“You have gotten so much better at masking your emotions,” he said. “When you were a child, every tiny feeling exploded outward.”
I refused to let my fingers curl, even as the growl of my beast built within me. “What do you mean, when I was a child?”
Accolon ignored the question. “It’s a skill I never quite mastered, no matter how long I spent with my mate and her court.”
His mate—Nimue. The Queen of the Elemental Fae. Accolon had ruled the terrestrials. Their union had ended the Great War, brought peace between the two ever-warring fae kingdoms, and set in place the procedures for the Offering and the Joining of the elemental and terrestrial heirs for seven thousand years to come.
“We went to the priestesses seeking help in ending the war. We were cursed with the prophecy instead.”
He’d spoken true. There were so many emotions in those sentences I struggled to parse them. Disdain, anger, hate. Maybe sadness in his eyes as he flicked them away, gazing at the sharp red-orange mountains that rose in the distance. So different from his terrestrial home—our home. A land of green and trees and lakes. Of life—while this place was devoid of it entirely.
Accolon spoke again, his voice low and fathomless. Devoid of emotion. Careful. Reciting each word with tenacious, agonizing accuracy.
“Then comes a queen in the age of uncertainty, when shadows cast doubt upon the realm. Born under a double moon and marked by a radiant star, a faerie queen shall rise to command the depths of the voids of darkness. Twice blessed, the realm of shift and mist, when comes the awaited queen who shall possess ethereal might. With a touch, she will feel the heartbeat of her subjects and she will unlock the secrets they guard within.
Together they must stand, to defeat what once thought dead. Together they must give, if any shall live to the end.”
The Void and Ethereal Prophecies.
But those last two lines… “You have botched the ending.”
Accolon’s eyes swung back to me. Yes, that was sadness lining them. “History has forgotten those last two lines, but I have not. It cost my mate everything, to write them down.” His dark eyes clouded with a feeling I recognized instinctively—anger. “And of course, you all forgot.”
Understanding flickered through me. “You took away my pain, brought me here, to tell me the prophecy in its entirety. So that I would remember.”
Accolon inclined his head, lifted his hand.
I knew what that meant—this reprieve was at an end; the pain would come rushing back.
“You said you would answer my questions.”
His hand stilled. “Ask.”
Who are you? What do you want?He’d answered those without me having to ask again. “Where are we?”
His shoulders shook in a harsh, acerbic laugh. “You do not recognize the Effren Valley?”
There it was again—understanding. I looked at the dusty red plain and the sharp mountains, dotted with narrow trees, fronds at the top the only sort of leaves. Bits began to fit into place.
This was where the last battle of the Great War had taken place.
I was not a student of history, but I was a battle commander.
Accolon surveyed the valley around us, his eyes colder now. Similar to how I imagined my own looked. “This is how I knew it. Before Baylaur was a mighty city, when the goldstone palace was carved into the mountain itself and did not yet rise above it.”
I opened my mouth to ask him more, the questions bubbling up in my chest. New questions, infinitely more important in light of what he’d told me—and the gathering dread in my stomach about what those forgotten words of the prophecy might mean.
But Accolon was standing. I was too, compelled by some phantom urge. The chairs disappeared. “I would have given you more time to heal, but alas.” The dust kicked up around us, swirling faster and thicker until it swallowed the mighty mountains entirely.
“Your rest has ended, Brutal Prince,” Accolon sighed. And it was not sadness in his gaze any longer. It was pity. “She needs you now.”
Then he was gone, and there was nothing but darkness. Nothing but me and my pain and that ache in my chest, that demand that superseded all else. The hollowness that called out, that could only be filled by one being, in this realm or any other.
I opened my eyes.
24
VEYKA
