CHAPTER 21 #2
But the most horrifying thing in the room were not the tiny fragments of bone filling each plate, but the thirteen massive creatures that sat, unmoving, in chairs before them.
Each one was as large and tall as Kilian, their faces withered and sunken.
Veins protruded from their stretched skin, pale and grey.
Leathery, paper-thin wings sprouted from their backs, shrunken and decrepit as they hung on the floor, centuries of sand and dust coating every inch of them.
The remaining fae. All that existed of the primordial creatures who had seen the beginning of our world.
They looked like statues, carved from ancient stone. Their eyes open and unseeing, glazed over from years of desiccation. They were not dead though. They were meant to be immortal. There was just no magic left for them to feed on. They had entered a stasis, just as Kilian had predicted.
I swallowed as I stepped forward, my eyes scanning the rest of the space for any sort of weapon. I wasn’t sure if Calendula was even breathing, face-to-face with her prehistoric ancestors.
“We need to search for the weapon,” I whispered, but the words sounded loud and harsh in the absolute stillness.
Caleb nodded, moving carefully around the table, giving the fae a wide berth. His sprite flitted from his shoulder, landing softly on the table. She picked her way daintily across the plates, searching. Calendula’s wings fluttered ahead of me.
“Don’t go too far,” I murmured.
The shadow sprite dipped inside a dusty vase in the middle of the table, her resounding sneeze echoing through the cavern.
I shot a wild look at the fae, but they remained motionless.
I probed through the ether for the voices that had warned me away so desperately, but nothing reached back.
Dropping to my knees, I dipped my head beneath the table, but only dry sand and faded bone was visible.
Caleb’s shadow was moving around, taking the orblight as he went.
The light flickered and danced, and the shadows inside of me thrummed.
I moved away from the table, convinced there was no weapon hidden beneath and instead focused on the fae seated around it.
The one closest to me looked female. Her thin hair had separated in clumps on her skull, leaving bald patches behind, but I could tell she had once been beautiful.
She had a heart-shaped face and large, glazed-over eyes, her full lips parted as if she were about to speak.
She wore a rose-colored gown, with a low neckline that hung limply off her too-thin body.
The grey veins snaking along her forearms made her look dehydrated and malnourished.
I examined the male beside her. He was broad-shouldered and twice as big. A cut ran across his left eye to his chin. Several onyx rings gleamed on his fingers.
The fae opposite him was tall and lean. He stared ahead sagely; his jaw was relaxed but his posture rigid.
How a soldier might hold himself. He looked calm, in the way one might when they’ve accepted death.
I scrutinized his face. I had the strangest feeling I’d seen him before, but as soon as I tried chasing the thought, it vanished.
He wore a sleeveless chain-link tunic above an open necked shirt, exposing the hard column of his throat. A delicate silver chain wound around his neck, its pendant resting against his breastbone. Shaped like a dagger, it was large and looked heavy, and at its hilt…
It couldn’t be.
I held out the dagger Umma had given me, placing it near the one on the fae’s chest, comparing them side-by-side. His tunic concealed most of his dagger, but its hilt peeked through the mesh, the stone in the center a polished ruby that, after all these years, had not dulled in shine.
They were the same.
Why were they the same? What were the chances of me entering Cosanus, finding a cavern filled with sleeping fae, only to find an exact replica of the dagger Umma had gifted me at the very start of all this?
It couldn’t be a coincidence. There was something here, something more to this, something that somehow connected me and my dagger to the weapon around the fae’s neck.
This had to be the weapon we were looking for. I was certain of it. I only wondered why Kilian had sent me in here to find it, when I’d had its twin all along. But that was a question I’d have to ask when I saw him again.
I looked down at my watch. Forty minutes had passed.
“Caleb.”
He turned from where he stood, orblight in hand as he peered down at the contents of a long-forgotten serving platter.
“This is it. Come help me take it off.”
“Are you sure?”
Now wasn’t the time to explain to him why I had no doubts this was exactly what we were looking for. “See any other weapons around here?”
“No.” Caleb set the orblight on the table, his hands fluttering around the fae before giving me a lost look.
I huffed a sigh. “Hold out his armor so I can pull the chain free.”
