Chapter 1
Elorie
Blue morning glories used to grow at the edge of Alyssium’s prison gates.
The delicate petals drew a colorful boundary against the slick obsidian walls.
As children growing up in the village at the center of the island, we were warned not to cross that line of morning glories.
Warned of what dwells in the depths of the Fae prison.
I never understood the fear of what was locked inside when what stirred around us was just as deadly.
After all, the island of Alyssium doesn’t favor human or Fae.
Death sticks to every branch in the frostbitten forest. It lingers on the icy shore and crashes like an unforgiving tide with the roll of the seasons.
It claims everything, regardless of what tries to contain it.
A few years back, it even claimed the morning glories.
Nothing is immune to death here. Not the trees. Not the birds.
Not even the Fae.
Which is why the prison was built on this horrible island.
The realm of Lyrichia is teeming with magic, but the island of Alyssium, set in the middle of the sea, is without a single drop.
The stony ground is cold and ordinary, fine for humans who can’t withstand the intensity of the magic saturating the rest of the realm, but deadly for the Fae if they stay too long.
Without magic, their hearts suffer the sickness of the Beating, when heartbeats quicken until they turn mortal. And even then, they don’t slow. They continue to speed up until their hearts beat so fast and brutally that they stop entirely.
So the prisoners wait, locked in their cells until the day their hearts still and their bodies are dragged out to be burned beside our own dead.
I scan the rocky beach, covered in corpses. Death hangs like a tang in the air. The stench is nearly unbearable, even with the icy wind blowing it out to sea. There are more bodies on the heaps lately—from the village and the prison.
Tonight’s funeral pyre will burn long into the night.
Callum says we’ve only seen the beginning of what will empty from the prison walls these next few moons. The Beating has started to claim the first Fae locked away at the start of the Realm War, and with how many have been brought here in the years since, I don’t doubt he’s right.
My stomach, usually steel, churns with tonight’s body count. Masses of dead Fae stretch the shore. Fae might consider themselves above us humans, but in these piles, we’re all equals. We’re all mortal in the eyes of Sarrow.
An icy gust whips a strand of white-blonde hair across my eyes as I tend to the next body on the beach.
I carefully arrange the young Fae’s hands, resting one over the other on her chest. Her empty eyes reflect the storm brewing overhead.
They darken as the clouds thicken, until they’re nearly as gray as the churning sea.
As the rocks.
As the young female’s skin.
The sharp point of her nose is only a touch softer than the point of her ears. Round cheeks and plump lips soften her face. I wonder what she might have done to spend her final years locked in Alyssium’s prison. What horrible crimes she committed to be sentenced with such a fate.
“Malaseah,” I whisper, brushing closed her eyelids. Her lashes tickle the pads of my fingers, sending a shiver through my spine. “May Sarrow see you home.”
To my right, a member of the Fae Guard steps closer, watching me carefully.
They oversee our rituals with little respect for the dead, especially when it comes to the prisoners.
The Guard has no sympathy for their suffering, and I should probably feel the same, given what pain these prisoners might have caused others in their long lifetimes.
But every soul deserves safe passage through the strata of Sarrow and into the After.
The last thing we need on Alyssium is one more shadow haunting us.
Which is why I whisper a final blessing to the Fae as I finish tending to her. The last goodbye her soul will hear if it lingers.
Sometimes, I feel them hanging beside me—waiting. Not quite ready to go.
I move from one body to the next, placing pine needles between their hands and closing their eyes. Melisande works behind me, setting a stone on their tongues and securing a cloth over their mouths.
The four burial rites are a blessing to each of the four gods of our constellation of realms. Gifts to ensure their souls find peace in the After.
As I quietly work, I wonder about the lives these Fae lived.
The magic that once stirred inside them.
I wonder what they did to be sent to this cold, dead island.
Or how they saw their final moments. I doubt they knew a human girl would be the last to hold their hand.
One who doesn’t know their name or what sins mark their souls.
Shadows cast off the spires of the prison, stretching as night settles. I pull my cloak tighter, working faster and trying to ignore the pebble digging into the heel of my sandal.
