"This must be the entrance to the lab," I realize with elation.
Silas pauses his translating to glance at me. "How did you know it's a lab?"
Oops.
Before I can backpedal or come up with a reason for knowing that, Athanis pokes his head into my peripheral vision, examining Silas. Silas frowns briefly at the ghostly newcomer.
"Well, Crane? What are we waiting for?" one of the fae excavators asks, wiping dirt off his hands and scratching his pointed ear. "What does the door tell us?"
Even though I'm carefully not looking at Athanis, Silas's scarlet gaze moves from the ghost back to me with a flicker of suspicion before he faces the door again. "The engraving commemorates this research facility as having been built by the fourteenth queen ofSaogheileand is dedicated to some ancient, long-dead god of discovery."
"Saogheile?"Everett repeats, struggling to make the same guttural sound in the middle.
"The ancient fae name for our motherland. It seems this was a scientific laboratory, after all. Perhaps Felix is right, and this place and the sleepers were preserved by the fae to be kept from Amadeus," Silas muses.
"Thae!Tell the blood fae he is right," Athanis says, motioning at me.
I go on pretending not to see him, but Silas is clearly noticing the way this ghost is trying to interact with me.
Noah whistles. He's one of the more friendly fae appointed by the fae elders to be on the excavation team. "If they were hidden before Amadeus, it means they've been in here for…what, three thousand years, give or take? That's wild. We'll need to lay strong preservation charms the moment we step inside to prevent scrolls or anything else from oxidizing. Can you sense them in there, Elise?"
I nod. The sleepers' desperate emotions calling out for help lace slowly through the air in this tunnel, but they're strongest right by this door.
"Good," another excavator, Brahm, grunts. "Get ready, everyone. Let's get these things extracted along with whatever else the elders might find useful and get the fuck out of this hole."
"Thosethingsare people," I point out, irked by his wording.
"Indeed, and there is one who leads these searchers who is easily corrupted by greed," Athanis tells me, narrowing his eyes at Brahm. "I have beheld it. My noble friend must not leave with these seekers, lest they twist him into something dark and cruel."
Noble friend? I want to ask him what he's talking about, but Brahm is already challenging me, ripping my attention back to him.
"Do you know that for absolute certain? Don't monsters dream, too?"
"I'm not sure, but?—"
"There's no but. What if these are dangerous shadow fiends or creatures down here? Does an empath like you have any way of knowing what you're actually sensing, or does your kind just have a bleeding heart for anything with a pulse? Don't be so naive, step back, and let the experts?—"
He yelps as ice crackles up his entire body, encapsulating everything but his flared nose and wide eyes. The other fae excavators stumble away in fear as Everett leans toward Brahm. Even I try not to flinch at the chill in my brother's voice.
"Talk down to her one more fucking time and see where it gets you."
I start to tell him it's fine and to let the poor frozen fae go, but Silas interrupts, glaring at the others in the tunnel.
"As for what may be founduseful, I'll remind everyone here that we reached out to the elders for this excavation to ensure historic fae records remain with the fae. Understanding and preserving our heritage is of utmost importance. However, anyone found still alive down here will betemporarilyplaced under the elders’ supervision before being set free—assuming they are not deemed dangerous. No innocent is to be kept in the fae research facility indefinitely."
"He is right, but the corrupt one will not honor this," Athanis says urgently, turning to me again with pleading on his face. "Elise. You must help me. Because he saved my family, I swore an oath to the gods to help my warrior friend in this new era. I have foreseen vastly opposite lives he may have here. If the corrupt one keeps him, he will do great harm to my noble friend."
Noble friend? His words almost get me to turn my head and look at him, but I force myself to stare at the door instead.
"We understand that, of course," Noah pipes up, ever the peacemaker. He rubs his neck with a slight grimace. "Although you may face some pretty intense resistance when you talk to Chancellor Marwood about this."
"I'd expect nothing less," Silas mutters dryly.
I don't know much about the fae in general, let alone how their leadership works. But from conversations with the fae working with us on the excavations, I've gathered that although they fall into the House of Arcana, fae consider themselves to be of a different origin and identity from other legacies. They have their own culture and figureheads.
I've heard a lot about Chancellor Marwood, who's overseeing this excavation from the fae side of things. I have no idea how highly a chancellor ranks in their leadership, but from what the excavators have mentioned, Marwood loathes the Amatoquintet. He frequently claims they'll be worse than the Immortal Quintet one day.
He sounds like a true ray of sunshine.
