Chapter 30
I whimper as Dae carefully pulls a shard of glass from my leg. The pain is sharp but distant, muffled by the incessant ringing in my ears. Throwing the glass aside, he wraps a cloth around my bleeding leg and tightens it until I flinch.
“Are you okay?” Kaya rushes into the room, her face etched with worry. Blinking, I scan her body, looking for traces of the bomb. There are no marks on her, but her eyes are red and raw, filled with sorrow.
I open my mouth to speak, but the words catch in my throat. “I?—’’
“Watch her,” Dae snaps at Kaya before standing, pressing a quick kiss on my forehead, and stalking from the room.
Coblynau enter and leave, patching up my leg with practiced efficiency, checking the room for more bombs. “Shiva?” I ask, my voice hoarse.
Kaya nods, finding a spot on the mushroom sofa and burying her head in her hands. “She’s fine. Abnehor got her out. She’ll have a fresh scar on her chest, but no actual harm done.”
I am numb, detached from the surrounding chaos. “Everyone else?”
Kaya purses her lips. “The Jinn are fine. The demons too. A few fae are injured. But the humans... most of them are—’’ She swallows, her voice thick with emotion. “The bomb was made for them.” She gives me a knowing look. “It was Aberith, trying to get at you,” she says, shattering the last vestiges of denial within me.
It was meant for me—I try to calm the storm raging inside my mind, but the guilt and anger are overwhelming.
“How many have to die for Ellyllon?” Kaya asks, her voice filled with a quiet rage. It’s only supposed to be one—me. But the concept of my death being for anything, once a source of comfort, is starting to chafe.
I cast my mind back to the humans I saw dancing and playing with the fae. They might have been treated like dirt, but they were alive. And now they’re dead. Father killed them. And I can’t tell if I’m angry at Dad for doing it or angry at myself for causing it to happen. “How many?” I ask, my voice barely a whisper.
Kaya shakes her head. “A hundred, at least.”
A hundred. All to catch one, and he didn’t even manage it. “I’m angry,” I say, the words escaping my lips before I can stop them. I don’t know why I say it out loud. Maybe to hear that I’m not alone. Perhaps I just want someone to tell me what to do.
“We all are, Elysia.” Kaya’s voice is gentle. “But it’s what you do with that anger that matters. You can let it fester. You can turn it on the wrong person. You can sit with it, continuing the same cycle as before. Or you can let it push you into action.”
The bedroom door swings open. “Party moved in here?” Dorian asks, walking in with Lilith and Aamon in tow.
“That’s not funny.” Kaya’s voice is a warning. Dorian throws his hands in the air and laughs, a carefree sound that grates on my nerves. Lilith hisses at me. I hiss back, a blow of breath between my teeth. The movement shifts my head awkwardly, and I quickly find myself clutching my neck, a sharp pain shooting through my injured muscles.
Dae comes back in through the door, blood splattered across his face and chest—again, it’s not his own. Lixi follows him in, and Dae turns to close the door behind her. I gasp. His back is in tatters, crisscrossed with deep gashes and burns. He threw himself over me to save me, and he’s suffered the consequences.
“Elly, is your leg okay?” Dae asks. I nod, trying to turn him so I can get a better look at his back. He captures my hand and stops me. “Lixi’s going to take you somewhere, okay? I want her to show you something. Is that okay? You won’t have to walk. Just look.”
He looks so vulnerable, his usual arrogance replaced by a raw desperation, that I can’t help but say yes. Lifting me, he cradles me as we leave the room. Down the corridor, through the castle, past the doors I found before, all the way to one shrouded in glowing mushrooms. Lixi blows dust on the door, and it swings open silently.
The smell of fresh air hits me as Dae carries me through the door into a wide-open clearing. Giant mushrooms, taller than any I’ve ever seen, tower over us, their caps a kaleidoscope of colours. Shades of cerulean, azure, and teal speckle the grass beneath Dae’s feet. My neck tips back, and my mouth falls slightly open as I imagine myself running and playing and dancing through the clearing, touching the serrated fluorescent plants and disk-shaped neon flowers growing everywhere, picking up blue moss-covered rocks to find out what critters lay beneath.
