Page 16

I pretend not to notice the way my hand shakes as I reach out, snatch my own goblet off the table, and lift the wine to my lips. It is finer than anything I’ve ever consumed, but as I swallow deeply, all I can taste is my own terror.

At what he said.

At what it means for me.

It will crack your mind like the shell of an egg…

“You need a guardian,” he says softly. Eyes on my throat, watching me swallow. Eyes on my fingers, white tipped with tension. Eyes on my shoulders, cowed in with dread.

I force them straight against the back of the chair and lift my chin in frail defiance. “Perhaps I already have one.”

“Who? Pendefyre? ” His scoff is dark. “Pendefyre is no guardian. Not for someone like you.”

“He has kept me alive so far.”

“Oh, he can keep you safe from clearly marked enemies. From hideous monsters and hungry beasts,” he acquiesces. “But can he keep you safe from yourself?”

Everything that makes you who you are will spill out onto the pavestones of your skull…

“That’s what I thought,” he murmurs, reading the fear in my expression as easily as one might the page of a novel.

My mouth snaps shut with a soft click. I did not realize it had fallen open. I cannot seem to formulate a word, to corral my scattered thoughts into anything coherent.

“You need more than some fierce warrior on the battlefield. You need someone to teach you how to wield that power you carry within you. How to channel it without letting it crush you completely. The biggest threat you will ever face, the toughest battle you will ever fight, is against your own limits.” He pauses. “You have only begun to scratch the surface of who you are, little wind weaver. Of what you are. Of what you will become.”

“And whom do you suggest for this illustrious role of guardianship?” I ask shakily, swallowing against the emotions clogging my airway. “Let me guess: you .”

“Mmm. Much as I’d revel in the opportunity to rile Pendefyre”—his smirk is wry—“I refuse to get involved with another doomed attempt at overturning fate. If he insists on trying to remedy the past in some vain attempt to assuage his guilt, that’s his prerogative. Not mine.”

“His guilt? Guilt over what?”

He laughs—actually laughs, head thrown back, the sound ringing across the terrace like the boom of a cannon. When his eyes return to mine, they hold no mirth but rather that same gleaming, predatory light I remember so well from our first encounter.

“Poor little skylark,” he whispers. “Caught in a web so tangled, she’ll never have a chance to test the skies. You know, you’re almost better off not knowing anything. To die in ignorance might be a blessing.”

“Death is never a blessing.”

His lips curl. “You may yet change your mind about that.”

“I have tasted death on my tongue many times already,” I tell him flatly. “I did not care for its bitterness. I doubt welcoming my demise with the wool still pulled over my eyes will do a thing to sweeten such an end.”

He seems to consider this, weighing my words against his own reservations. For a long time, there is only silence—so long, I think he might not speak at all. But then, with a casual shrug that belies the intensity of his gaze, he heaves a sigh and settles back into his seat.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He plucks another strawberry from the bowl and begins chewing. “Let’s begin with what you know.”

“I know I bear a Remnant mark…I know I am…” I shrug helplessly. “ Air. ”

“And?”

“What else is there?”

“Gods.” He dashes the water in his goblet onto the terrace, then refills it with wine. Leaning back in his chair, he gazes at me through half-lidded eyes. “Do you even know what a Remnant is?”

“A sigil of elemental power.” That’s what Penn had said. “It marks those with dormant maegical abilities.”

“That’s it? That’s all he told you?”

I glance away, glowering.

“Firstly, a Remnant is no common mark for just any fae who can stir a breeze or spin water in a goblet. Plenty of high fae can do parlor tricks. Some of the oldest bloodlines can do more—cast a glamour, activate a portal. But only four souls bear a Remnant mark. One for each of the elements. Water, air, fire, earth.”

My body stills as the words register. Four elements. Four souls. I’d assumed—wrongly—that there were many others in the Northlands bearing marks like mine. Many who might manipulate the elements. Or, if not many, at least…some.

You are a wind weaver , Penn had said.

Not you are the wind weaver.

The only wind weaver.