Boots would have been a better choice against the biting cold, but the soles have grown slick this winter. One step on a wet boulder would have sent me toppling into the sea. And as evidenced by the bodies around me, being cold is better than being dead.
After all, the cold, I’m accustomed to. Warmth is just one more luxury I’ve learned to live without when there isn’t any magic on Alyssium to breathe heat into the ground.
Chilling rain is followed by dustings of snow.
Storms sweep the land even at the warmest peaks of the season.
There’s no escaping the never-ending winter months.
Cold is Alyssium.
And Alyssium is home.
At least for the past few days, the rain and snow eased. Dirt is visible on the ground. The branches are dry, and the constant dampness has abated. It’s a breath of relief, even as the steely gray clouds are already churning.
A horn bellows in the distance, and I glance at the sky, at the warning. Tonight’s incoming storm will be brutal.
“Let’s go. That’s good enough.” Guards begin to rush our preparations.
For immortals, they’re awfully impatient and temperamental. Especially toward humans. Apart from needing us to retrieve bodies from the prison so they don’t get trapped inside, Fae have little use for us.
We’re smaller. Weaker. A flicker of flesh and bone in their long lifespans.
If it weren’t for the fact that the Arch to the Mortal Realm closed, and our village is all the humans left to assist them with their prison, I doubt they’d care about our fate at all.
The Ley Court certainly doesn’t act like it. We might be part of Lyrichia—part of King Malachi’s kingdom when the door to ours has long closed—but we’re a wasteland of death and mortality.
Father always says not to speak ill of the Guard, and especially not the Crown.
They’re the only reason storms, famine, and sickness haven’t wiped out our village completely.
But it’s difficult holding my tongue as corpses pile on the shore, and we’re left to clean up Fae messes. Dying twice as fast alongside them.
“And yet, here you are, living,” a whisper travels on the breeze.
Alyssium in my ear.
“For now,” I grumble back in my thoughts.
For an island with no magic, this pile of stone and dirt has a lot to say.
Not that the island is actually speaking to me. I’m just that lonely. Or maybe my mind has officially run wild.
At eighteen, in an especially dark moment, I called out for anything—anyone—and the island whispered back. It became a friend when there was no one to hear me scream, and it’s whispered to me ever since.
I rub the bottom of my ribcage, soothing the scars that still ache where the obsidian belt wrapped around me. Six years have passed, and I still feel the weight of it. I still smell the blood.
Shouting comes from the edge of the funeral camp as a guard rushes into the forest that surrounds the shore. Torchlight moves between the branches, dimming as they venture deeper. All around me, backs straighten, and panic swells. Humans nudge closer while Fae circle, guarding us.
Sightings of Vaelier rebels have been more frequent lately, setting everyone on edge.
The war between the realms of Lyrichia and Vaelier is intensifying, and it’s finally spread to our shore with the occasional rebel sighting.
What I don’t understand is why, in a war over magic, they would come here, to an island without it.
There’s nothing on Alyssium for the rebels. At least, nowhere they can get to it.
My gaze slides to the towering prison.
What dark secrets hide there?
“Would you really like the answer to that?” Alyssium whispers.
I swallow hard. “No.”
The island chuckles. Or maybe it’s the rumble of boots slapping on stone as the guards pull their perimeter tighter.
I shouldn’t be out here tonight.
When Callum left for the continent to refuel his magic, I promised him I’d stay within the confines of the village until he returned.
But as Father’s cough worsened, I had no choice but to offer my help with tonight’s pyre.
He won’t regain his strength on porridge and grain alone.
If I want to afford extra meat and healing tonics, then tending to the burning is the quickest way.
Murmurs rumble through the beach while we wait for the guard to return from the forest. When he does, his blade is clean, indicating no trouble.
The relief is felt through the group.
We spend the remainder of the evening in complete silence until the guards order everyone to stand back so they can lower their torches to the kindling.
Fire unfurls beneath the wooden planks holding the bodies.
It dances with the breeze as it climbs, spreading across the beach as the heady scent of burning flesh becomes overwhelming.