Page 14 of The Crown of the Last Fae Queen (The Heartless and the Wicked #4)

EIGHT – KOLFINNA

Kolfinna awoke to the wind blowing against her face with such strength that she thought she was falling through the sky.

A scream ripped from her throat as her eyes flew open.

The sky was an ugly gray color, the air thick with moisture and fog, and the winds unrelenting and frosty.

Her limbs flailed out, her body being swept away with the powerful gusts.

She tried grasping for something, her mana, anything, but it was like she was stuck. It was only once the initial panic fizzled away that she realized she wasn’t spiraling down to her death. Her body bobbed up and down to a wild rhythm.

She turned her head to the right, then to the left—the skies were all around her, open and wide and free.

Thousands of fae and elves atop drekis flew beside her.

A shock rippled through her. She was on top of a dreki, but unlike the other riders, she was tightly bound in shadowed magic.

She tried wriggling free, but her whole body, save her face, was constrained in magic.

“Finally awake?”

A purple-eyed elf peered over her shoulder at Kolfinna, her long, braided white hair whipping this way and that with the violent winds.

. She sat just a foot away from Kolfinna.

Her ears, like the rest of the army’s, were pointed, and beautiful moss- colored gems clustered along the shell of one.

She was in her early twenties, and unlike the others who wore stoic expressions, she had a wide, easy grin on her face.

“It must be a shock to wake up like this,” she shouted, her voice nearly fading in the ripping winds.

She held onto one of the horned spikes of the dreki, her thighs hugging the beast tightly, and a metal harness keeping her in place.

The other elves, Kolfinna noticed, used their shadowy magic as a harness to the scaled beast.

“Can you unbind me?” Kolfinna tried worming out of the shadowy magic—she hated the grimy cold-and-warm feeling of the shadows and how it drained her own mana—but with a powerful flap of the dreki’s wings as they turned, she froze and thought better of it.

She certainly didn’t want to plummet to her death.

The elf laughed and if it wasn’t for her shaking body, Kolfinna would have missed it. “It’s not my magic,” the woman said loudly. “So I can’t take it off even if I wanted to. But … here .”

The woman grabbed Kolfinna’s shoulder with one hand and yanked her up into a sitting position. The shadows shifted to allow her to move into that position, the wisps harnessing her in place.

The winds blew through Kolfinna’s black and white hair, sending it whipping over her face and shoulders, tangling easily. She tried pushing it away from her face, but the shadows binding her didn’t allow her to.

“There. I suppose that’s easier than lying down, huh?” The elf’s ruddy, wind-chapped cheeks rose as she grinned again, her gleaming teeth slightly crooked. She turned back to stare ahead and steer the dreki, her long braid continuing to lash from side to side.

Kolfinna wasn’t accustomed to the elves or fae speaking to her; they usually cast strange, dark looks her way whenever they saw her, or they simply ignored her existence—they probably didn’t know what to think of her—but this woman seemed different.

She was actually talking to her, laughing with her, smiling .

Kolfinna hadn’t even realized how much she had missed this—an amiable conversation.

It almost made her forget that they were enemies.

She reminded Kolfinna of Eyfura, somehow. They both had a vibrant energy about them. The kind that pulled people closer.

“What’s your name?” Kolfinna asked, glancing between the woman the other riders soaring through the sky.

“Astrid, Your Highness.”

Kolfinna prickled at the title. “I am not royalty?—”

“You are, Your Highness. You’re the daughter of our queen and our commander!

” Astrid threw her another grin over her shoulder, and then shifted the reins so the giant beast turned with the rest of the pack.

She then pointed at a mountain in the distance.

“See that? I used to fly over that every day on my way to the academy when I was younger! Strange, isn’t it?

Even though centuries have passed, some parts of our kingdom remain! ”

She was shouting so she could be heard past the winds, Kolfinna was sure, but even if she had whispered it, Kolfinna would have recognized the barely suppressed pain in her voice.

A shiver ran down her spine as she stared down at the scenery.

At the mountains scraping the sky, the hills of vibrant green and yellow, the tiny houses populating the outskirts of villages. Nausea rolled over her.

“Wait—you said you flew?” Kolfinna asked. “Like, on a dreki?”

Astrid didn’t turn around, her back stiffening. “No.”

“Oh? Then …” The question hung in the air for a while.

