“You fear what, Seg?” Nollaig asked.
The silence was as heavy as a guillotine.
Segonax lifted his gaze, but it was not toward Nollaig, or Tarrah, or even Reyna. He stared right at Lorcan. “I fear Unseelie has twisted our king’s mind past repair. I fear he’s finally gone mad.”
A trail of terrible fire burned down Reyna’s back. Ominous words. A mad fae in control of an entire kingdom, one who’d claimed a Seat of Power as his own.
Tarrah let out a tense laugh. Her face had gone deathly pale. “I told you. Unseelie does not twist minds. It’s all a lie. Another god does that, one with even more power than you could ever comprehend.”
“What god is that, child?” Segonax asked wearily.
She frowned. “I don’t know his name, but I know where he lives. Inishfall, the island in the middle of the impassable sea.”
“Did Unseelie show you this, too?” he asked.
“He did, but—”
“That island is a terrible place, even for a god. What’s more, there is no route to get there anymore. Many have tried. Even if you manage to sail past the Fomorians, the sea swallows you whole.”
Tarrah lifted her chin, and a spark flickered in her eyes for perhaps the first time Reyna had ever seen. “There is a route there. My mother took it.”
Segonax chuckled, glancing at Nollaig with incredulous eyes. Lorcan hadn’t said a word, but Reyna could read his face as easily as she could read the map that had been tossed onto the floor. Not a single one believed a word Tarrah said. But in truth, Reyna did.
Parts of it must be true, she thought. Tarrah surely believed every word she said, but like the king, her mind had become twisted by the god she thought she knew. If he was real, he’d been using her, much like the king had used Reyna and Lorcan.
A scream ripped through the camp. Reyna stiffened, suddenly alert. Footsteps thundered outside the tent, and then a handful of breathless warriors rushed through the linen flap. The whites of their eyes were almost as large as their faces. Terror was spoken with every hitched breath.
Segonax took charge immediately. “Tell me the situation. Where is the army? And how many warriors has the wood king brought with him?”
“Not the wood king.” The warrior’s eyes slid toward Reyna, and fear clenched her gut. “It’s something else. Ash. Ash that’s turning fae into more ash. It’s falling from the sky like snow.”
Reyna’s gasp ripped from her throat with so much force that she stumbled back. She pressed a hand to the table to hold herself upright, scarcely believing the warrior’s words.
“No,” she whispered. This couldn’t be happening. Not again. She thought she’d outrun the Ruin. It had left her alone for months. Now, it was here.Again. At the most southern edge of the kingdom of the wood fae. In the very spot where she stood.
It was not a coincidence. It had followed her here, just as it had followed her to Tairngire, and then further south to Feurach Fortress. All this time, her sister had haunted the libraries, searching for a way to end the Ruin. She’d read page after page, desperate to understand what was happening and why.
Well, Reyna might not know the rest, but she did know one thing. The Ruin did have a purpose. And it was to end Reyna Darragh’s life.
Lorcan’s face suddenly appeared before her. His brows were pinched with worry. “Reyna, what do we do?”
She gazed into Lorcan’s eyes, and then twisted to see Segonax looking to her with hope. “I don’t know,” she told him, turning back to Lorcan. “I don’t know how to fight the Ruin. I never have. It’s why my father wanted to make an alliance with another court. It’s why Eislyn came with me to the Air Court, so she could do research in the libraries. Our family has searched for a way to fight it all these years. We never found a way, Lorcan. Now that it’s here, it will kill us all.”
Hope vanished, punching through the ground to join the molten iron in the caves below their feet.
“I won’t accept that,” Lorcan said firmly, shaking her arms. “You fought it once. At Lord Bowen’s castle. You can fight it again.”
“I didn’t fight it. I fought Sloane Selkirk and a handful of his warriors.”
It was true. Shehadn’tfought the Ruin then. Instead she’d just…let it crash down upon her and seep into her skin. Unlike every other fae she’d ever met, she hadn’t died when the Ruin touched her. At the time, she’d been so concerned about Sloane Selkirk, and her sister, and finding a way to escape the castle alive.
She hadn’t stopped to truly think about what had happened.
It was as though the Ruin hadtriedto kill her, just like it killed everyone else. But it had failed. Instead of killing her, it had given her a strength and a power she’d never felt before and hadn’t since.
Reyna pulled a deep breath into her lungs, an idea sparking in her mind. “I might not be able to stop it, but there’s something I can try.”
Lorcan raised a wary eyebrow. “Why do I have the feeling I’m not going to like this?”
