THE SKY IS CRYING
Another rainstorm drenched the mountains. This one didn’t bring any lightning or thunder with it, only rain. Cold, heavy rain.
I stepped out into the onslaught, my shield keeping me perfectly dry. Death’s Whisper was sheathed at my hip, shrouded beneath the long cloak that fell from my shoulders.
The Keep’s patio looked like it stood at the edge of the world, because, beyond its waist-high stone wall, the mountains were obscured by slanted sheets of rain.
Eathril’s lair was tucked into the stone a few hundred steps down the mountainside. He waited within, as did the possible answers I sought to the questions that had been gnawing at my mind since we’d returned from the wraith’s cave.
The first thing the wraith had asked me was if I was kin to Eathril. I thought it was some sort of mistake. How could a wraith, who doesn’t leave her cave, know of Eathril, who rarely leaves The Keep?
The more I thought about it, though, the more I realized there was a lot about Eathril I didn’t know.
In fact, I hadn’t really thought to inquire much about him at all when I came into power.
He had always been here—a staple feature of this court—as far as I knew.
One of the founding brothers had given him a task, and ever since then, the interrogator had performed his duties, keeping to the shadows he inhabited.
Shadows.
Shadows just like me and the wraith. Just like Skadi. Just like Skotos.
There were too many coincidences for my liking.
I paused only a moment to listen to the rain, then descended the steps, using each one to think through my long list of questions and suspicions. When my boots came to a halt before the hollow entryway into the mountain, I took a steadying breath, then crossed the threshold.
It was an effort not to let the darkness bother me.
Ever since Ramil had tampered with my mind, every little thing seemed to set my senses on edge.
The darkness—the unknown within it—was now itching against my skin like an insect trying to burrow itself beneath.
I gripped the pommel of my sword to steady my anxious thoughts, instantly regretting my decision to come here instead of just summoning Eathril to The Keep.
As if he’d detected my anxiety, his voice cut through the silence. “My Lord, is everything all right?”
I cleared my throat, blinking through the darkness. I couldn’t form words. An overwhelming feeling of unrest washed over me, and my power rose to the surface as if to greet the sheer blackness I stood within . . . like it wanted to reach out and soak it into my body.
A shudder racked through me, and chills skittered down my arms as my power rippled along my veins.
I took a deep breath, then another, quicker and quicker.
There were no orbs, no candlelight to counter the dark. I thought I’d be able to handle it—
“Shall we go somewhere a little less unsettling?” Eathril suggested, seeming to know exactly what was happening to me. Before I could form an answer, his presence gripped onto my arm, and we ported.
The next moment, I was heaving in fresh air under a canopy of elms, pines, and birch trees. We were in The Elderwood, and the rain was still falling hard enough that by the time I calmed down and pushed my shield out around me, my hair was dripping wet.
But at least there was daylight. Gray as the sky was, the light settled me, calmed me, quelled the fear of losing control and succumbing to the demands of my power.
Somewhere, in the shadows of the trees, Eathril was watching me.
My heart rate slowed to normal, and I was finally able to speak. “Thank you.” The words came out as a near-silent rasp. So quiet, in fact, that I was afraid the sound of the rain would prevent Eathril from hearing them.
“You are troubled, My Lord.”
I nodded, half-ashamed to admit it, and half-tired of trying to hide it.
“How can I be of service?”
I searched the trees, scanning the shadows between them, trying to pinpoint where he was.
I knew better than to seek out a physical form, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to try.
Looking someone in the eyes while they spoke was the quickest way to gauge everything they weren’t saying.
That tactic had never failed me when it came to deciphering whether or not someone was telling the truth.
With Eathril, I would just have to give him the benefit of the doubt.
“I came to ask you some questions,” I said.
This time, Eathril responded from above. He was in the trees. “I hope I can provide the answers you seek.”
I stared ahead, getting my thoughts in order. “Tell me how a wraith from another world knows who you are.”
A gentle laugh danced through the tree canopy. “Sahren.”
“She did not give her name, nor did I ask her for it.”
