Page 68 of Atop the Faerie Throne
“Yes,” Caed finishes, ducking his head. “Elatha’s tunnel came out here, too.”
Squaring my shoulders, I stare down the imposing wall of rusted iron. It’s no longer foggy, like it was that day, but the iron braziers are exactly as I remember them—albeit unlit—and the grey sickliness still leeches through the soil. I can even taste the rot, although it feels oddly stale.
“No one’s in,” Bree says, shocking us all. “I can’t hear any movement from inside.”
“None?” Caed demands. “That makes no sense. We were just here. This was the biggest camp for fifteen leagues.”
The closer we get, the more obvious it becomes that Bree is right. The great gate I was once dragged through is open—as if in welcome—and beyond it tents have been ripped up, broken wagons abandoned, and the ships that lined the riverbank are simply… gone.
Then we get close enough, and I catch sight of the figures strung up along the top of the wall.
Filth-covered fae have been hung by their necks, with their chests cracked open and their organs spilling out. All of them are still wearing the shackles that kept them prisoner, and some of them still have their wings bound in that awful wire.
They never stood a chance.
My throat burns with bile, and my eyes with unshed tears.
He can’t get away with this. Elatha has done too much to my people to be allowed to just slink back to his hole in the groundto lick his wounds. We could’ve freed these fae. We could’ve saved them. If we’d just been faster.
“Dead.” Drystan rarely sounds shocked, but the terse edge to that one word might come close.
“He’s going to do this to all of them,” I realise.
“Your display in the palace must’ve shocked him,” Caed guesses. “He won’t want to waste soldiers in a doomed battle to keep the land we conquered when he believes that Balor’s medallion will hand him a total victory later on.”
“It’s too soon to make assumptions,” Drystan says, spurring his horse forward. “Someone needs to check to make sure it’s abandoned?—”
“Maeve, could you help us out?” I ask, and my grandmother pops into being beside me.
She’s already pouting. “Fine, but if I find any Fomorians, I get to kick their ass.”
I wave her on, already knowing the odds of her finding anything are slim to none. Caed’s right. Elatha has chosen a full withdrawal. And in his wake, he’s left more death, because he knows how killing my people affects me.
We sweepthrough the remains of camp after camp, following the Torvyn. The lack of any resistance makes the trip faster than it should be, and soon enough we’re standing on black sand, staring at the Endless Sea in gloomy silence.
We’ve saved no one. Even though we blinked a lot of the way, skipping over the smaller camps entirely…
The Fomorians left only iron and death behind them.
Lore is playing fetch with Wraith a little down the beach, using driftwood instead of body parts this time. He’s reactingbetter to the last few days than the rest of us, although even that isn’t quite the right word.
He’s… stabby. Antsy. It’s so strange that I can feel the urge to kill and how it rides him now. Then he disappears, and the urge abates. If I wanted to, I could keep track of how many fae he kills daily.
The knowledge that it’s always more than one is disturbing enough that I don’t want to. I think the lack of a fight is getting to him more than the horrors we’ve witnessed.
“I know what the minor royals think,” I mumble into Bree’s embrace. “But I don’t believe Elatha would turn tail and run like this unless he was absolutely certain he had the upper hand. I don’t think the bàsron are a myth.”
Neither do they, though they won’t outright say it. It’s written in the unease that passes freely up and down the bonds between us.
Drystan’s jaw clenches and unclenches like he wants to deny it, but he settles for glaring at the grey waves.
“We should head back,” Jaro says. “It’s already been five days. The palace will be mostly clear by now, and standing here staring at the sea isn’t going to solve anything.”
He’s speaking sense, but it does little to calm my aggravation. By rights, we should be over there, tracking down Elatha and bringing the war to a final, conclusive end.
We can’t. Not yet. It makes everything we’ve done seem futile. Like we’ve suffered so much for nothing.
“We should put our energy where it can be of more use,” Bree says quietly. “Rebuilding Elfhame, strengthening our defences, and dealing with Eero so that we can finally bring the Queendom together under one banner if Elatha does return.”
