Chapter 7
Elorie
White light floods my vision, illuminating the dark. It buzzes in my ears until the prison reforms, silencing everything. The cold floor is frigid against my shins. All warmth has been stripped from the air. From my bones.
A cool light shimmers a breath away from my skin, as if my aura has detached.
I’m a moonlight flame in the depths of nothing.
Flecks of starlight snow overhead, but they aren’t solid when they land around me. Pieces of the night drift down a path, leading the way.
I cling to that flicker. To that thread of light. And I tug.
There has been enough death—enough saltwater tears dripping over burned bones and ash.
No more.
Beneath me, the prisoner’s skin heats. His rune markings glow with his golden eyes staring up at me. It wraps through his blood. Lightning in his veins. Sparking, nipping at my palms with a final surge of light.
His back arches, and I stumble away, catching myself on the stone. The prison takes a breath and snuffs me out in one exhale, erasing that place I drifted to in my mind.
We’re back. We’re whole. And when I press my palm to my side, it’s no longer aching. There’s no more blood.
“What did she do?” A voice behind me has me jumping to my feet.
A group of three human prison guards watches me from the shadows, but I don’t remember them walking in here.
Where is here anymore?
The walls are those of the prison, but the cell is long gone. There is no path, only a wide-open room, and I’m standing in a beam of light at the center.
The men lean together and whisper.
“There’s no magic on this island.”
“That wasn’t magic; that was evil.”
“Did you feel it?”
“She raised him.”
Raised him?
My gaze darts to where the prisoner was lying only seconds ago, but he’s no longer there. Likely swallowed by the prison.
Are they right? The last thing I remember is the heavy beat of his heart against his ribs before he died.
Then what?
Did he open his eyes?
“She woke the dead.”
“I saw it.”
“I saw it too.”
“It’s forbidden.”
“It’s corrupt.”
My stomach turns as the men start to circle. The strength I felt as I ran through the forest has faded. My arms are heavy, and I’m weak.
Glancing around, I look for a way out. But the prison tightens its hold. It erases any escape. It wants me here with them.
“I didn’t do anything.” My voice shakes. “I didn’t.”
I take a step back, trying to avoid the men as they quickly close in, but it’s no use. My back strikes a wall, and I’m cornered. I press my palms to the stone behind me, and darkness collapses like a waterfall of shadow. I can barely catch my breath as everything disappears.
When I blink my eyes open, I’m no longer in the prison. I’m outside on a stormy day, standing near the gates.
“What—”
“Elorie.” Callum’s voice comes from behind me, and I spin around to see him standing with the line of the Fae guard where the morning glories used to grow.
The prison let me out?
I run for Callum. Not caring that his armor is streaked in blood or that everyone is watching. I throw myself at him, but it takes only a moment to realize he doesn’t hug me in return.
“Callum?” My eyebrows pinch when I meet his stormy gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m sorry.”
If I didn’t know him as I do, I’d think his tone is emotionless. But that small catch at the end paired with the pinch between his eyebrows makes it clear he’s regretting something.
“What are you sorry for?”
Callum swallows hard, holding my gaze for a moment. He searches my face as if it holds the answer to something he’s trying to figure out.
After a long beat, he glances behind me. “The king summoned her. It’s time.”
“The king?” My heart starts to race, but when I reach for Callum again, he steps back. “What does the king want with me?”
And how long have I been in the prison?
“Four days,” Callum answers, and I realize I must have asked that out loud.
“That can’t be right. I just walked in and—” And what?
I’m already losing pieces of what happened. The rebels. My mother’s sword. My father.
“Father.” My gaze darts up to Callum. “I need to get to him. He was dying and…”
Callum’s cold expression doesn’t flinch. He shakes his head just once.
Father is dead.
“No. No. No.” I pull away, only to stumble backward into waiting arms.
These hands aren’t friendly or comforting. They grab my shoulders while two Fae clutch my wrists and bind them in obsidian chains.
My vision swirls as the locks latch.
I’ve been bound in obsidian before. It had little effect on me apart from the pinch against my skin.
