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I don’t know what to say, so I keep staring straight. Now it’s my turn to shrug.
Her voice is a quiet breath in my ear. “I wasn’t sure you’d ever return.”
“Neither was I.” Silence stretches between us, the question hovering on the tip of my tongue like an arrow notched in a bowstring. I need to ask. I just don’t want to. But the words find their way out anyway. “What’s happened since we’ve been gone?”
Delphia inhales deeply before she speaks. “Summer has some freeholds that have resisted occupation. Many of the people you once turned to sirens have fled back into the water, seeking asylum in Aerantheis. The sirens remain free, though Sira’s growing her underwater army. The pirates have joined the cause. Corsa Tuga’s been destroyed, but there are other isles, ones kept off maps, that serve as bases for those who escaped.”
“Escaped what?”
“Hadria’s occupation.” Her voice doesn’t waver, too used to death and destruction. “The Suadela Sands are lost too. Sira’s devastated our outposts with her harpies. But we have hope in the sea.”
“Del, I’m so sorry—”
She doesn’t let me continue. “Nori went back to be with her family in Autumn.” Her words crack, and I know what’s coming. “Right before they blasted a hole straight through Coppershire’s walls. We tried to get squads in, but it was overrun. Lost an entire flock of Huntresses.”
“What of Nori? Padraig? Dom?” I cast my gaze to the side, where Farron strokes the neck of his winged horse.
“Taken as labor prisoners. They’re logging all of Autumn. Using the forests to fuel Sira’s war machines.”
My mouth hangs open, but there’s nothing to be said. The beautiful, sprawling woods of Autumn…Padraig and Dom and Nori, who were like a second family to me…
“Faustrius’s army of underfae have taken all of Winter. We haven’t been able to get word in or out.”
The face of the horned underfae, all at once terrible and gentle, floods my mind’s eye. He had orders to kill us but set us free instead. Is this the new world he so desperately craved?
“What resistance we have is mustered in Spring,” Delphia continues. “Much of Spring has been taken over, but Florendel’s the last true stronghold. Tilla and Justus are doing everything they can to rally an opposition to Sira’s forces.”
“Is that where we’re going now?”
“Yes, Princess.”
The title cuts me like a blade to the heart.
Delphia’s words seem to catch in the wind. “You came here to fight, didn’t you? Well, you’re going to need some weapons.”
Keep Hammergarden is a bustle of activity. The winged horses have trouble landing with so many people hurrying through the keep. And not the typical residents I met last time. There are fae of Summer, Autumn, and Winter.
“Some refugees have found their way here,” Delphia explains as she leads us away from the grounded flock toward the entrance of the keep. “Food supplies are short so we’re on rations. Thankfully, we have fresh water from the river that runs down Mount Lumidor, and we’re able to fly in fish and greens from some of the island bases in Summer.”
Carts whiz by, filled with steel weapons. A herd of goats is ushered straight past us, followed by a pack of laughing children.
“We’re trying to keep as many people within the keep’s walls as we can.” Delphia’s voice drops. “You never know when the city will be attacked.”
I cast a look to the princes, who cluster around me. Their faces are a representation of how I feel. Sick. Defeated. By the way Dayton’s holding so tight to Farron’s hand, I suspect Farron learned about his family’s fate on his ride over. I want to go to him, but there’s no time, no space, to pause.
Delphia gestures us forward. “Come on.”
Feeling hot breath on my neck, I whirl to see Wrenley, walking unnervingly close to me. She’s taken a hoodie out of her knapsack and pulled it on. It’s one from a souvenir shop, a hideous, pink thing with the cartoon orca bejeweled on the front. She flips the hood over her head and tugs the strings so tight only her nose is visible.
I grab her arm and yank her beside me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“I’m not exactly popular here,” she snaps.
Right. She posed as an acolyte and helped Kairyn implement his Green Rule. I can’t help but wonder what memories must rush back to her, being here again. She spent years in the monastery, putting things in motion with Kairyn.
Her mate.
Where is he? Last we’d seen him, his will had been stolen by Sira and she’d turned him against us using the rose’s power. Does Wrenley think about him? She must. Especially being back in Florendel.
