Page 6

CHAPTER SIX

T HE MORNING LIGHT ON MY WINGS felt glorious. I was thankful for the flight to clear my mind. Aralinth glinted in the distance, the giant leaves of Sil’abar came to life with the same auric glow of the Burning Mountains I had already flown over.

I dove for the center of the tree, transforming mid-dive and landing on the top of the giant Elder birch. I stood and let the cool morning breeze brush across my face as I looked out at the city of eternal spring.

I had thought the city beautiful before magic had returned. The flowery canopies that had hung over the alleyways were now so lush and thick they covered every roof and wall in blooms that had not existed before the revival.

Soft pastels smelled of honey, and vibrant jewel tones carried thick, seductive aromas I recognized from Nikolai’s prized perfume collection.

I pressed my hand to a thin line in the peeling bark of the trunk. It opened without hesitation, pulling back like a gutted stag to reveal the palace inside. I dropped through the roof and landed on my knee.

Rheih sniffed. “Maybe you should spend more time showering and using the door instead of dropping in through the roof.”

I raised a brow. Her own grayed curls were matted with twigs and leaves from that morning’s harvest. I wasn’t sure the Mage had slept since the return, too many new plants and herbs for her to catalog, but there was no redness in her yellow catlike eyes.

She continued to mutter insults at me as we walked to the end of the hall where the others were waiting.

Feron stood at the far side of the circular room. His hands were pressed to Gerarda’s temples. Her eyes unfocused and her jaw went slack. Feron was watching her memory, seeing the waateyshir for himself.

He dropped his hands and turned to me. “It is as you expected.” He signed what he had witnessed for Darythir, who reeled back in her chair.

She shook her head, annoyed, and signed something too quickly for me to follow. Myrrah tugged on Feron’s purple robe. His long twists swayed behind him as he translated for both of us.

“Show them.” I nodded to Myrrah and Darythir. Vrail poked her head from a tower of books sitting on the table and my chest heated with delight. Her skin was sallow and dry, and the dark circles under her eyes looked like bruises, but she was here.

I looked for Syrra but Elaran shook her head.

She hadn’t come.

The three joined hands as Feron projected the memory for them to see. Darythir’s face drained of its warmth.

“It destroyed the entire city.” I recounted what I had seen flying over Silstra that morning. Everything was a burnt ruin, though no smoke fanned in the breeze, just sickening ash.

Myrrah turned her chair to face the entire room. “Why would they reappear now?” She looked at Feron but he only shrugged.

“The waateyshirak were defeated well before I was born. Thousands and thousands of years before.” Feron sat on the edge of the chair he’d crafted with his magic and rested his hand on his cane. “Our histories say that the niinokwenar and the Elves had killed the last of them well before Kieran’thara and Ara’linthir gave birth to the first generation of Dark and Light Fae, as you call them.”

“It must be connected to the resurgence of magic.” Gerarda stood beside Elaran’s chair. “That is too big of a coincidence otherwise.”

Vrail shook her head so violently I thought she would make herself sick. “That isn’t possible. From everything the other Elverin and Rheih have cataloged, breaking the seals only restored the magic that existed when the Light Fae created the siphons. There is no evidence that the return of stored magic was strong enough to bring a creature from millennia ago out of extinction.”

All the enthusiastic joy Vrail usually had when explaining something was gone. Her words were hollow and monotone, and there was no life in her apart from her bouncing leg.

Feron considered her answer. “It is strange that the waateyshirak are the only foes of our past to resurface. There are other creatures in our histories that have not returned.”

“Not yet,” Myrrah huffed. “Perhaps they will join …” She stumbled on the Elvish word for the shadowy beast and came up with a translation in the King’s Tongue. “These Dark Ones.”

I bit my cheek and slumped into an empty chair. Vrail was right, this was too much of a coincidence. Just while the Elverin were preparing to vanquish their enemy to the east, a lethal one from their past returned?

“What if it isn’t a coincidence?” I sat up, leaning on the table’s edge. “What if Kairn did something to that last seal?”

Vrail’s brow creased. “A catalyst?”

I nodded. “He stabbed a blade into the seal before I broke it. It was black and laced with something. I had figured it was poison to harm me but—”

“There was a flash of black smoke when the seal broke.” Gerarda flipped her knife through her fingers as she addressed Feron. “I witnessed her break each of the other seals, but that had never happened before.”

Someone moved against the wall. “Even Damien would know that bringing back the waateyshirak would be a death sentence for the entire continent.”