My face must pale, for the man sitting across from me sighs and runs a hand through his dark hair. “I see he didn’t tell you that part.”

“No,” I breathe, shaken. “No, he didn’t tell me that part.”

“Mmm.” He takes another sip from his goblet. “At any given time, there are four Remnants in existence. No more, no less.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

“What if one dies?”

“Another is sent.”

“Sent? Sent from where? Sent by whom?”

“There are some questions even I do not have the answers to,” he murmurs. “The gods above rarely share their motivations. The ones below are even less inclined.”

I take another sip of wine to steady myself.

“What do you know of Anwyvnian history?” he asks, eyes narrowed. “Before the wars broke out. Before the blight began to sicken the land.”

My nose scrunches as I cast my mind back to Eli’s lessons. They seem a lifetime ago, a distant memory. I recall only basic details, but like a dutiful scholar, I recite them. “Anwyvn was once one great kingdom, ruled by a single fae emperor. During his rule, maegic was not seen as a scourge to be extinguished, but as a gift to be embraced. Humans and high fae lived in harmony, even interbred without consequence. It was supposedly an age of great peace.”

I shake my head, hardly able to fathom such a time. All I know is war. I’d been born into it. I’d spent twenty years mired in it, watching shortsighted kings fight for scraps of the wasteland they created, caring little for those of us caught in the cross fire. Any other way of life seems like some snippet from a bedtime tale.

“Go on,” he urges softly.

“I don’t know much more.” My brows furrow. “At some point, things changed. The mortals banded together and overthrew the emperor. After the empire fell, maegic became punishable by death. Bloodline mixing was outlawed. Anyone with even a trace of power was hunted down and killed. It’s been that way ever since. For two hundred years.” I pause a beat. “And I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon, given the dark state of the Midlands.”

He digests that statement for a long while, then murmurs inscrutably, “It is not your foresight that counts.”

“What?”

“The prophecy—that is what counts, far more than your imaginings of the future.”

I stare at him, perplexed. “I know of no prophecy.”

“Unsurprising. The mortals have a nasty habit of eradicating all mention of fae lore from their annals. Beyond the range, such things have been forgotten for generations.” He sighs, as if annoyed by a group of errant children instead of Anwyvn’s most powerful kings. “Alas, there is a prophecy. An old one, remembered now by few. It speaks of a fae tetrad, destined to restore the balance. Remnants, reborn over and over again, until all four elements are once again bound together.”

“The…the balance ?”

“The balance of power. Of maegic. Without it…” His head cants in reflection. “Anwyvn is sick. The land is dying. It has been for a very long time. Since long before your lifetime. It began the day the mortals killed the royal family—slaughtered the fae emperor and wiped out his bloodline.”

“The Cull.”

He nods. “An act so heinous, so abhorrent, it tore apart the fabric of the land. Ripped the seams that held Anwyvn together and left them to unfurl. To fray. It has only worsened with time. A black stain, spreading like a plague across the land.”

“Is it a curse, then?”

“Some certainly think so. That the emperor, with his final breath, doomed those who had betrayed him to the same death they delivered upon him.”

“Is that what you believe?”

“I don’t care about the origin so much as the consequences. Whether the imbalance was born of a curse or is merely a symptom of the mortal war on maegic…Either way, we’re all forced to endure it. Some with more success than others.”

“What do you mean?”

“Here in the Northlands, where the maegic has not yet fled entirely, we are somewhat sheltered from the blight. Our geography spared us the worst of the bloodline culling two hundred years ago. It continues to shield us now—from the ceaseless wars that rage on in the Midlands, from the occasional attempts at invasion when a particularly foolish king gets it in his mind to test his mettle in the Avian Strait.”

I nod absently, thinking of Seahaven. Of the Starlight Wood at the farthest reaches of the shore, where the branches glowed with unearthly light and the soil hummed beneath my feet, an untapped current. Were those lingering traces of power what had kept our land fertile despite the growing blight?

After seeing more of the Midlands these past months, I’m almost certain of it.

