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“Can you undo what you’ve done to her?” I asked them.
Four pairs of blank eyes stared back at me. They didn’t move. They didn’t speak. I shook my head.
“Tessa wanted to get the four of you out of here, but I’m tempted to let you burn for this.” I tightened my hold on Tessa’s slack body. “But I won’t. Only because she wanted to save you. Follow me down these stairs if you want to be free.”
Again, no answer. I turned, kicked the door open, and jogged down the spiral stairwell. None of the crones followed. So be it.
When I reached the ground floor, a new dash of fires roared through the streets. Holding my breath, I charged into the smoking ruins of Albyria. A sudden wind caught the flames. They flicked up toward the sky like a serpent’s tongue, a bolt of orange through the mists.
I ran through the last remnants of the once-great Kingdom of Light, one of the three remaining strongholds of Aesir. A strange helplessness took seed in my gut as I dodged a building crumbling down. The blackened wood groaned under the weight of its collapse. Yes, Oberon had been a terrible, cruel king. And yes, many of the light fae had followed his path.
But I’d never intended to bring ruin upon this entire kingdom.
Albyria might rebuild, but it would never be the same. A hollow ache took shape in my chest.
The gods had taken so much from the fae. When the world had forced the gods away, the fae who lived back then must have thought they’d finally won. Things would be better. We would take care of ourselves and each other. Instead, we had continued to destroy one another. Hundreds of years had passed, and nothing had changed.
When I reached the open gates, I slowed. I walked down the hill with Tessa cradled against my chest, alert for any sign of pookas or angry light fae. I carried her across the bridge, and then headed east toward Endir, where the others would be waiting for us.
The burning city on the hill became nothing more than a smudge of orange mist.
We’d left a clutch of horses waiting for us on the other side of the bridge, but they were gone now. The others must have taken them—the humans needed them far more than me. Endir was the closest city to the bridge, but it was still a long way to journey on foot. My arms ached, and my shoulder-blades pinched, but I continued.
I would carry Tessa to the moon and back, if I must.
Halfway to Endir, she squirmed in my arms and cracked open her eyes. She reached up and touched my face. “Is this a dream? Are you really here?”
Relief shook my weary body. “I’m here, love.”
She smiled and closed her eyes, sagging against me once more. With renewed determination, I did not stop to rest until I spotted the familiar shape of Endir’s terrain on the horizon. Once the most prosperous city in all of Aesir, Endir had been built into the hills of a lush forest. Curving stone bridges looped between the hills, where the path wound past clusters of slate gray stone houses topped with dark orange roofs. Before my conquest—and the mists—the city had been surrounded by verdant fields full of wildflowers. Now the ground was nothing more than sand.
I found Alastair waiting for me at the towering gated entrance of the city, first built to keep out invading armies. Now it worked to protect the citizens of Endir from the monsters of the mists. A pooka had never succeeded in getting past these walls, and soldiers guarded it day and night.
My old friend relaxed visibly when he spotted me, though his eyes widened in concern when his gaze dropped to Tessa. “What happened?”
“It’s an odd story,” I told him as I nodded toward the guards who raised the metal gates. After I stepped through and watched the gates close, I felt I could relax for the first time in days. Tessa was alive, even if something strange had happened back in the Tower of Crones. It had weakened her, but it hadn’t killed her. Oberon was still out there, but I could deal with him later.
What mattered most was in my arms.
Alastair fell into step beside me as we started up the street toward the castle. “We got most of the humans to Endir, but a few of them ran off screaming when a group of pookas attacked. And three turned out to be allergic to the mists. I’m afraid they didn’t make it.”
I gave him a sharp glance. “Nellie and Val?”
“Both fine,” he said with a nod. “Her mother has been throwing a fit, but she’s here too.”
“Good. If anything happened to any of them…”
Alastair chuckled. “Trust me, I know. Little dove grows claws when it comes to her family.”
I smiled.
“So, what now?” he asked.
“I’ll send word to request a ship to meet us in Sunport, and then the humans can sail to the safety of the mortal kingdoms. But it will take weeks for it to get there,” I said, glancing down at Tessa. “In the meantime, we’ll stay here and regroup. Let everyone rest and learn all is not lost. Maybe we’ll even throw a ball, something I doubt any of these humans have ever experienced.”
“And Oberon?”
My gaze narrowed. “He’s in hiding. I’ll send some of our soldiers to seize control of Albyria, and I’ll have more patrol Itchen and Vere, as well as the border to the Kingdom of Storms. If Oberon goes anywhere, we’ll know about it.”