My body froze at the sound of Riven’s voice. I didn’t move as he stepped to take the chair beside me. Everyone else in the room was silent, waiting for one of us to make the first move.

Except for Rheih.

“Are his eyes green?” she whispered loudly to Gerarda.

“I don’t think underestimating Damien any more than we already have is a good idea,” I said coolly over my shoulder.

Riven’s jaw pulsed. It might have taken me a few short weeks to realize that Damien knew about the seals and his father’s connection to the magic of Elverath, but it was Riven who was too confident his own brother didn’t know his secret. And Riven allowed Damien to use that knowledge to fracture our forces so completely the crevice between us was deeper than the Rift itself.

“If this was Damien’s doing, then he knows something that we don’t.” Gerarda perched on the armrest of Elaran’s chair.

I looked to Vrail. “What do you know about the waateyshirak ? How do we fight them? How many were there in Faelin’s time?”

Vrail gave a half-hearted shrug. “Very little.” She pointed at the dozens of books in front of her. “There are brief mentions in these texts, but so much of that knowledge was lost in the Blood Purges. Aemon targeted our scrolls as much as he did the Elverin.”

My skin itched underneath my tunic. Feron and some of the other Elverin were thousands of years old; had they not read anything useful in the time before Aemon’s reign? I turned to him, but he merely shook his head, reading my thoughts.

“All I ever knew were stories.” The faelight cast a silvery glow along the top of Feron’s dark cheekbones. “The Elves had learned to protect themselves against the waateyshirak .” He waved his hand and an image appeared across my mind. From the gasps in the room, I knew everyone else was seeing the vision too. A terrifying shadow of a beast flew over the city of Myrelinth. Every burl was dark, the entire city quiet as the beast flew overhead and a spout of fiery light blasted in the distance. “The waateyshirak use their scent and hearing to hunt more than their eyes. They can see movement but not details. The Elves took refuge in Myrelinth because the plant life masked their scent. They formed patrols to warn the citizens before the beasts approached.”

“The fire was a distraction.” Elaran toyed with the gold weapon holding up her curls and laid her head on Gerarda’s lap. The ease of their closeness made the distance between me and Riven feel like an ocean.

“Yes.” Feron nodded. “It was a useful tool to keep the cities safe while the waateyshirak were in their frenzy.”

“Frenzy?”

Vrail’s leg started bouncing again, though she didn’t look at me while she spoke. Her dark eyes just stared out at nothing; she had left part of herself in that library. “The creatures were only active one year for every century. But that year would be chaos, constant attacks all over Elverath, and as the year dragged on the creatures only got larger and more deadly. The Elves named it bii’agar niibe giizir —the year of the sleeping sun—because most would reverse their habits to sleeping during the daylight hours so they could be alert all night long.”

I leaned forward. “They can only attack at night?”

Vrail nodded, still not looking at me. “Faelin created the second sun to make the nights shorter than they were before. Sunlight is the only true enemy of a waateyshir .”

Feron leaned on the top of his cane from his seat. “The shortened nights made it harder for the waateyshirak to breed. They grew weaker and their numbers began to dwindle as Faelin led attacks into their nests.” Feron’s full lips fell into a shallow frown. “Her gifts started to wane after she forged the second sun. She faded from the world completely only a few thousand years afterward. But she was a brilliant warrior. She used what was left of her gifts to battle the waateyshirak until they were vanquished. And then she was gone.”

“Not just her gifts,” Vrail interjected. “Faelin’s main weapon was her sword.”

“Yes.” Feron smiled. “Her blade was said to have speared the heart of many waateyshirak .”

“They have hearts?” Myrrah crossed her arms. “They look to be made of shadow and smoke more than anything else.”

“They do.” I nodded. “I saw it.”

Riven snapped his head to me, his eyes wide with worry as if the beast was flying over our heads at that very moment.

I ignored him and spoke to Myrrah. “When I was leading it away from the Halflings, I flew under its wing. The shadows move and shift like watery feathers, but underneath is a red light. It pulsed bright red the moment before it attacked.”

“So we spear it through the heart with a blade?” Gerarda tossed her knife into the air and caught it through the hole in its hilt with her ring finger. “Easy enough.”

I scoffed. “Are you volunteering, Gerarda?”

“Scared, Keera?” she replied with a devilish smile.

Riven clenched his armrest.

“You can’t use just any blade.” Vrail sighed and leaned on the table. “Faelin’s sword was blood-bound and so were the other warriors’ from Niikir’na .”

