Crimson Stained Catalyst (The Last Fae King #1)

1. Caspyn

Chapter 1

“Get them up, and get them hidden.”

The panicked hiss pulled me out of sleep, the chill that was unusual for our home at this time of night immediately penetrating through my bones. I shivered and pulled the thin, holey blanket close as I looked toward our parents’ bed. The hearth beside it was as dark as the rest of the cabin. Even the faint glow of the embers was gone, the ashes wet as though someone had just put them out. The only light was what reflected from the moon and waves that drifted through the lone window in our home.

The window my parents were crowded around.

“Maybe they aren’t here for them. Maybe it’s the?—”

“Now, Ari. No excuses. It’s not worth the risk.” My father’s voice sliced through the inky night, cutting my mother off as they shuffled around the window, the threadbare curtain already pulled over the muddled glass.

“Caspyn?” My twin sister hissed my name as our mother shuffled her way over to us, careful to keep her steps slow.

I turned from the shadowed figures against the window to where my sister lay next to me in the bed we always shared, to those big blue eyes the color of deep water. Her eyes were a few shades darker than the blue as light as ice that my eyes were. Her deep brown curls were tangled from sleep, her lips already quivering. I reached out, wrapping her hand in mine as I tried to put on a brave face.

“It’s okay, Lily,” I lied.

I didn’t even know what was happening enough for it to be okay. She still believed me, or rather, she pretended to. She nodded once, even as her hand continued to shake, the low buzz of magic traveling through us like a current. Same as it always did.

Water between us. Like the color of our eyes. Like our names.

“Caspyn. Lily.” Ma said our names the way she had since the day we were born, as though it was one word. As though we were one person. One beautiful flower she had named us after. Not that either of us has seen one. We had never gone to land or to the deep rivers the caspyn lily grows in, with its elegant lavender petals and long green leaves. We had only heard about them or seen them in Ma’s drawings. The eight years of our lives had been on the Qit, on the floating fishing village where we were born.

“Ma?” Lily half sobbed in a panic. Ma’s hand instantly moved to cover her mouth.

“Shh, we need to be quiet. We need to be careful.” Her eyes were wide and wet as she looked between us, the soft green that reminded me of the foam that drifted against our home at tide.

“Why?” I asked, careful to keep my voice soft despite the panic snaking its way up my spine.

She pressed her lips together, that green growing brighter as the shining wet threatened tears.

“You have seen eight years now…” she began, and I didn’t need Da’s hushed bark to bring up the fear I had been holding against my heart since we were five. Since the magic first appeared in Lily.

Since I first felt it in me.

The volatile illegal magic that only brought death.

The fear that they would find us.

“They are coming.” Da was already making his way over to us, his steps as slow as Ma’s. If he moved too fast, our home would rock against the water it was floating on. The Qit was always moving, even at night, when it rocked in time with the waves, all of the tiny wooden homes and the walkways that connected us moving and shifting as the sea did. Quick moves could make our home rock differently than the rest, and they would know we were there, that we were awake.

They.

The Queen's Army of Fae.

The ones who went from Qit to Qit and village to village, taking the children with Requisite magic to be conscripted in the Queen’s Army. Killing the Catalysts’ that had stolen the magic from them.

Magic took two people, a Requisite to wield the power and a Catalyst to ignite it. I was a Catalyst and Lily was a Requisite. We knew what we were since the day she first made the water glow, since her power had moved through me and I had ignited it to create the beautiful glowing shapes.

We knew this day would come.

That they would come…to take whatever was inside me that let me conduct the magic and give it to Lily, leaving me to die, and Lily trapped in the Queen's Army as a slave.

“Now?” It was only barely a question, my hand tightening around Lily’s as I looked to the false wall beside the fireplace, the one Da had made to hide us the day after Lily’s magic presented. No one knew how they found the Catalysts, but they always did, and we needed to be ready.

