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"What? Betrayal?" I asked.
He raised an eyebrow at me. "Fae lands. Are they what you expected?"
"Safe to say no," Wyn replied for me. Or maybe he had been asking her in the first place. "For some reason, I had the impression that it would be this desolate place. Nothing and nobody for miles. No trees. No plants. Just dirt soaked with blood and scorched earth."
His brow furrowed. "It's been over a hundred years since the war. You know that right?"
She gave him a tight-lipped smile. "I understand that, but you have to realize all people ever talk about when it comes to fae lands is how it was razed to the ground, made barren at the end of the war."
"Sure, the bit right in front of the veil, but that was it. Everywhere else is still thriving, and the humans didn't touch it because most of them didn't even know it was there." Ronan smiled devilishly and seemed so much more at ease with himself now than I'd ever seen before.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"Glamour," Thorn grunted from in front of us. "Just like I was able to change my size and general appearance, the mages were able to hide the cities and towns from humans for the most part. There were some that were left exposed and deemed sacrifices in order to sell our lie, but they were empty for the most part."
Ronan nodded along before adding, "Humans believed that they had decimated our numbers and lands, when in reality we'd just been slowly hiding everyone. The war had gone on too long and the king and queen decided enough was enough. We made one last push to get the humans as far off our lands as we could and then the mages erected the veils."
"Veilsas in plural?" Wyn asked as I watched the treeline we were passing for any signs of life. I knew there had to be animals around, I mean they'd roasted one last night over the fire, the thing that was troubling me was I didn't know what any of them looked like. I had yet to see anything living other than the three men walking with us, which made me uneasy.
"There are two primary veils. The Veil of Life and the Veil of Death."
"Sounds ominous," I mumbled.
"The Veil of Death is the one you crossed through, and the Veil of Life is on the other side of fae lands, leading to the other?—"
"I think that's enough for now, we don't want to overwhelm them," Thorn cut in. "We have a lot more ground to cover and not much time to do it, more walking, less talking." He effectively killed the conversation, but why?
Chapter
Six
Senara
"Finally," Ronan sighed as we crested the hill. His tone made me think that there was some kind of significance to where we were, and yet all I could see was more forest on the other side of the valley. Ancient forest too, the kind that made a shiver run down my spine. I wasn't sure what to make of that.
"We're not there yet," Thorn grumbled. His mood had gotten increasingly worse as the day had gone on. Not that I cared. At least that's what I was trying to convince myself anyway.
Ronan pointed in the general direction of the trees I'd been watching. "Sanctuary is just over there."
"I don't see anything," Wyn said, putting a hand above her eyes to shield them from the sunlight.
"If we keep up a good pace, we should make it before sundown." Thorn had barely even stopped to speak, so I assumed my definition of a good pace was different from his. Wyn looked as though we had run her ragged, which made sense considering up until this point she had only existed inside the castle walls and within the Royal Library. She wasn't exactly used to large amounts of physical exertion.
"Come on, we can do it," I said encouragingly.
She gave me a tight lipped smile and nodded as we set out after Thorn.
"Pick up the pace," Thorn said a while later. "We need to get there before the ghouls come out."
"Ghouls? What are ghouls?" Wyn asked, turning to Ronan.
His face was drawn as he answered, "Ghouls are nocturnal creatures that hunt in the fae lands. They are nothing to be trifled with. They're like a cross between a wolf and a tiger, and the females have wings to boot."
My mind tried to conjure an image of such an animal, and yet I found it oddly misshapen and wondered if they did actually exist, or if Thorn was just trying to get us to hurry up. I doubted that Ronan would have just gone along with it though, and if he did it wouldn't have been so seriously, so maybe there was some merit to his concerns.
"Will there be food?" I asked, my stomach finally realizing that I needed more fuel than I'd given myself if I wanted to keep up like this.
"There should be some supplies," Ronan replied, seeming to choose his words carefully, as though he didn't want to commit to anything, which just made me feel like I was a prisoner all over again.
