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Their backs stiffened when the eleven other figures emerged from the mist around me. As to be expected. I’d never brought anyone from the outside in.
“Who are they?” my warriors whispered, their eyes flitting to the ones behind me. A few tightened their grips on their longbows.
“What are they?”
“They’re injured.”
“Are they prisoners, Your Majesty?”
Of course, I couldn’t exactly answer their questions, not as a tiger, and certainly not with the thick leather strap clenched in my maw. With a last triumphant glance over my jutting shoulders, making sure the Good Council elites hadn’t been stupid enough to follow us through, I stalked up the sharp incline of steps that rose on ancient pillars and spread into the sprawl I called home.
Ranuq.
Unlike the Esholian Institute and other villages outside the Uninhabitable Zone, Ranuq didn’t cut its own space into the jungle. No, my lost empire grew with the island, our walkways curling around thousand-year trees, bordered by foliage that clung to every structure in sight. If I looked down, I would see the ponds lurking below, flashing with the shiny scales of fluorescent fish, but I didn’t. I kept my head high, eyes pinned on the biggest structure rising in the distance: a domed palace that towered amongst the treetops. A mockery of the glamor I’d once wielded.
Before Dyonisia Reeve had taken it all away.
Hatred surged through my veins at the thought, and I cut a sharp turn to the left with my tail swishing in agitation. The exiled ones followed me uncertainly, some of them gaping, others still sniffling, winding up staircases and walkways until we began to pass more and more native faeries who gasped and bowed and whispered.
“The king is back!”
“But who’s with him?”
“They don’t have pointed ears.”
“But they don’t have brands either.”
“Well, they all have wounds where the brands would be.”
“Do you think…?”
I dipped my head at each of them despite my inability to actually respond right now. Once upon a time, Ranuq had been an empire of tens of thousands of faeries, spreading from one end of the island to the other. Now, there were barely a hundred left, and I knew them all by name.
Ayar, a one hundred- and twenty-three-year-old faerie with the ability to make the wind whisper voices into others’ ears, gave me a low, respectful bow.
Seven-hundred-year-old Pacay smiled at me from where he knelt. He was able to imbue specific locations with emotions and motivations.
Cui’s jaw dropped when her eyes lifted to the exiled ones marching behind me. At twelve years old, she was our youngest, the most recent to be born within the Uninhabitable Zone, and hadn’t yet developed a power of her own.
“Mamay!” She tugged on the edge of her mother’s sash. “Their ears are like mine!”
“Shhh, child, it’s rude to stare.”
“Well,” boomed a voice I knew far too well, “who wouldn’t stare at this sight? My brother returned at last, a bunch of damaged humans in tow.”
I stalked toward the male standing at the top of the widespread palace steps, finally releasing the strap of the satchel from my mouth at his feet. Larger and bulkier than the average faerie, he had an ochre skin tone the color of sunlight bathing the brown of the island’s loam in shades of gold. His shock of electric-white hair flowed past his shoulders, and two studs that were pierced through each eyebrow moved when he glared at me.
I’d taken his form so many times before that my bascite rose within me immediately, whispering the single most vital question.
Change, or remain the same?
Change, I told it.
And began to morph.
My skeleton jerked upright, my vertebrae shrinking, my skull rounding. Claws turned to fingers and toes, paws to hands and feet. My thick, powerful canines shrunk into typical faerie fangs, the glossy coat of fur all along my body sinking into the same ochre skin as my brother.
Someone was already handing me a beaded loincloth, which I wrapped around myself until I was every bit the clone of the faerie before me… except for the thin band of a tattoo that would be circling my neck in this form.
