Cassandra sat back in her own, shell-shocked by all the heartbreaking stories. No one in the colonies had ever spoken of the atrocities that Leonin Erabis and his Empire had committed against Fae with human heritage. Parents and children torn apart, spouses separated, even entire families locked away to rot.
And all because they had the potential to be Anointed by Adelphinae. To gain the long-dead elemental magics the Empire viewed as a threat.
“Thank you, Silas,” Mireille said. “I know it’s not easy to talk about.”
“If any of what I said helps you win your appeal,” he said to Cassandra, “I’m happy to help.”
He stood and she shook his roughly callused hand before he exited The Other Place, leaving Mireille and Cassandra alone.
Mireille pushed up out of her seat. “We should get going. Only fifteen days left until your appeal. We really need to get back to training tomorrow.”
Cassandra stayed in her seat. “Where are all the humans?”
Mireille pressed her lips together.
“Iknowthere must be some,” Cassandra insisted. “The Empire sends humans here. Surely a few of them must’ve survived the mists over the years.”
Again, Mireille kept silent.
“Tell me.” Cassandra glanced up. “Please.”
Mireille released a heavy sigh, then turned for the door.
“I might as well just show you.”
The first thingCassandra noticed was the smell.
It whipped her in the face as soon as Mireille opened the door to the squat building shoved up against the city wall.
Human excrement. Unwashed bodies. Rot and infection. Scents she recognized from Thalenn’s slums.
But beneath those familiar scents was something sickly sweet and putrid.
Despair.
So thick she almost choked on it.
She slammed a hand over her nose and nearly dropped the basket of apples she’d insisted they pick up on their way here.
Until this very moment, she’d forgotten she could scent human emotions.
Her sinuses burned with angry tears.
All was quiet beyond the door. Quieter than she’d anticipated. But her new Fae hearing caught the subtle shift of bodies, the soft hiccup of tears, the slow, rattling breaths.
Cassandra made to step over the threshold, but Mireille grabbed her upper arm. “Are you sure you want to see this?”
“I’m sure,” she said, her voice tight with restrained fury as she stepped through the door and her eyes adjusted to the darkness.
Iron-barred cells, barely six feet deep, lined the narrow enclosure and the only light came from two glass oil lamps bracketing the door. There weren’t many cells, maybe thirty in total, fifteen along each wall.
Mireille hung back as Cassandra approached the first and peered inside. Its occupants—four human women with barely enough room to lie on the floor without piling on top of each other—shrank back.
“It’s okay,” she said softly, crouching down. “I’m not going to hurt you. I brought… I brought you some apples.”
Her throat closed and she could barely get a breath down. Apples? She’d brought these poor soulsapples. When they clearly needed so very much more.
A level of fury she hadn’t felt since her sentencing rose, a fiery knot unfurling in her stomach and glowing incandescent.
