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“He was nothing but a murderer in my time.” I said through the harsh edge of my laugh, Ryndle pressed his lips together. The poor man looked as though I had shattered his world.
“You have seen it?”
I nodded, I wasn’t sure how much I wanted to share with him. Ryndle had, in a way, proven himself trustworthy. The Lightens proved that all Fae were not monsters. I had witnessed too much to think that it extended to all Fae, however.
“I have. In my time Vaelar is a hunter, he murders children for the queen.” I spoke carefully, watching Ryndle for any tell I might have missed before.
“There are many things in the future that do not make sense with our time now. Vaelar has walked far trying to understand it, trying to stop so much of that darkness from infecting Okivo. There is only one point that we have found that joins everything. When The Princess Elara faces the queen–”
“The Crimson Stained Altar.” I cut him off, my mind rushing to all of the stories that I had been told, to that moment that I had prepared my whole life to face, to kill the queen.
He nodded. “Yes, to save Okivo everything rests on that moment. It is why the Catalysts die, it is why Vaelar is controlled by the queen. She has many in her employ. Even now we see many Fae trapped under her thumb, seemingly oblivious to the path they have chosen.”
“Except for the ones I have killed in her name.” It had never made sense to me, she had an entire army of Fae soldiers in the time of the Red Wave that I was born into, yet she paid Fae killers like me to hunt them. I said the words as though to debunk what Ryndle was saying, but he nodded as though he understood.
“Yes, but that only leads her to more. You kill, and she sends her enslaved Fae to where they were killed, they hunt down others, using the same paths and safe routes that we have spent centuries maintaining. For each Fae that is killed she is able to capture two, sometimes as many as five more, using those same safe routes and safe houses. They hunt them down, and enslave them as well.” His face was pained, the sorrow dripping in the air between us. Water lapped around my calves as I remembered those Fae gathered around a map, trying to find a route that was still open out of the city.
Yersua had said the guards put a dot on the map when they delivered the ears. A dot to hunt down more, to create an army of Fae to hunt and destroy the Catalysts.
She had an army of Fae, and all this time I had been helping her to build it.
I didn’t know if I was going to be sick all over this beautiful pond, or if I needed to take my blades and fire and lay waste to the clearing. The sickly anger was quickly taking control.
I flexed my hands, forcing myself to breathe as Ryndle slid from his rock and stepped closer, clearly sensing the storm that was ready to explode from me.
“We do not know how she entraps them,” Ryndle continued as though it was the enslavement of his people that was driving me into my fury. “We cannot get close to the ones she has captured. We can only assume whatever fate fell them awaits Vaelar. We must stop that before it occurs. We must stop it all.”
“We?” I nearly spat the word.
“Yes. Isn’t that why you seek the Queen? To stop her. To stop what is coming?” He lifted an eyebrow, the poor man actually seemed concerned that he had misread me.
“For me. For my sister Lily. For the Catalysts. Not for the Fae.” I was firm, his absurd smile returned however, the thing spreading as he took a step into the waves.
“I see. Your past leads to your future, Caspyn. Just as ours does. It is the same.”
“It is not the same.” I spat, the darkness that was boiling inside of me seeped through my voice, Ryndle’s eyes narrowed in concern.
“It is. I have told you some of the histories, have you not found the truth in them?” He paused for only a moment, his eyes drifting back to the lilies. He looked at them lovingly, almost as though he was a proud father… no, I realized with a start, he looked at those flowers as all of his followers looked at him.
“The Goddess enslaved the Lynar to win her battle,” he began when I didn’t answer, the words like a drum beat. “She used their magic against the Sister and the rest of her people, The Fae.”
I nodded, that much I had figured out based on what he said, although it still did not make sense.
“If the Fae had always had magic, if the Fae had never been the ones to enslave the Lynar then why did the stories change? Why say the Fae enslaved and stole their magic if they always had it? What magic do the Lynar have that lets them defeat the Fae?”
“More Questions, Caspyn?” He didn’t smile that time.
“Until I get my answers.”
“Histories change to benefit those who need them, Light Bringer. The Fae’s power is drawn from the depths of our world, as is the Lynar’s. It is different ties, different control, but it is the same. The Goddess had allied with the witches, with their spells and dark magic on her side there was no hope for the sister. So, the sister sent her people, the Fae, into exile after the last battle. The battle that stood at the edge of the Forest of Ok, where the temple now stands. The sister gave her life to give her people a chance to flee, she let her magic consume her as she lay with the masses of her people that had already fallen. She sent the pure light of love, of Fae, out from her and protected her people. It moved through the fallen, bringing forth their light, and keeping them safe. It is said that everywhere a Fae had fallen a red tree of Ok grew; and every place a Fae stood to fight a lily grew, its light bright with the life of the Fae as it swallowed all of that power and kept it safe.”
“So that is why they glow? Because they have Fae… souls… trapped in there?”
“It is said that the light of the Fae would have left forever if Cassia hadn’t found a way to save it, if the lilies hadn’t swallowed it.”
“Caspyn should mean light saver, not bringer, then,” I snarled, he shook his head.
“Light bringer because someday all the light will find its way home, and these lilies will be the one to show it there, to bring it back to where it belongs.” I didn’t like the way he said that, or the look he gave me when he did.
