Chapter 37
The first thing I feel is the cold.
It’s not the crisp, biting cold of the courtyard. This air is musty, damp.
Stone bites into my spine, and I realize I’m lying on the ground. I groan. My head is throbbing. I lift my hands to cradle my skull, but find my wrists are bound in front of me with rusty irons. I’m shackled.
“Damn it, Nalina.” My voice sounds distant in my ears.
Boots scrape across the ground ahead of me.
I squint through the dim light. Chains pull against my shackled wrists, pulling my arms above my head, dragging me across the filthy ground.
My shoulders pull painfully in their sockets as I’m dragged slowly down a long, dark hallway.
I tug the chains and sit up. Someone releases the tension on the shackles, allowing me to scramble to my feet.
I blink hard, struggling to force my vision into focus. Nearby, water drips and rats scurry, their tiny claws scraping against the floor. The world swims around me: a rough stone floor slick with moisture, crumbling walls, a ceiling so low it nearly brushes my captor’s head as she watches me.
Nalina.
The memory slams into me like a hammer. She turned on me. How long have I been unconscious? The sounds of battle are gone. Or maybe they’re simply too far away to hear from wherever we are.
A few yards away, Nalina holds the other end of the chain attached to my shackles. My silver moth knife glints from her belt, and she’s watching me, her face grim.
My mind reels. None of this makes sense. Is she working with my father? No, she would never align herself with the Fox Army. She’d rather die.
Dampness prickles my skin. The air down here has a wet, cloying stink of mold, rusted metal, and decay.
My heart lurches as panic claws up my throat. I know this smell. I know this place.
I jerk against the shackles and iron bites into my wrists. My light power flares instinctively, then sputters and dies, like a candle snuffed out.
Nalina gives me a patronizing glare. “So much for your mighty light power.”
I say nothing as I try to access my light again and again. There are embers there; I can feel them burning in my core. I haven’t reached complete burnout yet. So why can’t I even make a simple orb of light?
Nalina crosses her arms in front of her chest impatiently. “Your shackles are made of iron.” When I don’t give her the reaction she’s expecting, she straightens, studying me. “You don’t know, do you?”
I just glare at her.
She lets out a bark of laughter. “How can that be? A Fox Heir with fae magic in her bloodline. And she doesn’t know about iron?”
The realization crashes down. In all the old stories, the fae were weakened by only one thing: iron.
“But, those were fairy tales …”
Nalina leans in close. “All fairy tales start from truth. That’s what makes them so powerful.”
“But there’s iron everywhere.” I stammer. “In wall sconces, even the door hinges! I’ve used my power around iron before.”
Nalina tsks, as if I’m a naughty child. “Iron has to touch your skin to paralyze the power in your blood. Otherwise …” She shrugs. “It’s just a useful decoration.”
My mind is whirling. My eyes dart to the skeletons and decaying corpses strung up along the hallway. They’re all bound with iron shackles. Skeletal hands clutch at the air, their faces frozen in endless, silent screams.
“Why do you think all of our weapons are silver? Hm?” She raises an eyebrow. “So anyone can wield them, powerful noble or not.” She taps the gleaming blade of her sword. “And what of your great Fox Army with its showy bronze and copper armor?”
Horror dawns on me. “There’s no iron in copper ...”
Nalina nods slowly. “None. Your Fox ancestors figured that out, at least.” She pauses, considering. “Though it’s strange that your Fox King father never told you.”
“No,” I say as a hollow pit deepens in my stomach. “It isn’t.” The truth leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Father didn’t want me to know. My ignorance was one more advantage he held over me.
I look down at the iron shackles clasped around my wrists. My skin is rubbed red and raw against the rust. A memory rises to the surface of my mind: Tristan, chained in my father’s kennels in Caerwen.
A humorless laugh bubbles out of me. He couldn’t have used his power to hurt me, locked up in those irons.
His power comes from the remains of fae blood in his veins too.
When he was imprisoned in Caerwen, I believed he was a great, terrifying Wolf.
But he couldn’t have killed me with his shadow power, even if he wanted to. He was nothing but a man in chains.
I may not have known about iron, but Nalina did. She knew iron weakened me, and she still shackled me.
“Why ...?” I rasp, my throat dry. “People are dying out there! What are we doing down here?”
She doesn’t answer. Her jaw tightens, and she turns, pulling the chains, and me, behind her. I pull and fight, but it’s no use. Nalina is stronger than I am by far. Without my powers or my knife, I’m useless.
“They need you on the battlefield!”
