Page 21 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
“How have you not yet figured it out?” Shiel snapped, suddenly, as if my words offended him to his core. His eyes were ablaze again, and hint of shame or darkness consumed in the golden glow as he stepped forward towards me, his head dipping down to look more directly into my own eyes. “Do I need to make a pledge, as Finch has, to the glamour? Or perhaps a bond, like the one you share with my warrior, Zev? I’ll make a deal with you right now, if that would make you trust me.”
“I don’t want you to make me do anything.”
“Then what, Aurra, can I do? How can I show you”
I looked down at the letter, once more clutched between my hands, and then back up at Shiel.
“You already have.”
What would have surely been a tender moment was interrupted as Finch swore, loudly, across the room.
“Looks like we have visitors,” Finch said from where he still stood, keeping watch over the street below. His lips movedwordless for a moment as he counted to himself before turning back to nod at Shiel.
“Three guards, coming down the street now, I can just see them.”
Shiel swore, one hand going up to drag through the tangle of curls at his crown.
“Vestele,” he snapped, eyes rolling wildly for a moment. “I’d forgotten. You told us, you warned us she saw Icarus. This is bad.”
“Wait,” I said, my mind finally sorting through the moments when I’d seen Icarus. “Icarus, he was injured.”
“Injured?”
All three of the fae turned to me as I described what I’d seen to Shiel.
“He must have just cast a spell, a big one, something that would keep him from leaving The Wildness for at least a few days.”
Shiel nodded, his eyes glazing over as he lost himself in his thoughts for a moment.
“Then there’s still time, but not much,” he said, nodding. “Whatever Icarus’ plan is, we’ll just have to make sure we get to the Eastern Court in time to beat him to it.”
Once again, his teeth flashed in the darkness as his lips pulled apart in frustration. “Still, the Lady is going to have questions. That has to be why she’s here now. And she’snotgoing to like the idea of returning her sister’s long-lost-daughter to her, so we need to come up with some other excuse for why—and justhow—the lord of the Wildness was here, visiting.”
“About that…”
For a moment, all three sets of eyes turned towards me. There was a flicker of torch light from across the square, where the guards had started nearing. There wasn’t much time before they reached us, so for once, I didn’t hesitate.
I told them everything the Oracle told me about my mother, about her strange, echoing poem, and even about the fever-dream I’d hallucinated in the moments before Icarus appeared, about how it had turned into the Oracle’s echoing words once more, sounding this time even more like a warning.
They stood in silence, for a moment, my breaths the only sound aside from the rustling of the birds still settling back into their roosts.
“So?” I asked, when no one spoke. Far down below, the sound of the door slamming open echoed up towards us, followed by the sound of the three guards rushing in. They’d be upon us in a minute. I expected the fae to change their minds, to reconsider what they were doing.
I expected them to reconsider me.
“Sounds like the Lady might not oppose us taking you to her sister’s court after all,” Shiel said, nodding as he glanced at Finch and Zev, the three of them sharing an approving look.
“But…but that’s it?” I asked. I should have felt reassured that they’d come so easily to the same conclusion I had, but I wasn’t. “What about the rest of it? What about all the bodies, about the…the…”
Shiel, at last, put into words what I’d not been able to.
“The prophesy?”
I felt, in my core, that he was right.
So rather than argue, even with myself, I just nodded. “What about that?” I asked, my voice so small, it could barely be heard above the growing thunder of the footsteps racing to meet us. “What if I’m the cause of…of all that? Of all those bodies?”
I felt my blood run cold again as the image I’d seen once again flashed through my mind’s eyes. “The bodies,” I said, “Shiel…there were so many of them, they eclipsed the sky.”
