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The first home of the fae.
Part Three
fae of the clouds
17
Farron
When I was little, I traveled to all sorts of strange and wondrous places: the singing flower groves of Spring, Mirror Lake in Summer, the Star-Marked Caverns beneath Frostmourn Valley.
Of course, all of them were in my books.
When Mother took me around the realms, I was too shy to do much more than peer through the carriage curtains. But even those fleeting glimpses lit something in me. I recorded every peculiar flower, every oddly shaped tower, every golden cloud that curled in a way I couldn’t explain. Wrote it all down.
I wish I had one of those notebooks now, though I’m not sure there are words for what I see.
Wrenley’s briars deposit us on a patch of grass. I let my lance dissolve back into Autumn’s token, not wanting to waste the precious magic we have left. The other princes do the same. Armor fades away to tunics and leathers.
The earth gives under my boots like sponge cake, springy and warm. Beneath the green, I spot fragments of cracked stone. My pulse quickens.
“Do you realize we’re the first fae in hundreds—no, thousands—of years to step foot in the Above?”
The others give me soft smiles.
We’re on a floating isle, not tethered to any mountain or cliff. It’s a massive slab of earth, drifting in open sky. I edge closer to the rim and peer down. There’s nothing beneath us but endless mist.
“How do they float?” I ask mostly to myself. The air is warm and thick, pleasant to breathe in. “Some natural quality of the rock and air? A gravitational anomaly?”
I trail off, distracted by the trees. They’re unlike anything I’ve studied. The trunks are twisted, but not in a crooked way. It’s as if the wind has been solidified, their leaves blue and thin as tissue paper.
Caspian strolls ahead as if we’re on a pleasant afternoon walk and not standing on a forgotten sky isle suspended above the world. Sunset purple mist hovers over the ground, curling away from his easy steps. He stops beneath one of the shimmering trees, brow cocked, and reaches up to pluck a strange fruit from a low-hanging branch.
It’s translucent and pear-shaped. Swirls of violet and silver ripple below the skin. The stem pulses faintly. It looks more alive than any fruit should.
He turns it in his hand, shrugs, and bites off a chunk.
“Caspian!” I shout just as Kel lunges forward.
Kel smacks the fruit clean from Caspian’s grip, and it tumbles to the ground with a soft splat.
Caspian swallows. “What? A little near-death experience makes me hungry.”
I rush over, dropping to my knees beside the ruined fruit. As I reach toward it, a tiny white worm crawls out.
Keldarion sighs and glares at Caspian, who looks like he’s about to be sick. “I don’t even want to know what that would have done to you.”
And then, a most beautiful sound rings through the air.
Rosalina laughs, soft and light. I turn to see her standing beside her sister. It’s a sound we haven’t heard enough of lately, and it makes my heart swell. After everything she’s been through, Rosalina’s finding her way back to herself. Finding the light in a world determined to shroud her in darkness. I am so proud of her.
“You got us here, Rosalina,” I say, then add, “You too, Wrenley. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
Wrenley scuffs a toe in the fluffy grass, and Rosalina meets my gaze. My mate is more reserved than she might be under other circumstances, the grief of the Vale still weighing on her. But I see a spark of curiosity in her eyes. “And now we’re here,” she says.
My throat bobs. “We’re in the Above.”
Mist curls around my boots, and my fingers twitch at my side, desperate for a notebook. I need to remember every detail, every variance, every novel aspect of this world.
