Page 103 of The Kingdom Cursed By Iron

The place is eerily quiet as I move through the corridors. There’s barely even a Low Fae to be spotted scurrying in between rooms, attending to their hundreds of jobs. Halima already told us that the miners’ excavation efforts are concentrated elsewhere in the palace, and I guess that everyone else who’d normally be bustling around began avoiding these areas when the eruptions worsened, moving farther and farther out of the court buildings to avoid the poison overtaking their home. The silence feels unnatural, especially when we’ve just come from the bustling Unseelie Court, and it makes my skin prickle.

The orchard is no better. It’s become a ghost town of discarded tools, though I release a tense breath when I see they’ve taken care of the bodies from when I was last here. The only signs of the tragedy that took place here have to be searched for: a lost shoe. The torn sleeve of a shirt. A brown stain across a fallen tree trunk that I think might be blood.

I clamber over the iron into the middle of the room, where I remember the metal first appearing. The shoots tower over me, and I feel like I’m in a vast gray forest. This place has a pall of suffering over it, and I can feel it seeping into my bones, nurturing my doubts.

But I shouldn’t doubt my abilities. I saw what I could do in the mountains, and I will get answers today.

I bend down, searching out one of the strange knots of iron that the fae excavated. I hold it tight in one hand, and place the other on the nearest shoot. The metal is cold and hard, and I know from experience that it will fight me. I’m prepared now, however, and remind myself of Maidar’s lessons—to not see this thing as a whole, but to go deeper, the very base level of its being.

I close my eyes and dive into the pool of my magic, focusing on the knot first. At first, I’m only able to touch the same information I found before—the sense of something once living, warped by anger and pain. I drop deeper into the object, examining the shape of its folds and layers.

Not just a living thing—it was once a plant, the shape of it unexpectedly familiar to me, like the lyric of a song you didn’t know you remembered.

It’s a rose.

That’s what I’m holding—a rose blossom, transformed into an unrecognizable lump of iron—yet once it was beautiful and vibrant. I feel a wave of triumph at the realization, but it quickly fades. What does it mean? How could a rose have turned into iron?

At first I don’t notice my heart rate picking up as my brain follows the trail of thoughts: the palace is filled with flowers, but roses have a special link to the Dawnsongs. It’s mentioned in Ruskin’s rhyme, and his infamous black coat is made from petals from his mother’s rose garden.

I don’t answer the question looming in my mind. Not yet. First I have to be sure. I close my eyes again and turn my attention to the iron shoot. The time has come to find its roots.

They were beyond me before, but I’ve stretched the muscles of my magic so that it can reach further and do more than I ever dreamed possible. I follow the shoots beneath the earth even as my fear grows. I’m desperate for the truth, but at the same time not sure I want to know it.

I feel the darkness of the soil press in around me, carrying me down, deep beneath the palace. Under the foundations is a mass of snarled iron tendrils—a vast network stretching for miles in every direction. It’s breathtaking and horrifying in equal measure.

I know I’m getting close to the source when the tendrils begin curving upwards, reaching towards the surface. A few feet underground, the iron gives way to organic matter—the roots of rose bushes, entwined with the metal like a lover’s embrace. The iron tendrils are the twisted offspring of the two, I realize. They’ve colonized the plant roots, taking them over, and growing into the monster that’s infested the court.

The roots of the iron plague lie in the rose garden.

I felt it being taken from me, didn’t I? When I was removing the particles from Evanthe, the metal polluting her body just disappeared. I didn’t understand it at the time, but it wasn’t blinking out of existence, it was being snatched away from me and fed into something else—into these gleaming, poisonous roots, created by some evil force to destroy the palace.

I reach out with my mind, finding almost immediately what I’d expected: a well of dark magic, carrying the same malevolence I feel radiating from the iron, only more concentrated. Maidar had told me something like this had to be holding back my ability to read the metal, but it’s disturbing to find it here, nestled in the very center of Ruskin’s world.

Evanthe lay close to this well for years, and it was the iron from her body that the darkness channeled into the roses, using them to spread and multiply. Now I find myself asking the question I’d been too afraid to before: could her magic be linked to all this?

Maybe it’s unconscious, maybe she doesn’t know she’s doing it, but I can’t help thinking that it’s possible. The first eruption occurred at the banquet, one I got the sense she didn’t want to attend. The iron arrived again as the founding stone rejected her. Both moments of high stress for her. It might be coincidence, but my gut is telling me otherwise.

I need to find Ruskin. Once I explain this to him, we can do something about this. We’ll find a way to break the link between Evanthe and the iron and we can help her heal properly.

I hurry to the royal chambers, remembering that Ruskin is probably with Evanthe now. But her rooms are empty, with no sign of either of them. I search Ruskin’s rooms next, but only find Destan sitting in the library.

“Destan, where’s Ruskin?” I gasp, out of breath from rushing.

He shrugs. “He sent me away when he went to talk to Evanthe. Isn’t he still with her?”

There are a dozen normal reasons why the pair would be off somewhere together, but a potent dread runs through my veins. Destan must see it on my face, because he jumps to his feet.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“The iron, I know where it comes from. Something happened when we woke Evanthe up. The metal in her body infected the roses. I don’t think she realizes it.” It sounds insane even to me, and I can see Destan opening his mouth, ready to refute what I’m saying.

But he’s cut short when the ground begins to shake beneath our feet—the same distant rumble that warned us of the iron eruption before, at the founding stone. At that moment, I realize where Ruskin and Evanthe have gone.

Destan and I lock eyes.

“Go get help, find Halima, tell her I think Ruskin’s in trouble.”

“Where are you going?” he asks.

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