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Kyre
With six hours behind me, I could almost taste the sea in the air. This far away from the city of Karn, I was finally able to lower the hood that concealed my face and nose from the cold and breathe deeply.
No one knew me out here on the fringes of the Acadian Empire, but I was nowhere near safe. If I was being honest with myself, I hadn’t felt safe since the day I was forced to live on the streets and thieve just to feed myself.
The forest was growing dark as the sun began to set, and the farther in I went, the larger the trees grew, their roots digging into the ground like reaching, spindly fingers waiting to trip you and drag you under. There were no sounds, not even the wind, but the icy air cut straight through the thick layers of wool clothing and my riding cloak.
I dismounted at the mouth of a cave that dripped with moss and icicles from the long winter, watching my breath come out in white puffs. My heart raced as I stood peering into the darkness, which looked ready to swallow me whole.
My stolen horse whinnied, and I shushed it quickly over my shoulder, eyes scanning the darkened forest. The horse shifted, its hooves beating the packed mud nervously. I couldn’t blame her. This place reeked of wrongness—a raw sort of power that repelled anything living. It was why I chose to do this without Zephyr. I wouldn't risk him. The wrongness here told me to run and run fast, but I’d never been one to follow the rules.
So many things could go wrong with this desperate plan of mine, but Queen Reena had left me no choice. If she wanted to gamble with the life of the prince of Karn, then that was her burden to bear, not mine. I, on the other hand, refused to let this sickness take my brother. If my father were still alive, he’d have sent for help himself, instead of sitting his ass on that gilded throne doing nothing.
Still, what did it matter if I failed? Perhaps Drystan and I would see one another in the next life. Maybe it would be better that way. Karn was tainted with the pursuit of coin and greed. The city was overcrowded, and the court had turned into the laughingstock of the empire. Reena didn’t know how to run a kingdom, having come from rags herself after wooing my father so long ago, and now the cracks in her carefully-woven façade were showing. I’d gladly watch it all burn if I could.
But not Drystan. My older brother was the only person who’d never made me feel inferior for being what I was, for being what our father had made me. His loyalty to me went beyond any sliver of love the king had ever shown me before he died last winter, so I’d do this for him. Drystan was the rightful heir to the throne of Karn, and the day he took it back from his mother couldn’t come soon enough.
It started to rain, the tiny, little drops quickly icing over, stinging my cheeks when they hit. I pulled the hood of my black cloak back up over my head and took a step into the darkness of the cave. The air grew cooler as I made my way deeper, and a silvery mist hovered over the cave floor, swirling around my feet, smelling like rotting moss with a hint of decaying leaves.
I walked for what felt like an eternity, yet the cave just kept going and I never turned a single corner. The only sound, other than the thumping of my heart, were drops of water landing in random spots along the ground, mimicking the light rainfall I’d left behind me.
After a while, the light from the cave mouth was gone, leaving me blind. From my satchel, I pulled out a small torch, which was nothing fancy, just a wooden stake wrapped in rum-dipped wool.
“Bál.”The torch sparked and caught fire at my whispered command.
The urge to look over my shoulder was strong, but I stifled it. There was no one around to witness the magic I shouldn’t have. The language of the faeries rolled off my tongue perhaps too naturally. A pleasant tingle came over me, warming my chilled bones, not that it helped much. The fog in this place seemed to come alive, swirling around me like caressing arms, begging me to go farther.
Out of the darkness, the light of my fire exposed a series of stones arranged into a pathway straight up the center of the cave floor. My stomach tightened, and I swallowed hard, realizing that after hours of travel and days of anticipation, I was finally here.
The stone path was a luminous silver in the firelight, which flickered ominously as I moved from one to the other. I counted fifty of them before I started to wonder if the path would ever end, but I kept going. Drystan deserved that much.
There were stories about caves like this one—stories told by drunken old men in taverns or whispered about by children. I knew they were more than just stories, just like most did, only I never pretended like it was fantasy. Acadia wasn’t the only empire in this world, and Queen Reena wasn’t the only ruler by far. Through the caves, if you knew how to find them, were doorways to a place not many humans ever got to see.
As I thought about that place of legends, my torchlight hit the surface of the stone walls up ahead and the last of the shining steps. I stopped on the last one, a sea of blackness in front of me. On the wall were a series of sconces, and as I moved my torch, I counted six of them. Taking a chance, I stepped into the darkness, quickly lighting each sconce until the cave was lit with a crackling orange glow.
Spread out before me was a massive ring of white mushrooms sprouting up from the black soil. The padded tops had little black speckles on them, and the room was pungent with their earthy odor. My stomach tightened again as I stared at the ring, and then I looked towards the dark tunnel branching off to the right of this small chamber. The cave seemed endless, but I knew better.
Slowly, I set my satchel down at my feet, unsheathing a small dagger I’d hidden in one of my riding boots. Taking my time, I circled the mushroom ring, inspecting it from every angle while I fiddled nervously with the blade.
This was a fool’s idea. I was a fool. I had no business poking around this cave or stepping into the center of the mushroom ring, but I did just that, and nothing happened. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but I was met with nothing but the steady dripping of cave water.
I stood motionless, listening to the sound of silence, my heart racing and my breaths still panting out puffs of white. When not a single monstrous beast came slithering out from the walls to consume me whole, I assumed I was relatively safe. How long that would last was a mystery I’d soon uncover.
Kneeling in the dirt in the center of the mushroom ring, I held my blade to my palm. Sucking in a sharp breath, I hissed when my skin was sliced open, my blood dripping and soaking into the soil. Then I placed my palm flat on the ground and closed my eyes tight, whispering a series of familiar words that I shouldn’t have known as well as I did.
Speaking the old language in the center of a faerie ring was as close as I’d ever come to signing my life away. If Drystan knew what I was doing right now, he’d lock me in my room and lose the key. Except it wasn’t even my room anymore, was it? Queen Reena had seen to that when she banished me from my home in the castle, when she called me a halfling creature that deserved to be put to death, laughing while the guards who’d protected me my entire life escorted me to the slums and left me there. So, I had to do this for Drystan. He could hate me when he was healed.
With my palm stinging, I repeated the words over and over again. Words that made my tongue tingle and my skin prickle with unease. Words that could get me killed if I ever spoke them to the wrong human.
When nothing happened, I began to panic. Had I come all the way out to the faerie caves for nothing? I’d risked spending the rest of my life in chains for this one moment, and for what?
I slammed my bloody palm down in the center of the mushroom ring, repeating the words again. I was shouting them now, tears dripping into the dirt and mixing with my blood. They were angry, frustrated tears. I needed this to work. Drystan needed this to work. Acadian Empire be damned, I neededhimto live for me because he was my brother and I loved him. I needed him.
The louder I chanted, the more desperate I became. My voice left the mouth of the cave and filtered through the trees. I wondered if I'd been followed from the city. I wouldn't put it past Reena to spy on me.
None of her spies would enter the faerie caves, but they would be waiting, if they were brave enough to venture this far into the woods. Any hope I had of slipping out of the kingdom and disappearing was long gone. Still, I begged.
With my forehead pressed to the cave floor, I let my arms sag. I sobbed and cursed at myself for waiting this long, for not doing something sooner. Drystan was wasting away more and more by the second, growing frail with every hour that the sickness spread through his veins. I was too late, and I’d failed him. I’d failed him…
