Chapter 4 #2
“Is he a friend of yours?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
Elara lifted an eyebrow. “That’s not an answer.”
Reynnar’s mouth tightened. Then, surprisingly, he let his head fall back against the stone wall behind him, eyes closing. “Everything will be fine once we speak to the Concord. To Eamon.”
It was a weak attempt at reassurance, but Elara nodded anyway. “Fine,” she said. “We will speak. We will be rational. We will not antagonize the ancient, suspicious mountain court.”
Reynnar’s eyes opened. A small smile tugged at his mouth, as if it had slipped past his notice. “That would be wise.”
They waited.
The minutes dragged, each one slower than the last. Elara tracked the sunlight creeping across the floorboards, trying not to imagine what it meant that no one had come yet. Footsteps came and went—some distant, some close enough to make her straighten—none for them.
Eventually, her hunger sharpened into something bright and physical. Her body reminded her, with irritation, that she had not been built for this. It wanted food. Water. Sleep.
What it would get was judgment.
Then—finally—footsteps. Quick, synchronized, echoing down the curved corridor like a drumbeat. Metal caught the light before the doors swung inward with a low groan.
Two guards stepped through—broad-shouldered, keen-eyed, their armor marked with dull scuffs and the faint scent of oil. One had a jagged scar tracing his jaw; the other’s eyes flicked from Elara to Reynnar, assessing, cold as cut glass.
“Follow me,” said the first, his voice clipped.
She made herself unclench her hands, square her shoulders, smooth her face into something resembling calm as they were led down another corridor and through a set of doors that opened onto a chamber so vast her mind stumbled, trying to reshape itself around its scale.
The room was circular, hewn out of the mountain’s heart. Tiered benches climbed the walls in steep rings, each crowded with Turlaith lords and ladies draped in finery.
In the center of the chamber, a broad expanse of polished stone held a single circular dais.
Faint runes glimmered along its rim, their geometry too precise to be anything but binding.
The guards led them forward, and Elara felt the rune-ring beneath her boots—a minute pressure change, the air tightening as though aware of her trespass. She made herself stay still.
Reynnar stopped beside her without hesitation, his posture settling into something formally composed. Silence followed.
Elara looked up.
The Concord were ethereal in the way all Sídhe were—symmetry so exact it unsettled, beauty edged with something inhuman, their eyes bright as cut crystal.
But the Turlaith carried their beauty like challenge rather than ornament.
Their faces were harder, their gazes steadier.
Their hair was braided or bound back with bone clasps and hammered metal.
Many wore mantles made from dark wool or leather, stitched with leaves that gleamed faintly as they moved.
There was a harshness to them that didn’t negate their grace. It made it dangerous.
Mountain dwellers, indeed.
Elara counted quickly: twelve on the highest tier, perhaps the “lords” of the Concord. Below them, more—advisors, wardens, lesser nobles. Their eyes were on Reynnar, on her, on the cut in her palm that still bled faintly through the cloth wrap.
One Turlaith male in particular sat forward on the highest tier, elbows on his knees, his gaze narrowing as if he were bringing a distant object into focus.
He seemed older than the others, though “older” among Sídhe was a slippery concept.
His hair was iron-gray threaded with silver leaf, eyes the color of pale lichen.
He stared at Reynnar.
“Reynnar Brannoc?”
The name fell into the chamber like a stone dropped into water, and a rustle moved through the benches. Reynnar bowed.
“Ciarán mac Dúin, it has been long.”
Ciarán’s gaze cut to Elara, and heat pricked beneath her skin before she could stop it, her body refusing to play at composure. “You have the nerve to speak my name,” Ciarán said—thankfully in Reynnar’s dialect, “and to stand in this hall as if you have not been gone for—”
“Nearly fifty years,” Reynnar said evenly.
Elara’s head snapped toward him so fast her neck twinged.
Fifty?
Her mind refused the number at first. It ran it through reason, through what she knew about Sídhe longevity, through the way Reynnar looked—no older than twenty-six, perhaps twenty-seven, if she allowed for the harshness of what he’d endured.
Fifty years was…absurd. Unless time worked differently here…
Her stomach tightened, not with fear now, but with the disorienting realization that she knew so little about the world she’d been dragged into.
She had been so occupied with surviving that she had not stopped to consider all of the physical differences between them.
Reynnar must have felt her stare, because the corner of his mouth lifted.
