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I walk slowly forward, picking my way between them.
“They’re all Leafborne.” I am looking into faces I have known my entire life. The beautiful Leafborne fae, once so vibrant and full of life, now lie still and lifeless. All of them.
All of us.
Their wings, once shimmering, are charred and crumbling. Their bodies are covered in scratches and bruises. Faces are swollen and almost unrecognisable. Limbs are contorted into strange angles.
I stumble forward, my eyes darting from face to face, hoping against hope to find someone – anyone – still alive. But there’s nothing. No movement, no sound, just the oppressive silence of death.
“No,” I whisper, screwing my eyes closed as tears surge into the back of my throat. “No, no, no.”
I search for Eldrion. He stands completely still, surveying the carnage. I cannot read the expression on his face.
“Finn did this,” Maura’s voice is cold and hard as she walks up from behind me. “Your precious jester. Your lover. This is what he’s become. This is what you let into our midst.”
I want to argue, to defend Finn, to defend myself, but the words die in my throat. Because she’s right. Finn did this. The Finn I thought I knew, the Finn I loved, is gone. And this... this monster has taken his place.
How could I ever have thought I might stop him?
Grief surges through me so hard and fast I can barely breathe.
I shake my wings, and my arms, and try not to see the devastation, the death.
My heart hurts. It burns in my chest.
It turns to liquid, sloshing around beneath my ribs and making me feel as if my entire body is going to sink to the floor and never get up again.
But then my eyes catch on something. A scrap of white fabric, like the ribbons Finn used to twist and twirl in the air above the Sunborne court.
I walk to it slowly, and pick it up, turning it over in my hands.
As I stare at it, and memories drip through me like acid, the grief inside me hardens into something else. A cold fury that burns like ice.
Finn did this. And I will make him pay.
EIGHT
Eldrion
Ihave never seen Alana like this before. Yes, I saw her in my visions. But I have never been with her like this before.
I have known her only within the confines of the castle, and the one time we ventured outside of its walls it was not like this.
Here, surrounded by nature instead of concrete, she is radiant.
Even as we sit amongst the smouldering ruins of the Leafborne camp, her face smudged with smoke and tears, she glows.
Her auburn hair contrasts against the thick, velvety shades of green in the leaves and the grass and the foliage. Her skin seems smoother, paler, her freckles more vibrant.
Her eyes glisten as she turns to look at me.
She screws them closed and shakes her head. She presses a trembling palm to her chest. “I can feel it in the air,” she whispers. “Their fear. It’s...” She inhales sharply, her shoulders shaking.
I turn away. I can’t look at her. A strange mixture of arousal and sympathy swells in my gut, and I don’t know how to process it. So, I lock it down and focus on the scene in front of us.
When she starts to sob, loudly, however, I extend a wing and wrap it around her shoulders. For a moment, she remains stiff and brittle. Then she folds into me and rests her head on my shoulder.
As she lets the tears flow, and her entire body trembles against me, I try to modulate my thoughts and my breathing. All I want to do, all I can think about, is cradling her in my wings, taking her back to my bed, and coaxing her fears away by teasing her body until she sees stars.
