Dawn is the End
The queen left me to my thoughts in the dungeon.
I could comprehend the words she spoke, but I couldn’t make them make sense. Not for me. Like they were about someone else that I was observing from afar, and this someone was a dark abomination.
I had the dark, umbra magic of an Umbrathren.
Was my umbra ability shadow magic? I thought over all the times I felt the dark, angry thing in my heart rearing its head, screaming for vengeance, controlling my emotions.
That unfortunately sounded exactly like dark magic…
I felt tainted. Like my own heart was something to be feared.
Clearly, I also had the fire element, but Malvina seemed to think I was Veythryn also?
How could she know? As far as I knew I hadn’t changed, just erupted into flames and started spouting shadows all over the place.
It made me think of the day Aemilia’s magic had emerged, when I was about seven or so.
I’d been on the other side of the playground, but there was a little boy that she’d electrocuted.
We never spoke of him, but now that I’d felt her lightning, my gut churned at the thought that she may have killed that boy that day.
A murderer before she could wipe her own ass.
At one point talking with the prince, I’d wondered what it would be like to have a vey form. Now, I couldn’t shake the feeling that if I did have one, it was something like Caedryn’s…a Pyrrath. Something I hoped with everything I had left that I wasn’t.
And if I truly was fae, I had to be half-fae at most. I knew Cassius was mortal, and I’d always assumed my mother was, too. But the only logical explanation for what happened was that she was fae and therefore I was half-fae.
I was still disgusted by that. I struggled to accept it, but there was no denying.
The queen also told me that the cuffs on my wrists are ability-blocking, which is why the beast in my chest is currently sleeping without a stir.
And with everything I was learning about my heart and what Noxie had said about magic living there, I clung to the hope that the cuffs were blocking my connection to him and he was still alive out there somewhere.
Our connection finally made sense, and I prayed so hard that one day I’d get to tell him that he was truly my Familiar.
That the magic in my heart held captive had prevented our bond from truly forming.
I hoped one day I’d experience the true bond with him. The only thing about my magic that I saw as a good thing was finding him.
This was also the first time I gave any real thought to the mortals back in the ballroom, wondering with deep sadness what the king had done with all of them. There was a genuine possibility that they were all dead. Caedryn was deranged enough that night to do it.
Surely, he needed their servitude, right? No way any fae were doing laundry and cleaning chamber pots.
It wasn’t until I overheard a whispered conversation between Dumb and Round some days later that I got an inkling of what had happened the rest of that night.
“I’ve definitely lost weight. That new cook doesn’t know what he’s doing! Food used to be so much better. I mean, he’s a kid.”
Halden.
Had to be. He was the only young mortal in the kitchen; the rest had been well into adulthood.
And if he was cooking, he was alive. But the rest of the cooks must have been killed…
Caedryn had killed more mortals after Nella, but not all of them.
“It’s definitely taking longer to get my uniforms back from the laundry too. Wish the king hadn’t killed quite so many of the servants.”
“Yeah, but it was a spectacle, though,” Round said with a chuckle.
It made my stomach turn.
Murder was a spectacle here, mortal deaths laughable—another reason I didn’t want to be fae.
I quickly licked my teeth and touched the tips of my ears.
Thankfully, I found my canines weren’t sharp and my ears were still rounded.
I didn’t think I could bear looking like one of them.
I guessed my magic had been blocked at a young enough age that my body grew as a mortal one. Thank gods for small consolations.
I wondered about how that had happened—when it happened and who’d bound my magic to mortality. Not even an inkling of a theory came to me.
“I tell you what, though. I don’t envy that mortal who confessed to being the rebel insider. I could still hear the screams from that big laundry lady long after the king’s fire stopped. His vey still gives me the chills.”
Miss Melda. She was the big laundry lady. The rest of the ladies with us had been thin.
My heart ached. Miss Melda had been so kind to us when we first arrived, motherly even. She looked out for us.
And she was a rebel. Or she had lied and sacrificed herself to stop the mass murder. I thought the latter sounded more likely, with a sharp pang of grief.
I couldn’t take any more loss.
“Not quite so chilling as the fiery shadows that came out of that one, though. I’ve never seen anything like it, ever. No one has.”
