Chapter 10 Rhianelle #4
When the air clears, the Painted Moth is gone.
Where it stood lies an enormous knot of dark wood, its beams twisted around one another like the roots of an ancient tree.
What had been a building that took up half the block becomes a dense mass of compacted timber with splintered beams wound tight around each other.
Somewhere beneath that tangled ruin are Lord Kharlis and three fae commanders.
I stand there, breathing hard, staring at the vast structure of interlocking wood.
I search the crowd for Fleur. She said she would catch up.
“Where is she?” River turns in a circle, panic breaking across his face. “Fleur!”
My gaze darts over the fleeing patrons, the workers gathering in the street and the mass of crushed timber where the Moth once stood.
Then someone coughs behind us.
Fleur stumbles from a cloud of dust beside Thorn Vale, her cream-and-silver wings coated in ash but whole. River reaches her first and throws his arms around her. Petal joins them an instant later, laughing and crying as she embraces them both.
Relief floods through me.
The Auctioneer stands beside them, his case of seeds clutched to his chest. His theatrical demeanor is gone, replaced by something harder.
“They’re gone,” he says quietly. “All of them.”
I turn toward him. Before I can speak, he approaches me with a faint smile.
“Ah, Fawn.” His gaze flickers toward my uncovered silver hair. “I mean, Your Highness,” he corrects smoothly, though his eyes gleam with knowledge. “Fleur told me who you really are. I must say, discovering our dear friend was royalty all along is quite the revelation.”
“I am sorry,” I say. “I never wanted to deceive any of you. I could not risk my identity reaching the wrong ears.”
“I imagine you couldn’t. You were protecting yourself,” Petal says immediately.
“Don’t apologize,” Fleur adds. “We don’t hold it against you.”
Petal takes my hand. River smiles at me, and Fleur’s dusty wings flutter behind her. The warmth in their faces loosens something tight inside my chest. They know the truth now, yet none of them steps away.
“Then I am still Fawn to you?” I ask.
“Always,” Petal says.
Then we all look back toward what remains of the Painted Moth.
“You killed them,” I whisper, turning to Thorn.
“Yes.” All warmth leaves his voice. “They hurt my people. What hurts them, hurts me.”
His gaze settles on the compressed remains of the Moth. Grief passes across his face before he conceals it. The building was more than enchanted wood. It was his creation, his refuge and the home of every person under his protection.
“The High Fae of the Unseelie court violated every rule, and King Eirik, who should have stopped them, did nothing.” He looks at Petal’s bruised eye. “So I did what needed doing.”
Petal is crying silently. River has his arm around Fleur, who is shaking.
“It’s done,” the Auctioneer says to them gently. “They can’t hurt you anymore.”
Movement begins around us. At first, only a handful of Painted Moth workers emerge from the surrounding alleys.
Then dozens more follow, carrying everything they managed to remove before the building closed.
Trunks pass from hand to hand. Bundles of costumes and bed linens are loaded onto small carts.
Someone rolls a barrel of wine across the street while another gathers abandoned cloaks from the road.
There are so many of them. I had only made the acquaintance of Petal, River, and Fleur, but the Painted Moth sheltered an entire community.
Some of the lesser fae have moth or butterfly wings folded against their backs, dulled now by dust. Other groundlings bear antlers in sweeping shapes, forcing them to angle their heads as they lift crates onto the carts.
Water nymphs move among them with damp hair clinging to their shoulders, carrying glass vessels filled with water from whatever rooms they once called home.
One weeps as she cradles a cracked bowl against her chest.
Their features make them unmistakably fae in a way Thorn Vale’s do not.
Like most of the Highborns of the Unseelie court, he appears almost human.
Yet the differences between them seem unimportant now.
They move together as one household, gathering the fragments of a shared life from the street.
The Painted Moth was their refuge, their livelihood and their home.
Now it is a mass of crushed wood behind us.
I stand beside the Auctioneer with Arescaine close at my back.
“Where will you go?” I ask Thorn.
“Away from the war. Somewhere we can rebuild.” His expression remains composed, but his fingers tighten around the case of glowing seeds. “I will plant new Moths and start over.”
“All of you?”
Thorn Vale looks toward his people. “All who wish to come. The Painted Moth has never been a place, Your Highness. It is the people who make it one.”