Feron cleared his throat. “We are not alone,” he whispered. “Come in.”

The wall split immediately with his command. Gwyn and Fyrel stood, the latter’s hand still lifted as if she were about to knock.

Gwyn’s eyes sparkled with delight. “There is a message from the scouts.” She ran a burnt piece of parchment over to me. “The waateyshir was spotted making its nest in the north.”

Feron took no offense as I read the letter instead of him.

I confirmed the message and slid it across the table for the Elders to read for themselves. “Are the Halflings settling in?” I raised a brow at both of them. They’d had orders to stay in Myrelinth.

Fryel’s cheeks burned bright red, but Gwyn grabbed her wrist and shoved the girl behind her. “They were tired and went to sleep in one of the dormitories in the lower city.”

I narrowed my eyes. There was something suspicious in Gwyn’s tone, but I didn’t have the energy to infer what it was. There were more pressing matters at hand.

“Good job, both of you.” I nodded in the direction of the door. “Make sure they have food and clothes waiting for them when they wake. Get the other Shades to help you.”

Fyrel nodded, but Gwyn glanced around the room.

“Now,” I pushed. They stepped back slowly. “I’ll come check on you soon.”

I waited for Feron to close the doors before I turned back to the group. “The spearing is going to have to wait.” I took a deep breath and explained everything that had happened in Silstra. The way my magic had been connected to every living thing in Elverath and the undeniable coldness I felt when Victoria had been killed. “It was too powerful a feeling. I would know if something like that had happened since Elvera.”

Riven turned in his seat, his back straight like he was made of stone. “You think you would have felt it if Nik had died?”

“I know I would have.”

Riven’s eyes were misted with hope. “Can you use it to track him?”

“That had been my plan.” I turned to Feron. “To ask you to train me.”

Feron nodded without hesitation. Then his brows furrowed. “‘Had been’ your plan?”

“Dynara has been planning a ball as part of her ruse to get the courtesans and Halflings out of Cereliath.” I crossed my arms. “Of course, it’s being hosted by the new mistress of the House of Harvest. A celebration in honor of the new king.” My lip curled around Damien’s title. “Dynara is certain that Damien will not attend but send an emissary in his stead. She has already begun pulling strings to make sure it serves us best.”

Riven stilled beside me. “Who does she think will serve as emissary?”

“Kairn.”

“Damien could be expecting a ruse.” Riven shook his head. “He could kill Nik out of spite in the meantime. Kairn might not show. Waiting for a ball is leaving him too long.”

“What better chance do we have?” I turned to Feron. “Even if we trained every hour, it would take me months to be able to find someone across an entire continent. If it’s even possible.”

Riven crossed his arms. “There’s no guarantee that we could get Kairn to talk even if we captured him.”

“I could get the man to talk.” Myrrah cracked her knuckles. “Don’t worry about that.”

I stood. “We don’t need to get him to tell us anything at all.” I looked at Feron. “Do we?”

Feron leaned back in his chair. His shoulders rose as he realized what I was asking of him. He could pluck every memory Kairn had of Nikolai from his mind without a bead of sweat wetting his brow. But I knew Feron didn’t like to tamper with minds that had not let him in.

Eventually he met my gaze and nodded. “I will get you what you need.”

“And the waateyshir ?” Vrail asked. “It could attack throughout the night.”

“We will set our schedules just as the Elves used to.” Darythir nodded with me as Feron interpreted for her. “We sleep through the day in both cities. We have scouts through the Faeland and along the borders to keep watch on its location. Vrail, you work with Gerarda and Elaran to prep the scouts with whatever they will need. Myrrah and the Shades will help break the news as gently as we can to the rest of the Elverin.”

Elaran lifted her head. “Why don’t we just hunt the beast and end this now?”

Riven answered for me. “Because it might not attack us.” There was an unmistakable edge of hope in his words.

“Exactly.” I nodded. “If Damien was the heart of this problem, let him deal with it. At the very least it may end up being distracting enough that we escape Cereliath unscathed, with all the Halflings and Kairn in tow.”

“And what about the Halflings still in the kingdom?” Myrrah’s voice was hard. “What if they are attacked in the middle of the night?”

My throat burned but I swallowed it down. “We always knew we wouldn’t save everyone. Splitting our focus will only get more of us killed.” I walked toward the door. “We’ll meet tomorrow to discuss specifics. Today we need to secure the cities.”

Riven followed me like a shadow and grabbed my arm. “We need to talk.”

I pulled myself free and shook my head. “We needed to talk three weeks ago.”