3. Greer
Greer
The moment I follow Elorie into the forest, the trees gulp down any light. The thick canopy rustles overhead, and an icy chill whispers against my neck. With every step, branches snag my leathers.
Growing up in Echme, at the heart of Lyrichia’s lightning fields, I thought I understood the power of a storm.
My home was on the northern beach, between the forest and the stretch of sand where spires towered, beckoning the gods to strike them.
A gray overcast sky hung on even the warmest days.
Static was a constant buzzing in the air.
Sometimes when I close my eyes, the murmur lingers as if I’m not a sea away.
The stench of metal and burning ash lingers in my senses.
But while those storms were brutal, they were nothing like these on Alyssium.
Those storms were welcome. We would dance beneath the lightning rain and cheer the blessings from the gods. For with the aether, magic would wake, and our realm would thrive.
Here on Alyssium, lightning is not followed by the blooming of magic.
Rain pours so heavily the ground can’t drink it fast enough.
Hail batters the village while the squall slowly tears the island apart.
Soon the only safe place will be inside the walls of the prison, and Callum and I can’t enter with the hope of ever getting out.
“Do you hear anything?” Elorie asks when I pause.
My senses perk, but everything is duller here.
Quieter.
I close my eyes and take a deep breath, catching the tang of blood breezing from my left.
A twig snaps, and unlike the branches breaking in the wind, it’s muffled by the crunch of dry leaves.
I pierce through it, stretching my senses farther, until I hear two sets of footsteps winding through the trees.
“There.” I unsheathe my sword, pointing.
The blade glints through the darkness, heavier than it was before I came here. Everything is heavier. Everything is harder without magic.
Yet this sword I claimed upon my father’s death is a part of me. I pull it close, readying my stance and moving toward the noise.
Elorie grabs her daggers, walking in stride beside me.
Any signs of the hesitant human I first met in the Ley Court have worn away.
Her white-blonde hair is tied off her face in two long braids.
The winter-blue ends of her hair are darker than they were when we first came here; they reach her shoulders now.
And her three freckles, set in a wide V beneath her right eye, continue to glow like flecks of starlight on her cheek.
At least it makes her easy to spot with the thick cloud cover casting darkness around us.
We walk in stride, quick but careful. Until I step on a rock sideways, and pain radiates up my leg. A burning sensation shoots all the way to my hip, reminding me of the night it was snapped.
The night my parents were murdered.
Apart from the scar cutting through my eyebrow, I didn’t think I had lingering physical damage from that night. But now, I realize I only thought that because the magic in Lyrichia masked the dull ache of old wounds. Here, there is nothing to soothe what never healed properly inside me.
With every step, my leg trembles and my hip throbs. But I don’t let it show because I don’t want sympathy. I don’t need anyone worrying about me. I’m here for Elorie, to see her mission through to heal our realm. I failed once; I won’t do it again.
We go so deep into the forest that I lose the sense of where I am until the lap of waves draws closer.
We’re almost at the cliffs now, and we haven’t found Dorn and Isra.
Dread swims in my chest as the beat of water haunts me.
Those same waves reach all the way back to Ruse Village, where I last saw Aunt Millicent and Lune.
Are they still there? Are they still fighting?
Has the Well swallowed them up?
This is all my fault. For a century, I bowed to the king responsible for the realm crumbling. To a king who slaughtered my parents and let me do the same to the male he framed for their deaths. He wields a gods-touched object against his own people. He betrays that which he should stand for.
When I find Malachi—and I will—my blade will be the last thing he feels as I shove it through his heart. Even if he takes me with him.
The trees thin as we reach a break in the forest by the cliffs. It’s the middle of the afternoon, but where there should be light, we’re met with shadows.
“It shouldn’t be dark this early.” I make note of the horizon, slowing my pace.
Elorie does the same, and we shift so we’re nearly back-to-back, studying the thinning trees surrounding us.
“It’s barely midday.” Elorie’s attention snaps to the right as a falling branch crashes to the ground. “There’s only one thing that drinks light from the sky like this.”
“The Well.” My voice thickens.
The inky darkness that surrounds us is tangible. A tang of death and rot hangs in the air. There was a time after the Collision when the Well was contained to the space where the realms touched, but now, it spreads. Its arms reach—made worse the longer Malachi wields the orb.
“There have been no signs of a vein from the Well on the island.” Elorie shakes her head.
“The storms have been worsening.”
“But if it’s reached this far—” She doesn’t finish that thought.
She doesn’t need to.
If the Well is here, how far does it stretch everywhere else? Only a few months ago, it was contained to Rohldova, with the occasional veins opening elsewhere. To see evidence that it might be stretching farther has my spine tingling.
“Let’s keep looking,” Elorie says.
Her voice is even, but her confidence is slipping as she avoids my gaze.
I nod, walking beside her with my sword in my grip. The hilt warm, and my body is ready to strike.
My senses perk, but there’s nothing out of the ordinary. Animals avoid us, scurrying into their burrows as the wind worsens. Elorie and I walk in silence, pushing through the dense trees until we reach brush too thick to navigate.
“If Dorn and Isra went any deeper, there’s no way they’ll survive.” She eyes the trees.
“If they did, that’s not on us. They were warned to stick to the village.”
Elorie follows as I continue walking. “Maybe they tried and couldn’t. Maybe they were running from something?”
“Maybe.” I adjust my stride when my hip aches, and I nearly trip a step.
Thankfully, Elorie doesn’t notice my wince. Her eyes dart from the path ahead to the prison spires towering above the trees.
“Are you ready for tomorrow?” I ask her, trying to take my mind off the pain.
“As ready as I can be.” She drops her gaze, pulling her lower lip between her teeth. “If I don’t come out—”
“You will.”
