“Your ice magic,” Einar said, breaking the silence between us. He was still looking straight ahead, but I could tell his attention was on me. “Is that the only kind of water magic you can use?”
“As far as I know.” I turned my gaze in the direction he was looking just as we rounded the edge of the forest. A winding road snaked ahead of us, and in the distance, the city of Talamh waited ahead, the tops of tall buildings peeking out behind towering walls. The spires of Castle Ithir rose above it all, where Lady Mossi ruled the earth realm. The antler bracelet Mavlyn had given me sat heavy on my wrists, and I hoped it would be enough to gain an audience with the head of House Ithir. Mavlyn’s relation was very distant, after all, and I looked too much like a water fae to endear myself to Lady Mossi. Rumor had it she was fiercely loyal to her own kin, but distrustful of outsiders, and with no obvious earth fae traits, that put me at a disadvantage.
“I’ve never been able to effectively wield my ice magic, though, not before today,” I went on, more to fill the silence than anything else. “I think the amulet—or whatever that stone was—suppressed both sides of my magic, the fire and the ice.”
“Interesting.” Einar’s eyes flickered briefly in my direction. “You clearly have better control over the ice, but that’s not surprising considering that you obviously favor your water fae heritage.” His lips pursed. “Your kind always were a pain in the ass to fight. Nearly as bad as the air fae.”
I arched an eyebrow. “The air fae were worse?” Since dragons were fire creatures, I would have imagined water fae would have been the hardest to fight.
Einar nodded. “The lightning riders would chase us through the skies and use their spears to attack our wings until we had no choice but to land. It is too awkward to fight in dragon form on the ground, so we were forced to shift, and without our iron hide to protect us we are vulnerable to magical attacks.” He shuddered. “I can’t count the number of dragon soldiers I’ve seen frozen in ice or crushed by earth or stone.”
“I’m sure my people can say the same about the number of fae who’ve been burnt to a crisp or ripped apart by dragon claws,” I said dryly, though I felt a twinge of guilt. I didn’t like hearing about such terrible deaths, regardless of which side the victims had been on.
Einar’s jaw worked, but he said nothing, and that was probably for the best since we were approaching Talamh’s gates. The portcullis was raised, but one of the guards standing on either side of the entrance stopped us before we could go through.
“State your names and your business,” he demanded. He wore the House Ithir sigil—a circle with a tree in the middle, its branches and roots mirroring each other as they spread through sky and soil—proudly on his breastplate, marking him as one of Lady Mossi’s soldiers as opposed to the Edirian army.
“Adara and Einar of Fenwood,” I said. “We’ve come to beg an audience with Lady Mossi.”
I held up my wrist to show him the antler bracelet. The guard’s eyes narrowed, and he grabbed my wrist, holding it still so he could examine the sigil carved there, identical to the one stamped on his armor.
“These bracelets are only given to those related to House Ithir by blood,” he said, still not dropping my arm. His gaze moved over my face suspiciously. “How would a water fae come by one of these?”
My stomach dropped, and my mind blanked as my anxiety bubbled to the surface. How much could I tell him without putting myself in danger?
“Those details are for Lady Mossi’s ears only,” Einar said, drawing the guard’s attention away. He stood his ground, and though his stance was relaxed, his stare even, I felt a subtle shift in the air as tension rose between them. “You are honor-bound to take us to her, so please, lead the way.”
The guard pressed his lips into a flat line, clearly annoyed. He fell back and exchanged a few muttered words with the other guard, who disappeared through the gate. Long minutes passed as we waited, and I resisted the urge to shift my weight from foot to foot. Looking nervous would imply there was something for me tobenervous about, which would only raise suspicion.
Finally, the second guard reappeared, with a third in tow. The golden leaves adorning the shoulders of his armor marked him as a higher rank than the others, probably a captain. He looked us both up and down, gaze landing on my bracelet, then gave me a terse nod.
“Come on, then. I’ll take you to Lady Mossi.”
We followed the soldier through the gates and into the hustle and bustle of the city. I expected it to be crowded and dirty, but to my surprise, the streets were clean, the air fragrant with blossoms. Flowering plants crawled up the sides of the buildings, covering them almost completely and making them look more like massive, geometrically shaped garden sculptures than dwellings. Countless gardens, both wild and manicured, teemed with life, and I grew almost dizzy as I tried to sort through all the garden scents.
A few fae glanced at us as we walked the wide street, heading toward the castle at the city center, but most paid us no mind. While most were earth fae, I spotted a few air fae as well. They were easily identifiable, not just by their white and gold hair, but by the way they flitted through the streets, blasting past other city-dwellers as they rode frigid air currents and leaving more than a few of them a little disgruntled.
“Tartlet, dear?”
I startled at the sound of the voice, and my eyes went wide at the sight of a water fae standing right outside of a bakery. Short, arctic blue hair framed her pale face, and her eyes, a matching shade, twinkled cheerfully as she held out a tray filled with tiny bits of pastry. My stomach grumbled a little as the scents of butter, sugar, and yeast wafted toward me, but I barely paid any mind as I stared at this fae who looked more like me than anyone I’d seen in a long, long time.
Her brow creased, bottom lip worrying. “Is there something on my nose?” she asked, swiping at the pointed tip.
“Oh!” My ears burned with embarrassment as I realized how rude I was being. “No…I just…” I glanced over to see Einar gesturing to me impatiently—he and the captain were already several buildings ahead. “Never mind. I’m sorry.”
Feeling ten kinds of foolish, I hurried to rejoin the others, too embarrassed to take a pastry even though I was hungry.
“These city sections,” Einar said as we passed from what was clearly a shopping district into a more residential area, “They’re organized into circles, not blocks like an ordinary city. Is that for defense?”
“Yes,” the captain confirmed. “There was a period during the Wars where Talamh was targeted frequently, so Lady Danah, Lady Mossi’s mother, had the districts organized into rings, to make them more easily defensible. During attacks, we raise earth domes around each section to protect the citizens, and because we have so many gardens growing within the city walls, there is enough food and water to last each district for several days.”
“Interesting,” Einar murmured, and I glanced sideways at him. His gaze filled with memories, and I wondered if he’d ever taken part in an attack on Talamh. Just how old was he, anyway? I knew that like Greater Fae, dragons could live for hundreds of years. Lady Mossi was reported to be close to three hundred years old herself, which meant that these city-spheres would have been constructed even longer ago than that, if her mother had been the one to build them.
As we got closer to the castle, the buildings grew taller, and more tightly packed together. We passed Talamh University, a sprawling campus that took up an entire district on its own, and I fingered the bracelet on my wrist as I thought of Mavlyn. She was right—there were water fae in this city, and if I could find one on the street giving out pastry samples, there was probably one at the university, too.
But then again, it wasn’t as if any water fae would have been able to help me solve my magic problem. If I’d taken Mavlyn’s suggestion and gone to the university with her, I would have just run into more frustration. In a way, I’d actually made the right decision, even if I was beginning to think it had brought me more trouble than it was worth.
After about thirty minutes of walking, we finally reached the castle gates. Like the rest of the buildings in the city, ivy crawled along the stone exteriors of the walls, but this ivy was a reddish-black that leant the castle a deadly wash of color.