Kolfinna could see that the elf didn’t have a pair of wings—elves didn’t have wings unless they were mixed with fae, and even then, not all of them did; Rakel didn’t have wings even though she was part fae too.

This woman was clearly elf, wasn’t she? The white hair and the no wings gave that away, but her eyes … her eyes were fae.

“Are you part fae?” Kolfinna asked.

“No, I’m fully fae.”

“But your hair?—”

“I don’t know why my hair is white, but both my parents were fae.

My grandparents were fae, and as far as anyone else knows, my family has always been fae.

” There was a hardness to her voice that Kolfinna hadn’t expected.

The edge of a warrior. Gone were all the smiles and friendliness. It was probably better this way.

She was probably in denial, Kolfinna realized, thinking back to Rakel’s words.

Elves are seen as lesser beings than the fae, so most half-elves hate to be seen as half-elf, and would rather be seen as mostly -fae.

Maybe Astrid’s parents were mostly fae, but some drops of elf blood had passed down to Astrid and caused her to have white hair.

That was the only thing that made sense.

At least to Kolfinna’s limited knowledge on fae and elves.

But she was wingless, and the way she wasn’t using shadow magic to remain on the dreki told Kolfinna that she didn’t have elf powers.

“Did you …” An unease rippled through the tense air. “Did you lose your wings?”

Astrid didn’t say anything, but Kolfinna noticed the way her shoulders grew taut. She remembered that Revna hadn’t had wings either, but hers had been cut off during the war, or so she said.

“Losing your wings is a great dishonor,” Astrid said after a moment of prolonged silence.

When she looked over her shoulder at Kolfinna, her expression was tight.

“A great, great dishonor. And a great … shame. The humans knew that.” She quickly turned away.

“They are evil creatures, Princess. I don’t know why you—” Her voice cut off with emotion and she didn’t speak after that.

Kolfinna’s stomach clenched tightly. The humans had … tortured Astrid, hadn’t they? Chopped her wings off since they knew they meant so much to her. The thought sickened Kolfinna, and yet … she wanted to tell her that the current humans were different.

But as if on cue, her own back tingled and her body trembled.

Hilda had tortured her the same as those ancient humans, and she knew the Hunters would do the same if they knew about the fae’s wings.

Even if she wished that they were different, she knew that the humans of today were the same as the humans of yesterday.

But the fae and elves weren’t great people either, a small voice whispered in the back of her head. They did terrible things too. They had almost killed Blár. They wanted to enslave the humans. They wanted to eradicate the whole race.

It was better for the fae if the humans won this war. They wouldn’t oppress her or her people.

She furled her hands together through the shadow bindings. She forced herself to remember Blár, Inkeri, Ivar, Herja, Gunnar, Eluf, Eyfura, Nollar, Fenris, Magni … All the people she had met who had been good to her. Who stood by her side to protect her. Who would fight with her.

They weren’t bad people.

She wanted to tell Astrid that there were good people among the humans, but … she couldn’t. Something stopped her.

She pushed those dark, perturbed thoughts away. She didn’t want to sympathize with the enemy, and yet she couldn’t help but feel sorry for the white-haired fae girl.

The army rode through the sky until the sun began to wane, then they dismounted in a forest clearing and made camp.

The entire time, Kolfinna was bound by shadows and stuck beside the dreki she had ridden on with Astrid.

The other fae and elves set up tents, led their drekis to the river to drink, and began preparing food.

“I really don’t think I need to be bound like this,” Kolfinna grumbled, trying to inch away from the dreki as it stretched its long, serpentine body.

She could feel the energy from the trees, the grass, and the nearby plants, and that calmed her, but she could also feel Vidar’s oppressive mana thick in the air—a reminder that he was nearby, and that escape was futile.

“What if this creature steps on me? Or worse …” She pointedly stared at the creature’s backside.

“Are you worried it’ll poop on you?” Astrid grinned as she dragged a barrel of dead chickens—with the skins, feathers, and everything still intact—and placed it in front of the dreki, which snapped forward as soon as it could.

She wiped the blood off her hands with a handkerchief and backed away from the feasting beast. “Don’t worry, we can toss you in the nearby river and you’ll be as good as new. ”

That wasn’t exactly what Kolfinna wanted to hear. She leaned as far away from the dreki as possible, a frown tugging down on her lips as bits of chicken flew from its chomping mouth. “I promise I won’t?—”