That one was me. They feared me.
Good, they should.
Dumb cleared his throat, and they both stopped talking. They remembered I was down here. What fools.
They had no idea they were on that one’s kill list.
* * *
It was several more nightmare-laced sleeps after that whispered conversation before anyone else came down to see me. This time, it was a male I recognized from the dinner at the ball—Chamberlain Vanthe, the smug bastard in a smug velvet get-up.
“Ignacia Corren, it is my solemn duty and great honor as the Royal Chamberlain of Ashthorn Castle that I, Luceron Vanthe, stand before you to inform you of your charges. You await trial for the following.” He unfurled a scroll of parchment and fixed a monocle over one eye.
Seriously, this guy couldn’t look any more smarmy if he tried.
“Intentional murder of a royal guard. Permanent disfigurement and assault of a royal court member. Assault on the crown prince. Treason for collusion with rebels. Each of these charges is capital in nature, and the punishment is death. Should you be found guilty of any or all, your punishment will be a public execution at the hand of the reigning monarch, King Caedryn Veylor.”
My heart rate picked up. I didn’t think I would get away unscathed from what I had done in the ballroom, but a formal trial? A death sentence?
“Why am I on trial? Why not just kill me?” It wasn’t that I wanted to die yet, but the question had been nagging at me. Why keep me alive?
He looked down his nose at me with his thin lips turned down in disgust. “You are fae. It is the law that all fae are tried fairly. No matter how heinous the crimes.”
It clearly tore him up to call me fae, to be the same as me.
Another silver lining to the change. But now I knew why the king hadn’t already had me executed—due process, which was laughable.
Funny, except for the cold, hard fact that due process was only owed to fae and not mortals, according to the law anyway.
“Right. Thanks for that. Will that be all?”
He gave me a hmph and then turned and left.
“Wait, when is this trial?” I yelled to him as he disappeared from my view.
“You’ll be informed the day of.”
The day of… I wasn’t sure if waiting in suspense or counting down the days was worse.
The trial didn’t scare me. Death didn’t even scare me. I’d already decided I would die once I eliminated everyone on my list if I ever got out of here. But dying before I can avenge Nella made my heart squeeze and my gut churn.
* * *
On what I believed to be the next day, I heard unfamiliar voices. New guards. It seemed that Round and Dumb had graduated from guarding a surely dead prisoner in the dungeon and had been replaced.
I couldn’t see the new males, but I caught small snippets of whispers.
“Operation Reignite” and “Dray” were two distinct and unknown things I caught.
Maybe Dray was one of their names, but Operation Reignite?
Perhaps something with the king’s fire. Or could it be related to the inevitable purge?
It seemed fitting for Caedryn to use his demonic fire to rid the continent of mortals.
My gut churned. I, too, had demonic fire, apparently.
I listened hard for more details but couldn’t pick anything up.
One of the newcomers brought the usual disgusting slop to my cell and just stared at me.
“What, never seen a mortal turned fae turned prisoner before?” I snorted a laugh, and his face showed I appalled him. I wasn’t sure how long I’d been down here, but I knew it was long enough for me to smell like I was already dead.
He just continued to stare with his differently colored eyes and long hair pulled back into a low ponytail. I had never seen anyone, fae or mortal, with one blue eye and one brown eye. If I didn’t despise him for being a castle guard, I might have thought he was intriguing.
But it only reminded me of my different eyes—one blind, and one that didn’t want to see the cruel world around me.
“Hey, new guy, how long have I been down here?”
Ponytail looked at what I assumed was the other new guard with concern on his face before looking back at me. “The incident at the ball was over a month ago.” He said it delicately, and yet…
My stomach dropped. Over a month? Added to my imprisonment leading up to the ball, it had to be at least two months that had passed since I folded my last linen next to Nella. Four months since we’d left Briarstead.
I also did not like the way he called Nella’s death—the death of many mortals, it seemed, along with my dark and fiery explosion—an incident. I decided I did not like Ponytail.
He left me to my thoughts and returned to where the other guard presumably stood out of my sight.
Four months… More than an entire season had passed.
It would be cold outside if I went out now.
I tried not to think that the only way and time I might make it outside at this point would be for my public execution the chamberlain had referenced.