Page 63 of The Heir the Fae Forgot
I held my breath, waiting for the blow. Icarus might lose our bond, after all.
How I felt about that?
I didn’t know, and it didn’t really matter. Whatever happened next, it had very little to do with whatIwanted.
Only, much to my surprise, after a long moment of deliberation, the Oracle let out a disappointed sigh. “Your price has already been paid.”
I felt something break slightly inside me, though I didn’t know which bond she’d taken yet. I didn’t dare to look up from the patch of ground I’d firmly set my gaze on.
“Am I allowed to ask which bond you broke?”
“Me?” I finally glanced up slightly as she leaned forward. “You broke that bond, Aurra. Or do you not remember?”
I broke that bond.
I looked up at her then, fully, and our eyes met again.
Only, this time, something happened. This time, something changed.
All around us, the fire roared to life,
The Oracle sat frozen, staring forward, her mouth agape and unmoving as words spilled out of her in a strange, otherworldly voice.
A dealonce made is now completed,
All the royal thrones unseated.
What was stolen soon forgotten,
At the very core is rotten.
Avarath has turned its eye,
Heed the cost or you will die.
All us now our own Creators,
In this court of thieves and traitors.
The moment the words died,they were replaced with a scream—not from me, but from the Oracle. The sound scraped up her throat until it ended in a strangled croak as she started crawling away from me, still, somehow unable to look away from me.
“What was that?” I asked, my whole body resonating with the words now playing over and over inside my head. The question only seemed to terrify the Oracle more.
“Get out of here!” she shouted, her hands clawing at the ash and wood behind her. “Stop looking at me!”
I knew, instinctively, that I couldn’t do that.Shouldn’tdo that.
I advanced on her instead.
“Then tell me what that was.”
“I—I don’t know!” she shouted, writing beneath my glare. It was as if the longer I looked at her, the more she shriveled beneath my gaze. “I’ll doanything,just get out of here and never come back.”
All around me, the fire was getting closer. It crept along the ground now, growing ever closer to me as I grew ever closer to the Oracle—or what was left of her. I wanted answers, of course, but there was something I wanted more.
“Take me to Shiel. To the others. Get me out of Icarus’ forest, and I promise you, I’ll never come back.”
Relief flashed in her eyes.