Not a smile, exactly. More like a grim acknowledgment: Later.
Ciarán’s gaze narrowed. “You left, then,” he said. “And did not return.”
Reynnar’s eyes did not flinch. “I did. But I am here now, and I call upon the Concord of Cruithneach as first witness.”
A Turlaith female on the upper tier leaned forward. Her hair was braided into a crown that made her look like a statue come to life. “Speak, then.”
Reynnar turned slightly, a gesture that took in the Concord without any hint of supplication. “Honored Concord,” he said. “Wardened lords. Root-keepers. Stone-blooded kin. I stand before you to deliver testimony of what has been done to our people across the veil.”
Elara watched him as he spoke. His hands hung loose at his sides; his voice was calm as he let his words do the work rather than his power. When he spoke of the Pit, there was no flourish in it, no reach for sympathy. Only truth, moving under its own momentum.
Reynnar spoke of the trance that hollowed the mind, of waking to iron and carved sigils burning in Sídhe skin.
He spoke of ring-cells. Collars. Rituals repeated until blood and Draoth were stripped away, souls tethered and burned like fuel.
Sídhe screams in languages humans did not bother to understand.
Of the laughter and cruelty that followed.
He spoke of bodies that stopped moving, of those dragged away and never returned. Of Osin.
When he finished, Elara realized she hadn’t taken a full breath in what felt like minutes.
The silence afterward rang in her skull.
She had known pieces—but not this. Not the scale of it.
Her gaze flicked up to the Concord to find some looking incredulous.
Others, bored. A few leaned forward, eyes keen with calculation rather than disbelief.
Only Ciarán looked concerned, though there was a reluctance in it, as if he did not want to believe yet could not dismiss it.
His fingers tightened on the armrest until his knuckles paled.
Then a male to the far right let out a short laugh.
“What you speak of is an impossibility. The humans have no access to the type of power needed to breach the veil. The Triad made sure of it when they shaped our two realms.”
Elara felt a tight, almost dizzying pressure build behind her eyes.
Impossible?
She stood there—human, or close enough to pass—breathing their air, standing in their hall, having crossed into their realm by means of a weapon that very clearly contradicted everything they were asserting. Why were they willfully excluding the evidence standing directly in front of them?
The Wound of Light rested heavy at her side.
Reynnar did not mention it in his testimony. She suspected that was deliberate.
Another voice followed, harsher. “And you ask us to weigh this testimony while overlooking the fact that you returned wielding Na Spioraid Tine’s power—and used it against Concord forces.”
Na Spioraid Tine.
There was no direct translation Elara’s mind could seize—only implication. Fire. Spirit. But Reynnar’s reaction told her enough. His hands curled slowly at his sides.
“Its use was necessary,” he said.
“You used it without leave,” the lord replied coolly. “Against our military. Against Turlaith authority.”
“The Turlaith do not rule by rumor,” another lord said. “We rule by order. If Sídhe were taken in such numbers, records would exist.”
Elara spoke before she could stop herself. “There were thousands taken. Thousands. How is it possible that there is no record?”
The chamber turned as one. Whispers rippled through the tiers—uneasy.
“She speaks the elder tongue.”
“How does one such as she know the true speech?”
Kynra’s gaze snapped to her, sharp with warning. “You will not address the Concord unless invited.”
Her heartbeat spiked, but she did not break her focus. “On what grounds do you dismiss Reynnar’s testimony? What purpose would there be in fabricating something like this?”
Ciarán regarded her. “The Concord does not dismiss testimony,” he said.
“We weigh it. Carefully. Extraordinary claims require more than witness alone—particularly when that witness acted beyond Concord sanction. If such events occurred, they would have left traces within established channels. Reports. Petitions. Absences formally noted.”
“This chamber,” another lord added quietly, “does not act on implication. And we do not destabilize governance on accounts that cannot be substantiated.”
Reynnar stood rigid beside her. And in that moment, Elara saw with awful clarity that this procession of “justice” would not question whether the atrocities done to them were real, but instead protect the system that had allowed them to happen.
“You will not hear an Ellylldan’s witness. Fine.” Reynnar’s eyes lifted, burning with fury. “Others escaped alongside me. Many others. Turlaith among them. I—”
Ciarán leaned forward. “What you speak of—”
“It is real,” Reynnar cut in. “It is happening now.”