Chapter 31
thirty-one
A prison.
Apparently, there was a place called the Ashfall Keep at the edges of Blackwater, just before the mountain borderline—the mountain borderline being the place where giants and dragons lived.
Yes. Those mountains at the edge of Verenthia—those were the mountain fucking borderline.
And we were going to have to get very close to them, too.
“The ashes from dragonfire fall on it constantly, like snow,” Rune said as we rode the Unseelie horses toward the large gates of the court.
These horses he paid for. He also put his magic over us, a shitload of it, and we’d been on our way without anybody even looking at us twice.
“That’s where it gets the name—Ashfall,” Rune continued. “I should have seen it sooner. Raja, too. But since it was the Unseelie heir, she was so certain it would be here, in Unseelie territory…”
“Why? Why are you so sure it’s the place from the reading?” I wondered.
“Because it is,” he said. “It’s a prison made in a deep gorge below the mountains, and it is only accessible through a single bridge.
Each cell has a silver light over it to both indicate that the inmates are locked in, and to keep an eye on them.
Each is tied to the blood of every prisoner, and the silver light looks exactly like a full moon.
That’s what the rumors say, and Raja confirmed it. ”
“I’ve heard of Ashfall many times,” Maera said from my other side. “I’ve heard it’s managed by vampires, not fae.”
“That’s just it,” Rune said. “No king has ever laid claim to it, but all of them buy cells for their most dangerous prisoners. They have been sending people there for centuries, and there are guards permanently appointed to it from all kingdoms.”
That’s when it hit me. “The court with no throne.” That’s what the reading had said—the court with no throne.
“Which means it’s not the Unseelie Court, because this one has a throne. It’s only empty at the moment,” Rune said.
“The Keep doesn’t have one at all,” said Maera, and each one of us sounded more and more in awe of the words coming out of our mouths.
Because it clicked. It fit perfectly. It felt right.
“So, that pretty much means we’re screwed, right?” Maera said, catching me by surprise. “If the heir is in Ashfall, that means he or she was too dangerous to be kept in an Unseelie prison.”
“Or maybe they knew who they were and wanted to take them as far away from the throne as possible.” That’s what the Thornevale pack had done with Maera, had sold her off to the sorcerers in hopes that she would die.
Except…
“Those people slaughtered all of the royal family, didn’t leave a single extended family member alive. They do not strike me as people who would care about keeping a clean conscience,” Maera said. “Of course, I could be wrong.”
“There’s a chance that they knew and kept the heir away on purpose. And if they didn’t, and he ended up in Ashfall on his own, we’ll deal with it,” said Rune.
“Deal with it how?” I wondered. “It’s bad enough that we have to deal with Lyall, isn’t it? It’s bad enough that he’s already on his way there.”
“True,” Maera said. “But the Seelie King plans to kill the heir to make sure he doesn’t pose a threat to him.”
“So maybe them being a dangerous criminal isn’t so bad?
” I muttered, then thought better of it.
“Actually, no—that’s worse. Imagine having to put a dangerous criminal on a throne, giving them a kingdom.
Fuck.” Whichever way I looked at it, I saw no way out.
“And didn’t you say that dragonfire was something even fae can’t withstand? ” That’s what he said. I remembered it.
“It is,” said Rune. “But dragons don’t fly over Ashfall. Only the ashes move with the wind.”
Except he sounded full of shit just now, and he knew I knew it. That’s why he refused to even look at me.
“What the hell can we do against dragons, Rune?” Because it was dragons. I’d seen movies, had read many a book about them.
“Very little,” Maera answered instead. “But we can still hope we don’t run into one.”
“That does not make me feel any better.”
She shrugged. “Me, neither. But like I said earlier—if we die, we die.” She had most definitely made her peace with it.
I turned to Rune, shook my head. “That’s it?
We just ride to Blackwater and hope we don’t run into dragons and hope that somehow we get there before Lyall even though he was on his way hours ago, and that the heir is a decent being and that he was thrown into that awful prison by mistake or something—is that it? Am I missing something?”
“Giants,” Maera said. “We hope we don’t run into giants, either. They’re out there, near the mountains. They live in them.”
“Right, right—giants, too. Because they’re buddies with dragons somehow. What—do they ride them or something? Is that it?” I was freaking out a little bit and I didn’t care enough to try to hide it.
“Nobody really knows,” Maera continued—and she wasn’t freaked out in the least. She was talking about all of this as if it was the most natural thing in the world to discuss. “Could be. I always thought it a possibility.”
My mouth opened and closed a dozen times, but nothing came to mind to say to her, not when she looked like that, so unbothered. So calm as she rode that horse.
“Fuck,” I ended up whispering because what else was there to say?
“It’s a long way to Ashfall,” Rune suddenly said, and dove his heels against his horse’s side to make him move faster. “I’m going to buy food and necessities. Keep moving and don’t slow down. I’ll catch up with you.”
His horse moved forward faster, and Maera’s and mine continued at the same pace down a dark road behind the one-story houses of a relatively quiet town. I watched after him without any idea what to even think, let alone speak.
It was all such a shock, I thought, and I still couldn’t believe I’d actually assumed it would be easy to do this.
But the night wasn’t done with me yet.
“This is fucked up,” I said, shaking my head. “So—so fucked up.”
“But we’ll make it, if we do,” said Maera, and I actually laughed. Not just because of her words, but because of her tone of voice. “If I were you, I’d concern myself with what happens after.”
