Page 80 of Memory of Ashes

Amelia gazed up. The height of the room was dizzying. The tower appeared much larger from the inside.

It was mostly empty as their steps echoed throughout the stone room. At the other end, a man stood by an arch overlooking a beautifully planted formal garden. He turned around, unsurprised by their presence. He must have been forewarned.

“Ah, Ruven, Danae,” he greeted them as if they knew each other.

“Elthar,” Ruven replied.

Amelia paused at his name. This was the king, the ruler of the High City. The meeting felt informal compared to her first audience with King Tiryn.

“And the human, I presume?” the king said, looking her up and down.

She returned his gaze. He was bulkier, but similar in appearance to the other king, tall with long silver hair that fell down his back. His eyes were the same colour as Casyl’s, but not as intense.

“Amelia,” Ruven replied.

“Let’s cut to it, shall we? Why are you here?” he asked. “You won the battle with your dirty magic and forced us back. What more do you want?”

“You were right,” Danae said. “Tiryn is mad.”

Elthar turned his head slightly, regarding her, his brows furrowed together.

“What has he done?”

Danae took a deep breath.

“He opened the rift.”

The king’s eyes flickered to Amelia and then back to Danae.

“And?” he asked, nodding to himself as if confirming what he’d already suspected. “Is he going after the Lifesource?”

“Yes, but he’s wiped out two human cities to get it, killing most of the humans and enslaving the rest to mine it.”

Elthar raised his brow at that. “Harsh, even for him. And your people support this?”

“Some do. Some just follow their orders.”

“And you?”

Danae did not look away. “I burned them all.” She glanced at Amelia.

“Then why should I trust you?”

“Because I will not burn anything else for him.”

Silence filled the room.

“There’s more,” she said, pausing. “Once we walked through that rift, everything changed. I expected it to feel different, being closer to the hub of the Lifesource, but it felt wrong. We felt wrong. We didn’t understand it until we attacked the capital city. They’ve been mining the Lifesource, using its power. They made a bomb.”

The king’s mouth fell open as she continued.

“We felt the power of it, the pain it caused, but it didn’t stop us. We became something monstrous. Undying.”

Her own jaw had gone slack. She’d wondered why they hadn’t died when they’d attacked the city. How? It made no sense. They could be killed. She’d watched as these two fae armies had fought each other and killed each other.

If immortality existed, then everything she thought she knew about the world was wrong.

“You’re telling me you became immortal?” the king said slowly. His eyes scanned Ruven and Danae. “Are you still immortal?”