Chapter 16 #2
Creation, invention and opulence are what Thyros and House Taramethos are renowned for.
And whatever else may be true, one thing is certain. The Aurevault did not stand still while I was gone. Reconstruction stretches out before me in a way I never imagined it could.
The shattered arches have been rebuilt, not crudely or hastily, but engineered to stand stronger than before. Stone has been set cleanly into place, reinforced with enormous timber supports etched faintly with runes.
A towering pile of rubble sits to the side of the entrance, rock shattered from the cave in and dragged out into the light. Carts full of new gear, coats, helmets, and axes are wheeled inside, ready for the next shift to begin without a hitch.
I step down from the carriage slowly, taking it all in.
When Atilia said she had sent her people, I hadn’t understood what that truly meant. I had imagined a handful of attendants, perhaps a small entourage dispatched out of obligation.
Not this. This is a court.
A full, disciplined force moving with quiet efficiency.
So structured and so organized, every motion has a purpose.
The Fae direct and distribute, standing tall and lithe among the humans, so utterly out of place amongst dirt and dust, and the humans obey these Fae without question.
Atilia’s Fae. Her court, and suddenly, the way I once saw her feels… laughable.
That I mistook her for a common servant like myself is astonishing now. I have been working alongside a Fae noble this entire time, someone who chose to cook, to sweep halls, to tend fires with her own hands.
Not because she had to.
But because she wanted to.
Because it allowed her to stay close to the son she could not abandon when everyone else already had.
The son she insists is not the monster the stories claim.
The Winter Lord who murdered his staff and drowned his wife. Who froze his world so that we all might suffer with him.
Legends that have haunted Brunemar for more than a hundred years.
So which do I believe?
The mother who humbles herself to serve meals and sweep stone floors if it means protecting her son? Or the whispered tales that cling to Luceran’s name like frost, refusing to melt no matter how much time passes?
As I watch the Aurevault rise again, I realize that perhaps the truth, like the mine itself, has been buried beneath layers of rubble for far too long, and perhaps, one day soon, I will have to decide which version of him I am willing to stand beside.
Pax emerges from the mouth of the mine.
Relief floods me, but it falters as he draws closer and I see the cost of survival written plainly across him. One eye is swollen shut, dark with bruising. A deep purple shadow stains his jaw, and his right arm is bound tight in a sling, held awkwardly against his body.
When he reaches me, I move before I can stop myself, throwing my arms around his neck.
He hisses sharply when I jar his injured shoulder, but then he lets out a soft laugh anyway, his good arm coming around to rub my back.
“I’m glad you’re safe too, Neve,” he says quietly.
I pull back before the moment can linger too long, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear as I draw in a steadying breath. “How many did we lose?”
Pax swallows. For a moment, he can’t quite meet my eyes.
“They’re still counting,” he says at last. “There are still many missing.” His chest shudders as he exhales. “But it could have been far worse. We could have lost every soul in Vein Two if not for you.”
I shake my head fiercely. “You and I would have been lost as well if Lord Luceran hadn’t arrived when he did. If he hadn’t put out the fires.”
Pax nods, but the motion is stiff, reluctant. “How is our lord?”
The tone of his voice is carefully flat, and I can’t tell which answer he’s hoping for.
“I believe he’ll recover,” I say. “But the first few days… it was close.”
“That is… excellent news,” Pax replies, though the words don’t quite ring true. “You must have taken very good care of him.”
I swallow hard, my fingers trembling despite my best efforts. I manage a small smile. “I did what I could.”
“And your master, in his great generosity, has put you straight back to work,” Pax says dryly. “I’d expect nothing less.”
He gestures broadly toward the Aurevault. “As you can see, the Fae rebuilt it good as new. Who’s going to let a few dozen human lives interfere with Elarium production?”
And suddenly, I understand.
The bitterness in his voice. The anger simmering just beneath his restraint.
The miners are forced to work these tunnels endlessly, dangerously, shackled to debts most will never pay off in their lifetime.
I’ve seen the records in the castle, sentences handed down for crimes as small as stealing a cabbage to feed a starving family.
Who knows what would have become of them if the mine had been destroyed forever?
Whatever it was, it might have been better than this.
Instead, the Fae rebuild the Aurevault in the blink of an eye. They cannot risk losing something so valuable. Not the humans, of course. The Elarium. So, for once, they give instead of taking, arriving in great numbers, working with astonishing speed, restoring everything back to order.