“Beyond the mountains,” he continues, “pathetic mortals live short, miserable lives full of hunger and suffering while their false kings battle over land so poisoned, it can no longer produce crops.”

My eyes jerk back to his. “You speak like they deserve such a fate.”

“Do they not?” He quirks an eyebrow. “Was it not the mortal men who threw the balance out of alignment in the first place? Was it not their selfishness that spurred them to betray an emperor to whom they’d pledged fealty? Was it not their greed that brought this curse down on the whole continent?”

“Their ancestors’ greed, maybe. Not theirs.”

“Who are we but the legacy we leave behind? They are as culpable as their forefathers.”

“A man is not his history.”

“No?” His eyes are so blue, so bottomless, I think I might drown in them. “Do you think any of those mortal men—men raised on the glory of that murderous lineage—would lift a hand to help someone like you?”

I think of the noose around my neck. Of my hanging tree. Of sneering mouths and half-lidded stares and eager hands reaching for hilts.

Point bitch.

Faery scum.

“There are good people in the Midlands,” I insist, pushing aside the cobwebbed memories that haunt the darkest corners of my mind. Finding bright spots.

Tomas passing me a honey cake fresh from the oven. He was mortal, and he showed me kindness.

Eli’s warm face, his comforting arms. He was mortal, and he loved me. A love so strong, he’d died for it.

“There are people who are too busy trying to survive to bother hating halflings. And, hard as you may find it to believe up here in the pampered shelter of the north…” I look hard at the bowl of strawberries. “There are people who would not only lift a hand to help someone like me, but would risk everything—would give their very lives —in exchange for mine.”

His tone is dubious. “You have met such people.”

“I have.” I swallow hard against the emotions that claw at me. “You cannot condemn an entire region for the crimes of a few.”

“I don’t condemn anyone. I don’t care enough to—not anymore.”

“But you did once?” I find it hard to believe the caustic, cynical creature seated before me has ever genuinely cared about anything.

His jaw tightens. “A long time ago.”

“What changed?”

“I thought perhaps the balance could be restored. That I could help the prophecy along. That my role in this actually mattered in some way. Now I know better.” He stares deeply into his glass. “I am a mere observer in all this. I will sit back and sip wine as I watch the southern kingdoms crumble into ash and bone.”

“That sounds very dramatic.”

He grins, an unexpected flash of white teeth that makes my heart stutter. “Indeed.”

“This prophecy you mentioned…” I knit my hands together beneath the table. My fingernails dig into the skin, leaving behind a row of crescent moons. “What else does it say about us?”

He sighs again, as if he does not want to tell me, but eventually relents. His tone drips derision. “Four elements. Four Remnants, reincarnated in flesh and blood. A fated tetrad, bearing the marks of the gods. Scattered across the land. Should all four come together and be bound as one, the balance will be restored. Maegic will return, the blight will end, the land will recover, all will rejoice. Bounty, glory, et cetera.” He snorts into his goblet as he takes another sip. “False promises of a senile old seer who probably made the whole thing up after too long in the opium baths.”

I stare at him for a long beat. “And if you’re wrong? If it’s true?”

“Like I said, Anwyvn’s fate no longer concerns me.”

“But you…you are… Water ,” I declare dumbly.

“I am a great many things. Fantastic waltzer, for instance. Superb fighter. Halfway-decent cook.” His eyes sparkle with amusement. “Damn near godlike in bed.”

I ignore his attempts at distraction. “Are you so jaded you’d ignore your own destiny? Or simply so selfish you’d doom the rest of the world rather than disturb your own serenity?”

“Careful.” The threat is delivered with such contradictory insouciance, it sends a shiver down my spine. “You speak of things far outside your limited understanding.”

“Of course this is out of my understanding! You’ve just told me I’m one of four keys that, together, unlock the door to the world’s salvation,” I cry, too angry to heed the warning in his words. “Yet, in the same breath, you expect me to blithely accept your utter apathy regarding your own role in it.”

“Apathy is the wisest course, I assure you. The alternative is an exercise in frustration.”

