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“How long have you been down here?” Veyka was asking.
They’d slowed down. Veyka and Isolde were side by side, the others just behind them. My instincts told me we were close—
To what?
“Seven thousand years,” Isolde said in her high pitched, tinkling voice. “Since the Great War.”
Suddenly the tunnel widened and then fell away entirely. We were in a huge atrium. Stones stacked carefully along the walls to support the height. Higher up, ornate carvings depicting landscape and forest scenes—lakes, waterfalls, rolling hills. At the apex, some sort of carefully woven cover let light shine through from above. It was hard to judge based on the little bits of light, but I thought it might be dawn in the world above our heads.
“Who is your leader?” Veyka asked, her eyes more focused on the female at her side than the grandeur overhead.
Isolde smiled, revealing long canines reminiscent of my own that glowed as brightly white as the rest of her. “You are.”
63
VEYKA
“You are.”
I blinked. Maybe my mind was addled. Maybe I’d been hit over the head by one of the nightwalkers and this was all a dream.
A nightmare. “That is not possible.”
Isolde’s smile didn’t falter an inch. “I misspoke.”
Oh thank the Ancestors. I was able to drag in a breath—
“The two of you,” Isolde amended.
My head was shaking. It was constantly doing that lately. Like I’d lost control of the muscles in my neck.
More like my mind couldn’t believe the new information and the rate at which it was coming in, so my body wasn’t waiting anymore. My mind was unreliable.
The vision of wings flapping flashed across my memory.
Isolde’s smile softened to something closer to a smirk. “Are you not Veyka Pendragon and Arran Earthborn, High Queen and King of Annwyn?”
Arran finally stepped up, pushing past the others and planting himself firmly at my side. “Yes. But we are not in Annwyn.”
It took you long enough.
But before his beast could growl back at me, another voice sliced through the tension.
“No. You most certainly are not.”
Overhead. I reeled backward, Arran’s hand pressing into the base of my spine. But I found the voice quickly. The female was overhead, wings keeping her aloft. Some of them had wings. I sucked in a breath. It was extraordinary, an entire race of beings—
Then she shifted, and suddenly she flew on different wings entirely. A gull with pale white and blue on the undersides of her wings. She sailed down through the massive atrium in sweeping circles until she reached the center. She shifted again and landed on two pale blue feet.
Not just elemental powers—some of these faeries had terrestrial powers as well. Shifters who kept their wings even when in their fae form.Faerie form?Ancestors, I don’t know.
Isolde, at least, was unimpressed. She folded her white claw-tipped hands in front of her and waited for the other faerie female to turn and face us.
She did—slowly. Surveying the room as she rotated, nodding here and there. Even a smile at some children clustered off to the side. But when she came to face us, there was no welcome in her small features.
That didn’t deter Isolde. “Taliya. We have guests.”
One brow arched. Her skin was pale blue, so were her eyes, hair, and clothing. It was difficult to see where her clothing ended and her skin began. They were so close in color and so finely made. The only part of her that didn’t match was the little amulet that dangled from her throat. A single gem—either diamond or amorite. It was small enough I couldn’t tell.