For their sake.
And then they send the miners back underground.
Back into the same tunnels where their friends died.
As if nothing ever happened.
That is why Pax is angry.
This, all of this, is just another reminder of how the Fae, our lords, see us. We are expendable. Measured only by how useful we are to them, how much we can produce before we break.
I follow Pax back into the mine, and I cannot believe what I see. I had expected the outside to be one thing, but I never thought they could so completely erase what happened in the tunnels.
There is no trace of the chaos. No lingering mark of the horror that tore through this place. The black stone walls stand unscarred. The blood has been scrubbed from the jagged floor beneath my boots.
What happened here exists only in my memory now.
The Veins have all been stabilized and reinforced, green sigils blazing along the arches overhead. Even Vein Four, unused for as long as I have been here, now stands open and active.
Even Vein Three. The tunnel where Rollin swore something called his name. Where the rock came down on me.
Even Vein Two, where Erold tossed a charge down the shaft, setting off a chain of death and terror that still curls through my thoughts when I try to sleep.
All of it is operational again.
“The man,” I say. “Erold.”
Pax stops. Slowly, he turns back to me.
“You saw his face, didn’t you?” I continue. “When he attacked me. When he killed those men.” My voice falters. “He wasn’t… he wasn’t a man anymore. It was like something else was wearing him.”
Pax lowers his head.
“I don’t know why Erold did what he did,” he says after a moment. “That wasn’t the man I knew. He was good. He worked hard. He missed his family.” His voice tightens. “He wanted to pay off his debt so he could go home to them.”
He looks around the tunnel with open contempt, jaw clenched.
“It’s these fucking mines,” he mutters. “They do things to your head. Just when we think things have settled, it starts again. It crawls back in. Drives men mad.”
I grab his arm. “So this has happened before?”
He pulls away from me sharply. The first time he ever has.
“We don’t talk about it,” he snaps, then exhales hard. “It spreads fear, and things are hard enough down here already.”
“There’s something down there,” I insist, lowering my voice as I lean closer. “Isn’t there? Do these tunnels go beneath the lake?”
Pax gulps.
“The tunnels go everywhere.”
My voice drops to a whisper. “I’ve seen it. It called my name. It used my father’s voice.”
Fear flashes across his face, but beneath it, something else surfaces too.
Relief.
His lip trembles, as if holding back a flood. “Sometimes,” he admits, “when I’m alone in the tunnel… I hear it too.” He swallows. “It calls me Pattenwald. Only my father ever called me Pattenwald.”
He turns away, shoulders drawn tight.
“They say if you listen to it. If you follow the voice, it makes you do things. Things you would never do.” He turns back to me then, and there’s a cold sheen in his eyes. “They say it takes you over.”
I want to know more. I need to know everything. But before I can ask, a shout booms through the tunnel.
“Foreman!”
Pax and I both jolt, turning as a Fae male looms over us, the bright, pristine colors of his clothing a jarring contrast to the soot and ash clinging to everything else.
Pax bows instinctively. “Yes, sir.”
“We need men to lay the new tracks,” the Fae says. “Now.”
There is no invitation for discussion. No room for refusal. Pax understands this immediately and nods once.
“Yes, sir.”
He doesn’t say goodbye to me. That would only slow him down, only draw attention where none is welcome. Instead, he gives me a brief glance before turning away and rallying a handful of nearby miners into a work crew. They follow the Fae male down one of the tunnels and disappear into the dark.
I spend the rest of the day working.
Much of my paperwork was destroyed in the collapse, and I’m forced to rebuild records from memory and fragments, but the task is almost soothing in its familiarity. Numbers settle. Columns align. This is what I’m good at. This is how I make sense of the world.
Still, Pax’s words cling to me.
When dusk finally falls and it’s time to return to Castle Frostwyn, they follow me all the way to the carriage. I stare out the window as snow drifts steadily from the sky, watching the dark shape of the castle rise into view.
If the demon in the tunnels can slip inside you, wear your voice and your face, twist your thoughts, and force you to do unspeakable things, just how powerful is it?
Powerful enough to seize a miner.
Powerful enough to hollow out a man.
Powerful enough to control a Winter Lord?
The question settles deep in my chest as Castle Frostwyn looms closer through the falling snow.