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In the mural a fae woman stood in the center of the forest, lit up by inner fire. Figures knelt around her, their arms raised in supplication.
“When she was strong enough, she came back.”
The third mural was smeared with blood. It had dried to a dull brown, and someone had added red pigment on top of it. Just a sea of blood with people in random poses drowning in it and the blue-haired woman’s inner fire. In the distance, all the houses burned.
“She killed most of her old tribe, enslaved those who had survived, and ruled over them from this palace. She became the Pale Queen.”
The fourth mural showed a lone figure with blue hair in the center of the palace, her inner fire surging to encompass everything. Many figures with gold collars knelt before her, her acolytes bowing on both sides.
“She fought a war with a neighboring shapeshifter people and enslaved them, too.”
Another panel filled with blood, portraying horned people and animals dying. The next one showed her back in the palace, with lions, wolves, and horned people kneeling before her in collars.
I crossed the chamber to the other side. Luther followed me.
“Then the world began to warm. The climate was changing.”
This panel had the sun, bright and scorching, wreathed in fire.
“She decided to put her kingdom into slumber.”
On the next panel, a massive hill formed over the palace and the houses, all people lying flat, including the blue-haired woman in the palace.
“A fae queen asleep in the Underhill,” Luther murmured. “How fitting…”
The next panel was blank. I stopped before it. “And then the fae woman woke up and found herself in the new world, which she decided to rule. She sent her emissaries to the closest town and demanded human sacrifice to bend them to her rule. At first the town paid, but eventually they asked us for help. We came, killed her, took over her house, and freed the people she didn’t manage to sacrifice. The end.”
Luther stared at the walls, taking it in.
“I will tell you the whole thing in more detail over some tea, if you want.”
“I want,” he said. “What do you think woke her up?”
“I don’t know. Although I’m maintaining a cordial relationship with the Order, and I’ve asked a knight-pathfinder I know to check their records. During the last flare, this entire area froze over. Nobody knows why, but apparently, they’d had a record drop in temperatures with three feet of snow and ice on the ground. It took weeks for it to thaw. Perhaps she had structured her sleeping spell in such a way that it awakened her when the world turned cold again.”
“But how? By what mechanism? Look at these buildings. They are primitive to the point of crudeness. How could she put all of these people and animals to sleep for fifteen thousand years?”
“I don’t know,” I told him. “We will probably never find out.”
“Did you have to kill her?”
“We really, really did.”
He sighed. “There was so much we could’ve learned from her.”
I nodded at the guard in the doorway. “Do you see her? She refuses to enter this room. Even if she had been forbidden, the person who issued that order is dead, but she still wants nothing to do with this place. Bad things happened here. Some magic isn’t worth learning.”
Luther surveyed the walls again.
“As soon as we get the urgent basics taken care of, I’m going to tear this palace down,” I told him. “If you want the panels for posterity, I will send them to you.”
Luther looked around. “You want to tear this down? This giant building?”
I nodded. “I’ll level it, purify it by claiming all this land so none of her magic remains, and then we’re going to build a nice modern Keep in its place.”
Luther looked at me. “Is that ‘Keep’ with a capital letter?”
“Probably.”
“So this is the new Pack HQ?”
“Yes and no. Penderton has given us eighty-two thousand acres and you’re standing in the exact center of that plot. I will claim all of it and keep it safe. If years from now things don’t go well in Atlanta and any shapeshifters decide to move down here, we will have housing ready for them. But this will never be a Pack-exclusive place, Luther. We’re done with that. Shapeshifters don’t need to live apart from other people. In fact, the more we all interact, the better.”
Luther would keep our secret. I had no doubt about it.
He dragged his hand through his hair. “I will take the panels. Of course, I want the panels. This is a wealth of magical knowledge. And I understand the sentiment and the plans, but the cost of all of this will be prohibitive. Just transporting the panels alone out through the woods. I may have to get a grant from the Mage Academy…”