She huffs out a laugh. “Try telling Callum that.”
“Callum can’t help worrying. He’s not one to take risks,” I remind her.
“You didn’t use to be one to take risks either.”
My throat tightens. She isn’t wrong. But that was before I understood what I was fighting for. Who I was fighting for. Now, I’m questioning everything.
“Callum understands what needs to be done.” I keep the focus on him. “He’ll come to terms with it. Don’t let his fears make you doubt yourself.”
“You think I’m doing the right thing?”
“I think we’re out of options, and that puts us in a dangerous position no matter what. But if there’s a chance, you’ll find it. Even here.”
A place where only one Fae has woken a drop of magic—Elorie. She did it once to save her mate, and again when she somehow told the Gate to bring us to Alyssium.
A Gate is a doorway between two places within the same realm. It roots in magic on both ends, which is why, when we stepped through the Gate in the Ley Court, it should not have been able to let us out on an island void of any. Somehow, it did.
I don’t understand Elorie’s magic or what the fates have in store for her, but I’m smart enough to know that if there is someone who can find hope when there is none, it’s her.
“Do you miss the Ley Court?” she asks, walking at a steady pace beside me with her daggers in hand.
“I miss a warm bed,” I muse, grinning. “I miss my options for partners to fill it.”
“Was that a joke, Greer? Oh my gods.” Elorie laughs, and I shrug. “Now I know you must think I’m walking to my death tomorrow, because you never joke with anyone.”
I chuckle, not blaming her for thinking that. While Elorie and I have grown close out of necessity, I’ve never been good at making friends. It’s rare I open up. Even when it’s only been the four of us these past few months living in Letia’s house, I mostly keep to myself.
Elorie is right; I’m looking for a distraction. Anything to avoid thinking about what might come of her entering the prison tomorrow.
I hold my chin up, not giving a voice to those fears. “I’m simply stating a fact. This is a cold place in more ways than one.”
“True.” Elorie sighs. “I miss a warm bed too. And a warm bath.”
“I miss my family.”
Elorie’s smile slips. “You’ll see them again.”
When I meet her gaze, it’s not comfort I find in her silvery-gray eyes, but determination. A promise she may not be able to keep, but I appreciate her offering.
“You will too,” I assure her, my gaze falling to where one of her hands rests over the rune on her chest.
“I know I will.” Her words are hopeful, but her expression isn’t.
The last time we saw Wilder, he stepped through an Arch to Vaelier, taking the doorway from one realm to another. For all we know, that was the last working Arch, and if that’s the case, she’ll never be able to reconnect with her mate.
If only we had the luxuries of the court to distract us from these worries. I’d offer her a proper night of celebration before she embarks on her quest tomorrow. A hit of haelmarrow to take the edge off. Wine to wash her worries away.
Gods, I miss the delicacies of the palace. There’s nothing rich or delicious here. The beer is practically water. It tastes of malt mixed with saltwater. Not nearly as hearty as the drinks back home.
On Alyssium, there’s nothing to dull the aches or quiet the mind. There is nothing soothing in this place.
A sound comes from behind us, and we spin at the same time. Elorie is still fractionally slower than I am, and I imagine she always will be with her half-human side. But even so, she’s picking up her training faster than anyone I trained before her. The other day, she managed to land me on my back.
While I blamed the lack of magic and didn’t mention the pain throbbing in my hip, she smiled and claimed her victory.
“Something’s there,” I whisper, raising my sword, just as two figures burst through the darkness.
Dorn carries Isra. Blood drips down her arm as she lies limp in his grasp. The steady rise and fall of her chest is all that makes it clear she’s alive.
“What happened?” Elorie rushes toward them.
“Something—I—” His voice is panicked, his eyes frantically searching. “It’s coming.”
“Go.” Elorie steps aside. “Get her back to the village. Callum is waiting.”
Dorn rushes around her, continuing through the forest. We’re about to follow when a chill has us both freezing in place. Her gaze meets mine, and I know she feels what I do. The icy brush of something other waking around us.
She swallows hard when I nod. We can’t follow the humans, or we’ll draw whatever this is straight to the village.
Elorie and I split off, fanning out in opposite directions. She presses her back to a tree, daggers up and ready, while I continue a wide arc of the scene.
At first, the movements are small and slow, so I almost think they must be footsteps. Dorn and Isra, maybe? But then, I listen closer, and they drag against the ground, sweeping a path of crushed leaves and branches.
A sickening chill surges from the realm, creeping up my legs as the night deepens around us.
Until all I see of Elorie is an outline where she stands and her three glowing freckles.
The cold rises like the tide, climbing my legs until my bones ache and my stomach chills.
It wraps me tight, my hair standing on the back of my neck.
“Elorie.” Her name is a whisper that is swallowed by the night.
As if whatever surrounds us now casts a blanket that mutes all sound. When I start to move again, I aim toward her.
“Elorie,” I say again.
Finally, I find her in the darkness, but her wide eyes aren’t fixed on me. She blinks, looking over my head, backing up a step. I turn slowly, sword held high as the dark creature towers over me. Not something of this realm but other.
Its body is crafted from shadows. Not scaled or feathered, but a weeping mess of tar and darkness.
It almost looks like an oversized bird, except it’s distorted and as tall as a tree.
Its eyes move nonstop. Its beak is made of teeth.
Its wings are not wings at all, but a blanket of death behind it.
And its limbs curl in and out of its body from all directions as it moves.
It’s a creature of the Well.
Fear should flare in my chest. I should panic—anyone would.
Instead, calmness moves through me. Where many might want to run, I grasp this peace I only find in battle. When all other thoughts are erased, and it is just life or death. Me or them.
And I smile.