Chapter 5
Elorie
“See through the stars.”
Screaming fills my ears. I blink, but my vision is too blurred to make anything out clearly. My head tips back, and I swear the clouds are parting, but that wouldn’t make sense. The storm was raging only hours ago, and the cloud cover stretched all the way out to sea.
My head swims as my blurred gaze drifts to the street.
People run in every direction, abandoning their homes as the rebels close in.
But the two males I’ve been fighting have taken a step back.
Their eyes are wide, scouring the street around us.
My gaze follows theirs, and I notice the snow on the street has melted, leaving only the drifts that cover the roofs. The wind is cold, but I’m warm.
Burning up.
What is happening?
Am I dying?
Or has Alyssium finally reached its end?
Pain shoots through me, and I grab my stomach. Blood soaks my clothes where the Fae stabbed me cleanly through. With the blade gone, I should have bled out by now. I don’t know how I’m alive, still fighting through as my vision swims.
The sky is clear blue and bright.
I’m hallucinating.
There is no sunshine on Alyssium. Only cloudy, gray days that blend into cold, dark nights. Maybe I’ve died already, and this is Sarrow welcoming me as I cross through to the After.
I suppose it’s possible that death isn’t an endless night like it’s said to be. Maybe it’s a warm day. Bright and welcoming. Maybe Father was right, and there’s nothing to fear in the After.
Father.
I heave forward, nearly vomiting at the sight of him. He’s still sprawled out on the street, unmoving. Darkness sweeps through me as I try to stand, and time skips. Black spots dot my vision.
The stony ground scrapes my hands as I crawl toward him.
“Father.”
My fingers shake against the cobblestones, and my knees ache from how the stone jabs into my skin. My head is lighter with every passing moment.
This must be it—the brink of death.
Still, I push myself forward, determined to reach Father. I stretch my fingers, knowing he’d chastise me for not running. But he always protected me with his entire being. Loved me with his whole soul. He deserves a proper goodbye.
Father is within reach—his body still. His expression frozen and his skin pale. His eyes brighten as the sky opens above us. But just as I reach for him, his mouth moves, forming a single word.
“Run.”
He’s dead, so he couldn’t have said it. But I hear it in every part of me. It echoes between my temples, and I stumble back just as the rebels begin to inch forward again.
“How did you do that?” one of them seethes.
“Her hair. What is she?”
“She summoned magic.”
“She summoned evil.”
More voices join the chorus of confusion as I scoot back, dragging my bloody palms over the stony street. Sweat drips down the back of my neck as the circle of judgment closes around me.
“Run, Elorie,” something whispers.
Nudging me.
Offering me a kernel of self-preservation.
I push myself to standing, not sure how I don’t immediately fall with how much I’m bleeding from the wound at my side. Leaving my mother’s sword in the street, I turn and run.
“Get her!” someone yells.
They’re close—too close.
I cut into the forest, trying to escape. There’s only one place no Fae will dare follow. One place I’m safe from them, even if I’ll be at risk of what’s inside.
Alyssium’s prison.
The spires stretch as if it hears me thinking about it.
They extend high into the sky, replacing the clear day with shadows.
Not overcast, but some other darkness that takes hold as I near the gate.
Like something beyond is reaching for me, crawling past the line where the morning glories used to grow and slithering through the frozen brambles.
My cloak catches on a bush, but it lets go like it wants me to get through. Even in the thickest parts of the forest, the branches flex and the sky yawns, carving a path to the prison.
I must really be on the brink of death to be imagining such things.
Before me, the obsidian gates unlatch. Or maybe, they were like that already?
“She went this way.” Voices and bootsteps follow.
Slipping through the gate, I shove my body against it from the other side to latch it closed. It won’t stop them, but the obsidian will hurt them enough to slow them down.
“This way.” The breeze tickles the back of my neck, summoning me.
Guiding me.
A final whisper hangs in the wind before I gather my breath and step through the black arch that marks the entrance to the prison. The moment I do, my surroundings turn from day to night. From light to emptiness.
This must be what the After feels like. Nothing. While also somehow feeling like everything is in one place, swirling.
For a land of no magic, something stirs here. There is no light, and yet, a clear path leads me deeper.
