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Even in death there’s something about his face that’s haughty, cruel, unconquerable. One look at him and you would’ve thought he’d been the victor of our duel.

I touch my forehead, where my crude bronze circlet sits. I refuse to wear Galleghar’s crown or any other, save this one. It’s a soldier’s crown—simple, unassuming, and most importantly, it doesn’t get in the fucking way if battle breaks out.

I’ve lived too long in the muck to develop a taste for fancy things.

I drop my hand. That last night of Galleghar’s life, the night I killed him, he’d known I’d take his kingdom from him. Even I hadn’t really grasped that. I’d assumed I could come in, finish him off, and disappear into thin air. Ruling had never been a part of my strategy. But even if I weren’t Galleghar’s son, killing kings is how conquerors come to power.

So here I am, reluctant to lead, but even more reluctant to abdicate and let one of Galleghar’s scheming sycophants inherit the throne.

I walk around my father’s body and rub my lower lip with my thumb. I hate that he’s here, lingering in this castle even now. I have no intention of letting him stay, but for the moment, there’s no other place for him to go.

It’s been weeks since I ran him through with my sword, and in all that time his body has failed to decay. The creatures won’t eat it—not the hounds, not the birds, not the fish, not even the monsters that live in the wilds of Memnos. Those were my first attempts to dispose of him—much to the shock and horror of all the haughty nobles. They’re more frightened of me and my barbaric ways than they ever were of my father.

When the creatures wouldn’t consume Galleghar’s body, I tried to bury him, only to have the earth spit him back out. I tried to set his body to sea, but the water refused to take him in. Not even fire would desecrate his flesh; the pyre burned to the ground, and once the last dying embers extinguished, Galleghar was still there, every hair on his head intact.

I study him now, my eyes narrowing. There are only four reasons a body fails to decay: One, the fairy is not dead. Two, a fairy is too powerful to kill. Three, a fairy is too pure of heart to return to the earth. And four, a fairy is so depraved that nature refuses to claim him.

This last reason sounds the most accurate.

My mouth thins as I look at the incorruptible body of Galleghar Nyx. Far above me, the last women of his harem are packing up their things and leaving. Of his hundreds of concubines—and by the end, there were hundreds—dozens upon dozens mourned his loss, some even going so far as to be openly hostile to me. He killed their children and yet they mourned him. I can’t wrap my mind around that.

Their living quarters will be converted into a weapons room, a library, and guest suites. All vestiges of the rooms’ previous use will be wiped away. It’s the least I can do to honor my mother’s memory.

And that’s what this all really comes down to: I killed Galleghar because he took the one person I’d ever loved from me. I’d called it justice, but this doesn’t feel like justice; my mother is still dead, I’m still alone, and this emptiness inside me is still there.

I give the Shadow King a final look. So many things I still have to say to him. So many ways I still want to hurt him.

I’ll never get the chance.

I grab his body and toss him over my shoulder. No matter. The king is dead, and tonight will be the last night Galleghar Nyx will haunt these halls.

220 years ago

It takes severalhours to arrive in the Banished Lands. This barren, craggy wasteland is the one area of the Otherworld that’s ruled by none of the main kingdoms. If you committed some great sin and managed to avoid a death sentence, chances are you’ll be banished here, which for most fairies is about the same as a death sentence.

An open plain of sunbaked earth stretches out around me, devoid of life. The flat, arid landscape is only broken up by the steep, rocky cliffs that border me on either side.

It’s not simply that this place is empty of life. It’s that magic itself has been razed from the land.

Most of the Otherworld is steeped in power. It’s in the air, the water, the plants and animals—in the very earth itself. And it’s that power that gives us life

The story behind the Banished Lands is that, long ago, when the pantheon of gods came to rule the Otherworld, Oberon and Titania, the Mother and the Father, were the first to discover magic. It lay in the wild fields and the shining sea. It cast itself wide with the night and blossomed with the dawn of each day.

They found that they could strengthen themselves by drinking deep off the land, and so they did. The Mother and the Father, realizing the hearts of fairies always hungered, sought to temper their fellows’ appetites, and so they gave each god domain over one aspect of the Otherworld—night, day, land, sea, plants, animals, love, war, death. On and on the power was sectioned off and bequeathed until all had a little. Each god could draw power from the aspect they ruled, and from it alone. Only Oberon and Titania could draw magic from everything.

But fairiesarehungry creatures, especially godly ones, and not so long after they were given the gift of magic, many of the lesser gods rose up against Oberon and Titania. A great battle was fought between these titans here in this part of the Otherworld. The gods stole magic from the air, from the earth, from the plants and animals that roamed the land. They pulled it from the streams and spun it from the stars and the shadows. All of this to fuel their monstrous power.

In the end, the Mother and the Father defeated their enemies and slaughtered them where they stood. But the damage had already been done. The land had been so overdrawn of its resources that it became magically barren. No amount of time and no amount of restorative magic could undo the damage.

And so the Banished Lands came to be.

Even the mortal world has more magic than this place. It’s every fairy’s nightmare. To be cut off from the sustenance that keeps us going … it can drive a fae insane.

Ahead of me, a cluster of rocks mark my destination. I stride to them, my father’s body still slumped over my shoulder.

I use my magic to roll away the largest of the boulders. Beneath it, a hole gapes in the earth. I drop down into it, lighting the cavern up with a bit more of my power. The fey lights I cast glow weakly as the land wrings out my magic and dries it up. Everything here takes a little more power for a little less payout.

The subterranean room I enter is nothing more than a pit carved from the earth, and the great king’s sarcophagus is merely a boulder crudely carved into a lidded casket. Using my power, I remove the lid, and then I dump my father into the stone coffin.