Chapter 15
Elorie
Every morning for a week, Callum fetches me for training. Wilder attends each one but avoids picking a fight like he did in the first session. I can’t decide what’s worse: his attempts to piss me off or his silence. The way he watches from the edge of the training ring is unnerving.
King Malachi doesn’t show up for training once.
Apart from him parading me through his great hall each night at dinner, he treats me as if I don’t exist. Dinner has quickly become my least favorite part of the day.
No one who attends actually eats anything.
They gather to gossip and fawn over each other’s jewels and dresses.
Praising themselves for their good fortune like the rest of the realm isn’t dying.
Maybe they don’t see that to be the case.
For the Fae in this part of the realm, where the trees are lush and magic stirs in the breeze, it’s possible they don’t understand the depth of starvation closer to the Well.
Much less on a human island in the middle of the sea.
They don’t know the chill from an endless winter.
Or the hopelessness of burning flesh and bone on a pyre.
The longer I’m here, the more terrified I am that I’ll forget those realities myself.
Warm baths, fresh spices, and a lush bed are comforts unlike anything I’ve ever known. The king ignores me, but he offers me everything in his absence. If I’m not careful, I could fall into this facade. I could let this mask become who I am.
I think about what Callum said of Alyssium. Without magic or comfort, we were forced to be sharper. Stronger. I refuse to forget that side of myself.
Which is why every night I sit at the window and write long into the evening. Remembering the past twenty-four years until I can barely stomach the food Isolde brings me.
I write of Alyssium. Of my friends. Of the corner in the square, where the children would gather to try and catch sight of the Guard changing. I write of home and wonder.
Are villagers still gossiping at the market over every little thing that happens?
Has starvation worsened?
Did Letia rush to marry Benjamin?
Did she attend Father’s burning? She could never stomach the dead like I could. But for me, I know she would.
Today is her twenty-fourth birthday, and I wish I was back home, celebrating with her over watery wine. Instead, I’m surrounded by opulence, standing in the great hall watching the king and his court drink and galivant, and it means nothing.
Selia giggles at something King Malachi says when he’s never said anything remotely funny.
Every night is the same. Selia watches the king while Wilder watches her.
One night, he tried to pull her aside, but she didn’t allow it. Whatever their history, it’s clear he isn’t over her.
I’m surprised Wilder bothers attending these dinners. Although maybe I shouldn’t be, considering it’s the same persistence he shows for my training. Always present. Rarely interacting. Tonight, like every night, he refuses food and drink and keeps his distance.
Selia tips her head back, and her eyes practically glitter with her amusement as she meets King Malachi’s gaze. She glows, even as gray storm clouds brew in her eyes.
Greer has been giving me insight into the magic of the court between breaks in training, and she explained to me that Selia is a storm wielder. An extraordinarily powerful one at that. She leveled a battlefield in lightning and drowned a group of rebels in a rainstorm, barely diminishing her power.
She’s beautiful but deadly.
Like the male who has yet to take his eyes off her.
It shouldn’t matter to me. I hate everything Wilder represents and everything he intends to do. But the longer he stares at Selia, the more irritated I become.
His teeth clench, drawing out the squareness in his jawline.
There’s no denying he’s attractive. If it weren’t for his constant scowl, his face might even be considered breathtaking.
Framed by dark-brown hair that is wavy and thick, and falls just above his golden eyes.
It’s clipped close at the sides and longer on top, with honey highlights that shine in the sun.
His arms and chest are sculpted muscle. As if he didn’t just spend a century starving in a cell.
Wilder is irritatingly perfect, except for that single scar that cuts diagonally across his face. I wonder how he got it. What is powerful enough to mark a Fae like that without killing them?
Wilder’s gaze snaps to mine, and I look away.
He might have heard my thoughts. But if so, he doesn’t whisper to call me out on it. That’s one more thing that changed after the first day in the training ring. He’s stayed out of my head.
I take a sip of Fae wine, thankful when it makes my tongue prickle and my thoughts swim. Anything to keep me from spiraling into my mind again.
With my free hand, I tug my sheer white dress out of the way so I don’t step on it as I shift forward. It shimmers under the warm glow that blankets any room King Malachi occupies.
