Cassiel
It has been four months since my brother died, and still my mother sleeps. The healers can come up with no reason for her condition. Her wounds have long since healed, but still, she does not wake.
I suspect that she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to wake to a world without Evander in it.
I don’t blame her.
But I wake to that world every day. I wake and remember the sound of his last breath. The way I called his name over and over until the cold of it sank in and stayed there. I couldn’t see his face. I only felt the warmth leave him.
And smelled his burning flesh.
My dreams sometimes come to me in images, conjuring what I couldn’t see. His pale face, the pool of blood beneath him, the light leaving his eyes. His empty body. Other times, I’m locked into sensation so swollen it feels like I’m suffocating in it.
After his funeral, when it became clear that Mother wouldn’t wake any time soon, when I was formally appointed regent, I led a group of knights into the Duskfen forest and attempted to burn the whole thing down.
It was a wild, reckless attempt. A child’s tantrum, drunk on power. I meant to burn the Duskfen to ash. Every tree. Every shadow. Every cursed creature hiding beneath the moss and twilight.
But the forest would not burn.
The flames turned to smoke. The smoke turned to mist. The mist swallowed itself and then us, and the trees remained. Watching. Waiting. I’d heard it said before that the Duskfen was a living thing, a beast not to be trifled with. I’d not understood fully until then.
I suppose I should be grateful that it didn’t retaliate. Sometimes, the roots will rearrange themselves, ensnaring us or trapping our path, but it rarely attacks, and when it does, there’s often a fey nearby manipulating it.
We hunt them one by one. It’s a slow tactic, but it will work.
The fey can’t reproduce like we can. Whether it takes ten years or a hundred, we can wipe them from this world.
Since I’ve taken over as regent, I’ve offered heavy rewards for information leading to the capture of a fey.
It hasn’t worked as well as I’d hoped. The fey are cunning, after all.
They can disguise themselves, blend into shadow.
They can retreat into their fortress of a forest.
But we can follow them there.
A branch cracks ahead of us. Robin pauses, sniffing the air. He growls low in his throat, too low for anyone else to notice. He knows not to whisper a loud alert. I pat his head, letting him know to be quiet.
No one else in the party notices. I tap out a signal on my left to Dain, letting him know what I’ve heard.
He passes it to everyone else. At least, I hope he does.
A downside to being blind means having to rely on different forms of communication, and trusting Dain to translate my taps into hand signals.
Three ahead.
I exhale slowly, shifting my weight. The Duskfen groans beneath our boots, old roots flexing like breath. Somewhere in the moss-heavy dark ahead is the tell-tale hiss of something drawing a blade.
They’re close.
I lower my hand to the pouches at my belt. There are three of them—one leather, one silk, one velvet. Each houses a very different concoction that I can’t afford to mix up, provided by the castle alchemist. My most used is sightsever.
The irony is not lost on me.
The fey move first. A whisper of air to my left. An arrow.
Dain’s sharp whistle cuts through the forest. Down.
I drop and roll. The arrow thuds into bark behind me. Robin launches forward, snarling. My fingers dive into the velvet pouch. I grab a handful of powder and fling it into the air. For everyone else, the glade is swamped in darkness.
But not for me. My world is already dark.
The air shifts. Our enemies stumble and curse. One cries out as their footing slips. Another shouts for a name that isn’t answered.
My knights know how to fight in the dark. They’ve trained with me.
And I don’t need my sight to attack.
Robin barks at my left. I pivot. A step forward, then a stab, low and fast. I strike something soft, and it folds with a breathless gasp.
Another moves behind me. I spin, duck beneath a swipe, and elbow hard into a gut.
My gloved hand slides to the second pouch—silk—and I fling powder in my opponent’s face.
A scream. They claw at their eyes.
One of the attackers breaks away from the group. I don’t think anyone else notices. Heavy breathing sounds not far off as they scramble through the undergrowth.
Oh no, you don’t.