“Now,” Da hissed back, carefully lifting the blanket off us and moving to scoop Lily from the bed. “Move slow.”

I hadn’t even shifted more than a speck from the bed when the house rocked on the waves as the sound of boots against the wooden walkway pounded in a stampede of an army headed our way.

“Open in the name of the Queen!” The loud bark snapped through the dark like a whip, but it wasn’t at our door. They were a few homes down.

“Maybe it’s not us…” Ma’s hope was infectious, and I froze, staring at the blurry outlines of people through the stained curtain. “Maybe it’s…”

Screams exploded in the pitch, everything rocking as those pounding feet slammed against the old boardwalk and flooded into a small home across the way.

Jaspyr.

He wasn’t even five.

The screams grew, the sound ending in a flash of light so bright it was as though a sun erupted in the center of the Qit. A second later, and the screams turned to sobs, a man’s voice shouting orders before all those feet pounded in an urgent rhythm as they moved closer… closer.

My skin prickled the closer they came, warning me of something I already knew.

I couldn’t swallow. My heart was too high up my throat. I couldn’t breathe for the way my stomach had tied itself in knots. My mouth was dry, my body a knot of fear as the knock repeated itself. This time on our door.

I was frozen on the bed, not even having taken a single step toward the open hiding place Lily stood in. She stared with those wide eyes, her own fear screaming to run. To reach her. To hide.

I had always promised her I would protect her, that I would save her. Now, I couldn’t even move.

“Open in the name of the Queen!” That same booming voice consumed the air, blasting through our home as though there was nothing between us and them. No flimsy wall. No painting of caspyn lilies that Ma and Lily had made to “bring a smile to the walls.”

“We are but fishers…” My father’s voice shook as he raced toward me, the house rocking as he tried to shoo me into the tiny room that was supposed to save us.

Save us. Lily and me. It was only in that half of a breath that I realized exactly what was going to happen and why Ma was sobbing and kissing Lily’s brow.

The room was never for all of us. It would never save our family. It was never meant to.

Not that it mattered. Da didn’t get more than a step before the door was blown off its hinges.

That same bright flash I had seen through the window burned my eyes as the wooden door splintered with a sharp crack. Burning air whipped through our house, and I was thrown back onto my bed, wood and dust falling like a hot rain that sliced and bruised. Ma screamed in a shriek, Lily’s sobs cut me to my core as I focused on where the door had been, and where a yellow haired man now stood.

He was tall, broad, and looked about as old as Da but without the lines on his eyes and forehead. The point on his ears clearly peeked through the glittering hair.

Fae.

His eyes were pools of spilled ink as they darted around the room, his wicked smirk crinkling a long scar that cut straight through his right eye from hairline to chin. His tall leather boots hit hard on the floor with each step he took into our home, at least four other guards following right behind.

Three of the soldiers held their swords at their sides, the last to enter leaning against the doorframe as if to block it. They were all tall and ominous, but it was their uniforms that made them that way. Every inch of them was covered in black so consuming it sucked away any light that might have been left in the night, turning them into shadows with capes, hoods, and black leather boots to the knee.

The only bit of color was the white snake emblem on their chest. Only the one against the door frame didn’t have it; he might as well have been a shadow. The others stood like a wall, hands on the hilts of their long swords.

I had admired those swords as a child; I had begged Da to teach me to fight. Now I knew better, I knew who carried those swords. I knew what the sign embroidered onto their leathers meant. The bright sigil of the queen: the white snake coiled around a crown of ice.

The image hung from battered and sun-bleached banners in every corner of the Qit, in every part of the Realm, reminding us who ruled. Who had taken control, and what she could do with that control.

The queen had killed her family to take the throne after she discovered how the Catalysts were stealing magic, or at least that’s what Da whispered around the fireplace late at night when he thought no one else could hear, when it was safe.

