Segonax sighed. “I don’t know, Lorcan. I just don’t know.”
Lorcan clenched his jaw and gazed out at the army. The wood king and his warriors had set up camp this close knowing that Lorcan’s men did not have the arrows or the skills to launch an aerial assault. Their green-dyed tents clashed against the charred ground where the Ruin had destroyed the edge of the forest a few weeks past. When his father had sacrificed his own army for more of his twisted Unseelie power.
“For now, the wood king waits for us to surrender,” Lorcan said with a frown. “He knows we don’t have the means to push out onto the battlefield and fight. Reyna took out part of his army, but it was not enough.”
“We cannot surrender, Your Highness,” Seg replied. “Perhaps if it were anyone else, but Ulaid Molt wears Unseelie’s darkness like armor, and he wields it like a sword. If he gets inside this castle, he will kill you.”
“I know,” Lorcan said, fisting his hands. “But what of the fae inside of Findius? Should I let them starve to save my own neck?”
“Saving your own damn neck saves theirs,” Segonax said, grasping Lorcan’s shoulders with firm, unyielding fingers. Anyone else, except perhaps Nollaig, would not even dream of manhandling their king this way. But Seg was family, no matter how much he had conspired behind Lorcan’s back.
Lorcan blew out a breath and turned back to the field of wood fae tents that stretched out toward the remnants of the Forest of Thorns. There were so many of them. “I know. It just all feels hopeless, Seg. We need help. Or every single one of us will die.”
3
Eislyn
“Look. There it is.”
Eislyn stepped onto the deck and filled her lungs with salty sea air. Tuath Island rose up out of the churning waters like the tip of an icy fingernail reaching up from the deep. Only a cluster of ramshackle buildings dotted the barren landscape. The docks stretched around the southern shore where the waters didn’t bash against the frozen rocks.
There were half a dozen ships docked, their flickering flags bearing foreign sigils that Eislyn had never seen. Not in person, at least. She recognized the Kingdom of Glass and its glass fist sigil. One of the kingdoms inside the Empire of Fomor. The rest were mysteries, but she imagined they were Fomorian as well. Kingdoms proudly displaying their homeland. It made her ache for home.
The ships themselves were monstrous things. Twice as large as The Stormhammer, their blackened wood bent and bowed, as if it had been rammed by some great creature from the depths of the sea. Monstrous war ships that were used even for trade with the fae.
“So, they’re as big as the legends say then,” Eislyn murmured. She’d never met anyone who had ever set eyes on a Fomorian. They were notoriously secretive, and they did not allow fae to visit their lands. The thought of seeing one now sent her heart cantering down the wooden deck.
“Can’t be sure,” Gayle said as she leaned with the sway of the creaking boat, her ginger hair a curtain around her square face. “I’ve never seen one myself. They don’t usually come out to these parts. All their crews are human. See?” She pointed to a cluster of humans scurrying about the nearest boat. “I don’t know how they get on so well with those big ships.”
Crews of humans, working for the Empire of Fomor. Eislyn had always doubted the truth in it. Why would the Fomorians want humans to do their trade? Why wouldn’t they just do it themselves? Why did they avoid the fae courts? Legend had it that they’d never lost their powers during the Fall. That had been the fae and the fae alone.
The Fomorians were as strong and as powerful as they ever had been.
None of it made much sense, which was why Eislyn was determined to find out exactly what had happened all those years ago.
The past might be the only way the fae could protect their future.
“Well, that settles it then,” Eislyn said with a nod, her voice almost drowned out by the rush of the waves against the bow of the ship. “I’ll just have to pretend I’m a human in need of passage.”
Gayle snorted. “Forgive me, princess, but that might be the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. Have you never looked at that face of yours in the mirror? That hair? You’d never pass for a human.”
Eislyn frowned. “Surely some humans have silver hair.”
“Old ones, sure. Ones bent with age. Your face is as fresh as the silk from a hoarfrost worm,” Gayle said with a shrug. “But what will really make you stand out are those ears.”
Eislyn reached up to touch the very tips of her curved ears. They cut through her hair, parting it so that half of her silver strands fell forward over her shoulder and the rest fell behind. She tried to push her hair on top of her ears, but the strands quickly settled back into place. It was as if a line had been carved so deeply in the dirt that not even the most rigorous waves could wash it away.
“I could wear a hood,” she whispered. “That will hide all of it. The hair, the ears. Whatever else that gives me away.”
“The way you move,” Gayle said. “The way you speak. The way you even breathe. You arefae, Eislyn. Everything about you seems otherworldly to humans. Only an illusion could hide the truth of what you are.”
Her hands fisted by her sides. “Well, I have to do something. I need to get to the Empire of Fomor.”
Gayle sighed and shook her head with a fond smile. Over the past weeks, Eislyn had worked hard, alongside the rest of the crew. She had scrubbed the deck. She had cleaned up sick. She had spooned stale porridge into bowls to pass around. Her entire body ached from the hard work of it all. But she had also noticed the new firmness of her muscles. Now, she could heft a full barrel of ale off the floor and carry it up the stairs.
As she’d worked, Eislyn had noticed the hardness in Gayle’s eyes soften. Her scowls had turned to smiles.
“Looks like you’ve left me no choice,” Gayle said with a wink.
