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My heart cracked as my parents disappeared.
Ysara lifted me over the city. Higher and higher, we went, until I could see the Sleeping Sea. Could see the glistening, iridescent ward surrounding our kingdom.
The ward disappeared. Ships appeared in the distance—previously hidden by magic.
Ysara took us back to the marketplace, where a bell began ringing again and again and again.
The expressions on the hybrids’ faces changed to blind terror.
Children were swept up by the nearest adult, and the hybrids ran for cover, ducking beneath tables, wagons, anything they could find. The humans were attacking.
I spotted a hybrid with fire magic like Madinia’s. He bought the children time, sending his power arcing through the air toward the human attackers. Next to him, several hybrid women used their own elemental powers.
But Regner had ensured his people brought weapons filled with fae iron. Those weapons flew through the air, spewing tiny bolts of iron when they landed. The iron buried deep into hybrid bodies, killing the unlucky and severing others from their power. Even knowing this had happened long ago, my heart thundered, my instincts urging me to join the fight.
“Where are the defenses?”
“The wards were gone. Without them, the serpents didn’t know to attack. Until directed.”
Ysara showed me a woman climbing a hill overlooking the shoreline. She was tall, graceful, her face lined with age. But those eyes…
“Is she—”
“Your grandmother. The current hybrid queen.”
She was at the top of the hill now. From there, she could see her people fleeing. Could see them dying. Her face twisted in fierce grief, and she threw back her head with a scream.
The sea serpents were sinking enemy ships now, tails slamming into wooden hulls, as if they could hear my grandmother scream her rage and were responding accordingly.
“Look closely,” Ysara ordered.
“The hourglass,” I murmured. “On a chain around her neck.” It called to me like a lover, as if some part of me had been missing until I saw it.
A strange wind began to swirl around my grandmother.
“What is she doing?”
“The humans came from what is now known as the Cursed City in Eprotha. It is named such because your grandmother gave her life to see it so. As she gasped out her last dying breath, the hybrid queen cursed the city from which those ships had come. As long as her people had no home, neither would they. Nothing would grow on the lands around their city. Sickness would ravage the city, and death would haunt it, until those who had lived there fled deeper into human lands. If she could have cursed the entire human kingdom, I believe she would have.”
Was thatamusementin Ysara’s voice?
She pulled me higher, until we were above the ships, close to the Eprothan kingdom. And I watched as they began to sink.
“Regner sent more forces. But the curse had already taken hold. Any ships carrying humans with hate in their hearts would sink. Your grandmother’s curse protected what was left of our kingdom for hundreds of years.”
I was related to that woman. Pride mingled with an odd kind of anxiety in my chest. Ysara showed me one last glimpse of her, slumping to her knees on that hill. Eprothan guards were sprinting toward her, and she cast out what was left of her power.
She…agedthem.
I gaped as the guards’ hair turned gray and then white. They became hunched and elderly, stumbling instead of sprinting.
But her power was drained. With a final scream, the hybrid queen collapsed to the ground. And one of Regner’s guards took his sword and sliced it through her neck.
Even knowing this had already occurred, I let out a helpless scream. The guard spat on my grandmother’s body, snatched the hourglass, and moved back down the hill.
Ysara pulled us back toward Eprotha. Someone had already used their power to create the tunnel, and families were pouring from it, running toward the pass. The hybrid army bought them time, laying down their lives so their people could get to safety.
Many of the hybrids traveled with only the clothes on their backs. A few of them wore nothing but thin slippers on their feet.
