Page 79 of Fallen Nocturne

The towers sink first, followed by the outer walls, each section bending and locking together as though the Moth is closing its wings. Rooms, corridors and staircases compress into a dense, twisting mass. Dust bursts across the street and forces the crowd farther back.

When the air clears, the Painted Moth is gone. Where it stood lies an enormous knot of dark wood, its beams twisted around one another like the roots of an ancient tree. What had been a building that took up half the block becomes a dense mass of compacted timber with splintered beams wound tight around each other. Somewhere beneath that tangled ruin are Lord Kharlis and three fae commanders.

I stand there, breathing hard, staring at the vast structure of interlocking wood.

I search the crowd for Fleur. She said she would catch up.

“Where is she?” River turns in a circle, panic breaking across his face. “Fleur!”

My gaze darts over the fleeing patrons, the workers gathering in the street and the mass of crushed timber where the Moth once stood.

Then someone coughs behind us.

Fleur stumbles from a cloud of dust beside Thorn Vale, her cream-and-silver wings coated in ash but whole. River reaches her first and throws his arms around her. Petal joins them an instant later, laughing and crying as she embraces them both.

Relief floods through me.

The Auctioneer stands beside them, his case of seeds clutched to his chest. His theatrical demeanor is gone, replaced by something harder.

“They’re gone,” he says quietly. “All of them.”

I turn toward him. Before I can speak, he approaches me with a faint smile.

“Ah, Fawn.” His gaze flickers toward my uncovered silver hair. “I mean, Your Highness,” he corrects smoothly, though his eyes gleam with knowledge. “Fleur told me who you really are. I must say, discovering our dear friend was royalty all along is quite the revelation.”

“I am sorry,” I say. “I never wanted to deceive any of you. I could not risk my identity reaching the wrong ears.”

“I imagine you couldn’t. You were protecting yourself,” Petal says immediately.

“Don’t apologize,” Fleur adds. “We don’t hold it against you.”

Petal takes my hand. River smiles at me, and Fleur’s dusty wings flutter behind her. The warmth in their faces loosens something tight inside my chest. They know the truth now, yet none of them steps away.

“Then I am still Fawn to you?” I ask.

“Always,” Petal says.

Then we all look back toward what remains of the Painted Moth.

“You killed them,” I whisper, turning to Thorn.

“Yes.” All warmth leaves his voice. “They hurt my people. What hurts them, hurts me.”

His gaze settles on the compressed remains of the Moth. Grief passes across his face before he conceals it. The building was more than enchanted wood. It was his creation, his refuge and the home of every person under his protection.

“The High Fae of the Unseelie court violated every rule, and King Eirik, who should have stopped them, did nothing.” He looks at Petal’s bruised eye. “So I did what needed doing.”

Petal is crying silently. River has his arm around Fleur, who is shaking.

“It’s done,” the Auctioneer says to them gently. “They can’t hurt you anymore.”

Movement begins around us. At first, only a handful of Painted Moth workers emerge from the surrounding alleys. Then dozens more follow, carrying everything they managed to remove before the building closed. Trunks pass from hand to hand. Bundles of costumes and bed linens are loaded onto small carts. Someone rolls a barrel of wine across the street while another gathers abandoned cloaks from the road.

There are so many of them. I had only made the acquaintance of Petal, River, and Fleur, but the Painted Moth sheltered an entire community.

Some of the lesser fae have moth or butterfly wings folded against their backs, dulled now by dust. Other groundlings bear antlers in sweeping shapes, forcing them to angle their heads as they lift crates onto the carts. Water nymphs move among them with damp hair clinging to their shoulders, carrying glass vessels filled with water from whatever rooms they once called home. One weeps as she cradles a cracked bowl against her chest.

Their features make them unmistakably fae in a way Thorn Vale’s do not. Like most of the Highborns of the Unseelie court, he appears almost human. Yet the differences between them seem unimportant now. They move together as one household, gathering the fragments of a shared life from the street. The Painted Moth was their refuge, their livelihood and their home. Now it is a mass of crushed wood behind us.