“How? How can that be, when we are already halfway there? When we’ve got two of the four elements sitting across from each other at a table?”

“And a third rapidly closing in, no doubt,” he mutters.

“What?”

He ignores my pointed query. “I thought our history lesson over, but it seems I need to clarify some minor points for your half-developed mind to adequately grasp our current reality.” He leans in slightly, tone tightening. “The first four Remnants were born over two hundred years ago, in the wake of the uprising. Some think their souls entered this world the exact moment the emperor’s fled it.”

“So?”

“ So , had the original tetrad found one another, do you think we would be sitting here having this conversation?”

“I suppose not.”

“You suppose correctly. Every time a Remnant dies—and we can die, do not doubt that, though we heal quickly and are harder to kill than most—the element is reborn as someone else. Sent back to start again, in a new body. A new soul.” His eyes scan my face. “You’re, what…seventeen? Eighteen?”

“Twenty.”

“And scrawny.” His lips twitch when I make a crass hand-gesture that suggests precisely where he can shove his unwanted opinions. “That means, somewhere in this world, around twenty years ago, the last wind weaver died. Probably painfully, on the end of a noose or at the point of a sword.”

I cannot disagree with that assumption, seeing how closely it aligns with my own near fate. My mind spins with curiosity, caught up in thoughts of the others who came before me. Past incarnations of Air. How many had there been? Who were they? Where did they live? What had their lives looked like before being snuffed out?

“And then came you,” he drawls, drawing me back to the present. His head tilts in thought. “Yet, the last Air Remnant I can recall meeting must’ve been…oh, at least seventy years ago now. However many others lived and died in that half-century gap of time between her demise and your birth, I have no idea. It could be one; it could be one hundred. If they survived longer than infancy, born into the hands of superstitious mortal peasants…If they made it safely from the clutches of murderous kings…I never had the pleasure of meeting them.”

I blink, stunned into silence. The man sitting across from me is not a day over thirty. I’d stake my life on it.

“How…” I swallow my surge of disbelief. “How old are you?”

“That’s a very rude question, according to every woman I have ever known.”

“I’m not in the mood to jest.”

“Pity.”

“Could you just give me a straight answer?”

“Oh…” He waves a hand, a noncommittal gesture. “A couple centuries, give or take a few years. Though I’ve been told I don’t look a day over a hundred and fifty.”

My eyes bug out of my head. Only the highest fae—fae royalty—are gifted preternaturally long life. Ordinary halflings are seldom afforded the luxury of growing old—at least, not in the Midlands—but the rare few who are live no longer than a hundred and fifteen years. Perhaps a hundred and twenty. And in those exceptional cases, they surely look their age. But there is not one wrinkle or age spot anywhere to be seen on this stranger’s perfect face. His dark, lush hair has not a single strand of silver.

I can only manage to gasp a bewildered, “ What? ”

“As I’ve already mentioned, Remnants are difficult to wound and even harder to eliminate entirely,” he says, as if I am rather slow of wit. “Long life-span. Quick healing. You will soon learn.” His eyes drop to my wrist as I reach again for my wine, noting the faded scars that ring the flesh there. “If you have not already.”

I swallow a large sip. My head is beginning to spin—either from the deluge of information or from drinking on an empty stomach. “So, unless someone takes pains to kill me, I will simply live…forever?”

“Perhaps.”

“I don’t want to live forever,” I whisper, my voice stark.

“Most would see eternal life as a gift.”

“To live on while everyone else perishes…To linger as all those you’ve come to care for are slowly whittled away by time…” I fight back a shudder. “That sounds more like a torment.”

He says nothing. Merely stares at me—stares with such acute intensity, I fight the urge to squirm in my seat. As though he is trying to peer directly into my soul.

A thought occurs to me. “If the prophecy is fulfilled…If the balance is restored, I mean…What happens then? Do we…pass on?”

“I don’t know. Seeing as I don’t have much faith in that ever happening, I don’t waste much time contemplating it.”