One deep cobalt moon fills the sky above us, casting an ethereal glow over the landscape. The stars create an unfamiliar pattern, a dazzling tapestry of light against the velvety darkness. I feel so close to the universe, I think I could almost reach out and touch it.
Pitch-black trees with crooked bases curve out from the ground, their branches reaching towards the sky like gnarled fingers. Pink ropes swing from giant mushroom to giant mushroom, carving a playful route through the clearing.
Tiny, delicate emerald wings flutter amongst the luminous violet flowers, gone as quickly as they appeared. “Let me down.”
“Your leg.” Even as he says it, Dae places me gently on the ground anyway.
I squat down, resting on the soft moss and wrapping my arms around my knees.
This time, when little dragonfly wings flutter into existence, I catch sight of a head, too. Tiny glittering shamrock eyes peer out at me from the darkness, and a small, starlit face watches me with sadness.
My fingers twitch towards it, wanting to touch, cuddle, and comfort. It ducks back behind a discoidal flower.
A flutter sounds from behind a giant mushroom. Another little near-human with bright pink wings and soft, puffy hair emerges. It ducks up and down from behind the mushroom until, finally, it rests its elbows on top of the giant mound and curves its fingers into a sign.
“A heart? For me?” It nods, cotton-candy hair floating around its oval face. “Why are you so sad?” It covers its tiny eyes with its tiny hands and ducks back behind the mushroom. “Are we in Callacombe?”
Hundreds of little dragonfly wings flutter through the trees, flowers, and mushrooms, their colours ranging from coral to amaranthine. Their tiny eyes peer out at me... with sadness. Some cry, others jam their hands into their armpits, others tighten their shoulders, gazing out with damp, overly bright eyes. Cringing, jerking, squirming.
“What’s wrong?”
In unison, they flinch, ducking back down towards the ground as a giant, half-rabid dog, the size of a man with sharp pincers for teeth and shadows for legs, comes bounding through the clearing. It snarls in our direction, eyes glowing red in the darkness. Dae snarls back, and it backs away, turning and sprinting off.
“Shadow-hounds,” I say, my heart racing, ears still ringing. “I thought they were extinct.” Dad told me about them in his stories of far-away and long-ago—they match his description perfectly. Gaunt, skeletal creatures with matted fur the colour of a moonless night, their ribs visible beneath their taut skin. Their eyes burn with malevolent red fire, and their breath comes out in ragged gasps, revealing rows of jagged teeth. It moves with unsettling fluidity, its shadowy form seeming to ripple and distort with every stride. Lixi snorts. “I wish.”
The hound grips a piskie by the dress, throwing it across the clearing towards the black trees. The piskie hits the tree hard, and I shout, trying to run towards it. I step on my bad leg and half-crumble to the ground. Rubbing her head and lifting herself up, the piskie begins to chip away at the tree with a tiny axe. Glimmering dust floats from the tree, catching the moonlight. Other piskies float over, some carrying bags, some carrying axes.
“Who controls the hounds?” I ask. Shadow-hounds are brought to life to serve. Someone pulls the strings. At least, that’s what Dad told me.
“Why else would we bring you here, love?”
“Dad?”
“Yes.”
My stomach sinks. “He’s controlling Callacombe. He’s forcing the piskies into slavery to mine piskie dust for him.” I mean it to come out like a question, but it’s more of a statement.
“Yes.”
“I don’t understand. He told me piskie dust is forbidden in Ellyllon.” Although I’m ready for Dae to tell me everything Dad said is a lie.
Lixi says, “They don’t use it, they sell it.” She turns to face Dae. “I can’t be caught here.”
Dae nods and picks me back up, carrying me back through the door. Lixi shuts the door behind us, and I make Dae put me on the ground. I sit, back against a wall, my mind reeling.
Lixi says, “I want my home back. I want my people free. I want the shadow-hounds and the Nightelves gone. What you just saw is nothing. Morning rounds of some tiny little village. I’m responsible for billions of lives, and that’s how they live. Hunted and enslaved. You’ve seen your father kill your kind, now you’ve seen what he does to mine. If you go back, if you give them your life, this is what you’re complicit in. Remember that when you try to sleep tonight.”
With that, she leaves.
And I have no idea what I’m supposed to do.