No greetings.
Yet as we passed, they moved. They cleared his path without a glance.
Even as we walked through a marketplace, where trade should have kept them busy, they paused. A young fae woman near a forge turned as he passed. She did not bow, but her head dipped. A motion worn into her existence, done a thousand times before.
I swallowed hard.
He wassomeone.
My heart thudded as the looming structure at the heart of the city came into view. The castle, if it could be called that, emerged from the mist. A monolith, its spires reaching toward the sky in impossible, seamless lines.
This place didn’t welcome. It ruled.
The gate creaked open and a figure in polished armour stepped forward. His face was taut, movements deliberate.
He inclined his head. “Lord Varyth, you’ve returned.”
I stopped breathing.
Lord.
My fingers clenched around my bladeas dread rose through me.
I had walked my children straight into the hands of a fae lord. A ruler.
Gods help me.
What had I led us into?
And how the hell was I supposed to get us out?
3
Iflinched as thegates groaned shut, the clang reverberating through my ribs. My hand tightened around the hilt of my dagger as I moved.
The castle hadn’t been built. It had bloomed. The walls curved instead of cut, pale marble veined with gold, balconies tangled in vines of burgundy and bronze. The roots of this place ran deep, older than maps, older than warning stories.
Golden-lit windows cast long shadows over the paths, glinting off hedge lines cut too cleanly, terraces polished to unnatural smoothness. Even the dusk-flowers glowed with soft pulses, as if syncing with a heartbeat buried deep beneath the stone.
This wasn’t a place bought with coin. It was built on fear, and it wore power like perfume. And Varyth—the fae I had blindly followed through the forest—walked ahead like he’d never once questioned his place in it.
Mist coiled across the stone walkways, crawled over my boots, whispered around my calves.
Varyth moved through it untouched, the swirling vapourparting effortlessly before him.
“Do you understand now?” he asked.
I stiffened. “Understand what?”
There was a smile waiting in his mouth, but none of it reached his eyes.
“Whose mercy you are at.”
I stopped walking. Mireth laughed, bright and unaware, perched on his shoulders. A weightless, innocent thing in the arms of power.
My knuckles ached against the hilt of my blade.
Gods, he had my daughter.