In hushed whispers, he had told us stories of the last King, the last Ramal of Okivo, and the beautiful Princess Elara, whose name was still a prayer in some places, a reminder that she had tried to save us all before the crimson-stained altar. He told us of how she and her disturbed Catalyst had been the only ones to stand before queen Dalyah and attempt to stop the Red Wave that slaughtered the Catalysts and squashed magic. The start of the war that killed so many and enslaved so many more. But that all happened more than eighty years before we were born. Now, it was only memory. All we had were black banners and the armies that stole the children. We were left with a Queen that killed the magic.

The first man, the one with honey hair, removed his sleek black leather gloves as he tapped his way in, the smirk deepening as he caught sight of me on the bed and Lily crying in the tiny space that had been meant to save us.

“Well, isn’t this interesting,” he said, the boom in his voice replaced by a taunt. “I came for one Catalyst; but imagine my surprise when I destroyed that one only to feel two more hiding feet away.”

He continued moving closer, his eyes darting from Ma to Da to Lily and finally to me. The world felt heavy against my chest as he stopped before me, his long blond hair falling over his dark eyes. He looked down and smiled, or tried to smile. He had too much wickedness in him to truly smile. The evil blazed in his eyes as he reached toward me. I could feel it in the too hot touch of his hand against my chin, the prickling flavor of his magic trilling over my skin with one touch.

“Little monsters. Floating in these festering hovels, waiting for us to pluck them out.” Each of his words stung as his warm fingers pinched painfully against my chin, the touch heating as that hand moved from my chin to my neck.

I knew I was going to die. I had always known, somewhere in the back of my mind, that this power would kill me. I had lived in fear of it, but now it was there, and I wasn’t going to look away, even as my body shook and hot tears escaped my eyes. I clenched my jaw, tears streaming down my cheeks as I stared right back.

“Waiting for us to kill.” The Fae’s hot hand tightened around my neck, cutting off my air enough that I gasped.

Something in his voice snapped through me, the vile greed mixing with the sobs of my mother and my sister and mixing all of that fear into something more.

“Don’t touch me.” I tried to sound brave and strong as I pushed his hand away, but my voice caught, the shake clear even as the feel of his magic lingered against my skin.

“Oh-ho-ho!” he laughed, the others joining him in chortles as dangerous as their uniforms. “The rat has claws. Well, let me tell you something, little rat,” he spat the last word, drops of saliva falling over my face as his fingers wrapped around my chin to lift my face to look at him. “You are vermin. Rodents. Useless, dangerous creatures that we will wipe out. We will destroy every one of you.”

“We’re not vermin,” I snapped again, Lily’s sobs becoming shrieks as I glared at him defiantly. “We are children.”

I tried to bat his hand away again, but his fingers dug in deeper, pressing painfully against my chin.

“Yes. Disgusting, vile children who stole power that is not theirs. Which is why, by order of the Queen, we have come to strip you of it.”

“No!” The word hissed between my lips thanks to the pressure from his hand against my chin.

I should have thought better about saying it, about standing up to an adult, especially one with a sword, and eyes as hard as stone. I promised Lily I would protect her; and now it wasn’t just her. It was Ma and Da as well. It was our home. It was everything.

So, I glared at him, I glared at that snake that had been everywhere in my life. I glared at the hatred and the disgust. I glared at death.

I didn’t even know what life was like without the banners. When there was food for everyone and the armies didn’t come to take our fish. When the soldiers didn’t hunt and leave people to rot on the side of the road. I didn’t know what it was to not be afraid. Lily and I pretended sometimes that everything was normal. But looking into this Fae’s eyes, I knew nothing was normal, and it never could be. He was going to take everything away.

I was going to stop him. I may be small. But I knew I could. Well, I knew I could try.

“You can’t have my magic.” I could fight him. I could.

“I can’t?” he questioned with a laugh, all of the soldiers joining in as Ma and Lily continued to cry, both of them jumping as the man grabbed the front of my nightshirt and lifted me to stand.

