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The next day, we stumbled into Tempeste behind Solok, the Mistress snarling at our backs, leaving the desolate waste of a forest behind. We’d stopped long enough for them to wash up in a horse trough, but they wore their blood stains like badges of honor, Fae scurrying away when we passed.
I was numb from fear, but Ember and I hadn’t had a chance to talk, because they’d kept us apart all day.
I’d killed three males last night.
My rescuers or Solok’s enemies, or both…I had no idea.
The green-eyed male called me princess. Claimed I was the Shadow King’s daughter. Impossible, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the flash of relief on his handsome face when he’d seen me.
Couldn’t forget the burned, ravaged body we’d left behind in the woods.
Gods. I’d killed him.I was a monster, and would burn in the flames of the Great Beyond, if the Old Gods didn’t consume me first.
The city had loomed ahead of us all day, the spires reaching high enough to touch the clouds, the sheer size of the place unimaginable. The streets were flooded with Fae as we climbed through each level, from the shops to the crowded tenements, to the large estates flying royal court banners, until we arrived at the palace’s grand approach.
The memorial arches were fifty feet high, carved straight out of the rock, veined with crystal and some dark blue stone that glittered in the sunlight, engraved with the names of the honorable dead of countless battles from the unending war.
The crowds were far behind us and the king’s uniformed guards, with their ravening gazes and sharp, pointed teeth, didn’t dare stop Solok when he strode past.
Didn’t ask where the hundred guards he’d left with were.
An hour later I checked the handle of the sumptuous room Ember and I were locked inside. It wouldn’t budge. Our room overlooked the entire city, surrounded by more wealth than we ever knew existed, and yet…we were prisoners. The Mistress had disappeared the second we’d set foot in here, Solok had headed off to see the king, and we’d been escorted to our room.
Ember drifted over to the window, pushed back the gauzy curtains. All I saw was wasteland, stretching out for miles. “We’re going to die here, Anaria.” She said softly. “I should have stayed in Varitus and gone to Whitehall Castle and stayed a slave.”
I didn’t know what to say.
I couldn’t disagree, not when I’d been thinking the same since last night.
“They ate them.” She choked back a sob and I swallowed down the bile in my throat that had been there since last night. “They ate those males. All night. I couldn’t block out the sounds, and then, in the morning, when I saw what they’d done…”
“I know.” I couldn’t breathe, toying with the embroidered edge of the silk coverlet. “I saw what the Fae guards did at the duke’s, but somehow, last night was more awful.”
The Fae were monsters.
What had happened here? Was everything I’d read about Caladrius a lie…or had something gone terribly wrong? Eating your own kind…such brutality was unheard of, Solok and the Mistress were little more than demons.
And we were trapped in their realm, alone. Defenseless.
I tugged at the iron band around my throat.
No, not defenseless, if I could get this godsdamned thing off.
“You’d better look in the mirror, Anaria.” Ember still stared off into the distance, as if trying to commit the view to memory. “When that warrior spotted you, he recognized you. And his eyes were the same color as yours.”
I didn’t want to think about what that meant.
And I didn’t want to look in a mirror.
“I’m going to sleep.” I decided, coward that I was.
“You should, too. We’ve been walking for days, and haven’t hardly eaten.” My stomach was caved in, my muscles were worthless, and Ember was worse off than me. I patted the bed. “We’ll sleep for a few hours then ask the guards if someone can bring us food, if there is any in this godsforsaken place.”
As much as I hated the idea of climbing between these pristine sheets in my filthy, bloody clothes, I didn’t have the energy to do anything except curl up in a ball and make the world disappear. I fell asleep watching Ember by the window, but when I woke up, she was right beside me, snoring softly, both arms thrown straight out.
I covered her up, then ran my finger over the collar. Perhaps this thing was a blessing, given the fact I’d now killed in excess of a hundred people, without hardly even trying.
Or perhaps…after being powerless my entire life, the only thing that stood between me burning the entire palace to the ground was a strip of iron.
