Page 2 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

“You have no idea what I think,” Zylah spat, but the words came out weak.Shewas weak, and just talking and eating had made her want,need, to lie down again already.

Raif nodded. Rose from the stool. “You’re safe here, Zylah,” he said again, and she wondered if it was more for himself. He took the empty tray from her bed, leaving a pitcher of water beside it, and didn’t meet her eyes again.

Zylah glared at his back as he walked away, as he disappeared out of sight around a corner in the passage that led away from her room. Only when she was certain she could no longer hear him did she allow herself to fall back into her blankets, elbow nudging the little bowl of seeds.

Nestled in another scrap of fabric at the head of her bed, Kopi slept deeply. He was weak, too, though Zylah had thought he was dead the first few days when he hadn’t stirred at all. Raif had tried to offer help, but she wouldn’t let him near her little friend.

She gently stroked Kopi’s head, wondering if she should wake him, to try and coax him to eat, because she’d be damned if she was going to lose him too. The tiny owl was all that was keeping her together. As soon as he was strong enough to fly, she would tell him to go. To find their friends, to be free. She had no idea who had survived the mine attack—if any of the others had made it out. Or if they’d fallen like Holt.

I’ll find you.Zylah would look upon his face one last time. Press one last kiss to his lips as she uttered his final rites.

Before she killed them all.

Aurelia, Ranon. Raif.

Though if her blood was bound to Ranon’s, if the reason her blood had been used to free him had in some way tied them together… Zylah swallowed. She’d have to leave him for last. And there were other matters, like how Aurelia’s vampires and thralls could have overtaken half the continent by now for all she knew. Which meant humans and Fae were still just as much in danger as each other. Would be just as caged as she was.

Kopi stirred beneath her touch, one eye peeking open as he made a little garbled sound that let her know he was content. Raif had said he didn’t know how long he would be gone, but Zylah silently vowed not to let more time go to waste. She would get her strength up, explore where she could. And then she was going to get the fuck out of there.

“I don’t know what my legacy will be,”Holt had told her after he’d found her in Varda. “But it will be something of my own making. Nobody else’s.”Her legacy would not be to rot in a cell at the hands of a family of monsters. Zylah refused to let it be her fate.

To live. To find her freedom. That was what every step had been about since fleeing the gallows in Dalstead. Since joining the uprising in Virian. Since seeing how the Fae existed, trapped in their courts. Since learning of the hold Raif’s family had over Holt.

To living free. That was her vow. The words Holt had repeated back to her once. She fought against the fresh sting of tears, the space inside her where he should have been, fractured and empty.

Zylah would have her freedom. Would give it to as many Fae and humans as she could. She swore on it as at last, the tears silently fell. Swore on the old gods, the Fae who had abandoned them all, her grandmother included.

“To living free,” she murmured to her empty room, swiping the tears away with fierce resolve, something like hope fluttering in her chest for the first time since Raif had carried her into the dark.

Chapter Two

Threedayspassed,andthere was no sign of Raif. Zylah was strong enough to properly bathe, though she’d almost fallen getting out of the bathtub. She didn’t let that part of herself that had whispered dark thoughts so often in the past leak through; only told herself that she would get better. That she would get out.

Though she could still barely walk, she pulled and heaved on that place within her that her magic had once resided, the place that allowed her to slip into the aether and evanesce from location to location, but nothing happened. She tried to call things to her, too, small things like a blanket from Holt’s room back at the tavern in Virian; her sword, though she didn’t know where it had fallen, but nothing appeared.

She was hollow. Empty of her magic. Empty of Holt’s presence.

I’ll find you.It was a promise she made to herself on repeat. To him, wherever his body was, she would see it properly prepared. She would—Zylah bit back a sob as her plate fell from her hands and shattered at her feet. The sprites would have him. Would have taken care of him for her. Preserved his body so she could see him one more time. Zylah had to believe it.

She reached for the broken plate, sliding a fractured sliver of stoneware into the sleeve of her tunic as Kopi hooed softly. Zylah barely had a moment to stand before Raif’s mother evanesced into the room before her, a sheen of sweat on the Fae’s brow.

Zylah swallowed. “Come to finish what you started?” She’d wondered how long it would be before Aurelia sought revenge for her mate’s death.

The Fae’s eyes narrowed to chips of ice before she slapped Zylah hard across the face, the sound sending Kopi fluttering from his place on the bed. Zylah reached a hand out to steady herself, the other grazing the shard she’d slipped up her sleeve. Aurelia’s touch could be paralysing if the Fae willed it, but Zylah would go down fighting, no matter how weak she’d become.

Sleek black hair framed the female’s face, falling over her chest in soft waves where it rested against her black gown. She’d always been pale, but now her skin was ashen. Zylah had had countless hours to catalogue the Fae’s magic. Like the way she’d held them in a bubble of her magic. The way she’d commanded Holt to stop. The way her magic had released like a web over them both, snuffing out the connection they shared.

Jesper had learnt compulsion from Aurelia, but Zylah would never forget the way Holt had knelt before her, eyes glazed and unseeing, the way the Fae had offered him two choices: kill their friends or let her in.

Raif’s mother pressed her lips together and wiped a hand against her brow as if some sickness had fallen over her. “You think you know suffering. We’ve only just begun here, Zylah. When I’m done with you, there will be nothing left.”

Zylah lunged, aiming for the Fae’s throat with her makeshift dagger. But Aurelia’s wrist fell over hers too quickly, magic skittering over her skin where they touched. The shard tumbled from Zylah’s fingertips as she lost control of her body at the onslaught of so much power, her body too weak to fight it.

Fight, a tired part of her whispered.

Her hands reached out, the breath leaving her lungs at the impact as the ground rose up to meet her. Something cracked. Her wrist, maybe, but Zylah used her other hand to twist around, to scoot herself back in the dirt.

Aurelia’s chest heaved, the shard of pottery in her fingertips as she glared down at Zylah. Her magic was weak. The last time Zylah had felt the Fae’s paralysing touch, it had taken hold of her entirely, rendered her useless.

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