But as I’m wrapped in it this time, bound in the weight of black stone, a heaviness seeps deeper than flesh and bone.
It rests over something in my chest that I didn’t realize was burning until the chains snuffed it out.
“What are you doing?” I try to tug free as I look up at Callum. “What are they doing?”
He doesn’t answer. His face is cold.
“You have to stop them. You have to stop this. I’m human.” Panic swells in my chest. “I’m human!”
Something cracks in the forest. The snap of a hundred tree branches breaking all at once. Birds take flight, and fear washes through the Fae. Even Callum flinches.
I didn’t do that.
I can’t do that.
My heart hammers as a final chain wraps around my chest, covering my heart. And then I can barely move or breathe or think. I can only succumb to a new type of black prison that envelops me.
The island no longer speaks.
The scent of frozen pine is replaced with something floral, which is when I realize I’m no longer on Alyssium. The last flowers to bloom were the morning glories, and when they gave up, I did too, even if I didn’t realize it at the time.
At some point, I manage to find the strength to speak, but my vision still swims.
“Where are we?”
“Ruse Village.” Callum’s voice.
The last thing Father said was to trust Callum—that he would have the answers I’d be searching for. So why would Callum let them do this to me? He stood and watched me be bound and chained. And these chains are so…
My stomach lurches as bile rises in my throat.
They’re heavy.
Even if I could form a question, this queasiness won’t let me open my mouth. Only vomit will come out. So I bite my tongue and swallow it down. I close my eyes and refuse to look at Callum. Even when a warm hand rests on my shoulder, and I know it’s him. His fingers tighten once.
Twice.
Then he’s gone, and I’m alone again.
Father was wrong. I can’t trust anyone.
“Why does it glow sometimes?” My fingers brush the handle of the sword, but Father quickly pulls me back.
“It doesn’t. It’s just a trick of the light.”
“Like the butterfly?” My eyebrows pinch as I look up at him.
His dark beard has grown grayer this winter, and when his expression pinches, it draws out the wrinkles in his forehead.
“Yes, like the butterfly.”
My gaze moves back to my mother’s blade. Maybe Father isn’t seeing it like I am, because the blue vein swims, and light doesn’t do that.
“There is no magic on Alyssium. You know this,” Father reminds me.
“And humans don’t have magic.”
“That’s right.” He smiles tightly.
“I wish we did.”
“Why’s that?”
“Maybe then it would be warmer. Maybe then we could part the clouds and see the sun.”
Father sits in his chair, pulling me onto his lap as he places two fingers on my heart. “All the magic you need is right in here, Elorie Vale. Don’t you forget that. You don’t need the sun to glow. Not when you are a star.”
Vomit heaves from my stomach, and there’s no holding it back. The sharp pain that lances my chest is as powerful as the obsidian chains.
Obsidian should have no effect on humans, so these must be spelled because their weight is overwhelming.
Folding forward, I retch all over the floor. Not that it’s much of a floor. What’s beneath me is stone and dirt. Musky and cold. My stomach empties, filling my cell with the stench of vomit.
This cell is nothing like the prison. It’s more like the human guardhouse in the village. There are bars and locks, and no carvings that would contain a Fae. It’s damp and cool, so I must be underground, but without a window, I can’t tell how much time has passed. Whether it’s day or night.
Does it really matter?
“Good Gods.” Callum sighs as the door to the cell creaks open.
“I don’t know how the gods are good if they allow all of this,” I grumble.
Callum unlatches one of the chains, and the moment it’s off me, the sourness in my stomach abates. “I told the Guard that was too many chains.”
“How kind of you.” There’s no hiding my sarcasm.
“Elorie—”
“Don’t.” I cut him off, leaning forward to vomit again, but nothing comes out.
At least my arms are no longer secured to my body, so I can balance myself. A far cry from nearly tumbling into my own vomit moments ago. When the dry heaving finally settles, I sink back on my shins and take a breath.
“Are you okay?”
Glancing up, I don’t bother answering Callum’s question. Nothing about this is okay.
“Right.” He drags his hand through his dark hair, and for the first time in my life, I resent his beautiful face. “I’m sorry.”
