‘Will you help me?’ Alina asked, her voice barely more than a breath. Yet the weight of it nearly crushed her. Her heart pounded with such violence she feared it might tear itself from her chest. ‘Teach me how the Phanax fight. Teachus.’ She gestured to Isla and Arena across the table.
‘You are only three,’ Mareena replied, repeating Alina’s own doubt aloud. ‘Even if I teach you… it will not be enough.’
‘No,’ Alina agreed. ‘It won’t. But we shall die trying and our grains shall return home, to the desert.’
Something shifted in Mareena’s crimson eyes. A flash of pride, of hope, of something dangerously close to admiration.
‘Very well,’ she said at last. ‘I will teach you.’
Alina inclined her head in gratitude, though her hands trembled and her limbs burnt with the urge to rise, to move, to outrun the fear that still lingered like smoke in her lungs.
More than anything, she ached to run into the dunes and disappear, to lie beside Hessa beneath the stars in whatever world waited beyond.
‘Waa kair janta, amira,’ whispered a voice like desert wind at her ear.
‘Waa kair janta,’ Alina murmured in return, to the ghost that would never truly leave her.
We fall together.
When my son was taken from me, I learnt years later that he had found his way into the land of the Fae. He was raised there, not by strangers, but by Fae parents. And not just any Fae. They had once been dear friends to Hadrian and me, kind souls who had even stood beside us at our wedding.
Of course, they hadn’t known the child they found was ours. Had they known, they would have returned him without hesitation. And yet… in some quiet, aching way, I’m glad he was raised by them, by those I once trusted, those who would have loved him well.
But I wasn’t the only one searching. Others hunted him too.
By the time I reached those old friends, I found only ruin. They had been slaughtered. Thankfully, by then, my son had already been sent away to fight in the war. But…
There are whispers now, dark and dangerous rumours. There are those who believe my son is the weapon Hades intends to unleash upon the world.
The God-Killer.
If only they knew…
Tabitha Wysteria
Kage Blackburn had no great desire to follow the Fae. Not through the charred remnants of Fireheart, nor into the bleak, scorched reaches of the Kingdom of Fire. And yet, Bryn Wynter’s wolf had chosen its path, slipping into thewasteland with quiet purpose. Kage’s own shadow crow, Spirox, ever the inscrutable companion, had deemed it necessary to follow.
And so, reluctantly, Kage had trailed behind. Silent, watchful, and always at a distance. He made no attempt to approach, but he knew the Fae was aware of the shade that haunted his steps.
Kage wanted to find his siblings. That much was constant. He also hoped, in some half-formed corner of his mind, to return the wolf to Bryn, as though honouring such a small promise might restore something in a world gone cruelly askew.
He wanted to find Freya, to ask what had become of Wren.
He wanted many things.
And deep down, he knew he was unlikely to have any of them.
Now, he watched in silence as the Fae kindled a fire and sat beside it, green eyes fixed on the flames as if something precious had been lost within their flickering light. Perhaps it had. It seemed that all of them, lately, had misplaced something vital, and none of them knew how to retrieve it.
Kage still pondered the connection between Wren Wynter and this quiet, distant Fae, though never deeply enough to bridge the space between them with a question. More than once, he had turned back, muttering curses into the wind, ready to abandon this ghost-trail of ash and silence. But the wolf pressed forward, and the crow, ever loyal to some secret wisdom, soared ahead.
And Kage, with reluctant breath and bitter mutterings, always turned around.
‘Why are you following me?’
Kage stilled. The Fae’s voice cut clean through the stillness, his gaze fixed unerringly on the shadows where Kage had hiddenhimself among the trees. Despite the cover of twilight and foliage, he had been seen or perhaps sensed.
At the sound of the stranger’s voice, the wolf padded over with the confidence of a creature utterly unbothered by tension, curling up beside the fire as if it had always belonged there.
