Chapter 18 #2
How does he do it? It's like he has invisible arms.
“That's Forken steel,” I said, reaching for it but he held it away, balancing it in his palm.
“And it's Forken beautiful,” he chuckled at his own joke.
I gritted my teeth, wondering if he knew the worth of that blade.
It was the strongest material known to Fae.
The Forkens were renowned for their beautiful and near-invincible weaponry, and luckily for my emperor, he had an alliance with them.
Of course, they loved to claim that was because their steel was made by the gods themselves, but it was no doubt just a boast to gain the fear of other kingdoms and empires, but that hadn’t stopped the Quellioths trying to invade them.
Anger grew in my chest as I tried to figure out what it would take to reclaim that prize, but before I had to make any kind of decision, Drake handed it back to me.
I observed him suspiciously as my fingers closed around the weapon, unsure why he was happy for me to keep it and feeling like I was on the back foot with him once again.
“Your fingers are lighter than any thief I've ever known. Is it some magic?” I asked, sheathing the scimitar again and tying it at my hip.
“No,” he said cockily. “It's pure skill.” He shrugged at me in that way that said he owned the world.
How did someone with absolutely nothing to his name have so much confidence?
As if he were a far richer man. Perhaps he was already spending the treasure in that cave, presuming his wealth or perhaps his position in this world wasn’t as bad as he had led me to believe.
But somehow, I was certain that wasn’t it.
He was just fully confident in himself, in his own talents, and he made no apologies about any of it.
I had been raised to be proper and follow social expectations, trained to become a man of steel and show no emotion at all, but Drake was just utterly…
himself. I couldn’t even convince myself that that was an entirely terrible thing either.
I knew it was bad form for me to allow The Forty to get their hands on any of that trove, but I was satisfied that Azurea would come to claim most of it, ensuring no more sinners were able to get close to it.
Letting these men take a cut was a trade-off that would allow me to destroy the coin.
And frankly, I was starting to give less of a damn about my code of conduct since I had no one to answer to right now.
But if I one day managed to expose Magdor for what she was, I’d no doubt be welcomed back into my old position.
My truant tongue would have to learn to behave again then.
I’d return to the company of my thoughts where I let out my inner frustration and kept my wants and desires firmly concealed within the walls of my own mind.
That worked before. It can work again. I just need to focus on getting this done.
The gang returned to the backs of their camels and I led the way on, anticipation seeping through my veins as we followed the river upstream, my certainty in our route never faltering now we’d found the oasis.
As we passed into a crevice between the two mountains, the roaring of a waterfall caught my ear and a spike of adrenaline rocked through my limbs. We were close. So fucking close that I could taste it.
I encouraged the camel into a gallop, the thieves crying out excitedly as they followed my lead. My heart thumped harder as the wind rushed over me and every passing second drove us nearer to our destination.
The river turned a sharp bend and there before us was the incredible falls, the roar of them seeming to make the earth beneath us tremble with their rage.
They were higher than any I'd ever seen, tumbling down a sheer cliff of black rock, the top lost in a cloud of mist so that I had no idea where they even began.
It was almost as if they came crashing down from the heavens themselves.
Rainbows danced between the spray, the water so blue it shamed the cloudless sky.
There was a large pool at the foot of the falls, but no river continuing away from them, so I had to assume that the water made its way from here beneath the ground much like the Carlell River in the city did in several places.
I dismounted the camel, tying its reins to a tree before advancing on the towering waterfall.
I drew my scimitar, a creeping sense of danger flooding over me from this place despite its apparent beauty.
We were treading the path of the Fallen here, I knew it in the deepest fibres of my being.
This was a place that Fae had no business in being anymore, yet we were still advancing on it, defying the will of the lost gods and taking our fates into our own hands just as they’d cursed us to do all those years ago.
A strange humming filled the air which had everything to do with magic and I hesitated, fearing the power of old and the price we might pay for messing with it.
But I didn’t let it hold me back for long, raising my chin and forging forward.
The gods had abandoned us over a thousand years ago, so I wasn’t going to cower from them now.
Drake moved to walk at my side, exchanging a look with me which said he could feel the dark hum of power radiating from this place too as he followed me into the water.
It wasn't too deep, allowing us to wade through its chilly depths and only rising to our waists.
Luckily, no current attempted to drag us under either and I had to admit that the water was eerily calm in comparison to the falls, the taste of magic on the air only growing stronger the closer we got.
The water pulled us forward as if it wanted us to walk this path just as much as we did, defying the laws of physics as it failed to push us away from the falls.
A strange whispering filled my ears, like the echoes of songs once sung and prayers once spoken, but I couldn't make out the words which seemed to be breathed in an ancient language.
I stepped beneath the falling water and it didn't pound down on my flesh as I expected; instead, it trickled over me in a wave of heat, working through my limbs and into the very depths of my being.
The sensation slipped beneath my skin and an inch of fear found my heart as I fell under some power which was so much greater than myself.
We emerged in a wide cave on the other side of the water, stepping up onto a flat expanse of dark rock which rose ahead of us, blocking the view onwards.
The others followed, the eight of us striding up the incline of rock to its edge and my breath was stolen by the view beneath us.
The cave dropped down into an enormous garden which grew impossibly green and lush within the dimly lit space. But instead of fruit, gemstones hung from the branches of the trees, nestled amongst glowing red flowers and leaves so bright they glittered.