Need us, I want to say, but I know I’m next to useless in my current state. I’m nothing but a liability. But Nalina could still fight. Why is she wasting precious time chaining me up and dragging me through the castle dungeon?
The corridor narrows, the stones growing slicker, blacker. More bodies line the passageways. All dead women. Some corpses are so old, they’ve crumbled into little more than mummified rags and bone.
I gag, bile rising in my throat, but Nalina doesn’t slow. She pulls me past them as if they’re nothing more than furniture.
A sound builds ahead, a faint scuffling. We pass through a broken archway that’s coated in a layer of black soot as if it’s been licked by flames. And there, in the farthest corner, I see it.
Moribund’s lair.
A putrid scent wafts from the corner where his nest of burned human hair sits.
It’s far less impressive than it was the last time I saw it, with its long, blond strands escaping the towering mound of golden hair.
Now, it’s barely more than a pile of ash.
Blackened bones poke out of the nest like flowers sticking out of a fresh grave.
And at the center of it, half-shrouded in shadows, something shifts.
The revolting fae rises from his bed of ash, unfolding like a spider emerging from its web.
He moves quickly and jerkily, all elbows and angles, scuttling over what’s left of the burned hair with bare feet.
His parchment-thin skin is covered in soot.
As he grows closer, I see his flesh is bubbled and blackened in patches, with the unmistakable mark of burns.
When he grins at us, I grimace. My stomach lurches as revulsion mixes with fear.
“Well, well, well.” His voice is childlike with interest. “Look what treasure you’ve brought me this time. Is that my little fox-haired bug?”
Nalina steps behind me, then shoves me forward.
I stumble to my bruised knees, and the iron cuffs scrape hard against my wrists.
Panic floods my chest. I need to get out of here.
My eyes scan the walls, searching for something I might have missed before, some way out.
A weapon, a door, anything. There’s nothing down here but soot-painted walls, and what’s left of Moribund’s char-blackened nest.
I need to fight. But without my power or my knife, I’m nothing more than dead weight. And Nalina knows it.
“You said you'd help us,” Nalina’s voice is taut. “That you’d help save Gwyllion if I brought her to you.”
Moribund’s smile widens. His overlong fingers steeple together like a pastor deep in thought. “And so I did.”
He crawls closer to us, a new tattered loincloth flapping with each movement. As he circles nearer, I can smell him. The stink of his breath is thick as rot.
“Such lovely copper hair,” he purrs. “Such sweet blood singing beneath her bug skin.”
I jerk away instinctively, but there’s nowhere to go. His hand brushes a lock of my auburn hair. I flinch, but Nalina doesn’t stop him.
“You can’t do this,” I hiss at her, fighting to keep my voice steady. “We’re in the middle of a battle! We’re fighting for the same people!”
Nalina’s mouth twists, and something like guilt flickers across her face, but it doesn’t stop her. “That’s exactly why I’m doing this. My loyalty is to my people. To Annwyn. And, unfortunately, we need him.”
“You can’t be serious,” I scoff.
Nalina whirls on me, her face inches from Moribund’s. His wide, black eyes flick to her, and his grin widens.
“Listen to me, Fox Heir,” she hisses. “Your life means nothing to me. Your family has slaughtered mine for centuries! As far as I’m concerned, your only worth is whatever I can haggle to save Gwyllion.”
Moribund chuckles. It’s a low, sick sound that seems to echo from everywhere. He runs his fingers through my hair again, slower this time.
My stomach sinks. It’s like Tristan said, Nalina’s methods may be unconventional, but she believes in them wholeheartedly.
I’m nothing more than a bargaining chip to her.
I clench my teeth so hard my jaw aches. My wrists bleed where the shackles bite deeper with every movement.
I fix Nalina with a look of pure, seething hatred.
“You think this will save them?” I whisper. “You think he will save them?”
For just a moment, she hesitates. She looks toward the nest, but her eyes slide right over Moribund, who’s only inches away from her face.
Suddenly, my fury clears enough for me to remember one important detail: Nalina doesn’t have fae blood. She can’t see Moribund. Only I can.
She steps back, then turns away from me. “I’ve come to make good on our deal.” She calls out in the direction of the burned nest, where she assumes he’s sitting. She unsheathes her sword and holds it flat against her palms in a peaceful gesture. “I’m not here to harm you.”
At my left shoulder, Moribund’s wide black eyes watch her with interest. He laughs lightly, and she turns to face the direction of his voice. She lifts her chin in defiance.