“That is her name,” Eathril said. “It has been ages since I have spoken with her. We have a lot in common. The shadows call to us.”
Shadows, yes. The thing we all had in common. Eathril dwelled in them, I wielded a form of them, and the wraith, Sahren, could not live without them.
“Why would she ask if I was akin to you?”
As if he were standing in my midst, I sensed him go stiff. Even the rain seemed to ease, as if it were listening, waiting to hear his answer.
“My Lord—”
“Tell me the truth, Eathril—all of it. I need to know. I—” I cut myself off, taking a breath to keep my frustration from radiating through my voice. “I think I’ve known for a while, but I need to hear someone tell me.”
I closed my eyes, and waited for him to choose the words he wanted to say.
“The place where she and I come from, and the place your power originates from, are one in the same.”
“Say it.”
“Skotos.” The word seemed to echo through the forest, despite the sound of the pelting rain.
“Is it Erebus’s power?” I asked.
There was something like pity in his voice. Perhaps regret, as he said, “It is.”
I kept my eyes closed, letting his words sink in.
Hearing him say it somehow filled a gap within me that had been hollow for so long.
And yet, at the same time, something else fissured, another crack in what was once a perfectly-fortified facade.
I waited to feel the long-anticipated sense of relief I thought I would gain by having confirmation, but dread crept in instead.
Fates, the wraith had been right.
And if Eathril knew all of this, who, or what, did that make him?
“Who are you, Eathril? How are you here, in this world, if you are neither a wraith, nor a witch?”
The shadows within the tree canopy shifted, then settled, as if he had found a place where he was content to perch and spill both our secrets.
When he spoke, his voice was more solemn than I’d ever heard.
“I knew that the time for this conversation would eventually come. And so it has, arriving on a day when the sky is crying.”
I flicked my eyes up to the rain, taking his statement into consideration. That must mean I wasn’t going to like what I was about to hear.
“Aleris was the only other fae to ever question my origins.
When we stumbled across each other here, in these very woods, he did not fear me, nor did he raise the alarm that there was a strange, formless being living in his territory.
I had dwelled here for quite some time without anyone discovering my existence, but the moment we crossed paths, he knew he was in the midst of someone he could not see.
He was a special one—open-minded, gifted with an exceptional ability to sense things that others were not privy to, and talented with glamours, just like your mother was.
He was also a bit mischievous, which is why he and I got along so well.
“To this day, I still believe that whatever power allowed him to be so in-tune with the world around him also allowed him to actually see me, in some sense. The real me. Not just the essence that is bound to the shadows.
“All that to say, Aleris and Sahren are the only beings who have ever known where I came from. They are two of the three souls I have had the pleasure of calling friends. You see, I did not consider myself someone who was deserving of friends. Not in the past. Perhaps not even now. Not with what I—” He cut himself off with a pause, as if he needed to work up the courage to say the rest. His tone dropped menacingly low as he finally said, “I was never supposed to come with the witches and the wraiths—they didn’t even know I fled with them.
But I . . . I couldn’t stay. Not after what I had done. ”
“What did you do?” I asked, equally as quiet.
It took him a moment to answer.
“I drove a blade through Erebus’s heart.”
Time seemed to stop. The rain slowed. The forest hushed.
I lifted my head, letting Eathril’s words sink in. “You . . . killed Erebus?”
Silence. An all-confirming silence.
“How is that even possible?”
“Because his daughter commanded me to. She created me; I was Skadi’s general.” There was so much shame in his voice, I didn’t need to see him to understand the magnitude of it.
“Tell me more,” I said.
“I . . . You’re not . . . offended?”
“What do I have to be offended by, Eathril?”
“I just . . . I thought—”
“I need to know what happened. Whatever it is, it will not change my opinions of you. I swear it.”
A sense of relief permeated the atmosphere. “Thank you,” he said quietly.
Stricken with the need to sit, I strode to the nearest tree and took up the space at its roots, propping my back against its wide trunk. The leaves above me averted much of the rain that still fell, so I dropped my shield.