Caleb grimaced as his hands brushed the fae’s tunic, eyes wide with fear and never leaving the male’s face.
There was no clasp to the chain, so it had to be pulled over his head.
This close, I could feel how cold and hard the fae’s skin was.
Like the blood had congealed and solidified in his body, turning his skin to granite.
I tried grasping the chain, but it was as if the links were fused to the fae’s skin. Like it had gotten stuck there as he had solidified.
“What’s going on?” Caleb whispered.
I didn’t dare breathe, not this close. Not when I had smelled the death clinging to the fae. I tried again, but I couldn’t get a grip on the chain.
“Cut it free,” Caleb urged.
I angled my own blade to the fae’s skin, trying to dig the tip beneath it, terror coursing through me all the while.
The silver scraped across flesh turned stone, but there was no way for it to slide beneath the chain unless I sawed through it.
Even then, we didn’t have the time for me to make my way around the entire thing.
Panic bubbled inside of me, cresting into a scream I was too afraid to let loose in the eerie cavern.
Sweat dotted my palms, and it took me a second to realize it wasn’t just because I was overheating with nerves.
My dagger was slowly warming, searing my hand with heat.
The blade turned orange where it met the fae’s skin and I wrenched it away.
It fell to the ground with a thud, sand pluming in its wake.
Caleb jerked backward, his boots knocking the chair behind him.
I didn’t understand what was happening, but Calendula did.
For the first time since I had known her, the shadow sprite swore. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the smallest finger on the fae’s right hand twitch.
There had to be magic imbued in the blade. Because the fae before me had begun to breathe. Ragged, gasping breaths sounded as he sucked in lungfuls of air.
As he breathed, the chain around his neck rustled.
Without thinking, I reached for it again, pulling hard.
It gave way easily this time, the magic seemingly unsticking it from the fae’s neck.
I pulled it over his head even as his hands slowly reached for me, fingers stiff and unbending.
He was sluggish and clumsy, awakening from his slumber, but I doubted it would last for long.
I stepped back quickly, horror eating at my heart.
The fae blinked, onyx leeching into what were once stone-grey eyes. His wings rustled half-heartedly, stirring the dust on the floor. His skin was deathly pale, veins still hard and protruding.
I was frozen in place, my heart thumping against my ribcage like a war drum, so loud I was sure the fae could hear it.
Caleb stood, also immobile, near the edge of the table, his sprite between the dinner plates.
The fae turned his head toward me in a sickeningly slow arch that made the bones in his neck crack.
His lips parted and the low sound he uttered was so primal and throaty that it stirred something in the deepest recesses of my soul.
The next few moments seemed to happen in slow motion.
The fae rotated his wrist, congealed blood squelching as he clenched and unclenched his fingers.
In one swift motion, he whipped his hand out, reaching for Caleb’s woodland sprite.
He grasped the sprite with long fingers and black nails, drawing her toward him.
The fae’s mouth snapped open wide, and his teeth closed around the sprite’s head. There was only the shocking crack of bone and the wet smacking of his lips as the sprite’s head separated from her body, blood and strings of gore pulsing from where her neck used to be.
Caleb let out a shriek of pure terror. Some color had returned to the fae’s skin now, and there was a vibrance in his eyes as they snapped toward Caleb.
The legs of the chair scraped back, and my heart dipped, stopped and restarted all at once when I realized that the fae was rising, bones clicking and snapping from years of disuse.
The neurons in my brain began firing all at once. I snatched my dagger from the ground, sheathing it quickly, and slipped the one I had taken from the fae around my own neck. It fell against my chest with a heavy thud and the fae swiveled his head toward me.
Fuck.
“Run!” I yelled.
Calendula whizzed past me, not needing to be told twice. I didn’t look at the fae, or the remains of the woodland sprite, or even Caleb. I turned on my heel and fucking ran.
I didn’t need to look behind me to know I was being chased.
Wings rustled and scraped along the ground.
The noise the fae emitted was so ancient and malevolent, it made me want to drop to my knees and puke.
His hunger and rage ripped through the cavern, the energy so fierce and powerful.
My legs burned but I continued sprinting, following the curve of the wall until a warm breeze greeted me and I saw the exit, the salt boundary beyond glistening in the moonlight.