Page 2 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
It was a cramped journey from the edges of the Wildness to the heart of the Southern Court, my bones and muscles aching from the constantly jolting carriage, but I preferred that pain to the one that threatened to swallow me whole from the inside out.
The further that we travelled, the easier it was to notice that we were moving south. The air grew thicker and warmer with each passing day, until the weight of it was palpable. Even beneath the canopy of Icarus’ court, I’d never felt anything like it before. With the last stretches of the Wildness soon far behind us, the scattered patches of trees could hardly justify the title of “forests”. To the north, mountains started to rise in the far-off distance, the rocks and boulders shimmering beneath the mirage of heat that only thickened with the summer air.
Eldrin, the head of the guard that discovered us, was unwilling to give us any further information about what had led them to ‘stumble upon’ us at the edge of the forest, no matter how hard we pried—and Finchpried.It became a sort of game for him, passing the hours travelling along abandoned roads by trying to get answers out of the fae that marched alongside us.
But Eldrin must have instructed them not to speak to us, because not one of them said a word.
Not to us, anyway.
At night, when the tents were pitched and I found myself curled beneath canvas with a fox burning too hot for his own good in my arms, I overheard whispers coming from the nearby campfires. I couldn’t make out much of what they said, but what I could made something inside me sour a little.
They were suspicious of us, that was certain. But that wasn’t what made my insides twist and my already heavy heart feel like lead.
It wasn’t so much what they said, but how they said it.
There was a certain reverence with which they spoke of the ruler of their court, of the Lady that they were taking us to. It was different from the way Zev and Finch treated Shiel. Shiel might have been their lord, but they treated him as an equal—or at least, the closest thing to it that a lord could be. They obeyed him, but they didn’t follow him in the same glassy-eyed devotion that the soldiers walking beside us every day did.
All my life I’d been taught to fear the fae, so when I came into Icarus’ court, it barely phased me the way his own court fearedhim.Shiel had warned me about him countless times, and yet, somehow, how was itShielI thought was the exception?
How had I let myself get so close to Icarus? I knew that, I saw that, I felt the way the very air of his court was poisoned with that deceit and danger, and yet the last moments we spent together were entangled together in his bed. If it weren’t for the beating bond that tied me to Zev, the reminder of it always pounding in the increasingly hollow space between my ribs, Icarus would have kept me there, in his court, against my will.
I would have gone straight from one cage to another.
I’d been reckless thus far, taking my newfound freedom for granted. I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
I had the answers I needed now, at least enough of them to make my own decisions.
I’d known from the moment Shiel and the others told me why they’d rescued me, well before I knew for certain my rightful place in this world, that my life was about to become far more complicated. I just hadn’t expected it to be like this, with every decision I made affecting not only myself, but everyliving creature living within the boundaries of this kingdom—and, perhaps, beyond.
It was something I’d only just begun to come to terms with over the course of those hot, sweltering days and nearly as sweltering nights that led us further, and further south. I knew from the weight I’d felt already, that it was only just the beginning. It was only going to get worse as I began to understand the true weight of what lay before me.
As it was, however, I just had to hope the next decisions I made would be enough to keep me from becoming ensnared in yet another court.
CHAPTER TWO
There wasno wall around the Southern Court.
No gate to keep out any wayward wanderers.
There was, in fact, no court at all.
Eldrin stood at the head of the guard, the rest of the soldiers slowly stepping forward on either side of the cart. Their faces were tilted upwards, looking towards an empty patch of sky in front of us. All around was a sea of fields well past the point of freshly planted, but not yet ripe for harvest. They rippled in the near non-existant breeze, stirring just enough to keep the landscape from looking like nothing more than a lifeless painting.
That heavy mirage hung over the horizon, as it always did, making the edges of my vision blur together when I tried to focus too hard.
But even that wouldn’t be enough to hide an entire court, would it?
“I…I don’t see it,” I finally said, when no matter how long I stared, I couldn’t see whatever had drawn even Shiel and Zev to look on in wonder at the seemingly empty patch of sky.
A small smile formed at the corner of Eldrin’s mouth when he turned to look at me, his first of the journey. “Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean that it’s not there.”
That was all the answer I was given, but judging by the smug look Zev and Finch shared, they were in on this too—whatever it was.
I was tired of begging for answers, so, instead, I gently shifted my weight beneath the fox still sleeping on my half-numb legs and simply waited. For a while, the cart continued trundling forward, the landscape unchanged. The longer it went on, the mirages at the distant edges of my vision seemed to start to strengthen, but the harder I looked at them, the more they seemed to skirt away, disappearing before I could truly get a good look at them. I felt the strongest urge to turn around, to check behind me to see if it was just the heat playing tricks again, but I felt a hand reach out to take mine.
Zev looked at me from where he’d moved to walk beside me. I guessed, from the way his eyes met mine in silence and the gentle squeeze of his hand, that he’d felt the stirring of my heart. The tattoos on his chest must have started to fade over the last days, but the bond between us was still strong enough to feel, at least.
It was strangely comforting, knowing that.