“But—”

“We’ve never found the final element,” he says bluntly. “Earth. Not once. Not one single trace of them. Not in all my many years. And while my current apathy may seem disappointing, I assure you…there was a time when I devoted significant efforts to that search.”

I suck in a breath.

Never.

Never once.

Not in two hundred years of looking.

His gaze drifts over my shoulder. I turn to see one of the soft-footed servants standing there, her eyes conveying some silent missive. Whatever it is makes a scowl contort my host’s face and a stiffness settle onto his shoulders.

“Our time is running short,” he explains, looking back at me. “Your darling prince approaches to slay the villainous dragon who’s captured his fair maiden.”

I sit upright in my seat. “Penn is here?”

“Brooding by my front gates as we speak.”

“Take me to him at once,” I demand, lurching to my feet. “And return my things.”

“Ah yes, your pretty cloak.”

“You can keep the cloak. But I want my dagger back.” I do not pause to wait for him as I race across the terrace on flimsy blue slippers.

“Listen to her, giving orders.” The amused remark comes from just behind me—he’s closed the distance between us in soundless strides. “So high-and-mighty.”

I shoot a glare over my shoulder as I reach the doors. They swing inward in the hands of two uniformed servants. Both are at least partially fae, given the pointed ears I spot on their bowed heads as we pass by.

We do not speak as we make our way through the keep. Only the soft patter of my slippers against the stone breaks the pervasive quiet. He, as ever, moves in total silence. I wonder if the ability is an inherent gift of his power, the result of extensive military training, or some combination of the two.

It does not take long to reach the front gates. The property is not as large as I originally thought. Though it is clean of dust and detritus, I get the sense it is seldom used. The hallways we traverse are devoid of character. I peer into open rooms as we pass and find them empty—of art, of life, of people. Besides the soft-footed servants, I see not a soul. Not even guards. Even after we step through a set of massive wooden doors banded with metal braces and walk into a walled courtyard, I note not a single man on duty. The garden beds are barren, the grass studded with weeds. In my swishing blue skirts, I feel like the only spot of color in a world gone gray.

“I don’t generally spend much time here,” my enigmatic host says from beside me, noting my curious gaze as we walk.

“You don’t live here, then?”

He glances with distaste at the heavy stone, the lifeless courtyard. “Gods, no. The Acrine Hold is near the strait, on neutral ground. We keep it for formal matters of state, battle strategy meetings…” He glances at me, lips twitching as he tacks on, “Hostage negotiations.”

“So I am a hostage.”

“I’m certain Pendefyre thinks you are.”

“Are you trying to provoke him?”

“If I were trying to provoke him, I would’ve brought you back to Hylios.” His smile vanishes. “Though it does not take much to provoke him.”

Hylios.

I have heard that name before, from the innkeeper in Vintare who gave me her niece’s cloak. What was it she said?

She left it behind when she moved to Ll?r last spring. No need for fur in Hylios, that’s for sure.

Ll?r.

Hylios is in Ll?r.

I glance at my companion as new questions about his identity bloom within me, but his blue gaze is fixed toward the stables. A groom is leading a great black stallion from them. The horse appears to be fighting every step, pulling at his bridle and baring his teeth, his head swinging as his brays echo off the keep.

“Onyx!” I call.

His head swings around at the sound of my voice. His glossy black eyes fix upon me, and the braying stops. I walk to him, hand extended, and stroke his velvet nose when it butts against my palm. He is tacked to ride. My bow and quiver are right where I left them, strapped in place behind his saddle.

“It’s okay, boy,” I whisper, dropping my forehead against his neck. “It’s over now. Penn is here. He’s come for us.”

A sharp cough calls my attention back to the man standing beside me. “Your belongings are in the saddlebags. Dagger and all.”

I nod.

“Here—put this on.”

I haven’t noticed the cloak in his hands until he lifts it toward me. It is a deep shade of blue, nearly midnight. The material is a rich, warm velvet. I do not put up a fuss as he wraps it around my shoulders. It’s cold in the courtyard; the ride will be even colder, especially once the sun drops below the horizon.

