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Lash stepped around the counter, placing himself between me and the others. The fire in the hearth roared brighter, the dancing flames reflecting dangerously in his purple eyes. A reminder that Lash would use his powers if needed.
Nikolai smoothed the nonexistent wrinkles on his silk jacket. He raised a manicured brow as he finally looked at me, peering out from behind his Fae guard. “Pirmiith didn’t hide the wine. I did.” He tucked his head back behind Lash, tugging at his hair. “And you will find everyone intends to follow my lead.”
I tilted my chin up at the mountain of a Fae. I could force the truth from Nikolai if needed but Lash was another matter. “Where is it?” I shouted, flinging the empty wine bottle in my hand across the room.
The glass shattered against the wall and someone gasped. It wasn’t a scream or anything close to a word, but I recognized the tone of her breath all the same. My body froze, arm still extended like the hand of a compass pointing directly at Gwyn.
Her head was pinned against the table, shielded by her arms and mane of red curls, both now covered in bits of glass. They fell to the floor as she stood and were ground to dust as she stared at me with nothing but vitriol in her eyes.
My throat tightened until it hurt to breathe. “Gwyn. I didn’t know you were there,” I mumbled, fully aware of how pathetic I sounded. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Gwyn’s lip curled back as she shook the rest of the glass over of her shoulders. There was no hint of the young girl who had once hovered around my chambers for hours. Damien had taken so much more than her childhood when he had sliced into her. Her smile had yet to be seen in the Faeland, and no one here had heard Gwyn speak, let alone laugh. I worried that wouldn’t change no matter how many moons passed.
Gwyn grabbed the book she had been reading from the table and signed something at the others with the slow movements of unpracticed fingers. Nikolai nodded glumly and she started out the door.
I gritted my teeth and turned back to Nikolai. “Where is the wine?”
Lash shook his head in disbelief and threw a tray of pastries into the oven. Pirmiith wisely turned around, knowing the conversation no longer concerned him.
“Are you going to throw something at my head next?” Nikolai crossed his arms.
Guilt flared across my face like one of Lash’s fire tendrils. I dropped my gaze to the floor and stormed out of the room.
I didn’t turn around as he called after me. I didn’t look as the Elverin in the hall whispered as I stalked toward the faelight.
Every ounce of energy I had was being spent on keeping my newfound powers controlled. My muscles ached from the tension as I climbed onto a large ball of covered faelight and was carried to the highest burls in Myrelinth.
My vision blurred from the pain and nausea as I stepped through the door. The full force of my cravings had returned as soon as that first bottle had touched my lips six weeks earlier. I had been so naïve to think I could control them. So desperate to think that I could keep the cost hidden from anyone but me.
I rummaged through my clothes with shaky hands, feeling for the soft skin on my leather pouch. I found it under a soiled tunic. I threw the shirt over my shoulder and onto the floor with the rest of my unwashed clothes and unused blades. It took three tries to untie the drawstrings and dump the contents onto my lap.
A flash of gold sent a shiver along my unmarked skin. But this was not a craving that could be settled with my mage pen. I picked up the vial of black liquid—the same elixir that Hildegard had given me to help with the cravings—and unstoppered the top.
The scent ofwinvrarelaxed my shoulders. I had never needed more than a few drops to lessen the cravings before, but that wasn’tall I needed. Guilt had already exhausted my body and I needed to sleep.
But to sleep, I needed oblivion.
I brought the vial to my lips and swallowed what was left of Hildegard’s gift.
The memory of that first night haunted me as I fell asleep. It replayed in my mind like I was living through it for the very first time:
I tumbled onto a field of grass with no recollection of where I’d fallen from. I groaned with the little bit of air left in my lungs but there was no pain. No broken bones or split skin from the fall.
I stared down at my sleeve; the top of the jagged scar along my forearm was peeking out over the cuff. The sudden urge to pull it back into place overtook me and I tugged the linen before I gathered my bearings.
I never walked into a field. I had just been underground dropping Gwyn off at the infirmary in Myrelinth. The healers had swarmed around her the moment I lay her on the cot.
Riven had been there and told me to lie down too, but I couldn’t keep my eyes off Gwyn. She had taken ill again as we passed the boundary into theFaelinthand nothing I did seemed to help. I needed to know she was okay. I needed to know that I hadn’t hurt her by using my healing gift to stitch her belly back together.
Riven pulled me into his chest. “You brought her here alive,diizra,” he whispered so quietly only I could hear him. “You don’t need to worry now. She’s safe and she will stay that way.”
Somehow his words penetrated my fear enough for the exhaustion to blanket me. My brows creased along the grass, trying to place the rest of the memories, the journey to the field, but there were none.Moments before Riven had lifted me into his arms to carry me to his burl, but then I had tumbled out of them into a field I didn’t recognize.
A soft breeze blew hair across my face, but it carried no scent. No hint of birch or florals, no spray of sea in the air. I shifted against the soft earth and strained to hear something out in the distance. No crashing waves, no birdsong or carriage wheels. It was as if the field existed in a world of its very own.
Something shifted behind me, loud as thunder in the eerie silence.
My chest tightened. The hair on the back of my neck raised as I pulled myself off the ground and slowly turned. Damien stood tall with his hands tucked behind his back. He was not dressed in his usual undone tunic, but instead in new finery: his shirt was pressed and buttoned to its high collar, as black as the night sky, paired with a jacket of interlocking buttons that formed a jagged, inky pattern down the length of him. The only color on his person was the jade eye patch he wore to cover what Gwyn had done to him.
