Fey carved this, I think.
This must be the castle’s original foundation. Thousands of years old, if I had to guess.
The mouse stops and loops back, circling me urgently.
“What are you trying to say, huh? Oh…Oh. I see.” My voice fades as I take in dark paint marks, almost like writing, on the stone walls. They’re covered by a half inch of dust, like everything else down here.
Making a fist, I brush the dust away, coughing as it clouds the air. I shake it from my hair, raking the strands back, and study the walls.
At first glimpse, it’s just nonsense paint streaks. I lean close and sniff. Actually, it isn’t paint. It’s lampblack, which I haven’t heard being used as paint since ancient history. But the brush strokes—faint though they are—don’t lie. Someone smoothed chalky lampblack over this wall in only this one section.
Strange.
With a shiver, I think back on when I left Duren in Rian’s entourage, on our way to Old Coros. We passed a warehouse with a large mural of Sabine on the side, but someone had painted over it as a protest against her Volkish heritage.
I lean forward, picking at the flicking lampblack with a grubby fingernail. As a shard flecks off and falls at my feet, it reveals a faint—but unmistakable—painted eye underneath.
Unnerved, I step back, only to trip over the dusty rubble at my feet, nearly stomping on the forest mouse.
I bark a quick, “Sorry.”
It tears my fingernails to the quick, but I claw away flecks of rotting lampblack until I can make out more of the original painting beneath. If someone went to the trouble of covering this up, deep in this ancient basement, it must be for a reason.
Finally, I step back.
I regret not bringing the candle with me. My night vision is keen, but lacking in color, and I can only imagine this mural once glowed in iridescent hues of ground red ochre, azurite, gypsum powder.
“Fuck me,” I breathe.
It’s a portrait of the Immortal Court. All ten of the fancy fae bastards in their greatest finery, seated at a rough-hewn stone table in the middle of the woods. Their reddened cheeks, rumpled robes, and wine-stained lips hint at a debaucherous tale. Their clothes are simple and primitive, the style of thousands of years ago, though they’re bedecked in rough-hewn jewels.
The faces are different than they wear now. Immortal Vale is completely white-haired, though the exact same Battle Helm Crown rests on his head. Iyre has long, black hair in bouncy waves down to her waist. Artain is still a blond, preening bastard, but this version of him has a squared-off jaw. It’s easy enough to recognize him by the bow at his feet, though.
And—gods damn it—the woman at Artain’s side, his hand resting possessively over hers, is a beauty with curly mahogany hair woven into an Immortal Crown. A wren perches on the woman’s left shoulder. A snake coils like a bangle around one wrist. Behind her, a buck bows his antlers.
“Sabine,” I whisper, the breath ripped from my lungs.
It isn’t her. Notmylittle violet. The face is wrong. The posture, too, leaning toward Artain with her tits practically shoved up in his face, and something almost sinister about her smile as she gazes over her shoulder at the buck.
But the way those animals flock to her?
Yeah.ThatI recognize.
A nasty scar in my mind flares with old pain. I should remember so much more about Sabine than just the way nature fawns at her footsteps.
It’s Iyre’s fault. Stealing my memories.
For so long, I chased that void like a bloodthirsty hound.Mymemories might be gone, but this? Communal memories, long buried? That someone clearly wanted to keep secret?
Well, I’m a hunter. If I can’t get my own memories back, maybe I can stalkthese.
I step closer to the ancient painting, fingers hovering over the few flecks of lampblack I couldn’t scratch off. The ache inside me doesn’t fade—it sharpens. My whole life, I instinctively knew the fae gods were full of shit. Not worth the incense the holy temples burned through by the barrel in their honor.
Here's my chance to prove it.
I step backward to scan the dark hall ahead. There’s no telling where such an ancient tunnel leads. I sniff. There—at the far end, before the hallway turns a sharp corner, there’s the scent of more smoky lampblack.
The mouse scampers at my heels as I locate another blacked-out mural, and tear at this one with already shreddedfingernails. Slowly, streaks of the mural reveal themselves. This one shows a wizened old man with a twisted-oak staff and long gray robes, holding court over a maze with willow-reed walls.
