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The ferryman cast his eyes to the sky, following the path his pet blight cut through the air. The bird landed upon his shoulder, staring back at him with golden eyes as the ferryman nodded finally.

“We did, but that love will not save her from what the Fates have in store,” he said ominously, turning his back on me to signal the end of the conversation.

He rowed his boat through the doors to the Void, and the blight’s eerie golden stare held mine until the gates closed behind them.

17

Estrella

Three days passed.

Three days of healing, of recovering from the snake’s venom in my veins. The worst of the effects had worn off days prior, but the mental fog and exhaustion lingered. Mab left me in peace, likely knowing exactly what consequences the venom could wreak upon a body. It felt like a test, as if she wanted to see exactly how quickly my body could work through it, but the iron collar at my throat slowed everything to a standstill when Malachi had returned me to my rooms that night.

So I slept, and I slept. Until Mab grew tired of waiting, and Nila arrived to prepare me for the day. The blouse and skirt she selected were far more casual than usual.

Nila and I entered the throne room in the middle of the day, with Malachi at our backs. I’d expected it to be empty save for Mab, but the floor to ceiling windows that bordered the edge of the hall were thrown open, casting the bright light of the sun gleaming off the white sand into the space. Fae I’d never seen worked in tandem, grasping the heavy chains from hooks on the wall and lowering the cages from the ceiling.

The stone floor was now littered with the bodies of Mab’s victims. Other Fae worked to pull what remained of the mangled, rotting corpses from those cages to lay them upon the floor. They worked in near silence, the melancholy of such a task pulsing off each of them in waves.

At the back of the throne room, the tallest Fae I’d ever seen stretched toward the ceiling. He dragged a wet cloth over the stone ceiling, cleaning the dirt from it and leaving the rock lighter somehow. I didn’t want to think about what manner of debris had coated the porous surface, or what I inhaled every time I set foot in the room where Mab held court.

The body of the Fae female was humanoid. A dark sweep of feathered wings covered the back of the blood-red jumpsuit she wore. Her hair was parted down the middle, flowing in silver cascades along the feathers of those great wings as she scrubbed. She spun as if she felt me staring, and her silver eyes glinted maliciously as they landed on me.

I swallowed, staggering forward when Malachi placed a single hand on my shoulder and shoved me forward. “Get to work.”

Nila took my hand, guiding me into the fray, while Malachi lurked by the doors, watching as we moved toward Fallon and Imelda. They were already working to remove Adelphia from the cage that held her remains. Her charred flesh stuck to the metal frame, melted to the ore as if she’d been set on fire right where she hung.

They looked up as I bent forward, leaning into the confines of the cage so that I could pull each strand of hair that remained out of the blood matted to the metal while they worked.

“She decided you needed to be useful in some way too, I suppose?” Fallon asked, breathing through her mouth as she pressed a hand against Adelphia’s charred shoulder andshoved.The burnt flesh crackled, and then it tore from the rest of Adelphia’s body in a strip. Fallon gagged.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, glancing toward Nila, who nodded as she and Imelda worked on the other side of the cage.

Glancing around the throne room as I worked, I shoved aside the stench of rot and decay as I grasped one of the rags from a bucket of water.

Or rather, what had been water at one point. Dark, inky swirls of blood and gore floated within it now, the clarity and pureness of the water itself long gone in the time the Fae here had been at work cleaning.

I started at the top of the greasy cage, trying not to think of the burned fat and flesh and blood that made the surface rough and uneven. The rag was too soft. I pressed into the cage with all the strength in my body, and the metal groaned as it bent, then gave way beneath me.

A gnome appeared at my side, a spiked, bristled brush in his hands. It was almost as large as he was, the spikes as sharp as any weapon the Mist Guard possessed in their armory. He lifted it up for me.

Accepting it from his hands, I smiled down at him and tried not to think of Lozu and his desire to eat me.

I nodded instead of thanking him as I knelt in front of him.

The blood and gore upon the stone stained the chartreuse skirt Nila had dressed me in. The skirt reminded me vaguely of the pea-green dress I’d worn when I’d escaped Mistfell. It seemed so long ago, like I’d been an entirely different person then.

“It is a pleasure, Princess. We watched you,” he said, looking over his shoulder as two other gnomes stepped up behind him. Lozu lingered behind them, his spirit as corporeal as a body despite its translucence as he stared at me beneaththe sweep of his hat across his forehead. “You did not object when you were given work beneath your status. You stepped into the fray like you belong.”

I smiled softly as he approached my knee, hauling himself up onto it so that he could come to stand in my palm. “Only a ruler who does not deserve her people would think that she is better than them.” I stood, allowing him to come to stand upon the cage.

He picked up the rag I’d been using, wiping down the surface with water so that I could follow the path he created and scrub at it with the harsh brush. Bits of burnt flesh scraped from the cage, some dropping to the floor, others flying into my face as I closed my mouth and focused on my work. A gag swelled in my throat, making my tongue feel heavy in my mouth as I fought it back. I would not appear weak—would not seem disgusted by the manner of this work—not when so many in this room had undoubtedly been forced to do worse.

“You must have very different rulers in Nothrek than we have here,” he said.

I considered how well he spoke. Lozu’s language had been stilted at times, his use of it less advanced. As if summoned, the shade of my dungeon companion stepped into the cage with Adelphia’s body. He set to work, picking up the pieces of her that were large enough chunks to be carried out and laying them atop her torso.

“What makes you say that?” I asked, scrubbing each and every one of the bars where they met at the top of the cage. I didn’t want to think of how thick the debris would become when I moved lower, of what might shift or change when we hauled Adelphia’s body out.