My head spun with the quick movement, but I didn’t look away from him. I locked my jaw and tried to scowl back as best I could. Da always did say I was too stubborn and that it might get me killed, but I was going to die either way.

“No!” I was louder that time, the shout cutting across the laughter that picked up.

“Cute little rat thinks he can win a fight. Well, let’s see what you can do against me.” They all laughed louder as the man tossed me toward where my family was trying to hide in the shadows. I fell to my knees, splinters cutting through the bare skin as pieces of broken door cut apart my palms, pieces of it skittering away at the impact. I grabbed the biggest piece of broken wood I could, jumping to my feet as I faced the Fae.

He stood with his palms out, the tips of his fingers sparking as he called magic from somewhere, creating a white cracking firelight from nothing. The loud bang and blast of light suddenly made sense. It came from this man, and now he was going to explode us all.

I had no magic of my own. I was the Catalyst. I only gave my sister the key to use her power, but that didn’t stop me from screaming, from holding the piece of wood above my head as I rushed the blond man. I swung the wood toward him, the end scraping against his face and leaving a trickle of blood behind.

But not red blood like what flowed through my veins.

Purple.

His blood was purple.

I couldn’t look away from the color, even as that light on his fingers moved to his palms and became blinding.

I raised the weapon again, the wood slamming against his chest before clattering to the ground. Pivoting, I grabbed his wrist, trying desperately to move whatever was about to explode from his hands away from my sister. The second my hand made contact with his skin, however, I was met with a chill so cold it sliced against my skin like the waves in winter, when everything on the Qit turned to ice and it cut and burned with a powerful chill.

The ice shouldn’t have been possible with the heat radiating from his palm. Everything else was hot. What in the world was happening?

“Poor little rodent. I’m going to enjoy killing this one.” He laughed with a sound I had only heard come from the Wave Walkers, the traveling dock workers of the Qits. The other soldiers joined in, the sound growing, even as the feel of the cold in his skin shifted to something warmer, something familiar.

It felt like Lily, when her hand pressed against mine and our magic united so she could use it. Except this was strong, powerful, and his. It was his magic, and it was moving into me.

No!

I wouldn’t let him take me; I would take all his power before I would let him end me.

I tugged at it, feeling it pulse through my veins. It was like the honeyed berries I had tried once, sweet and sharp and electric. The sensation was everywhere, like the never-ending ocean was trying to move into me. It should scare me, but it didn’t. I wanted more of it. I needed more of it. I pulled at it, feeding it into me. The only food I would ever want.

A second later, the flame in his hand went out.

“What in the—?” He gasped, those hard eyes shifting from humor to fear. “Sypher.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but I didn’t care. He was scared. I could use that.

“Yeah, I’m a Syphel.” I tried to repeat the taunt, sure I said it wrong. A few of the guys laughed, but the sound was chopped and panicked. One of the guards looked to the shadow in the back, the man still leaning against the doorframe even as the others looked on in horror as the blond Fae shouted and tried to pull away from my grip.

That fear, that horrible, horrible fear I saw in his eyes, was the same that was twisting up in my spine. He was as scared as I was. This Fae who had come to kill me.

He was scared of me.

That shouldn’t be possible, but I wasn’t going to ask. I was going to keep doing what I was doing.

The Fae attempted to yank free of my grip again, but I held on tighter even as he lifted me, my other hand swinging around to his neck. The heat that radiated from him rose, that pulsing power still surging through me. I pulled harder at the power, even as my head spun and the comforting heat in my veins turned into a boil.

That crackling light had moved into me.

No! I should have thought this through! What was I doing? This was too much.

“Lily!” I screamed in an attempted warning, her name turning into an agonized shout from the heat, from the pain that was engulfing me. The flames that were everywhere.

Da yelled something behind me, Lily’s sobs turning into a scream, but I was stuck staring at the man who, even in his panic, began to smile again.