I’ve only ever collected bodies from outside the prison gates, so I’ve never wandered the depths.
But the human guards tasked with finding corpses and dragging them out tell stories of the prison.
How it is dark in a way that nothing can be seen, and yet, somehow, everything is also perfectly clear.
It didn’t make sense then. But as I stand, staring into the darkness, something stares back.
The guards would say there is no clear path, but a thousand instead. An infinite number of ways to move through these walls. And when I asked how they found the dead if there was no one way to search the cells, they told me the prison knows.
It showed them.
Like how it opens something wide in front of me now, guiding me to a corridor that stretches with every blink. On either side are tall obsidian walls, etched in runes, spelling the prison to ensure Fae can only leave upon their death.
Even if I’m human and the spells mean nothing to me, I feel the weight of these marks.
The heaviness in the stale, endless tunnels.
The prison presses from all around, and I understand why sometimes humans don’t make it out.
Not because of the markings, but because the prison has a mind of its own, and it refuses to let them go.
What if that’s why I’m here?
It wanted me.
“We can’t follow her. We’ll get trapped inside.”
“We have no choice. You saw what she did. The snow melted.”
It did melt, but that had nothing to do with me. Are the rebels that desperate for magic that they’ll chase a human girl into a prison they’ll never escape in search of any drop of hope they find on this desolate island?
My tongue turns to sand at the thought. At the sound of boots slapping stone as they follow me inside. They’re already so close.
“This way.” The words tickle my ear, and I spin to see a corridor opening on my left.
There is no light at the end, but there’s no turning back either. So I press my palm to my bleeding side and trudge forward, nearly tripping over a crack in the ground. I should have bled out by now. How am I still standing?
“This way.” Death is whispering louder with every short breath.
It’s fitting, I suppose. To tend to the dead for so many years that I’ve come here to hand my soul over alongside them.
The deeper into the belly of the prison I go, the thicker the air becomes. I’m choking on dust and blood with every inhale. There are no candles. No torches. Still, light flickers against the stone, guiding my way.
The farther I go, the less the walls look like obsidian. Or anything, for that matter.
They become a night sky, pitch black and endless. My fingers reach out, and they meet nothing. No slick edge stopping them. Yet, there’s something there that can’t be crossed. That pushes me to where it wants me to go. Wrapping its belly around me and swallowing.
At the end of a long stretch, I pause at a set of stairs appearing out of nowhere. Maybe I should take my chances with the rebels. Any deeper, and I might never find my way out.
My belly flutters when I glance into the depths of the stairwell, considering turning back. But then my heartbeat flickers. Something tugs me toward it. Begs me to keep going.
Ten stairs turn to hundreds as I wander for what feels like forever.
Until I reach a landing at last, stumbling on the first cell I’ve seen since entering.
Except, it isn’t a cell like I would have expected based on the human ones in the village.
There are no walls or bars or windows. Apart from a thin line of carvings at my feet, there is nothing but a well of empty space with a figure kneeling in the center.
His bare back is to me, and his black pants hang low at his waist. Bloody scratches make a mess of his spine, cutting through the gaps between the dark rune markings that decorate his warm bronze skin.
I’ve never seen markings like these on a Fae.
They cover him like someone dipped a quill in ink and drew all over his arms and back.
The symbols are similar to the ones etched in the prison walls, but different.
I can’t read them, but when I squint, I swear they say something.
And the longer I stare, they start to move.
How is this the first prisoner I’ve seen when I’ve been in this prison so long that my head is light and my feet are aching?
This maze is endless.
The prisoner doesn’t move from where he’s kneeling, but two paths forge on either side of the cell. They split like a river rippling through the prison, offering two directions. The prison wants me to choose one, and yet, I can’t stop staring at the prisoner.
“Why are you here?” I wonder. “What did you do?”
He breathes heavily but doesn’t respond as I watch his shoulders rise and fall. My chest tightens, and I grip my side. Blood seeps through my fingers, and I finally turn my back on the prisoner. But the moment I do, I’m frozen in place.
The air stirs, and something warm crackles through me. Like lightning striking at a distance, it makes my hair stand on its ends. Somewhere far away, I sense a shift in the clouds. They roll with the start of a storm.