Page 66 of Memory of Ashes

A guard rushed into the hall, bowing briefly.

“My lords, the prisoner is ill,” the guard said.

Casyl and his father looked at each other.

“Where did you find her?” the king asked Casyl.

“She was in the forest.” He didn’t voice the possibility that she had contracted something in the forest. They both knew that a human was unlikely to survive such an infection.

When he reached her room, she was on the bed, tossing and turning. He put his hand on her forehead. “She’s burning up. Send for the healer,” he ordered the guard.

He inspected her body for any sign of injury and saw the gaping wound on her leg. He hadn’t noticed it before. It was hot, and there were signs of infection.

The healer arrived, confirming that he was right. “She’s been infected by Sporillus,” the healer said. “If you look at the wound closely, you can just make out the tiny fungal spores forming.”

For days she fell in and out of consciousness. They treated the infection and worked to control her fever, but a human’s physiology differed from a fae’s, and the healer couldn’t be sure that she’d survive.

“Keep her alive. If she dies, you die,” he told the healer.

The next time he walked into the room, his heart paused as she lay still. He told himself it was his father’s wrath he feared.

She sat up, and he suppressed a sigh.

*

He had tried to avoid this moment. Casyl took the human to see the king.

She was a pitiful sight. He probably should have had her cleaned up before bringing her into the main hall. He’d have to find some clothing that would fit her, which would be difficult with her small stature.

The king rose to meet them. Eleandor was also there. He distrusted the man, even though he and his father had known each other for centuries. He had declared himself neutral in the fight for power over this land, claiming to have no master, but he always ended up back at the High City.

The king stepped forward. The girl recoiled too late. His hands closed around her head, anchoring her in place as his power reached out. His mouth went slack—an expression Casyl recognised. The king had entered her memories.

She resisted. Not physically. She did the same thing to his father as she’d done to him.

The king went tense.

This was something she was doing, on purpose or not. He’d have to find out. Was it possible that she had powers? Humans didn’t have any. But she was in his world now. Could that have changed her?

He listened to his father lie to the girl. Was it possible that the humans mining the Lifesource could still affect them in this world? He had never heard of such a thing, but his father’s certainty unsettled him.

He deeply pitied the girl for how she was about to be used.

Casyl followed the guards as they led the human away. As the doors to the hall closed, his father’s faint voice stopped him. She glanced back, her expression tight with fear.

“You felt it too.”

Casyl remained by the doors, listening.

“I felt an absence,” Eleandor answered. “A place where the magic should have been.”

“You said yourself that she should not exist. She is our way back.”

“That is not what the prophecy says.”

Casyl stepped away from the doors before he was discovered.

Chapter 15