She followed Mareena through the winding grandeur of the palace: soaring halls bathed in morning light, wide-open galleries filled with flora from across the eight kingdoms. They passed door after door, most gilded with carvings and opulence, until they came upon one that stood in stark contrast. Plain wooden doors, guarded by two silent sentinels.
Alina slowed, curiosity prickling at the back of her neck. None of the other chambers she’d seen had guards. This place was different.
Mareena turned to face her, folding her hands before her with the calm certainty of a tutor addressing her pupil. ‘Among phoenixians, knowledge is our most sacred pursuit. We revere it above gold, power or even magic. We study, we preserve, we protect.’
Alina inclined her head in understanding.
‘We believe knowledge is strength,’ Mareena continued. ‘And that such strength must be safeguarded, should our kingdom ever fall to ruin.’ She gestured to the guarded doors. Plain, sturdy things, devoid of ornament, and yet somehow more imposing for it. ‘Beneath the palace, we have fashioned a sanctuary, a world within a world, where all we have learnt may endure, even if everything else burns. I would like to show it to you.’
Alina hesitated, brows drawing together in mild concern. ‘Is this where you’re keeping the… Dawn?’ She caught herself just in time, cautious not to speak the word “witch” aloud.
‘Yes,’ Mareena replied simply, her expression unreadable.
Alina sensed the arrival of another presence behind her, familiar and undeniable. She didn’t turn. She didn’t need to. She knew the weight of that presence too intimately. Hessa leaned in, her breath ghosting against Alina’s ear like a whisper from adream.
‘I told you, amira,’ she said, voice low and knowing, ‘phoenixians delight in their alchemy. Every creature you’ve seen, they’ve conjured, surely beneath our very feet.’
Alina drew herself upright, spine stiffening. She hadn’t seen Hessa in what felt like lifetimes, and ever since that kiss with Kai, she’d feared she never would again. The question had haunted her. Had she destroyed Hessa? Had she banished her with that single act of weakness?
Mareena’s voice broke gently through her thoughts. ‘If I show you what lies below,’ she said, grave now, ‘you must never speak of it to another soul. It is forbidden. Sacred. What is done there… must remain there.’
Alina hesitated, the weight of the decision pressing on her chest like stone.
‘Don’t,’ came Hessa’s warning, sharper this time, tinged with something brittle.
Alina’s hand instinctively flew to her chest, fingers brushing over the place where Hessa’s stone pendant lay hidden beneath her clothes. She longed to listen. To heed the voice that had always guided her through shadow. But something else pulled at her, a curiosity laced with defiance, a thirst for truth she couldn’t ignore.
And just like that, the air shifted. The warmth behind her disappeared. Hessa was gone. The ghost of her presence vanished as quickly as it had come, leaving Alina with a deep and sudden chill, as though she’d been plunged into icy water.
Disappointment twisted within her like a knife. She had lost Hessa again. No, driven her away. The silence she left behind was louder than any scream.
She isn’t real.
Alina pushed the thought aside. She focused on the figurebefore her made of flesh and blood, not spirit. Mareena, with her gaze like garnets and poise carved from fire. Real. Tangible.
‘Show me,’ Alina said, voice steady now.
Mareena’s lips curled into a smile as the great wooden doors creaked open.
And without looking back, Alina stepped into the dark that waited beyond.
Many find themselves bewildered by Fae magic, often mistaking it for the workings of witchcraft, but they could not be more wrong. Fae magic is of a gentler nature, woven not for combat, but for enchantments of protection and veils of illusion. It does not lash out like a curse nor scorch like a spell. It cloaks, it whispers, it deceives.
Unlike witches, who must devote years to study, labouring through ancient tomes, memorising incantations, and mastering the volatile pulse of power, a Fae is not taught. Magic flows through their veins as effortlessly as breath. It is not learnt; it is lived.
And yet, to think them weak is a grave mistake.
There are whispered tales of a Fae king, a master of illusions so potent he unravelled the mind of his own queen, casting her into a madness of his own making. They say he conjured such horrors upon enemy armies that men, overcome by phantasms, turned blade upon brother, leaving battlefields soaked in their own blood.
But even he, this dark king of illusions, feared one.
Only one other king was said to draw dread into his marrow: the first wyverian king, the shadow-walker.
Legend claims the Fae king, trembling behind glamour and deceit, sought to ensnare the shadow-walker with illusion. But when the truth reached the ears of the wyverian king, he struck first, kidnapping the Fae king and rendering all his trickery useless. For shadows, it seems, cannot be fooled by mirrors.
Tabitha Wysteria
Kage found Arden high among the trees where the true heart of Floridia had once thrived. Though he tried to keep his attention forward, he couldn’t stop himself from casting a glance downward where the lush green of the forest floor had become a graveyard, strewn with bodies. Above, the fire crept on like a slow, consuming tide, devouring what remained of the city.