River approaches first. He bows awkwardly, then seems to decide formality is no longer worth the effort and embraces me.
Fleur takes his place and wraps both arms around me. “Come find us when we build the next Moth.”
“I will.” Her wings flutter once behind her in nervous surprise when I hug her back.
Petal waits until Fleur releases me, then steps forward and hugs me fiercely. Her butterfly wings fold around my shoulders, trembling against my back.
“Stay safe, Fawn.” She pulls back, smiling through tears. “And take care of your prince.”
What?
I glance at Arescaine. His face gives nothing away, though one dark eyebrow lifts slightly.
“Petal, he isn’t—”
But she is already leaving with the others. The carts begin to move as dawn breaks over Greenvale. Thorn Vale walks at the front with the case of seeds held against his chest. Petal, River and Fleur fall into step among the others.
Morning light spreads across the road as they leave, turning the dust around them gold. Wings catch the sunrise as some rise above the procession, flying toward whatever waits beyond Greenvale.
I watch them go.
“We should leave,” Arescaine says quietly. “Before questions are asked about what happened here.”
I nod.
Bells ring from the town square while guards struggle to force a path through the growing crowd. I draw my hood over my silver hair. Arescaine moves beside me, placing himself between me and every guard we pass.
We walk back through Greenvale in silence.
The forest path back to the capital is dark, moonlight barely filtering through the thick canopy overhead.
We have been walking since morning, stopping only when Arescaine’s injuries forced him to rest. Now night has fallen again, and my leg throbs with each step, the adrenaline from the Painted Moth long since worn away.
But I keep walking.
Beside me, Arescaine moves silently through the darkness. His footsteps make no sound. I hear only the faint whisper of his cloak and the occasional crack of a twig beneath my own boots.
We walk in silence.
The path is barely visible in the moonlight. But Arescaine moves through it like he can see perfectly. Darkness is nothing to him.
He is a Nightwalker. Darkness is his element.
Last night replays in my mind. Lord Kharlis’s voice describing troop positions to the fae commanders. They’re all dead now. The evidence of their treachery dies with them. But I heard everything. I know what they planned and which positions they compromised.
I can’t quite bring myself to feel guilty about Lord Kharlis’s death. The traitor who’d been selling my people’s lives can’t betray anyone ever again. I’m ready to tell Rainer everything as soon as we return.
I think about Petal’s bruised eye, the terror in River and Fleur’s voices when they talk about the abuse. The Fae King has stopped enforcing honor among the Highborn Fae.
Their magic is terrifying. I cannot stop thinking about what will happen when my people face it on a battlefield.
The memory of the commander’s spell returns with brutal clarity.
Fire climbing the walls and searing through the air.
Arescaine’s wings wrapped around me, dark and massive, sealing me away from the flames.
I remember the smell of burning membrane and the way his body locked with pain while he held me against his chest. He did not make a sound.
The fae fire was so powerful that it left Arescaine, a Strigon, unable to fly or use his shadow magic. That is what we are up against.
I glance at him walking beside me. His face is calm in the shadows. My leg sends sharp spikes of pain through me with each step. The running around in the Painted Moth’s maze was brutal, but the walk back home is worse.
But I don’t slow or complain. I just need to keep putting one foot in front of the other. His pace slows slightly, just enough to make it easier for me to keep up.
“Once my injury recovers a little more, I should be able to use my shadow again,” Arescaine says quietly.
“That’s all right,” I reply. I want to tell him he doesn’t have to slow down because of me. But the relief is immediate. My leg still hurts, but the slower pace makes it bearable. So I say nothing and accept the small mercy.
We walk without speaking for a long time. The forest fills the silence around us with the wind moving through the branches overhead, the distant call of an owl and the rustle of some small creature in the underbrush.
“I’ve been to the Painted Moth before.” I break the heavy silence.
Arescaine says nothing.
“I remember it.” I frown, trying to grasp at the fragments. “The building that twisted back on itself, the auction room. I remember standing on that platform.”
The memory is vivid. I can still feel the fear coursing through me. The terror of not knowing who would buy me or what they’d do once they had.
“I remember Petal, River and Fleur helping me,” I continue. “They were so kind.”
The vampire doesn’t respond. He simply keeps walking beside me.
“But there are pieces missing,” I say, looking at him. “Big pieces, as if someone cut them out.”
Arescaine stares ahead, his expression unreadable.