His hands linger for a moment at the neck clasp as he stares down into my face. With a gentleness that makes my breath catch, he reaches beneath the curtain of my hair and frees it from the heavy fabric.

“The next time you nearly kill yourself channeling power you scarcely comprehend,” he murmurs, “at least the blood won’t show.”

I almost smile. “Fantastic.”

His hands are still at my collar. “It would be a shame, you dying on me so soon.” His voice drops so low, I’m no longer sure he’s speaking to me. “A few hours of conversation in exchange for seventy years of waiting? Hardly seems a fair trade. Then again, the God of Luck has always been a fickle bastard.”

I have no idea what he’s talking about, but I respond anyway. “Perhaps you might have better outcomes where the gods are concerned if you’d refrain from insulting them.”

His eyes crinkle at the corners. “And whom would you have me appeal to, little skylark? The God of Death?” He pauses and, as I watch, every trace of humor bleeds out of his expression. His tone grows oddly serious. “No. The Goddess of Fate, I think, is the one I owe thanks for this rather interesting turn of events.”

I swallow hard against the sudden lump in my throat, trying—and failing—to formulate a clever retort. Our faces are already quite close, yet he leans in closer still, until all I can see are the perfectly symmetrical planes of his face—those cutting cheekbones, like blades beneath his golden skin. Those sardonic brows atypically furrowed. That smirking mouth momentarily sober. And those eyes—two devouring oceans, so deep they threaten to swallow me where I stand.

Every muscle in my body goes utterly still in response to his proximity. Like the hapless prey that has wandered far too near a deadly predator, I freeze when it would be smarter to flee. I feel excruciatingly aware of his nearness; searingly sensitive to the flex of his hands against my cloak collar as his fingers tighten in the fur.

My heartbeat picks up speed as the moment lingers on, neither of us saying anything. I want to shatter the strange tension, but I am too tongue-tied to speak. Our stares are locked together with a magnetism I do not even attempt to escape. I know, without trying, it will be futile. A fool’s errand.

No one escapes this man , I think, my pulse a deafening roar between my ears. Not unless he wants them to.

“What’s your name?” he asks, finally releasing me—both his grip and his gaze.

I blink, caught off guard as the supercharged air abruptly clears and I can once again pull in a proper breath. My first in far too long. “I’m surprised you care enough to ask.”

“I don’t. It’s just that calling you Remnant of Air seems a tad formal.”

“I don’t expect you’ll have many more occasions to call me anything at all,” I point out. “I doubt we’ll ever see each other again once I depart.”

A soft laugh tumbles from his lips. “Do you?”

It seems safest not to answer.

“If we’re never to see each other again, why would it matter that I know your name?”

I ponder his question. And perhaps it is because I am tired. Perhaps it is because he has given me so much information without asking for anything in return. Perhaps I simply miss the sound of my name on someone’s lips…

“Rhya,” I tell him in a halting whisper. “My name is Rhya Fleetwood.”

“Rhya Fleetwood.” He repeats it slowly, as though tasting each syllable as it forms in his mouth. “Pleasure to meet you.”

I wait, but he does not return the favor. My nose scrunches in annoyance. “Aren’t you going to tell me yours?”

“No.”

“ What? Whyever not?”

“Names have power. Especially full names. Never give yours to a stranger when you don’t know how they plan to use it.”

“But…I gave you mine!”

“And?”

“And it’s common courtesy to give back that which you’ve received!”

“Oh, I haven’t dealt in anything as common as courtesy in a century.” He grins, greatly enjoying my discomfort. “Your foolishness does not necessitate my own. And, anyway, I expect you’ll learn my identity soon enough, with or without my telling you.”

I glare at him. “Is every conversation between us to be like this? Full of trickery and verbal traps?”

“I thought we were never to see each other again.”

My glare intensifies.

He does not seem to mind, or even notice. His blue eyes turn mocking as his hand sweeps toward the far end of the courtyard. “Your hero awaits.”