“You don’t know what you are,” the blond man taunted, my scream turning to a gasp as he pried one of my hands from him, holding my wrist in his giant hands. “And you don’t know how to control it.”

He pried my other hand away, both hands held out as he gripped my wrists. That heat continued to pour through me as he leaned in.

“Word of advice, rodent; when you play with fire, you are the only one who will burn.” All fear faded from his eyes as his magic pulsed through me again. This time, he was pushing it into me.

Every inch of his magic ignited my skin in that cold heat more intense than I had ever felt. My skin was on fire; my bones were cracking with it. Agony ripped through me, and I screamed and pushed at it, desperate to get it out, to get it anywhere but inside of me.

It moved in a woosh, right to my palms, to my hands, and to my fingers that began to spark. Light pulsed, jumping between my fingers as I kept pushing at it. The heat burned me from the inside out, and with one scream, I was the one who exploded.

Lightning ripped through the air as though it was devouring it. It shredded the back walls of our home like they were made of the broken nets the sharks ruined in the spring. Water flooded through the cracked wood, filling the floor of our house as everything fell apart and the ocean rose to engulf us.

“What? No!” I wasn’t sure if I yelled or he did. One second, I was in the air; the next, he dropped me to the quickly disappearing floor.

Water lapped around my knees and calves as the shard of floor I landed on struggled to float. I stared at my hands, at the power that still buzzed there. I tried to stand, to turn, to find and save my family, but the second my hands pushed against the water-covered floor, everything exploded again.

Lightning multiplied with screams in a strangled sound as the last of the floor ripped apart. The Qit groaned and rocked, screams echoing from everywhere in the floating town. But there was only one scream that sunk into my soul. Lily’s.

Her scream of pain and panic slammed against my heart as I kicked and crawled through the mixture of wood and waves. I couldn’t see her. I couldn’t even feel the gentle strum of her magic. Only the Fae’s.

“Lily!” I needed to find her. She had to be there somewhere.

“Rodent!” the blond man screamed and rushed me, water splashing over everything as I kicked away, holding my hands out as I let the last of his mutated power flow through me and out of my palms.

Sharp knives of light that screamed as loud as I did hit him and the few men that stood behind him in a blast of white and blue, their screams joining with all the others as they flew into what was left of the front wall of our house. I continued to swim and kick and skitter over the broken remains of our floor in an attempt to reach where Lily had been.

Except nothing was there. It had all been destroyed.

“Lily!” I screamed for her, staring into the debris, into the black water. The black water that was devouring everything, the bits of my home, of my life, sinking into the abyss.

“Lily!” I dove into the icy depths of the ocean before I finished screaming.

Kicking, I darted through the waves, dodging the pieces of our home, some of the slabs of wood glowing faintly white even as they sunk to the bottom of the ocean. Everything was black and silver as I searched, kicking and swimming as I had since the day I was born.

The house had been torn to pieces, my parents and Lily gone, but they had to be there somewhere. I searched the pitch, my heart screaming, lungs raging as they protested for want of air.

I would not go up. I knew I had more air in me. I had to find her. I could feel her down there. Feel that familiar thrum of her magic.

Then I saw it, the bright white of her nightgown, the fabric a phantom curl in the pitch. I kicked with all my strength, diving toward her even as she frantically kicked toward the surface. But she wasn’t moving right. Something was wrong.

The distant boom of another explosion far overhead rippled through the waves as I reached her, the comforting thrum of her magic pulsing through me the second I grabbed her hand. Her eyes darted to mine, wide for a second before she recognized me. She kicked and reached for me, wrapping her arms around me in a frantic grip. Lily’s magic poured into me in thready pulses so different than before.

I clung to her, my legs kicking frantically even as my lungs screamed for air. We were almost to the surface when the water and sky above us erupted in ribbons of gold and red. The echo of the blast ricocheted underwater, shards of whatever had been destroyed slicing through the depths like daggers.