Apologies are useless if he isn’t going to let me out. “You let them take me.”
“The king summoned you. I had no choice.”
“There is always a choice,” I echo the prisoner’s words, wondering if the whispers were right.
Did I really wake him from the dead? Was it real when those golden eyes opened, and his runes glowed? Is he still trapped in that horrible, dark place, wandering endless halls while the prison slowly swallows him deeper?
“You’re right. There is always a choice.” Callum grabs a bucket and rag, cleaning my vomit from the floor.
A moon ago, I’d have been flushed with embarrassment at the thought of Callum seeing me vomit. Much less of him cleaning it up. As he runs a cloth through the mess, I decide this is what he deserves for bringing me here.
Where is here?
“Where am I?” I glance around at the dark cell.
“The king’s palace.”
“I’m in the Ley Court?” My eyes widen, my head swimming as Callum nods. “I can’t be here. Humans can’t survive on magical ground. I’ll burn up.”
“You’re not human, Elorie.”
My face blanks, and the same bad feeling I got when I stepped inside the prison stirs inside me now.
Callum’s shoulders slump as he looks up from where he’s kneeling. “I should say, you’re not entirely human. You’re half-Fae.”
“Half-Fae?” My mouth turns to sand. “That’s not possible. Fae can’t bear a child with a human woman.”
“No, they can’t. But a human man can create a child with a female Fae.”
I shake my head, revolting at that thought. “My mother was human. Father met her on Alyssium, and there are no female Fae in the Guard on Alyssium.”
“No one said she was of the Guard.”
But that would mean…
“The prison.” My breath seizes with my whisper.
There are female Fae on Alyssium. Imprisoned ones.
“Yes.” Callum’s confirmation turns my blood cold.
This can’t be the answer Father was referring to. He would have told me himself if my mother were Fae. A prisoner, at that.
“How do you know?”
Callum’s chin dips with his sigh. “I was outside the prison the night Laef carried you out.”
“You helped him hide me?”
He nods once.
“My mother…” My breath catches. “Is she dead?”
“I don’t know.” Callum pushes to standing. “I don’t even know who she is. Laef never went back, and he made me swear I wouldn’t dig for answers.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
My father was hiding a mountain of secrets, and he wasn’t the only one. “But you knew all this time who I was? What I was?”
“What you are, Elorie.” Callum brushes his dark hair back, and unlike the cold expression he gave me outside the prison, sympathy has returned to his eyes.
“You didn’t tell me.”
“I couldn’t. Half-Fae are that of the lore. They’re rare, especially now with magic dying. Fae themselves can barely birth children, much less create them with a human. It’s why Laef kept you a secret. It would raise questions. And considering where your mother was—”
“They’d have me executed.”
Callum nods.
It’s no secret what happens to the offspring of prisoners.
I grew up hearing the story of a Fae they imprisoned before she gave birth.
The day the child was born, the prison led a human guard straight to her cell.
They burned her baby on the pyre that night.
And to this day, the forest wind still shrieks with the mother’s cries.
“Is that why I’m here now? They’re going to execute me because I’m the daughter of a prisoner?” I shift in the chains.
They pinch. But worse than that, they itch where they’re rubbing my skin. It makes sense now why the obsidian bothers me. Although, I don’t understand why they feel worse now than they did before, if I’ve always had Fae blood running through my veins.
“You’re here because the king heard what you did in the prison.”
My eyebrows pinch as I try to remember, but the obsidian clouds my mind.
“What did I do?”
“You don’t remember?”
“Not clearly.”
Callum’s expression is calm but strong. There’s no weariness in his gaze. His eyes are bright and stirring with power in a way I’ve never seen them. His aura hums around us. The air breezes, even though we’re underground. He’s brimming with magic.
His eyes glow brighter. His skin warmer.
I’ve known him my whole life, but I’ve never known him like this.
“Bring her up,” someone yells from the top of a staircase before Callum can explain to me what’s happening.
He frowns, but he doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t fight for me. He makes his choice and leads me out of the cell in chains.