There went my laughter. “What?” I said in half a voice.
“After, Nilah. After we find the Unseelie heir and we put him on the throne, and you claim the Frozen Court, too.” Stabs at my gut, at my chest—everywhere on me.
My eyes moved ahead though I didn’t really see anything.
“You will do it, right? You will claim the throne?” Words—so many fucking words in my mind trying to come out of me all at once, contradictory words, words that made no sense whatsoever, and my tongue was bleeding from the effort my teeth made to keep them in.
“You will,” Maera said after a moment, and I only saw her nodding through the corner of my eye. “You will—otherwise, all of this would have been for nothing. You wouldn’t waste time chasing the lost heir for nothing, would you?”
This time, she didn’t speak. Not when ten seconds passed, and a minute, and two.
This time she let her words marinate in my mind, until a weak, no, I wouldn’t, left my dry lips.
She continued as if she hadn’t had to wait so long for an answer. “Then you should consider putting some distance between you and the Midnight King.”
I pulled at the reins of the horse so hard instinctively that it stopped walking. Maera’s did, too, when he realized I wasn’t beside her.
“What did you say?” I asked because my ears couldn’t have possibly heard right. And suddenly I saw the way she’d looked at Rune and me since the beginning—at our joined hands, at our arms linked, at our lips pressed against one another.
“The Midnight King. Now is the time to start putting some distance between the two of you,” Maera repeated.
My heart fell to my heels before I even asked the next question, like my body already knew. “Why would I do that?”
She raised her thick brows for a moment. “You don’t know.” The look in her yellow eyes turned softer within the second.
“Know what?” she made me ask.
“No king and queen from different courts can be together. It is forbidden by the stars. Two fae courts cannot be joined, Nilah. That is a law that cannot be broken.”
The memory of the last time we spoke to the Seer of Shadows came back to me slowly. Hadn’t she said something similar before Rune promised me it was nothing to worry about?
No, it can’t be. I shook my head as my stomach turned. “We’re not going to join anything—we’re just going to be together.”
She moved her horse closer to me. “How? You will be ruling the Frozen Court, and he the Midnight. How will you be together? You cannot be married. You cannot live together. Neither palace would allow the other to live under its roof.”
“Then we won’t. We’ll find another place to live,” I said through gritted teeth as tears gathered in my eyes and made a mess out of the image of her face.
My God, this hurt. Had the world suddenly run out of air? Because it fucking hurt to breathe.
A hand on mine. Maera’s warmth did nothing to calm the racing of my heart.
“You cannot rule from another place, Nilah. And if you plan to try anyway, you might as well go back now because the curse will still be there if you step down from the throne. If any of you steps down from your thrones.” A black cloud that was invisible to the whole world was hovering over my head, sucking life out of me—and Maera wasn’t even done yet.
“If that is what you truly want, then you should consider walking away together with Rune right now, live however many years Verenthia has left together.” I blinked, and the tears slid down my cheeks so fast it all felt like a dream to me.
“But first, answer yourself this: will you be able to live like that, knowing all that you know?”
I didn’t see anything from the tears, just a little orange light bending here and there, and I was glad for it. I didn’t want to see. I didn’t want to know.
But I heard the footsteps of Maera’s horse as it moved forward. She left me alone—for a moment, I figured, to ask myself the silliest question in the world.
No, I couldn’t live like that. Rune couldn’t live like that. Of course, we couldn’t.
Just like that, the saving of the world became my doom just as much as the ending of it.
Not thinking about everything Maera and I talked about when Rune left to get supplies was surprisingly easy.
Possibly because my sanity depended on it.
Who wants to think about the very thing that would most likely tear them apart in every aspect, anyway?
I certainly didn’t, and my brain was happy to pretend with me.
I’d unconsciously decided that I’d keep at it until I couldn’t anymore.
That’s how we traveled on horseback for almost two whole days, sometimes running, sometimes walking, even stopping for breaks when the horses needed it.
Rune had gotten everything we needed from the Unseelies.
We had food and water and blankets to lay on during breaks, and even spare clothes for each of us.
We did make good use of them when we stopped to rest near a river just into Blackwater territory, and we decided to bathe.
Maera went first, and then she watched the woods surrounding us while Rune and I went in.
We lost ourselves to each other in perfect silence that night, and I didn’t think for a single second that I wouldn’t have him at any point in any timeline, any realm.
I didn’t think at all—I just consumed him like he was my fuel, and I felt more alive afterward.
The moon kept us company, and the water was perfectly cold, and it reminded me of the first time we were together in that lake in front of Raja’s house.
Much too soon, it was time to get back on the road.
Sometimes we talked, shared stories with one another—three people from such very different worlds come together.
It fascinated me every time Maera spoke about her upbringing, and every time Rune told us about how the Midnight Court was supposed to be ruled now that he was king.
I even found it exciting to tell them the most boring stuff from Earth, then watch them find it so damn fascinating, like it was the most interesting thing they’d ever hear.
Sometimes we were silent and let the sounds of the horses’ footsteps try to relax us.
During those times I liked to pretend I was riding with Rune on the same horse like that time, and I was sleeping in his arms. I got so used to the whole thing, it surprised me.
I was comfortable, not afraid in the least, because I wasn’t alone.
The woods in Mysthaven had felt familiar, and Blackwater felt perfectly safe to be in without turning to watch my back every second—because Rune was there.
Maera was there. I could go on like this forever.
But we arrived at Ashfall Keep before sunrise on the third day.