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I blinked, confused.

Then I realized—I still held her blades. They dripped with a mix of thin red human blood and the black death that had poured from him. But she took them nonetheless. I understood completely her need to be armed in that moment.

“No magic like that exists in the kingdom of the elemental fae,” Veyka said, staring at her blades. The question in her words was clear.

“None that I’ve seen in the terrestrial kingdom, either,” I said.

“Then where?”

“There are other places… other continents beyond Annwyn,” I said carefully. Places I’d done battle. Places forgotten to time. “But I’ve never seen this.”

“The humans think we are wreaking a plague upon them, is that…” Veyka’s voice shook. “Is that why they killed Arthur?”

“It is possible.” Because it was. It seemed unlikely—how could the humans have gotten to Annwyn, into the goldstone palace, without magic? Without fae help?

“The mountain rift,” Veyka said softly.

I settled the axe back into my belt, trying to find normalcy. “What of it?”

“There is no mountain rift.”

My head snapped up.

Veyka was staring at the decimated human body. “The rifts to the human world are known, protected. There are none in the mountains surrounding Baylaur—at least, there are not supposed to be.”

“The Shadows,” I said, realizing even as Veyka was nodding.

“That’s how they are smuggling humans in. The human in the ravine… we must have been close. He must have passed through the rift in the mountains.” Veyka’s eyes were clearing, the shock of the human’s grotesque death giving way to calculation. “Whoever is behind Arthur’s death knew about the rift in the mountains. They knew how to get the humans through undetected.”

“What about,” I paused, gesturing to the otherworldly tableau. “This?”

Veyka chewed her bottom lip. Any other time, I might have been inflamed. But the expression on her face summoned something else instead—worry.

“This is a human problem,” she said icily. “I am the Queen of the Elemental Fae. I do not care what happens to them.”

The mask of cold hate was firmly back in place as she shouldered past me. “Let’s clean this up. I don’t need anyone else finding out about the human treachery until I am ready.”

45

VEYKA

I was shaken.

Stubborn as I was, even I could admit it to myself.

The human’s death, while gruesome, was not the cause of my nightmares. I’d endured terrible things before, and I was beginning to suspect that I would again before this was all over, my vengeance satisfied.

What startled me awake at night was the enormity of it.

Arthur’s death. The secret mountain rift. The darkness haunting the human lands. I insisted to Arran that I did not care about what happened in the human realm. And mostly, that was true. They could rot in that disgusting bile, each and every one of them, for what they’d done to my brother. But if that darkness came to Annwyn…

I stuffed the thought down. I didn’t have time for it. Mabon crept closer and closer, and I had not yet found Arthur’s killer. I could not afford to wait for things to unfold; it was time to force them forward.

Which was how I found myself in a library, of all places.

I didn’t mind books, really. But they were a luxury. They couldn’t stop a blade. They couldn’t keep me alive. They couldn’t protect me from my mother and her schemes to somehow imbue me with a magic that didn’t exist.

I’d learned swordplay so I could slaughter the monster she brought to the water gardens. I taught myself to wield the daggers, hidden behind the crashing of the waterfalls, so that when the chance came, I’d be able to punish her. So that one day, I’d be strong enough to defend myself.