“It’s strange, isn’t it?” he remarked. “This place was built to hold the Elves, wasn’t it? But I haven’t seen a single Elf since we got here.”
I swallowed the lump that rose in my throat. “Perhaps the Elves survived.”
I dared to hope, because it would be the one advantage we had to stand up to the Warden’s weapon… if there was anyone to stand up to him at all after this.
We entered the main warehouse, and despite the carnage we witnessed outside, I wasn’t prepared for what we saw indoors. The warehouse was nothing more than a massive room with a tall ceiling and a dirt floor, metal walls surrounding us on all sides. Bunk beds were lined up in rows, and hundreds of bodies were crowded on the mattresses. There were multiple people on each bed, and they appeared to be sleeping, but the putrid smell of decaying bodies told us they were long gone. These people had literally been sleeping on top of one another and died immediately. No one had the chance to save them.
We kept on moving and made our way into the next warehouse. We all halted in the doorway, because after everything we’d seen, we didn’t expect it to get any worse. But it was— so,somuch worse.
Here, bodies that had long rotted were thrown into huge piles. Some of them were so far gone that they were mere skeletons now. The ones on top were fresher, but their skin was already sagging off their forms. These people had been dead for a while by the time the Warden’s weapon killed all the other prisoners.
Nearby, one of the piles was made up entirely of hair and teeth. It was the only pile of human remains that wasn’t rotting, as if the hair had been cut and teeth had been removed before the victims were murdered. Some of the hair was still in braids, though the base of the braids had been completely hacked to pieces.
I dared to guide Oberi closer to one of the mounds of bodies. I saw the pointed ears first, then witnessed holes straight through each of their chests.
“I guess the Elves didn’t survive after all,” Danny said in an empty tone.
I choked back tears. “Opal was right about the firing squad. That’s what they did to these Elves. That’s why there weren’t any outside, because unlike the other prisoners, they’d already been slaughtered the moment they arrived. They piled them here to rot.”
Charlie furrowed his brow. “This doesn’t make sense. The Warden invaded Forevermore and imprisoned the Elves he captured because heneededthem. He wanted their power. Why would he throw all this power away now? Unless…”
“He doesn’t need them anymore,” I finished hollowly. “Whatever he wanted from the Elves, he got.”
“I bet you it’s whatever weapon he used out there to kill all these people,” Danny said.
A long silence stretched between us all, before Charlie turned and continued walking. We left the warehouse out the back.
In the distance was another building, smaller than the others. A fence blocked off that area of the camps, and tiny bodies littered the dirt behind the fence. I caught sight of blue fur, which I thought was a small Familiar at first, before a gust of wind swept past and it went tumbling across the ground. I realized it was made of cotton.
It was a teddy bear.
It hit me then that we hadn’t seen a single child in all the rest of the camp. The Warden had separated children from their parents and locked them up behind that fence.
From a distance, I saw the bodies of toddlers and five-year-old children— tiny little ones who’d barely gotten a shot at life before the Warden had stolen it away.
The Warden was pure evil, and I had the sick urge to go see just how far he’d taken it. Ineededto know. I started guiding Oberi forward.
“Please don’t go, princess,” Eddie whispered in a broken voice.
I paused and looked over my shoulder. “If the rest of you want to hang back, that’s okay, but I need to see what the Warden has done.”
Eddie kept his gaze down. “I’m not asking for myself, your highness. I’m telling you that you don’t want to go over there. The injuries are great, and the lifeless stare of those children will haunt you forevermore. Trust me.”
I saw something in Eddie’s eye that I hadn’t noticed before. It occurred to me that this must be harder on him than the rest of us, because he’d been held in a camp just like this for monthsbefore he escaped. It was torture like this that had lost him his eye.
But the longer I looked at him, the more I saw something else.
I narrowed my eyes. “How do you know what injuries they sustained?”
Eddie shook his head. “I cannot say, your highness.”
That was all the confirmation I needed. Eddie knew, because he’d already seen them.
“You were here last night,” I whispered. “Emperor Cassiel has already been here. You came with him. Cassiel ordered you not to tell Charlie, because he knew we’d want to come see the damage for ourselves. That’s why he called this a lost cause… because he already knew all the victims were gone.”
Charlie slowly turned toward his guard. “Is that true?”
Eddie kept his head down and didn’t respond. It was his way of confirming the truth when he couldn’t give a direct answer.
