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She had stood tall, every inch a princess, accepting her fate with dignity and courage until Prys had knocked her out in front of the entire court, adding insult to injury.
Maybe she did not realize how we dealt with those who killed a king. Her death would not be easy. The children of the Weeping Hags would swarm and eat her alive. Her suffering would take hours or days if the council demanded it. And they would with her.
I leaned forward, supporting myself on the back of a chair in my quarters, shuddering with revulsion.
They would do that to her, to the daughter of the Lost Princess. To my Beth. When had I started thinking of her as mine? Was it after the first time I fucked her? Or when she stood up to me, showing grit and more integrity than my liege lord?
My teeth ground together so hard, I was in danger of breaking my jaw. I had never felt as powerless in my life. With the dungeons secured with strong frost magic, there was nothing I could do other than bear witness and then follow her to the afterlife. Maybe the Goddess would have mercy on both of us.
By midnight, I could no longer bear it. I had to see her, despite the prince’s orders. My heart pounded as I descended into the dungeons, torchlight flickering over stone walls, closing in around me. The air grew dank and musty, heavy with the scent of mildew, urine, and unwashed bodies.
With each step, dread coiled tighter in my gut. What would I find? Beth, pale and shivering on the floor of a cell? Bruises marring her pale skin? Or worse, a broken and bloodied corpse discarded like so much refuse?
No. I shook my head, refusing to entertain such a grim possibility. She lived. She had to.
My boots echoed on the steps as I quickened my pace, no longer caring if anyone noticed my haste. The dungeon guards snapped to attention in my presence, but I barely registered them. I rushed from door to door, my gaze sweeping through the bars, searching, searching—
There. A flash of fiery red in the dim light. Beth huddled against the far wall of a cell, her knees drawn up to her chest. A surge of relief loosened the vice around my heart.
She lived.
I grasped the bars. “Are you hurt?”
My voice was raspy, raw with emotions I could not afford to show. Not here. Not yet.
Beth shook her head mutely, without looking up. Dirt and exhaustion smudged her face, but there were no visible injuries, other than a bruise on the side of her face. Thank the Goddess.
I passedaurintsto the guards like sweets, ordering them to make sure Beth would not starve or freeze. “By order of the prince. He wants her to stand trial.”
They did not question me. I released a slow breath, the knot in my stomach unwinding. I had gained some time to figure out a way to free her, my liege lord be damned.
***
The next morning, the sun rose as usual. But as the day progressed, the light’s reflection wavered on the surface of the scrying pool. The recent phenomenon had worsened. Our realm’s sun was dimming and fading in a slow descent into twilight.
I remembered Beth’s astonishment and horror when I had explained how our sun was but a cunning copy of the real one in the human realm. Its power was bought dearly with the magic in the blood of human children.
But it was all a lie—no nourishing power of sunlight existed in this world. Only stolen magic that fed the rich and starved the poor.
I returned to the palace library, determined to find an answer in the largest collection of books and scrolls in all of Gwerin.
Hours later, I slammed my hand against the wooden table in frustration and hung my head. Then I pinched the bridge of my nose and pushed back from the pile of scrolls and ancient tomes scattered before me.
Hours of research had yielded more questions than answers. Nothing in our records explained the strange fluctuations in the sun’s light and magic.
Unnatural. The word whispered through my mind as it did every time I stopped to consider our predicament. Our very existence since the Fae realm had separated from the human world was unnatural. A chill crept down my spine, and my thoughts immediately wandered to the only human I cared about.
Beth’s face had been so pale and drawn in the dim dungeon light, her eyes haunted with shadows that had nothing to do with our realm’s fading sun. Guilt twisted my gut as I thought of her confined in that bleak cell, waiting to face trial for a crime I was more and more convinced she had not committed.
The scroll in my hand crinkled as my grip tightened. As the royal enforcer, I had sworn an oath to serve my prince. But how could I stand by while injustice was done? There had to be a way to save her.
I had to be patient. There would come an opportune time to free her. In the meantime, I would keep myself busy with finding out why our sun was dying.
I plunged into my research with renewed vigor, poring over ancient prophecies and magical theories. There had to be an explanation somewhere. As candlelight flickered over the scrolls, a symbol caught my eye—the triple moon, a sign of feminine power. I bent closer, my eyes tracing the characters surrounding the image.
The text was written in the old tongue, older than Emlyn, dating back to the First War when the Llwyd family, Prys’s forebears, led the Fae armies against the dark entity called the Gaped Maw. As my finger slid past the ancient letters, I read along.
“The sun’s flame wanes as a beast stirs in the abyss, threatening eternal shadows upon human and Fae alike. Yet, an ancient prophecy whispers hope: a royal woman, neither wholly Fae-born nor human, carries within her the key to the realms’ survival or their doom.”
