“Stay as you are,” my mistress states. “You’ll need energy to speak to the executioner.”
“We’re not on the best of terms.”
“Of course you aren’t.”
“It’ll require strength and concentration,” Eli tells her as she grabs the water pitcher next to the bed and places it at her feet.
“I find those traits easy to summon with the right motivation.”
“And what’s your motivation for helping a Reign Crest you don’t know?” He watches her, his tawny gaze hardening.
But my mistress is watching me with glassy eyes. She blinks, glancing at him.
“Perhaps the sweetness of Versara has become sickly to me,” she says. “I do not have an apartment in Remiti to escape to when needed.”
“I haven’t been home in decades.”
“You still have one.”
They lapse into silence. Briar enters and places the coal into Eli’s hand, her fingers coming away covered in soot.
The two fae face each other at the foot of the bed. Kassandra pulls the water from the pitcher with ease. Maybe it’s the practice she’s been doing. Maybe Dominik has not bothered her in a while. Whatever the cause, my mistress grows confident, and so do I, in her.
Kassandra moves the water around her like a ribbon, coiling it up into the shape of a ring, a circular, ever-flowing river that feeds and devours itself. The room warms as the coal in Eli’s hands rises. It burns a deep red, sparks flickering around its edges. It bursts into flames, then burns brighter, taller, more ferociously. Then the two fae begin to chant.
Follow the flow
up, around, below;
offer the final breath
to find a face of Death.
The ring of water and the burning coal shrink, rising in the space between the fae, until the water circles the flame entirely. As the coal burns brighter, it becomes smaller, darker, more compact. The water steams, the fire smokes, and together the elements bow into another, transforming into vapors that dance in the air.
It is beautiful and eerie and ancient. It is something I have never known, another layer to the winding labyrinth; a map given only to the fae, while faeries stumble in the dark. Finally, there is the last sputtering breath of the coal, the last path of circling water, until both elements, and the chanting, end.
No one says a word.
Smoke pours into the room, a dark figure materializing out of the shadows.
“Death,” Eli says before he’s even fully formed. “Can you tell us if the Reign Crest Lila lives?”
If Death is surprised, he does not show it, does not react.
“She does.”
A sob escapes me. Eli pushes forward. “There’s been an incident. We need you to retrieve Lila from Reign, bring her to House of Healing, where I will tend to her injuries.”
The Death fae’s eyes scan the room, flickering across me, before falling back to the Head of Healing.
“This is not a command from the king,” he states.
“No, but it is from his oldest friends,” Eli replies. “He acted out of anger, and in torturing his favorite faerie, he may have killed her. We want to salvage the situation so that he may choose his desired path when of sound mind.”
The room quiets, the plane paralyzing. “You accuse the king of madness?”
“His magic is still maturing, which makes it unstable and vulnerable. As a Healer, I’ve seen this before. He’s not mad but rather struck with a passing illness.”
