Page 34 of Fairies Don't Fall

He cleared his throat. “You killed the werewolf leader who invaded? How did he get into Fairyland? All the ways should have been blocked.”

I blinked at him. “They should have been. They were, but Malamech was a great Lupin Sorcerer. He had very few limits.”

“Or, he was working with someone from Fairyland, someone who could have betrayed you to them.”

I was shocked at the accusation. “You think one of my people would work with an invading army? Impossible!”

He shrugged. “Betrayal is common. Fairies aren’t an entirely virtuous species. Even angels have their traitors. Malamech channeled infernal magic, if I recall correctly. Such dark magic may be able to work against the natural fairy connection you share with your people. That could be what’s blocking you from tracing the thoughts of the person that wants to poison my people.”

I frowned as I considered. It was ridiculous to think that anyone would be stupid enough to think that allowing werewolves into our land would be beneficial to them, but someone had blocked me after I heard them talk about poisoning an entire pack of wolves. I hated werewolves in general, but I’d never kill all of them. That was extreme in a very dark direction. Strange that such a soft wolf knew so much about it.

“You’ve studied a lot about the werewolf invasion of Fairyland. Why?” I finally asked, looking up at him.

He shrugged and gave me a wry smile. “It’s a weird thing. Malamech in general is the sort of… leader that leaves a terrifying impression to everyone, even generations later. He enslaved the souls of his armies. Did you know that? He stole their will, their power, and turned them into the same kind of monster he was.” He shuddered theatrically. “Thinking about it will give me nightmares.”

I swallowed hard. “I’m glad I killed him.”

“To be honest, it’s kind of hard to believe a little thing like you could kill a big bad wolf like him.”

I gave him a look. “I’m not that little. Also, your beast is too weird and poetic to be turned into one of Malamech’s monsters. He didn’t take their souls unwillingly. You can’t do that. They agreed to it in exchange for something. Lies, no doubt, but still, they chose to follow a monster. I still think about whether it was the right thing to let them leave after Malamech died.”

“You chose to not become a monster like Malamech.”

I sighed heavily. “No. I chose to become a worse monster than Malamech. Otherwise, I couldn’t have beaten him.”

“You’re saying that virtue doesn’t always conquer evil?”

I glanced at the soft, naïve, warrior wolf. “I would never. Of course good always wins. There are stained glass windows depicting countless scenes of virtues overcoming all obstacles. They’re around the square where my extremely virtuous mother was slaughtered. Stained glass never lies.”

He rubbed his chin. “One thing, your detoxing process, your scent is the same as pixie-dust addicts. I think that your medication for your death sickness is made out of pixie-dust.”

I frowned at him. “What do you mean? Why would you bring that up? What kind of connections…”

He flashed me a sharp smile. “I’m just saying that maybe you should ask the person who gave you your medicine where they got it.”

“It was developed over decades. The entire court was involved.”

“And after it was developed for optimal effectiveness at numbing you, weakening you, it spread from Fairyland across earth to the other fairies who struggled with exile or your death-sickness.”

His words hurt. I wanted to cover my ears and find somewhere to hide. It’s like he really thought there was a fairy behind all the misery in the whole world. I would discount his theory, except there was a fairy who had been able to block me. That made me question everything. Also, I functioned much better without the medicine. Maybe I had been sicker from the medicine than from the death-sickness, but how was that possible for a fairy with ill intent to hide from me? Because they could block me. Was a fairy truly meddling in demonic magic? Had a fairy invited Malamech into Fairyland? But why?

“You make good points. I will consider it,” I finally said, stiffly. It would be foolish not to consider all the possibilities, however unpleasant they were. We didn’t hold hands for the rest of the walk to the werewolf gym, or juvenile detention center.

It was filled with people on the blue mats, mostly younger in age, goblins and werewolves who were hooked up to bags of water, while their eyes had a greenish cast.

Ruin ran up to me right away, her eyes big as she threw her arms around me and squeezed me tight. I squeezed her back and felt better again, connected. She pulled away to glare at me. “You were gone forever! I thought you’d never come back.”

I tugged on a strand of her hair that had come out of her ponytail. “I thought you were dead, poisoned with a decomposing corpse that I’d have to take to the necromancer. Max knows a guy.”

She snorted and rolled her eyes. Knowing she was safe was such a relief. I could help those I didn’t know much more easily. I turned to the nearest person lying on a blue mat. It was a woman with green skin, pointed teeth, and an inability to focus her eyes. I dropped to my knees beside her and summoned the strength of the moon as it was rising over the city so high above us. I put my hand over her face and sent strength in her while searching for the underlying poison and killing it. She turned to the side and started throwing up, violently, until strands of brown started coming out of her throat. I squeezed her shoulder until she’d gotten it all out, then helped the mess decompose into a nice rich compost.

“That’s cool,” Ruin said, at my shoulder, making me jump.

I smiled at her. “Yeah. Can you get her some water? Are there bottles? Make sure it’s clean water. Not poisoned or laced with silver.”

She nodded and darted off, leaving me to smile encouragingly at the woman who was looking at me with horrorin her eyes before I went to the next prone figure, a boy a little younger than Ruin, a werewolf this time. The process was the same, the strength of the moon, the killing of the poison, and then the vomiting. Finally, it was all broken down into usable compost, and I moved onto the next. Ruin handed him a water bottle then followed me.

“What spells do you use? You don’t have runes on your arms and you don’t chant anything.”

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