I’ve been here half the night already, and he’s yet to say a word to me. I’d rather be reading or writing in my bedroom than waiting for him to summon me over. But I have no choice in the matter.
My throat tightens, and I search the room for Callum again. He’s busy with the Crown Guard tonight, so he’s not here, and the room is colder because of it.
I’ve yet to completely forgive him for hiding the truth about my mother, but he’s familiar to me.
A constant. A hint of home. Besides him and Isolde, who asks more questions than she’s willing to answer herself, most Fae keep their distance.
Even Greer, who trains me daily, sticks to the wall and avoids speaking to anyone but members of the Guard outside of the ring.
Spotting Greer across the room, I don’t miss that her gaze is set on Wilder just like it is when we’re training.
She doesn’t trust him, and I don’t blame her.
He and his rebels want nothing but for us to suffer with them.
I look forward to choosing King Malachi over Wilder and putting an end to this.
Greer’s silver eyes shift with Wilder’s every movement. They’re a touch lighter than mine, and sometimes I swear they’re not silver at all, but white. Greer has yet to reveal what magic she wields, but the soft white glow to her aura is unlike anything else in this room.
“Elorie, I’d like you to meet Lord Alasdair Merikh.” King Malachi snatches my hand, spinning me toward him.
His hand rests on my bare lower back, and I have to fight the urge to push him off me. It’s still unclear what his intentions are for our relationship, but I prefer it when he ignores me for Selia, who is currently walking away with Wilder following close behind.
“Alasdair has been a friend for many centuries. One of the few true ones,” the king praises, while I meet Alasdair’s dark gaze.
There’s nothing kind in his eyes. Only a merciless darkness. His long chestnut hair falls over his shoulders, barely hiding a scar that paints a ring around his neck.
“A pleasure.” Alasdair takes my hand and kisses the back of it.
His lips are a bee sting to my skin, and I pull back, trying to settle what darkness just stirred between us. Some Fae are better at masking their magic than others, and while I can’t sense what he wields, something awful brews in his aura.
“Nice to meet you.” I press my lips together.
“Alasdair monitors the battlefront from his territory, Rohldova, while my adviser, Cyan, coordinates from the palace.” King Malachi continues his introductions, waving at a male standing nearby.
Cyan doesn’t approach as Alasdair did. He doesn’t offer a hand. He gives nothing more than a simple nod and a disguised scowl as he looks me over. His dark-brown hair hangs loosely at his chin, but there’s something familiar in his stare.
His expression is cold and empty as he leans forward, whispering something to the king.
King Malachi waves a hand, and Cyan leaves us.
“Alasdair brought us a little present,” King Malachi continues. “Something for you to practice with.”
That catches my attention. “What kind of present?”
A slow, wild smirk curls in the corners of his mouth. “Let’s go see.”
The king doesn’t take his hand off me as he guides me through the room, and I notice guards don’t follow like they usually do. At a throne beside the king’s sits Hazel, watching me leave with her brother.
Her pitch-black hair is pulled over one shoulder tonight, revealing her pale neck.
Hazel never interacts with anyone. Instead, she sits on her throne and watches her brother move from one group to the next. Her shadows stir at her fingertips, and anytime I get near her, something endless opens. A deep, magicless void.
Hazel’s nearly black eyes catch mine the second before I step out of the room, and a shiver runs through me.
King Malachi and Alasdair turn in the opposite direction I’m used to going, down a series of hallways I don’t believe I’ve seen before. The paintings are unfamiliar, and the halls get narrower the farther we go until we reach a door that leads to a winding stone staircase.
Alasdair goes first, which I notice is common for the king, as his Guard scopes out any room before he enters. When Alasdair is a few steps ahead, I’m guided to follow.
The staircase winds downward in a tight spiral. Nearing the bottom, my nose is flooded with the all-too-familiar stench of death.
We step into a room that reminds me of the dungeon I was held in when I was first brought to the palace.
But there are no cells, simply stone walls with vines creeping over them.
Torches light the space. Not even the king bothers with his magic here.
No one needs to see better to know what lies before us.
Bodies.
