Page 85 of The Realm That Falls to Her

Elias nods his approval and continues. “Do not worry about the queen launching another attack on our territory. I shall have our spies patrolling the borderlands day and night for any whiff of trouble.”

The Sunshards murmur their approval.

Relieved we seem to have avoided a major incident, the others join us to finish our farewells. Over to the side, removed from the hubbub, I spot Jorna hovering over by the gates.

“Oh, stars, she’s not coming with us, is she?” I murmur to no one in particular.

Destan is beside me, and his brow furrows. “No. Yesterday she spun me some nonsense about Seelie’s iron clogging up her diviner’s eye. Apparently, that means she’ll be much more use if she stays here.”

Now he says it, the seer clearly isn’t dressed for a long journey, and she’s fidgeting nervously, seemingly unable to take her eyes off me. I raise an eyebrow at her, and she beckons me over.

“One moment please,” I tell our friends, and Ruskin follows me to the gates.

“Oh, I didn’t know if I’d catch you before you went,” she says, wringing her hands. “In fact, I was in two minds about telling you at all.”

I glance at Ruskin, but it’s clear he has no idea what she’s talking about either.

“But every ephor knows the future isn’t ours to influence, only to report,” she continues. I can think of a few times where Jorna hasn’t stuck to her own rules in that regard, but don’t bring them up.

“What is it?” I ask, growing impatient.

“I didn’t see the significance before because I didn’t know. But then I overheard the Unseelie talking and…” She fixes her watery gaze on us. “It’s true, then, that you are naminai? Bonded?”

Ruskin takes a step in front of me as if to shield me, a move which seems instinctive, even though I don’t need protecting from Jorna.

At least I didn’t think I did, but she’s looking at us now with uncomfortable levels of concern.

“We are, yes,” Ruskin says, a hint of warning in his voice.

“Then that must be it. There’s a prophecy in the text of Ephor Novan about two figures bound by the deepest bond—one a male, one a woman. Forgive me, but for a while I thought perhaps it referred to the bond of mother and son, to Evanthe and Ruskin, though the wording was strange. A male and a woman, not male and female, as we would say of two fae.” Her eyes fall on me. “But of course the naminai is the deepest of bonds and so it seems clear now, this prophecy is about you, Eleanor Thorn.”

“Lady Thorn,” I correct her coldly. I don’t care about the title, not really, but I can feel her fear infecting me and I hate it. No wonder she set the Seelie Court pointing fingers and running scared. She’s got my stomach twisted in knots before she’s even told me what she thinks she’s foreseen.

“Lady Thorn, yes. But you see, that’s the problem,” she says mysteriously.

“For star’s sake, Ephor, you will spit it out now,” Ruskin snaps. “What does the prophecy say?”

She swallows. “That if you two remain together, it will destroy the very foundation of the Seelie Kingdom.”

We use a portal to get us close to the border, but from there we have to ride to the liaison point the Sunshards have organized with the resistance. As we ride, I increasingly wish we could somehow click our fingers and be outside the Seelie palace. Even though I’m dreading everything that might go wrong, I’d still rather be fighting for my life than sitting alone with my thoughts, dwelling on what Jorna told us. It bounces around in my head like a constant echo, repeating over and over.

Destroy the very foundation of Seelie.

Jorna had been spectacularly unhelpful at offering us any more insight on why that might be, or how me loving Ruskin was going to doom us all. All she’d say was that ephors aren’t meant to interpret prophecies beyond a certain level. In the end we’d decided we couldn’t waste time trying to work it out. The Sunshards and the resistance were waiting.

But now, riding through the lush greenery of Seelie, the idea I might somehow harm all of this only gets more disturbing. Jorna’s vision of Evanthe was clear as day. Do her other predictions hold the same weight? Does it matter that it wasn’t her prediction—not something viewed through her necklace—but something she interpreted from the scrolls?

Ruskin notices my silence as we ride. I’m at the back of the group, like I always am on these massive, terrifying horses I can never fully control. He holds his animal back to fall into step beside me.

“You’re worrying about it, aren’t you?” he says, admonishing me.

“I find it stranger that you’re not,” I say.

“And what about the prophecy she was shouting about before? The one she claimed proved you were a curse the realm was trying to purge from its veins?”

“That’s not what she claimed,” I say, reminding him. “She was vague—she let everyone else decide it applied to me. Besides, it’s like you said back then, the prophecy did have truth to it. ‘When poison runs in the vein of the Seelie Kingdom, the magic of the realm will bring the hand of metal to purge it.’ It seems that I’m the hand of metal, and the iron is the poison I’m meant to purge. You’re High King, your magic is the realm’s magic, so it was you—the magic of the realm—who brough me to Seelie to fix the iron problem. All the iron problems.” I finish, a little breathless from my ranting.

He doesn’t say anything for a few moments and the lack of immediate counterargument makes me feel even worse, because as I spoke, I was convincing myself too. Jorna’s prophecies mean something.

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