Page 50 of The Crown the Fae Forgot
The distant sound of howling followed us through the edges of the forest, to the plains that now stretched out along the edges of a vast and endless sea. The moment we first burst out from between the trees, I sucked in a breath, a gasp so deep that the saltiness of the sea air stung.
I’d never seen the ocean.
The closest I’d ever come was in the hallucinatory pages of a children’s book. I’d thought it was overwhelming then, but this, this…
This felt like home.
Once more, Shiel’s words echoed through my heart. Something inside me tightened, drawing me down the path even as Zev spurred the horse we shared even faster. I could feel the creature’s exhaustion between my thighs, the tightness of its muscles, the slick dampness of its sweat. But despite its labored breaths it, like us, carried on—the sound of those ever-present wolves enough to keep its tired hooves from stopping.
We rode through the night, our steeds only stopping once for water while Zev and Finch kept watch. Shiel and I pretended to be tending to the horses, while in reality, we were struggling to even tend to ourselves.
There was no time to light a fire, but the silver light of the moon provided enough light for me to see what I needed. Shiel’s old wounds had opened back up, leaving him pale and breathless. My own, the fingers blackened and shriveled at the tips, had not yet begun to heal. Some of the black color in my veins had faded, however, the remnants of that twisted glamourslowly seeping out of my body through the seeping wounds at the ends of my fingers.
I felt like a traitor to myself, looking at the wounds.
It was only one time, one spell cast, but already, I felt the glamour’s pathways inside me shifting. I could only imagine how this would change me. How this would mold me. Would it make my inherited power, the power of tongues, less potent? Or would it slowly just erode me until even the simplest of glamours damaged my body past the point of repair.
I’d seen Icarus three times now, the remnants of him that remained after he cast this magic he was never supposed to.
Despite my best efforts, I’d already started to become what he wanted me to.
That was the worst part, the part that made it impossible for me to look Shiel in the eye, even though neither of us might have been here, by this fire, if I hadn’t.
I’d succumbed to the Dark Lord after all, after everything.
It didn’t matter that I was desperate.
In this world, I would always be desperate. Next time, would I succumb so easily?
I couldn’t be sure, not even with myself.
With the breakingof the dawn came a new sight—a welcome sight, despite all that it represented.
The Eastern Court.
It wasn’t so much of a court as it was an entire, sprawling city. From where we stood, our horses paused at the top of a crest leading down towards a paved road leading into the front gates, we could see into the multiple layers of the court.Three rings encircled one another, each one with a higher wall separating it from the rest.
And in the center, right along the edge of the cliff plunging down into the sea, was a great sparkling white castle.
The sun rose behind it, illuminating its silhouetted in a rosy, golden glow.
Despite all odds, we’d actually reached it.
And not a moment too soon, it seemed.
Behind us, the howls of wolves once more broke about the whistling of the wind that raced between the rocks. But this time, it was not a distant sound.
And this time, when I turned my aching body in the saddle, I saw them.
They were not, after all, simply a spectral sound sent to haunt us. They were very, very real.
Too real.
Even from where he stood, our horses snorting and sniffling at the top of the hill, I could make out the size of them, the bloodlust in their eyes, the unnatural speed with which they ran.
Six of them, each one a black speck along the horizon, already gaining on us by the time I lifted the tip of one of my wizened fingers to point.
No words were needed. One glance, and the horses were once more thundering down the crest, their whinnies of annoyance drowned out as the baying wolves called out once more.
