“Every last one?” I asked. “There are no Fae left?”
“Occasionally, a person comes forward claiming to be a distant descendent of the Fae. There’s one woman, Elle, who lives here on The Isle and works for the Rangers. She seems to have whispers of Fae magic in her veins. The Rangers keep her tucked away and protected, as she’s the closest thing we’ve found to our ancient ancestors.”
“Why don’t you let her be the queen?”
“Queens are born—not made,” Silas said. “If she was a Fae Queen, we’d know it by now. The island would know it. The world would know it.”
“That’s so sad. What happened to wipe out an entire species?”
“The Fae Queens were known to be wise and fair. Beautiful and powerful. Exceptional in every way. They were beloved by everyone.Almosteveryone.”
I barely noticed the way branches scraped at my cheek and leaves rustled my hair. My horse’s footsteps fell gently on beds of pine needles.
“A set of men were envious of the power our queens held.” Silas had to grind the words out through his teeth. His knuckles were white holding onto his horse’s reins.
“Men,” I said, half joking, half not.
Silas cocked his head sideways, listening for something. Eventually, he continued. “The Fae Queens were slaughtered in one day. Men, jealous of every fiber of these magnificent queens, prepared an attack against them for years.”
“But if the queens were so powerful, how could they be defeated by these…men?”
“It’s rumored these men—who were quite powerful alone—recruited the help of Hades and his Furies to launch a massive attack on every throne in the immortal lands.” Silas shook his head. “At the end of the day, the Fae Queens believed in the beauty and goodness in everyone, and that was their downfall. They couldn’t fathom such pure evil and selfishness.”
“That is terrible.”
“The slaughter lasted a single night. It is still the darkest day of the year.”
“You don’t mean literally?”
“I do, yes. It’s linked to the Winter Solstice, a day our world mourns for the loss of our beloved queens.”
“Who runs this place now?”
“After that day of bloodshed and horror, the rest of the world scrambled.” Silas raised a shoulder and let it drop. “Unfortunately, the Fae population take their power from their queens. Without queens, the rest of the Fae were weakened. They were quickly hunted down and eliminated. It was a swift and complete genocide of the Fae species.”
“Why kill off the rest of the species? Why not stop with the queens, especially if the rest of the Fae don’t have power without their queen?”
“That was the deal between the men orchestrating the attack and Hades. The only creatures ever thought powerful enough to defeat Hades were the Fae Queens. By snuffing out the whole species, it ensured there would never be a Fae Queen who would attempt to defeat the King of the Underworld. That was always one of his insecurities.” My heart felt heavy, thumping against my chest. A sorrow I’d never experienced seemed to dwell deep in my belly, a longing for a time that had been millennia before I’d been born. It didn’t make sense, except that maybe the sadness of this cataclysmic event transcended boundaries between magic and mortals.
“The courts formally fell shortly thereafter,” Silas said. “The men responsible tried to take over and set up kings to rule in their places. They failed.”
“How did they fail to rule the courts if all the queens were dead, and the courts were open for the taking?”
“That’s not how it works. They found out the hard way. You see, the courts do not exist without the queens,”Silas said. “Without queens, there are no courts. There is no reign. There are only power-hungry individuals, and that does not unite a kingdom. Not in the way the queens did, so worshipped and cherished by many.”
“So the courts just fell apart?”
“Over hundreds of years,” Silas said. “The crumbling of this institution didn’t happen overnight. But when it did fall, it fell hard. Now, the courts are all but a dream. A nightmare, rather. We’ve moved on, forgotten what an honor it was to serve a fair and wonderful queen. Our world slowly fractured, splitting into different lands and kingdoms, each with their own systems of rules and regulations.”
“What sort of systems?”
“We’ve got MAGIC, Inc.,” Silas said. “They’re the corporate bureaucracy that runs most of the American society of paranormals. There’s the Sixth Borough, another exclusively paranormal community tucked into New York. Wishery, Olympia, Crystalvia, The Hollow—all different hidden communities.”
“You’re kidding me.” I blinked at him. “There’s an enchanted wonderland right in my New York backyard, an actualSixth Borough, and you whisked me all the way to Minnesota?”
Silas grinned for the first time since speaking of his beloved queens.
“You weren’t...” I hesitated. It seemed ridiculous to ask. “You weren’t alive when the queens were slaughtered, were you?”