I didn’t need to rise above the surface to know what had been destroyed. The Qit. The entire village… There was no way it could have survived that.

I clung to Lily’s hand, her grip having gone limp as I turned to her; turned to wide eyes and a panicked face, and a giant shard of wood that stuck out from her gut. Bubbles popped from her mouth in a slow pace, the red-tinted orbs of air taking what was left of her precious air supply.

Lily!

No! No!

I tried to scream, but it was only bubbles and air. It was only everything in the world exploding into nothing.

“Lily!” The sound was hollow as I clung to her hand, her eyes focused on mine in horror. In pain. Sadness. It took me too long to figure out what that look was.

Goodbye.

The ghost of a grin spread over her face sagging as our power surged together for the last time.

It wasn’t just magic, though. It was a warm heat and a tingle of knowing. It was the feeling of her, of every night we had giggled beneath the blanket when we should have been asleep, or when we would hide under the ridge of the Qit and carve our names and practice the magic we were supposed to be keeping hidden. It was learning to swim together. It was our mother’s hug every night. It was watching the light of her magic move over the surface of the water when we thought no one was looking.

It filled me, flooding me the same way the icy lightning of the Fae had. But this was different. This was powerful. The sensation whooshed through me, the intensity of her power settling in my heart as her eyes went dark and that beautiful blue was swallowed by the ocean.

Fire exploded overhead as pieces of our bed sunk through icy depths, knocking into us. Lily’s hand slipped from mine, her fingers limp. She didn’t even try to reach for me. She didn’t even kick.

Those eyes, now the color of night, stared at nothing as she followed the pieces of wood down.

Down.

Down.

“Lily!” I screamed her name, even though I knew no sound would escape, even though I knew I was giving up my air.

But it didn’t matter. All that mattered was Lily, and she was sinking. She was leaving me.

“Lily!” I screamed again, that phantom feel of her power moving deep into my soul as I tried to swim toward her. As I tried to reach her.

I was almost out of air. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Nothing but her.

I screamed and screamed, all of the power bubbling and boiling and turning into a weight that pressed against my chest. A piece of darkness that I knew would take this all away. I don’t know how I knew, but I clung to it, letting it grow and swallow me whole.

Just like the black of the world as the last of my air turned to nothing.

—----

The familiar taste of salt and fish bit the air, the aroma ticking my face when I came to, the loud call of a gull overhead pulling me from sleep. I was floating on my back alongside a long stretch of sodden wood, the blazing sun burning into my forehead. I blinked twice, letting my eyes adjust before I sat in the waves, ready to grasp whatever floating remains of my home I had washed up against.

Except it wasn’t a piece of wood. It was a whole length of it.

Water splashed around me as I shifted, staring at the long buoyant side of the Qit, right by where the boats would take off in the morning. I had been there a thousand times. My father’s boat had docked not far from there.

Well, it did before the Qit was destroyed. Except it wasn’t destroyed. I could have sworn it was destroyed, that it all was destroyed. Yet there it was. All of it. All in one piece.

There wasn’t a smolder of smoke in the sky or a scorch mark to be seen. All I could smell was the salt of the water and the stink of the fish. All I smelled was home.

“’Ey! Boy! You ’right down ’dere?” Water splashed as I spun at the voice, salty foam bobbing around me as I faced the man on the dock, his large hand held out to me, his sun-parched face worried and skeptical.

“Yeah…?” At least, I thought I was. I had no idea what was going on or what had happened. Had all of that been a dream, or a sun fever? Had I fallen into the sea during line-call yesterday? I didn’t remember. All I did remember was the dark and the fear… Everything had been on fire. Lily had just… Lily.

“One segond ’dere was jest wabes, and ’den the next, you art ’dere. Me and ’enry got a bet ’dat ya were a Mer, but I’d seen your legs kid’king…” His dialect was familiar on the Qit, the same one Da spoke to the Wave Walkers that traveled from Qit to Qit and took small jobs in exchange for fish and coin. My father had more than a few that worked on his boat, but I barely heard him. I grabbed his hand and let him pull me up. “My… Doze be sum inters’tin eyes–”

“Yeah, I’m fine. I just need to get home.” I barely heard him, I was still staring around at the perfectly intact Qit.

