Page 5 of Shade of Ruin

Yet, I know no human could help my cousin. Only a Fae could. That salt and cedar scent fills the room as he turns to me. “I cannot heal this. I can keep it from killing her… for now, but I cannot cure it completely.”

“Do it,” I say, knowing the cost is that I will owe the most dangerous being in Nyth anything he asks. “Don’t let her die.”

He nods to me, and the scent of cedar and salt gets even stronger as his nails trace the lines on Hazel’s skin. And those lines stop moving. For the first time since she screamed, Hazel looks like she can breathe again. Her chest rises and falls slowly as the Shade and I both watch her.

She’s going to live. But those lines aren’t going away, and the cuts on her arm are still dripping inky-black blood onto the wooden floor.

The Shade runs his hand over her cuts, and they knit together and then disappear. But the lines remain. He stands up and faces me, and even without seeing his face, I know he’s somber. “Your cousin will slowly get worse and will eventually die within the year. I only know of one being alive that can save her. Calyr the Gold. The only dragon still in this world.”

A knot in my stomach tightens as I look at Hazel laying on the floor. No one’s seen Calyr in centuries. “Your wrist,” the Shade says.

Without looking away from Hazel, I lift my arm, presenting my wrist to him. My cousin is going to die because of me.Because I’m a Wyrdling. That’s the only explanation. My mother was Fae, just like everyone said.

I look up at the Shade, staring into the shadows of his hood. “How could I accidentally do this?” I ask.

He takes my wrist softly, and instead of answering my question, he says, “This will hurt.” He presses a black-tinted nail against my wrist, and for a moment, the world seems to take pause as he looks at me, his nail pressed against my skin. Then a searing pain flashes against my wrist for the briefest of moments.

He lets go of me, and I look at the mark that’s left. A single tally mark in my skin, like a tattoo. Like the lines on Hazel’s skin. Like a shadow, it moves ever so slightly as I stare at it. Never fully there.

It isn’t a tattoo made of ink or a brand made of flame. It is a mark made of magic. The physical manifestation of an unbreakable vow that I will do as he says when he demands it.

Or I will die.

When I look up at the Shade, he says, “You are not the first to hurt someone accidentally. There is a reason that Wyrdlings hide from humans.”

“Thank you,” I whisper as I accept that every truth of my life is shattered.

The Shade, a being that knows so much more than I do, just confirmed my greatest fear. My cousin, the only person I care about in the world, is going to die within a year. My world is over.

I look down at Hazel as she stirs, and just like before, it’s like someone’s opened a window. When I try to find the Shade, he’s gone.

The only proof that he was ever here is on my wrist, and I run my thumb over the little black mark. I don’t know what I’msupposed to do, but there’s no doubt that the life I expected to live is no longer possible.

Then I see my mother’s ring laying on the floor beside Hazel. The only thing I have of hers. A simple silver ring shaped into a flower with a small black sphere in the center of the petals. Without a second thought, I bend down and pick it up, slipping it onto my finger instinctually.

And for the first time in years, I can’t help but think about my mother. If I’m a Wyrdling, she was Fae. What kind of Fae? And why did she come here?

Chapter 3

The Great Sacrifice was to give power to the High Fae, not to create them as the rumors suggest. The High Fae were created just as the Lesser Fae were, to simply exist. The Great Sacrifice was to give them the power to take over for the dragons. They created four new Houses, the Great Houses, to care for the world as they did.

And we have failed in our charge.

~Queen Brenna, personal journals

Aunt Prudence is nota kind woman. She never has been, and I doubt she ever will be, but I’ve never seen her like this. I’d expected tears, and I’d expected yelling. She seems… broken.

“Get your things and leave,” she says. She’s still wearing the embroidered silk dress that she was parading around town in when everything happened. I still have blood under my nails,though I managed to wash it off my face and hands. I’m wearing more acceptable and less gore-soaked clothing, even opting for a simple linen dress, since Aunt Prudence hates it when I wear pants.

She’s sitting in a high-backed chair in the sitting room, her expression just as grim and unforgiving as ever. She cradles Hazel in her lap, who looks at me with a mix of fear and sadness. I don’t know if I’ll ever fix what I broke today. Even if I could somehow fix those black lines, I don’t know if she’ll ever trust me again.

Prudence doesn’t seem to care one bit. She should be angry, at least, at the twin lines that weave their way over her daughter’s arm. There’s nothing except an icy cold air and a strangely territorial arm over her daughter.

“Leave?” I’m not completely sure I understand. Where would I go? This has been my home for almost fifteen years.

She shifts, the embroidered gown catching the fading light from the window, and its metallic threads shimmer in it, making her seem almost surreal. “Get your things and get out,Wyrdling. Don’t come back. I’ve been saying for years that we should make you leave. Everyone knew you were dangerous. If Trevor hadn’t…”

It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt Hazel. They have to know that. My eyes go to Hazel, who keeps looking between her mother and me. There’s fear in her eyes. It’s the same fear she had when I hurt her. She’s afraid, but she’s not angry.

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