Page 189 of Of Empires and Dust

As she met Fenryr’s stare, the door behind him swung open and Elia Havel half-walked, half-ran into the room, carrying a tray with a teapot and a number of mugs. The smile on her face stretched from one ear to the other, her eyes wide. “Ella Bryer. Every day I prayed Heraya would keep you safe.”

“Heraya did nothing,” Fenryr whispered, a sharp tooth biting at his bottom lip. “She only watches as we die.”

Elia didn’t hear him. She pushed Tanner and Lasch aside and laid the tray on a small table by Ella’s bed. Ella could already smell the earthy aroma of Arlen Root tea. In fact, she had smelled it from the moment she’d woken, but it had sat in the back of her mind, muddled by the haze.

“Here.” Elia poured the tea into a clay mug and made to pass it to Ella before Fenryr placed his hand in the way.

The man – no, the god – raised a finger and gave Elia a gentle smile. “May I?”

Elia stared at him curiously for a moment, then handed him the mug, her eyes remaining narrowed. Despite Fenryr’s pleasant demeanour, the atmosphere in the room darkened. Both Lasch and Tanner moved a little closer, Aneera and the other Angan taking a position behind the still-kneeling Fenryr.

Fenryr held the mug in one hand, his palm on the base, his fingers snaking up the sides. He stared down into the murky liquid. “Do you know the history of Arlen Root, Ella Bryer?”

“The history? It’s the root of the Arlen Odus, a flowering perennial with dull orange petals and long leaves. It’s native to western Illyanara. My mother used to pick it fresh all the time.”

Fenryr gave a soft laugh. The smile that touched his face was one of pain. Ella could…smellhim. He smelled of anguish, and the wolf in her blood mirrored that same grief. “The Arlen Odus plant is native to Terroncia. We’d thought we’d burned every shred of it we could find. Thought we’d left it behind us when we sailed to these lands. We were wrong.”

“I don’t understand.”

“This plant, this root, is poison. It is the reason my children, my people…ourpeople are on the edge of extinction. We were betrayed three thousand years ago when some of our own smuggled it onto the ships. They thought to use it to gain power in this new land. But all it brought them was death. When ingested, Arlen Root poisons the blood of the Tuatha – the children of gods, the Gifted. It blocks your Gifts, making you weaker and dulling your senses. It is how the Ungifted – the Itharín – controlled your kind, how they kept them sedate and corralled them like cattle for the slaughter. They put it in the food where the taste could be hidden, then put you in chains. This root was the slow death of tens of thousands.”

“But my mam… she?—”

“She made her choices. She did what she needed to do to protect her pack.”

“She was a druid?”

Fenryr nodded slowly. He stood, taking a seat on the edge of the bed, Faenir shifting without complaint. “When you are recovered, I will answer any and all questions you have. I will show you the paths once walked. For now, I will tell you thatyour mother was of the Pathfinder blood of my veins. She was, as you are, a descendant of one of the oldest and greatest septs to bear my name – Sept Eridain. By the time of her father’s father, the imperials were using collared Tuatha to hunt and track their own kind. Freis made a choice to use the root against them – and against my counsel. She used it to block her Gifts, and yours after you were born, so the trackers could not follow the scent of the wolf in your blood.”

Fenryr extended the mug towards Ella. That same earthy scent that only moments before had reminded her of home now turned her stomach. All these years, her mother had poured that tea down her throat, had fed her poison – had lied to her.

“But now,” Fenryr said, twisting on the edge of the bed so that he could look into her eyes, “I feel it is only right that you know the truth and that you are given the opportunity to make your own choice. The landscape of this continent is shifting, and I think we’ve spent enough time in the dark. Gods are not all knowing, or all seeing, or all powerful – not even the Enkara. Decades ago, your father risked his life for mine many times over. He had no cause to do so. He was not aware of his blood, and he had nothing tangible to gain. He freed me from the chains my complacency had bound me in. And I will be complacent no more. What say you, Wolfchild?”

Ella stared back at Fenryr, into the golden eyes of a god. Taking a breath in through her nose, she took the mug from Fenryr, allowing the deep earthy smell to fill her nostrils. The wolf within her stood on all fours, a rage swelling. That same red mist that had once blinded her now wrapped around her like a blanket. It warmed her and filled the cracks in her brokenness. Her fingers closed around the mug, nails darkening and extending to claws. She closed her grip, and the mug shattered in her hand, tea spilling over the floor, shards of clay bouncing on the stone.

“Gods. What a mess.” Elia Havel looked completely flustered, her gaze darting around the pieces of broken mug on the floor, her hands moving frantically. “Let me get that for you.”

Lasch rested his hands on her shoulders and shook his head gently, then pulled her closer.

Ella stared at the remnants of the mug, her hand in a tight fist, blood trickling through the seams, deep and crimson.

Chapter 42

A City Once Lost

17th Day of the Blood Moon

The Argonan Marshes – Winter, Year 3081 After Doom

Calen had heardtales of the Argonan Marshes, of how thousands of corpses lay beneath the water’s surface from after The Fall, how dragon bones jutted from its depths and ghosts and demons prowled the vast expanse of sodden earth.

Now that he stood there, staring out at the fog-blanketed wetland with his own eyes, he couldn’t say he saw anything of the sort. The place held that same sense of otherworldliness as Ölm Forest and had the same ability to make his skin crawl. But that likely had more to do with the old stories roaming in the back of his mind than with the place itself.

The marshes were unnaturally quiet, which meant that every tiny sound that broke the stillness was as sharp as a blade. The occasional bird call rang out, echoing endlessly, but it was the splashing that kept Calen from his sleep. Every time he got closeto his dreams, a splash would sound somewhere around him and jolt him awake. Awake to the vast emptiness, the quiet, the dark.

Which was why he now stood with his hands behind his back and his breath misting into the air as he stared into the night.

Much like the dunes of the Burnt Lands, the marshes seemed to stretch into eternity. Sodden strips of earth, laden with dense, squelching vegetation, traced through the wetlands like lengths of dropped string. Tufts of grass that rose as high as Calen’s chin rustled gently in the wind. The light of the moon tinted thick layers of fog in a deep red as they drifted over the thousands of pools of murky marsh water pockmarked into the land.

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