Everything was there.

Everything was fine.

I didn’t let the Wave Walker respond before I ran. Water sprayed from me as I bolted over the wood walkways of my Qit, my sodden nightgown twisting around my legs. Rough wood pushed painfully into the calluses on my feet. It was as though the sun- and water-worn planks I was familiar with had been recently replaced.

People stared, a few yelled, but I ran right to my front door without looking back. The front door that was intact. Perfectly intact.

Had I really imagined everything? Please let me have imagined everything.

“Ma! Da!”

My throat was tight, my heart exploding as I yelled, fiddling with the latch that had somehow turned into a knob. The door opened on strangely quiet hinges, the bright room that was my home coming into view.

“Lily!” I yelled her name, ready to run to our bed, sure she was there, sure everyone was worried about me.

She wasn’t there.

The bed wasn’t there. Nothing was where it was supposed to be. The pretty lilies painted on the cupboards were gone. The big bed where my parents slept was pushed into the wrong corner, an unfamiliar rug underneath it.

“Hey! What in the Goddess’s name do you think you are doing?” A bark of a voice pulled me from my shock, and I jumped, more water falling from my nightshirt.

“I… I’m…” I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what had happened. “This is my home.” But was it? Nothing was right, and where was Lily?

“No it ain’t, you fish! Out! Out!” The man emerged from a bed, a frightened woman screaming as he charged me.

I ran before he could reach me.

Frantic feet pounded against the rocking walkways and carried me out the door, over the rough wood, and toward the center of the Qit.

A Qit that floated without damage and a house that was wrong. My eyes burned, my throat tight in panic as I darted through everyone who was just going about their day. A day that shouldn’t be there.

Maybe it hadn’t been a dream. Maybe all of that had happened, and everything had been destroyed. But then where was I? Had I floated to another Qit? Da had said they were all different, but this one was exactly the same as Waide. Even the big shop and fish markets by the square had the same names. Waide’s Fin.

The number of people on the boardwalk increased as I reached the center of the Qit. The small square that was always barren was now crammed with people. Fruit stands, honey shops, milliners, and bread sellers circled around a large fountain of a kraken that stood in the center of the Qit. The same statue had stood forgotten in my home, the broken bronze surrounded by banners of the queen. But now it was polished, water flowing from the mouth of the beast to pool by its tentacles. I didn’t even know it did that.

The white snake was gone, too. Everywhere those vile banners had been hung, they were replaced by banners of shimmering flags of purple and gold. The sigil of a white crown surrounding feathered wings waved in the pungent air of the sea, the chilled breeze pulling at my hair as I looked up at the glorious flag.

The sigil of the Ramal.

“A bun for you!” a woman with rosy cheeks said, shoving the still warm pastry in my hands.

“But I can’t… I have no money.” Or any idea what was going on. I couldn't make the words come. Tears welled in my eyes as all the fear, all the panic I had been pushing away since I awoke to wet ashes, came pouring out.

“Come now, pet,” she crooned, kneeling down and grinning with green eyes almost the exact same shade as my mother’s. “There’s no need for tears. Not on a day like today.”

“What’s today?” I asked, suddenly hopeful. Maybe I could figure out what in the world was going on. Maybe there was a chance I could still find Lily.

Even as I thought her name, the image of her sinking to the black abyss stabbed at me, and all those tears began to fall.

“Why, today we have a new princess. The Princess Elara. Born on the high moon to the Ramal and Queen Dalyah.”

I dropped the roll, the woman laughing as she replaced it with a new one, clearly not understanding why my eyes were wide. Why it was suddenly so impossible to breathe and everything was terribly tight. I needed to run from there, run from her.

