Page 15 of An Honored Vow

“Thewaateyshirakwere defeated well before I was born. Thousands and thousands of years before.” Feron sat on the edge of the chair he’d crafted with his magic and rested his hand on his cane. “Our histories say that theniinokwenarand the Elves had killed the last of them well before Kieran’thara and Ara’linthir gave birth to the first generation of Dark and Light Fae, as you call them.”

“It must be connected to the resurgence of magic.” Gerarda stood beside Elaran’s chair. “That is too big of a coincidence otherwise.”

Vrail shook her head so violently I thought she would make herself sick. “That isn’t possible. From everything the other Elverin and Rheih have cataloged, breaking the seals only restored the magic that existed when the Light Fae created the siphons. There is no evidence that the return of stored magic was strong enough to bring a creature from millennia ago out of extinction.”

All the enthusiastic joy Vrail usually had when explaining something was gone. Her words were hollow and monotone, and there was no life in her apart from her bouncing leg.

Feron considered her answer. “It is strange that thewaateyshirakare the only foes of our past to resurface. There are other creatures in our histories that have not returned.”

“Not yet,” Myrrah huffed. “Perhaps they will join …” She stumbled on the Elvish word for the shadowy beast and came up with a translation in the King’s Tongue. “These Dark Ones.”

I bit my cheek and slumped into an empty chair. Vrail was right, this was too much of a coincidence. Just while the Elverin werepreparing to vanquish their enemy to the east, a lethal one from their past returned?

“What if it isn’t a coincidence?” I sat up, leaning on the table’s edge. “What if Kairn did something to that last seal?”

Vrail’s brow creased. “A catalyst?”

I nodded. “He stabbed a blade into the seal before I broke it. It was black and laced with something. I had figured it was poison to harm me but—”

“There was a flash of black smoke when the seal broke.” Gerarda flipped her knife through her fingers as she addressed Feron. “I witnessed her break each of the other seals, but that had never happened before.”

Someone moved against the wall. “Even Damien would know that bringing back thewaateyshirakwould be a death sentence for the entire continent.”

My body froze at the sound of Riven’s voice. I didn’t move as he stepped to take the chair beside me. Everyone else in the room was silent, waiting for one of us to make the first move.

Except for Rheih.

“Are his eyes green?” she whispered loudly to Gerarda.

“I don’t think underestimating Damien any more than we already have is a good idea,” I said coolly over my shoulder.

Riven’s jaw pulsed. It might have taken me a few short weeks to realize that Damien knew about the seals and his father’s connection to the magic of Elverath, but it was Riven who was too confident his own brother didn’t know his secret. And Riven allowed Damien to use that knowledge to fracture our forces so completely the crevice between us was deeper than the Rift itself.

“If this was Damien’s doing, then he knows something that we don’t.” Gerarda perched on the armrest of Elaran’s chair.

I looked to Vrail. “What do you know about thewaateyshirak? How do we fight them? How many were there in Faelin’s time?”

Vrail gave a half-hearted shrug. “Very little.” She pointed at the dozens of books in front of her. “There are brief mentions in these texts, but so much of that knowledge was lost in the Blood Purges. Aemon targeted our scrolls as much as he did the Elverin.”

My skin itched underneath my tunic. Feron and some of the other Elverin were thousands of years old; had they not read anything useful in the time before Aemon’s reign? I turned to him, but he merely shook his head, reading my thoughts.

“All I ever knew were stories.” The faelight cast a silvery glow along the top of Feron’s dark cheekbones. “The Elves had learned to protect themselves against thewaateyshirak.” He waved his hand and an image appeared across my mind. From the gasps in the room, I knew everyone else was seeing the vision too. A terrifying shadow of a beast flew over the city of Myrelinth. Every burl was dark, the entire city quiet as the beast flew overhead and a spout of fiery light blasted in the distance. “Thewaateyshirakuse their scent and hearing to hunt more than their eyes. They can see movement but not details. The Elves took refuge in Myrelinth because the plant life masked their scent. They formed patrols to warn the citizens before the beasts approached.”

“The fire was a distraction.” Elaran toyed with the gold weapon holding up her curls and laid her head on Gerarda’s lap. The ease of their closeness made the distance between me and Riven feel like an ocean.

“Yes.” Feron nodded. “It was a useful tool to keep the cities safe while thewaateyshirakwere in their frenzy.”

“Frenzy?”

Vrail’s leg started bouncing again, though she didn’t look at me while she spoke. Her dark eyes just stared out at nothing; she hadleft part of herself in that library. “The creatures were only active one year for every century. But that year would be chaos, constant attacks all over Elverath, and as the year dragged on the creatures only got larger and more deadly. The Elves named itbii’agar niibe giizir—the year of the sleeping sun—because most would reverse their habits to sleeping during the daylight hours so they could be alert all night long.”

I leaned forward. “They can only attack at night?”

Vrail nodded, still not looking at me. “Faelin created the second sun to make the nights shorter than they were before. Sunlight is the only true enemy of awaateyshir.”

Feron leaned on the top of his cane from his seat. “The shortened nights made it harder for thewaateyshirakto breed. They grew weaker and their numbers began to dwindle as Faelin led attacks into their nests.” Feron’s full lips fell into a shallow frown. “Her gifts started to wane after she forged the second sun. She faded from the world completely only a few thousand years afterward. But she was a brilliant warrior. She used what was left of her gifts to battle thewaateyshirakuntil they were vanquished. And then she was gone.”

“Not just her gifts,” Vrail interjected. “Faelin’s main weapon was her sword.”

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