Page 60 of A Legacy of Poison and Lies

For some reason, it made Zylah think of Okwata and Ahrek, but she couldn’t pinpoint why. “Why do I get the feeling very few Fae know this story?”

Nye turned a page. “Pallia. Imala. Altais. Gentris. Diotin. Acrona. Farian.” She pointed to each of the seven faces Zylah knew of once as her gods. Had been raised to believe it, anyway. “Ranon. Sira.” A child sat in Sira’s arms, Ranon’s arms around her, looking down at their baby.

“They were together? Ranon and Sira?”

“They were. Ranon and Sira lost their child either in the war or in the process of coming to our world, we aren’t certain which. But it was the loss of their child that set them on their path.”

All Zylah saw in the pages were grieving parents, desperate to fill the void their child had left behind.

“Their vision didn’t quite align with the others, so Ranon and Sira took matters into their own hands, creating new life as they thought it should be. And they almost succeeded in reshaping this world in their vision. They started a war that lasted four hundred years. What were once called Lesser Fae are all descended from the creatures Ranon and Sira created.”

Zylah leafed through the pages, each image becoming worse than the last. Asters and all kinds of creatures filled the pages, the ink thicker and more menacing in all the spaces they occupied.

As the pages went on, the creatures became slighter, some with wings, some scaly. More recognisable as the Lesser Fae she’d seen since fleeing Dalstead.

Lesser Fae.An old term, Zylah had been told. And now it made sense. It truly marked them as less than their High Fae equivalents. She thought of Mala and Asha. Of their fierceness and strength. Their loyalty and love. They hadn’t been her friends. But they were not monsters, far from it. Marcus, on the other hand. She bit down on her lip, silently repeating her promise to herself. She would end him and Jesper before the vanquicite took her life.

“The others?” she asked, meeting Nye’s gaze. “They drove Ranon and Sira away?”

Shadows seemed to leech back into Nye as she pushed off the table. “Not exactly. That’s the version our children are taught. That Ranon and Sira realised the severity of their mistake. The truth is they kept going, and the remaining seven had to stop them. Ranon was put to sleep. Entombed. No one knows where he is. But it’s said he let it happen to allow Sira time to flee to safety.” She flipped the book a few pages ahead, an illustration of Ranon’s tomb spread across two pages, crosshatched sections of faded ink eating up all the parchment. A mask lay over a shrouded body, vines wrapping over it.

“And did Sira succeed?”

“All we know is that the remaining seven tried to remove whatever remnants they could of Ranon and Sira. They established the four kingdoms, divided them into twelve courts, appointed High Lords and Ladies.” Nye pointed at two kingdoms splitting Astaria, one in Bhuja and one in Ilrith.

I am still the King of Feoldran, Marcus had said once back in Virian.

“Each kingdom was ruled by two monarchs, with courts managing most of the responsibilities of the land.”

“That makes eight.”

Nye raised an eyebrow. “Imala’s lover was not Fae. But he was not from here.” She pointed to a man with feathered wings that arched above his shoulders and almost reached the ground. Not a Lesser Fae, but not a High Fae, either. Something else entirely.

Zylah pieced everything together, connecting the dots between what she’d been told and what she’d taught herself in the last few months. Nye slipped in and out of the shadows almost as if she didn’t realise she was doing it, her face impassive. She was far more guarded than her cousins, but given the life she’d likely led, it made sense. To anyone else, she might have seemed cold and unfeeling. But Zylah saw it for what it was: armour. The Fae said nothing as she played with the shadows, letting Zylah flick through the remainder of the book, including the pages she’d skipped through to show Ranon’s tomb.

Zylah couldn’t understand what was left of the faded ink, the language so old she wondered if anyone could speak it. But the images were clear. War. Death. Suffering. The four hundred years Nye had spoken of, condensed into a handful of pages of scratched ink. She flipped past Ranon’s tomb again, the page too dark to linger on, as if the drawing held some of his presence within it. Her fingers slowed at more images of war, and without asking, Zylah knew. It was the beginning of the rivalry between humans and Fae.

“Virian was the old Fae capital,” Zylah murmured after a stretch of silence. “When?”

“After the first uprising, when many of the ruling Fae were murdered.” Nye had disappeared into the shadows entirely, although Zylah could somehow still feel her nearby.

“Marcus wanted to become High King,” she said quietly. And now he was king there once more. How long had he planned this, how many centuries?

Everything Ranon and Sira had created were Lesser Fae. Even the Asters and the vampires. And vampires hadn’t been seen since Holt was a child. Over three hundred years, and he’d said he remembered the first uprising.

It didn’t strike Zylah as a coincidence that the two might be connected.

“What happened just over twenty years ago, during the last uprising?”

Nye stepped out of the shadows. “Marcus was moving his pieces around the board. And Holt got tired of waiting. He’s built up a network of people over the years since his parents’ deaths, but Marcus was one step ahead of him. I guess he was whispering in Arnir’s ear all along.” She shook her head. “We heard Arnir ruled Dalstead as if Fae never existed.”

Zylah willed herself not to frown. “He did. I thought they were all gone. Speaking of them was forbidden.”

She’d been nothing but a puppet in Dalstead. As if it wasn’t enough to be a woman in a man’s world, King Arnir had stripped away all access to the truth. But Kara had always managed to get her hands on the Fae storybooks, so therewasa source, a way. Zylah had just never opened her eyes enough to see it, to find it for herself.

She flipped back to the map showing the four kingdoms, her attention snagging on Feoldran, Marcus’s kingdom, and Lanaros, Holt’s. “Holt told me once he didn’t believe the gods were Fae,” she murmured to herself.

Nye laughed under her breath. “Knowing something and accepting it are two very different things. But I couldn’t tell you any more of Holt’s story even if I wanted to.”

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