It was magic, pure and simple, the likes of which I’d only ever heard about in tales from days so far past that I wasn’t sure I’d ever truly believed in them at all. But here it was, cold hard evidence of the history of our kind and all we’d lost at the cost of a simple lie.
Drake's men muscled past us with whoops of excitement, but my gaze stuck on the one thing in this place that mattered. A single beam of sunlight cut through a hole in the roof of the cave, falling on a pedestal at the far end of it, illuminating the golden coin upon it. Even from this distance I could tell what it was, the magic Magdor had placed in me drawing my gaze to it irrevocably with a certain sense of destination to it which I couldn’t shake off.
I knew that coin was powerful, I just didn’t know how exactly. But I’d have it in pieces before I ever found out.
A fierce determination took hold of me as I took a step forward, but Drake planted a hand on my chest to stop me before I could head for the prize I was here to claim.
“That's what you want?” He pointed at the coin and I nodded firmly.
“That's all,” I growled, as his eyes twinkled with some thought.
It was only a brief moment but I saw it for what it was, greed and cunning twisting in his dark gaze as he assessed my interest in the coin.
The one thing in this cavern that I desired which looked to be worth so much less than all the other treasures here that it should have been irrelevant.
My muscles tensed, my fingers twitching for my blade.
I was so close to finishing this, but that look in his eye said it might not be so damn simple.
“Why?” he demanded.
My tongue swelled with heat and suddenly the answer burst from my lips even though I willed it not to. “I think it holds some magic, some power that Magdor wants. It must be immeasurably valuable.”
I clamped a hand over my mouth in shock and Drake gazed at me eagerly as the truth spilled from me beyond my control.
“It's mine,” I snarled, heat pumping through my veins as I fought to rein in my temper and keep to that single demand. “Take whatever else you want. We had a deal.”
“Yes. But I'm going to screw over every last one of you to get the best haul,” Drake said, then his eyes widened as if he hadn't meant to say it.
“Shit,” he hissed. He glanced back at the falls and I followed his gaze.
“We can't lie here,” he whispered and I nodded, biting my tongue in case any more of my secrets flowed out.
The power of this cavern was ancient indeed if it had managed to bind us to the laws of the Fallen, forcing the truth from our lips in place of any lie we might have tried to tell.
“What will you leave for Azruea?” I asked, this having troubled my mind for the past nights.
“Nothing. Not a single coin. I will take it all and the dragon be damned,” he snarled.
Fuck. We’re dead.
“You’re a fucking fool,” I hissed.
“Maybe, but I’m soon to be a rich one.” He grinned at me, giving in to the power of this place and just owning what he was.
This was old power. The magic of our kind which had long since been stolen from us.
The legends all agreed on that one single fact.
Fae used to be known as the fair folk, gifted with magic and immortality by the lost gods who loved them dearly.
But that love turned sour with a single act from a traitorous Fae who had cursed our entire kind.
There were certain things which were built into the very fabric of our being such as our Affinities, which had once been touched with pure magic we could wield freely, and the way iron burned and weakened us unlike any other substance we knew.
And once, so long ago that none living could remember it, we had been bound in truth as well.
No lies had passed our lips in any shape or form, the truths we spoke sometimes cast in riddles or tricks, but always true nonetheless.
It was the cost the gods required from us so that we could never plot against them, and we had been bound to it in payment for the gifts they had bestowed on our kind in turn.
Until the Fallen learned to lie. And with that, the gods abandoned our kind and left us to rot in mortality and without our magic.
I had grown up hearing those stories, but never until I felt the power of this chamber forcing truths from my tongue had I even come close to understanding it. And now that I did, I could hardly fathom how anyone had ever learned to tell a lie, let alone why they had been so determined to do so.
A blood-curdling scream tore the air apart and we both ran forward to the edge of the garden in alarm, our realisation forgotten in favour of the agonising screams which were echoing off of the walls.
All six of the thieves who had accompanied us here were on the ground, writhing in agony as they held huge gemstones in their fists.
“What’s happening?” I gasped, but Drake had no answer.
The screams grew louder and more desperate, their knuckles whitening around the gems they clutched as if they could do nothing other than hold onto them despite the way they glowed with a power which must have been the cause of their pain.
My eyes widened as their skin started ripping, tearing open and blood poured out to stain the grass all around them.
I could barely stand to watch as their entire bodies turned inside out and their screams cut off as death claimed them in a sick and twisted curse.
“Holy mother of fuck,” Drake breathed as a wave of nausea gripped me.
Blood bubbled from their corpses, their eyes bulged and all that remained of them was muscle, sinew and shredded skin alongside the resounding echoes of their screams which were dying out in the system of caves that surrounded us.
I dragged my gaze from their mutilated bodies, my heart thundering in my chest as my task filled my mind and I fixed my sights on the coin.
My sole purpose for coming here washed away any fear I had at walking through this cursed garden, and I gritted my teeth as I rallied myself for what I knew I had to do.
Power thrummed through the air, the whispering voices drawing closer as if they’d taken strength from the deaths they’d caused here, and I swear I felt the touch of icy fingers against my skin too.
But I couldn’t waste time worrying about Fallen Fae and long-lost gods, because I knew with all my heart that I could touch that coin and survive the consequences.
I wasn’t sure how, I just knew it was so.
But I didn't care for touching it anyway, I was going to destroy it with the Forken sword and take away Magdor's chance of ever getting her hands on it. That vow was all I had left of the man I’d been, and I would see it done no matter the cost to myself.