Dalyah.

Queen Dalyah. The queen who kills the children, who slaughtered the Catalysts. The queen who killed the Ramal and her children, including the princess. Princess Elara, who was somehow born today. It was not possible.

The Princess who had fought the queen at the dawn of the Red Wave, when Dalyah’s true nature was revealed. The Princess who had disappeared over eighty years ago, her light fading then only to blaze anew when she would return and save us.

I had heard the story in whispers, about how she would return. But she never did… not then. Then.

It wasn’t where I was. It was when.

My fist tightened around the roll, the woman’s laughing voice following me as I ran.

“Go! Celebrate, child! ’Tis a glorious day!”

It wasn’t. How could it be? I had somehow traveled back nearly a hundred years, to the same Qit I grew up, to a time before the Queen destroyed magic. To a time before she destroyed everything that meant something to me.

I ran over boardwalks, to the far corner of the Qit where Lily and I would hide away when we didn’t want to get any work done. There was a ledge there, a small outcropping just above the waves where you could sit and not get wet and where the sun never hit. We could spend hours there.

Roll still clenched in my fist, I slid between two houses, sliding between two private docks too fast to be seen.

The familiar outcropping met my feet with a splash, the sun falling to nothing as I crouched my way into the tiny space, turning toward the place Lily and I had carved our names, wood that was still fresh hewn and full of splinters. There was no sign of our names.

It was gone. She was gone. Everything was gone, or rather, it wasn’t there yet.

But I was… I was there.

“Who are you?”

I turned so fast I was sure the Qit above rocked with the motion. The hideaway that had been so forgotten was clearly not so now. Two other children were huddled into the corner, both dressed in rags and clinging to rolls they had obviously gotten from the celebrations at the square.

Two kids, a boy and a girl, just my age. Just as lost and alone as I was.

“I’m Caspyn,” I said, realizing tears were still dripping down my cheeks, blending with the salt water of the ocean. I hoped they didn’t notice.

The girl narrowed her eyes before she turned to the boy, who gave a tiny nod.

“I’m Jayse. This is Jack,” she said, nodding in introduction and sending her red hair shimmering. “You have interesting eyes.”

I pushed the dark hair out of my eyes, “They are just blue.”

She shook her head and took a bite, speaking through the food, “No, one is blue. The other is almost white. Like ice.”

Ice.

“What?” The boy looked scared as I yelled in confusion and scooted to the edge of the hideaway and the water that splashed there. I couldn’t see clearly, but I didn’t have to. I knew what was there. Two shades of blue, one in each eye. Mine and Lily’s.

I touched the side of my face, the warm buzz of her magic moving through me. That’s what I had felt in that last moment. She had given her power to me. She had given part of herself to me.

My chest ached as though I had been hit by a boat, the pressure forcing more tears as I reached toward the water and released the strong pulses of her magic. The powers of a Requisite mixed with the powers of a Catalyst I already held, both igniting a ribbon of purple light on the surface of the water. Magic shouldn’t be in one person, but now it was in me.

I pulled my hand away, shoving the brilliant bright warmth of her magic down as far as I could make it go. The light faded, and I sat back against the board that would someday hold my name, but for now, it was the last bit of home I had.

I had nothing left.

The two others kept giving me glances, but I barely noticed. I sat, thinking of my sister who would return long after I was gone. Thinking of the queen who would take any chance of Lily having a safe and happy life long before she arrived.

Or she would.

Unless I could do something to change it.

I knew what was coming, and I knew how to stop it. Princess Elara was going to face the queen when she took control. The princess would lose, but not if I was there to help her.

I looked again at my hands, at the icy power from the Fae that still lingered there, at the burning throb of my sister's power. Power I would use to save her before she was even born.

“Hey,” I said after a minute, turning to the kids, who were still eyeing me warily as they slowly chewed their rolls. “What can you guys tell me about Queen Dalyah?”