Chapter 3 #2
He was tall and elegant, moving with the kind of grace that made it feel like the air bent around him.
His hair was a cascade of silver-white falling down his back, not from age but from something older—bloodline.
His features were sharp, too perfect to be human, with skin that looked ageless except for the fine lines around his mouth and eyes.
If I had to guess, he looked like he was in his fifties or sixties…
but with the fae, that could mean anything.
Some said they lived as long as seven hundred years.
His eyes, lavender and piercing, landed on me first. And then he smiled.
“It’s been a long time since I’ve had visitors,” he said, his voice smooth, melodic. “Though I’m guessing this parley was not… sanctioned?”
“It’s not,” I said, forcing my voice to stay even.
His eyes roamed over me again, thoughtful. “It’s been even longer since I’ve seen my hair color.”
I tensed.
Was he implying… kinship? Or merely remarking on the shared white hair of fae ancestry?
His pointed ears twitched slightly as he studied me further. “How rare,” he murmured.
He was beautiful, in the way storms and ruins could be beautiful. Something that had survived and been shaped by centuries.
“Are you a prisoner?” I asked.
He chuckled softly, the sound like the rustle of silk. “Not really.”
My frown deepened. “Then how have you gone unnoticed? No one said anything about a fae wandering the castle.”
He raised a single elegant hand, and in the blink of an eye, his form shimmered. His frame shortened, thickened, and shifted until he was the spitting image of one of the guards who had fled moments before. Uniform, face, even the scar above the brow. Perfect mimicry.
“Wow,” Tae whispered. “That’s… that’s some advanced glamour magic.”
The fae returned to his true form in an instant and gestured gracefully to the seating area.
“Please,” he said. “Have a seat. I promise you’re safe here.”
I exchanged a quick glance with Tae, then moved cautiously toward the couch and lowered myself onto the velvet. Tae settled beside me, still tense.
The fae took the armchair opposite, legs crossed, every movement deliberate, controlled.
I leaned forward slightly. “What is your name?” I asked. My voice didn’t shake, but it was close.
The fae inclined his head with regal poise, long fingers folding together atop his knee as if we were seated for tea rather than in the depths of a secret dungeon.
“My name,” he said, voice as smooth as silk and shadow, “is Alahathrial.”
The name echoed in the chamber, old and heavy with power. It curled in my chest like smoke.
I swallowed. “I’m Ashe, and this is Tae. Why are you here?”
Alahathrial’s expression didn’t shift, but something passed behind his lavender eyes—old sorrow. Deeper than any wound I’d ever known.
“I’ve been here since the Unification,” he said. “I was a soldier during the final push… one of the few who survived when the Light Court fell. The rest of my people died on blood-soaked soil.”
Tae stiffened beside me.
So did I.
“You’re the last?” I asked, barely able to speak.
He nodded slowly. “The last free Light Fae, as far as I know.”
I hesitated. “The king… he’s searching for something. We believe he’s trying to locate the Fae Sanctuary.”
Alahathrial’s gaze darkened.
“If it still exists,” he said, his voice quiet now. “It may have fallen in the years since. Hidden beneath illusions, lost to time… But I have no doubt the Blood Fae are hunting it too. They would see the last of my people extinguished. Burn the sanctuary to ash.”
Tae leaned forward. “Do you know about a weapon? One the king seeks?”
Alahathrial tilted his head. “A weapon?”
I nodded. “Something called the Virelith Crystal.”
The name changed him.
His composure cracked, only slightly, but it was enough. His eyes widened, breath caught, the old calm giving way to something almost feral.
“It was thought destroyed before the war,” he said. “We believed it shattered to keep it from falling into Blood Fae hands. If it still exists…” He shook his head. “It will be in the sanctuary. Protected by the ancestral magic of our bloodlines. Wards that even I could not breach.”
He met my gaze, sharp and solemn.
“It does not belong in human hands.”
I let the silence stretch. “So you’ve never seen it?”
“No,” he said. “It is legend. Whispers passed through generations. It was before my time.”
I studied him.
The white hair. The pointed ears. The lavender eyes that reminded me of Zander’s.
A memory rose—Solei telling me I wasn’t meant for the Order. That I was born from something ancient.
I stared at him for a long moment.
Then breathed the question I didn’t know I’d been holding.
“Are you my father?”
Alahathrial smiled, not with mockery but with a softness that made the tight ache in my chest press deeper.
“I have fathered many children,” he said gently, “but you are not one of them.”
A strange breath left me, part relief, part disappointment.
“Your bloodline,” he continued, “is older than my own.”
That made me sit up straighter. “You know who my parents are?”
“I do not know your father,” he admitted, “but I can tell you he must have been human… or near enough. Yet he carried a trace of fae magic, thin, faded. Not like your mother.”
He paused, and in that pause something reverent passed through his gaze.
“You knew her?”
“I did. Her name was Loretha.” He spoke her name with reverence. “She was thought to have died before the Unification. Many of us believed her lost in the final collapse of the isle.”
My heart was beating too fast, too loud. “You don’t know what happened to her?”
He shook his head. “No. But as you are no more than twenty-two… she must have survived in the human world for some time. Long enough to bear you. Raise you, perhaps, for a season.”
My throat closed.
“She died when I was an infant,” I whispered. “I was raised by the Order.”
Alahathrial leaned back, his face carved with something like sorrow. “A princess raised by the Order. That would be funny, if it weren’t so… tragic.”
“Princess?” Tae’s voice cracked beside me.
Alahathrial turned toward him, lavender eyes glinting in the low light.
“Loretha was of the Light Court. Royalty through her mother’s line. Her throne fell long before the war reached its zenith, but blood remembers. Magic remembers.”
My hands trembled as I pressed them to my knees. “Tell me about you,” I said softly, desperate to ground myself in something.
He nodded once, folding his hands in his lap.
“Before the fall of the Fae Isle, I was a soldier of the Radiant Guard, the sworn shield of the Light Court. I served under King Corenil and Queen Thelisira, whose reign kept the darkness at bay for nearly two centuries. I walked under golden trees that never shed their leaves, through crystal halls that hummed with magic born of sunlight and seafoam.”
He looked far away now, like the memory hovered in the flames behind his eyes.
“There were songs,” he said, voice lower now, woven with grief.
“Real songs. Not like your ballads of war and conquest, but ones that breathed with the land. We sang to the trees to ask for their fruit. We whispered to rivers for safe crossings. Even our blades had names and sang when drawn. We did not live above our world, child. We lived with it.”
I listened, completely still, the chill of the stone walls forgotten.
“I had a mate once,” he said, more quietly now. “A son with hair like starlight and the mouth of a troublemaker. They died during the first incursion. When the Blood Fae struck without warning and broke the Crystal Bastion’s southern wing.”
He met my gaze again. “The Light Isle burned. The seas boiled. And I turned to the human king because I had no home to return to.”
He looked around at the lush prison that held him, lips twitching bitterly. “And our people were forgotten.”
I didn’t know what to say.
But something in me, something old and blood-bound, remembered.