Page 85 of Calling of the Crown

“See what?” I asked, not even caring that my question came out strangled. “What happened?”

Instead of answering me, she led me around the corner toward the hall where Dax’s cell was. When the hallway came into view, I stopped dead in my tracks.

“Oh my God,” Dallas gasped as she came out behind me.

“Fuck. Marcus,” Rance hissed.

Jesiah rushed past us to kneel in front of Marcus, whose body was slumped across from Dax’s wide open cell door. A dagger was shoved into his chest all the way to the hilt, and his head was tilted up to the ceiling, mouth agape and eyes closed. Dried blood smeared his lips and chin, and it caked the front of his white shirt from the stab wound.

“When did this happen?” Rune demanded.

“Two days ago,” Imani answered.

“Two days? No one moved him?” I shrieked.

“We wanted the five of you to see the scene yourself since this doesn’t make sense. Plus, this is just the tip of the fucking iceberg of new problems,” Imani said with tightly shut eyes.

The news was gut-wrenching. Two days. Marcus had died two freaking days ago. I met Rune’s gaze. I knew he was thinking the same thing as me—that was the day we’d arrived and left Muna’s Kingdom. Could the soul she had to attend to be … I inhaled sharply and approached Marcus.

“H-How is he—” I asked, falling to my knees next to him. I reached my shaking hands toward his gray, lifeless body. “How is he dead? That wound isn’t fatal to Fae.”

“No, it’s not,” Jesiah agreed. His brown eyes examined the body. “At least, it shouldn’t be.”

“That’s the part that didn’t make sense,” Imani explained. “It’s why we left him like this. He shouldn’t be dead, Jesiah.”

Jesiah grabbed the hilt of the dagger and yanked it from Marcus’s chest, sending what looked like black tar spewing from the wound. Jesiah gasped and immediately leapt away from the body.

Rune suddenly grabbed me around the waist and yanked me firmly against his chest until my feet no longer touched the floor. He, like everyone else, backed away from Marcus.

“There’s no way,” Dallas screeched as she stared wide-eyed at the lifeless form.

“What?” I asked in alarm. “What is it?”

“How the fuck—” Rune growled, squeezing me tighter. “Is that what I think it is?”

Jesiah slowly shook his head like he was in a trance as he watched the black gunk ooze from the wound in Marcus’s chest. “I—I’m not sure.”

I gripped Rune’s arm tightly, my feet futilely kicking at air in frustration. “Someone please tell me what’s going on!”

“There’s a myth among Fae,” Jesiah started slowly. “About an oil that a certain flower creates. It’s not a plant that just grows out in the wild. It—It’s created by Land Fae, but only the strongest of them can do it. You have to have a certain trace of magic. Being injected with or consuming even a drop of the oil stops the Fae’s ability to heal, rendering us basically human in that sense. We can’t recover from injuries, and what would be a fatal wound for a human is also a fatal wound for us.”

“How the hell has no one said anything about this to me?” I snapped.

I thought back to when Rune and I trained all those months ago, and he taught me how to fight and kill a Fae. He never said anything about this oil-producing flower, and it was never brought up in my studies since then, either.

I suddenly remembered the day of my coronation and wedding. Elias’s letter had held a single black petal, and none of us knew what it came from. A shiver ran down my spine as I realized Elias had been sending a warning, even back then. Death was right before my eyes then, and here, it lay at my feet.

“Because it wasn’t supposed to be real,” Rune finally answered. “The Nightbloom was just a myth, a story made up and told to Fae around fires. Like a horror story.”

“It looks pretty damn real to me,” Dallas fretted, raking her hands through her hair. She tugged on the ends. “If a Land Fae has figured out how to create and harness the Nightbloom …”

She didn’t have to finish what she was saying. We all knew what it meant.

A single drop could prove fatal when paired with the right attack.

And Land Fae now had this at their disposal.

“How are we supposed to combat that?” Rance asked.

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