage… well, excluding the couple hundred humans Dyonisia had brought with us, claiming that she was saving them from some worse fate her sister had in store.” Aggie shook her head, the faintest trace of regret etched in her wrinkles. “We tried to convince Dyonisia to leave after that, but she just became obsessed with a new goal.”
When Rodhi and I simply stared blankly, Aggie huffed.
“You know, to use the island she’d already conquered as a base for her own Esholian Institute, where she believed she could create something to destroy Mydusia for good.” Aggie blew on a strand of her own fraying hair. “And that’s how the five of us ended up in cells instead of by her side, as she’d promised. Simply because we disagreed with her new direction.”
Aggie began rocking in her crouched position, gaze fixed on the interior whorls of the tree. I watched her with a pit crawling through my stomach.
We sailed here. We demolished most of Jagaros’s empire. We tried to convince her to leave. The wording of it all didn’t sound like the Good Council had been kidnapped and dragged here against their will. At least not initially.
“You supported Dyonisia at first,” I said. “You helped her take this island.”
Aggie’s head snapped up. Maybe she sensed the rage that had begun to boil beneath my skin, because she leaned back slightly, cringing.
“Dyonisia Reeve went too far down the path of ‘greater good’, child. Queen Mydusia… she doesn’t even know what ‘good’ is. So yes, the five of us on the original Good Council supported Dyonisia at first. Everyone assumed we’d been kidnapped, but we left voluntarily because we thought she was right. That Chrysanthia had been sold. That Jagaros was keeping her hostage. That Mydusia was kidnapping humans and selling them as slaves. Would you not ravage an island of supposed enemies if you truly thought that?”
I couldn’t answer. Bile had thickened in my throat. The faerie before me may have had a change of heart, may have been imprisoned and tortured and milked for her magic over a period of five centuries for that change of heart, but she’d also helped murder Jagaros’s people over a faulty accusation.
Was it really a faulty accusation, though? my subconscious whispered despite my best efforts to stuff the thought down. Chrysanthia obviously did end up here twenty years ago, appearing on this island to have you just as mysteriously as she’d melted out of existence.
Was that really just a coincidence?
I massaged my temple and glanced at Rodhi. He was frowning, arms crossed, one foot bouncing restlessly against the forest floor. Aggie herself had resumed rocking back and forth, bony arms hugging her knees.
It was nearly time to go. The original Wild Whisperer seemed to be running out of bravado, and I needed to get Felicity and Willa out of their drunken haze.
But one last question swirled through me.
“What did you mean by ‘her own Esholian Institute’?”
Again, the wording didn’t sit right with me, like I was missing a chunk of context, some vital piece of information hovering just beyond the tips of my fingers.
Aggie continued to rock, gaze fixed on a distant point. “Do you think Dyonisia made it all up, child? She is simply copying that which already exists, trying to create a better version of it. The place where certain selected faeries go to trigger their magic and serve in Mydusia’s army in exchange for the strength and power that training provides. A place you would have had a top spot in, as the princess’s daughter.”
My insides coiled tight, remembering what Coen had told me last year about catastrophic events: some faeries in Sorronia will purposely put themselves through a catastrophe if their power hasn’t matured by their mid-twenties. I just hadn’t realized he’d been talking about an actual place where this happened. “You mean…?”
“There is an original Esholian Institute in Sorronia,” Aggie said, nodding absentmindedly. “So much greater and deadlier than this one here.”
Then she broke out in a song filled with jumbled, slurred words, a mix of the Sorronian and human language I couldn’t dissect.
“Come on.” Rodhi held out a hand to help me up. “Once she gets like this, it takes her days to recover. Best leave her alone now.”
I accepted the help, making sure Willa was still on my shoulder and beckoning for my knives to follow. Rodhi himself scooped up Felicity, and we turned toward the exit together.
Right before ducking out, though, my head cranked back.
The fireflies still wavered above Aggie’s head. Her skin hung so loose around her bones that I hadn’t even noticed all the scars marking her body until now. As hot as my blood boiled for her part in hurting Jagaros, a horrible, heavy sadness thickened in my veins at the sight of her too: the source of our sector’s magic, holed up in a tree, engraved with signs of torture, and clearly nearing the end of her life.