I give chase, Robin quick at my heels. It’s a bad idea to follow my opponent, but I have enough powder to blind him again as soon as I reach him. My sword acts as a cane. Robin barks whenever there’s an obstacle—
Another whistle: duck.
I can’t hear Dain anywhere, but I don’t stop to question his whereabouts. I drop to the floor just as something sails overhead. It hits the tree behind me with a thud. The fleeing fey’s steps thrash through the undergrowth ahead.
Robin lunges forward again, and I run. My boots splash through a shallow mire, the stink of rot clawing at my nose. The air here is thicker, wet in my lungs. My foe pants ahead, branches whipping past as he shoulders through.
The Duskfen shifts underfoot, roots rising and settling like the spine of some enormous beast. For a moment, I imagine that they’re parting for me, but that can’t be right. I tried to burn it. The forest would never aid me.
I close the gap between me and my enemy.
He must sense me. There’s a sharp intake of breath, followed by a hiss of steel. A slash whistles towards my ribs. I twist, cold metal grazing across my leathers. My sword comes up, striking his blade. The jolt shivers up my arm.
We circle. His breathing is ragged; mine is measured.
He strikes again, hard and fast, but he’s clumsy—running has spent his strength, or possibly someone else has managed to wound him.
I can’t tell, and it doesn’t matter. I can sense his waning energy in every blow, every ragged breath.
I block, pivot, let the movement carry me behind him, and slash low.
He cries out. He staggers, but he doesn’t drop, despite the smell of blood mingling with the mud.
His teeth grit together before the next attack comes. This time, I let him push me back a step, feigning weakness. He bites at the bait, charging, and I slide inside his guard. My blade finds the gap between ribs.
His breath leaves in a soft, surprised sound.
I hold him up as his knees buckle.
“Where is she?” My voice is low, but the demand cuts through the thick air. “The fey called Serawen—do you know where she is?”
He laughs, wet and broken, the sound rattling in his chest. The scent of blood sharpens. There’s so much of it, now.
“If the forest knows, it hasn’t told us,” he spits, which is a fey answer if there ever was one. It tells me nothing.
I twist the blade deeper. He cries out again. He sounds young. Younger than me, even, although they can look and sound however they wish. “Where is she?” I hiss again.
“The forest can have her,” he chokes back. “For we will not. She is no friend of ours.”
He sags against me, his body turning boneless. I let him fall. Robin growls once, low, before falling silent.
I draw back my blade and wipe it on his clothes. Robin comes forward to press his wet nose to my cheek. I remove my gloves to pet him, stuffing them into my pockets.
“Good boy,” I whisper. “You did well.”
I check the sword as best I can for blood before sheathing it. Dain finds me a moment later. He takes a moment to assess the scene.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“Yes,” I tell him. “Any injuries?”
“Nothing serious,” he reports, stooping to pet the dog. “Did he tell you anything about—”
“Nothing,” I answer, perhaps too quickly. It’s better than lingering on the taste of frustration. No one seems to know where she is. He’s the first to know her, though.
The first to declare her an enemy.
Dain’s silence stretches. “Are you sure that you’re—”
“I’m fine,” I snap.
Dain breathes the quietest of sighs. “Very well, Your Excellency,” he says.
Your Excellency. It’s an address I’m still not used to, one that was never meant to be mine. I’m the Regent. No longer a prince. Not quite a king.
I never, ever want to be king. I was never supposed to be.
Evander was.
We trudge back towards the rest of the knights. “Thanks for your assistance, earlier,” I mumble, wanting to say something to ease the tension. “The second duck was much appreciated.”
Dain pauses. “I only whistled ‘down’ once.”
I almost miss a step.
“Sire?”
I freeze in place, the Duskfen shifting around me, roots rippling softly in the undergrowth. I wait for something. A soft-footed step, the scent of wildflowers, an inhale of breath I’ve mapped to my mind.
There’s nothing. She’s not here.
It must have simply been one of the other knights. Most of them know our signals by now.
Who else could it possibly have been?