I stepped closer to Alahathrial, the tension in my shoulders refusing to ease. “You’ve watched the courts for hundreds of years. You must have insight we don’t.”
He arched a brow, but didn’t deny it.
“What do you know about the new sects?” I asked. “The ones rising against the crown. Aligning with the Order.”
Alahathrial exhaled, the sound like wind through brittle leaves. “The Blood Fae likely created one,” he said. “But not both.”
Zander frowned. “Then who?—”
“They used a familiar tactic,” Alahathrial interrupted softly. “One I’ve seen before.”
He began to pace again, the hem of his robe whispering across the stone.
“They infiltrate with whispers, twist truths just enough to splinter unity. They don’t always need violence to break a kingdom. Just fear. Just division.”
He looked at me, his eyes haunted now. “That’s how they split the people of the Fae Isle. None of us realized what they had done until it was too late. More than half our people turned dark, corrupted by what they thought was power. But it was only rot wearing gold.”
I swallowed the tight knot rising in my throat. “That’s awful.”
He nodded. “It was.”
The room felt colder suddenly.
“But,” he said, turning to me fully now, “we need to worry less about the sects… and more aboutyourlineage.”
I stiffened. “Why?”
His expression shifted, subtle, but something about it made my skin crawl. Like a storm building just beyond sight.
“Because your bloodline is older than mine,” he said. “Older than Zander’s. It was erased for a reason. Buried so deeply, even the sanctuary stopped fearing it would resurface.”
Zander glanced at me.
Alahathrial continued, voice grave. “You are not just the destroyer the prophecy fears, Ashe. You are the reckoning they hoped never woke.”
And just like that, the fire in my veins burned colder.
“What is my role in this?”
Alahathrial stared at me, his shoulders straight but his face pale with strain. For all his power, he looked older now—like speaking these truths cost him something.
“You ask about your role in the prophecy,” he said, voice soft but heavy. “Well…prophecies, I should say. There’s more than one. More than a dozen, if we’re honest.”
I blinked, startled. “And they all call me the destroyer?”
He gave a grim smile. “Yes. But not all for the same reasons. Only yourfinal actwill reveal which prophecy is true. Until then, you walk between them.”
I swallowed hard, my pulse thudding at my throat. “Do you know what they say? All of them?”
Alahathrial nodded.
“One names you as the only being who can bring the dragons to bear again, not just command them, butunitethem, as they were in the earliest wars.”
Zander’s brows pulled tight beside me, but he said nothing.
“Another,” Alahathrial continued, eyes on me, “says you’ll destroy this kingdom. That almost every living thing on this continent will burn in your wake.”
My chest hollowed.