So many of them. Lined on cots in perfect rows.
A few guards stand at the other side of the room. I nearly heave when King Malachi pulls me to the side of one of the cots.
These aren’t like the bodies I tended to on Alyssium. They’re rotted. Skin eaten by creatures, some missing entire limbs. I’m thankful I haven’t had dinner, or I’d lose it.
Trying to hold my breath, I look around the room. So much death. But worse than that, so many souls that have yet to be properly blessed and sent to the After.
“You don’t burn your dead?” I ask, regretting speaking when the taste of the stale, rotten air clings to my tongue.
“Our own dead, yes. These aren’t ours.” Malachi scowls, glancing down.
I step to the nearest body, inspecting the insignia on his chest—the mark of Vaelier.
“They’re Wilder’s people.” My chest tightens. “Does he know?”
“They’re filthy rebels in their proper form.” Alasdair spits on one of the bodies, and my stomach turns.
The rebels have done nothing but take from Lyrichia. They’ve killed, pillaged, and probably done much worse. I’ve never had sympathy for them. Until I watch Alasdair circle the room and sneer at the corpses like they’re nothing.
Like they aren’t still Wilder’s people, dead and dismembered, and he has no idea they’re just beneath his feet.
Shoving that thought down, I tug at my dress, trying my best to keep it from soaking up the blood on the floor. “How is this a present?”
“Greer says you’ve yet to summon a flicker of magic.” King Malachi paces the room, keeping his distance from the dead. His tone is flat and unimpressed.
“She has me training with blades.”
“I’ve heard. She has her own methods. But until they work, I thought it might help for you to have a little motivation.” The king stops at a body, glancing it over. “This one. See if you can bring it back.”
My eyes widen. “You want me to resurrect them?”
I glance around the room again. At the rotting corpses. Some can no longer be considered flesh and bone. Wherever their souls are, they’re not among us.
“You resurrected him.” Anger laces King Malachi’s tone. “These simple creatures should be nothing. They’re not even powerful Fae. Most had weak affinities.”
The way the king disrespects the dead makes my teeth clench.
But it’s how he discredits some because they only had affinities that stirs the anger in my chest. Maybe these Fae did horrible things, or maybe they didn’t.
For all I know, these could be pawns of their own king, fighting a war to save their families back home.
“I can’t.” I swallow hard. “It’s unnatural. They’re already rotting.”
King Malachi clicks his tongue on the roof of his mouth, pacing the room in a slow circle back to me. He lifts a finger to the point of my chin, slowly tracing the line of my jaw until his nail presses below one of my freckles. I feel it burning—glowing—as his gaze meets mine.
“You can be very important to me, Elorie Vale. Or you can be nothing at all. Do not forget that you are the daughter of a prisoner and a human. The only reason I don’t hang you by this pretty throat is that you have proven yourself useful once, and you could be of use again.
But only if you can help me save my kingdom. ”
His hand drifts until he’s gripping the front of my neck, applying just enough pressure to prove his point.
“Do you want your people to live as badly as I want to save mine?”
“Yes.” It comes out slightly strangled.
He releases my neck, taking a step back. “Good. Then I expect better news soon.”
At that, King Malachi turns and walks away. But Alasdair doesn’t. He waits, watching me slowly walk toward the body the king pointed out.
I have no idea how to summon my magic. It’s been proven time and time again in training. But with Alasdair keeping watch to report back, I have no choice but to try. I rest my hand on his chest as I did with Wilder in the prison, finding the body stiff and cold.
He’s missing a hand, along with half his face, but I don’t dare ask what happened. I close my eyes, and I search.
There’s no flicker in the air. There is no path like I saw when I held Wilder.
There is no light. I close my eyes and try to see that darkness that became a part of me when I was in the prison, but I’m met with something else.
A spiderweb of shadowy threads curls through my thoughts.
They weave along my fingertips and travel my arm.
A ghastly whisp prickles my skin. Darkness slithers up my chest, biting me with a sharp sting.
I nearly fall backward when I stumble a step, and my eyes fly open.
“Did something happen?” Alasdair eyes me intently.
“Yes.”
Except that wasn’t life I felt. It was death.