Anya, I’m so sorry. There was nothing you or I could have done. He was dead the moment he was betrayed, though I still can’t grasp what happened. And I still can’t believe he’s gone.
Write me. Please. Come and stay with me and my father in Sheness if you like. You’re always welcome here.
I’m thinking of you.
G.
At the bottom, hastily scrawled as though she had considered not including it, was an added message:
If you retain any care for Shea, she’s in danger now that he’s gone. His friends are unforgiving.
I crumpled the letter in my hand, angry at Gwyneth for even mentioning Shea. Whatever happened to my former friend was out of my hands. More than that, it was of her making.
“Is the news bad?” Fi asked.
“No, just not what I wanted to hear. Tell me—when did this arrive?”
“Only this afternoon. By snowbird to the Dementya station, then by servant here.”
I nodded. Although snowbirds were notoriously difficult to train, they were swift fliers and therefore favored as messengers by the wealthy, a class that included the Dementya family. And if the news had been spread this quickly to the coast, it had probably been flown across the sea to all the reaches of the human world, sparking celebrations at many port cities. Gwyneth’s father, Leo Dementya, was the owner of a fleet of ships that had been raided on more than one occasion, placing him among the revelatory group. What would she do if he asked her to join in a toast to the death of such a notorious pirate and criminal? At least I didn’t have to pretend happiness. Gagging at that thought, I rushed to the washbasin, struggling to keep my food down.
“Are you sick?” Judging from the concern wrinkling Fi’s brow, I looked as pale and clammy as I felt. “Should I send for a doctor?”
“No, no, I’m fine. But I should have listened to you—I think I ate too fast.”
She pursed her lips, not quite believing me, and I spoke up, wanting to head off additional questions.
“Listen, Fi, if any more letters come—”
“I’ll hold them for you—your eyes only.”
I forced a smile and returned to the cot, taking a sip from my mug of cider.
“I’ll be going, then,” Fi said, removing another item from her hidden pocket. This time when she extended her hand, it held a key. “For the door into the alley. No one ever comes or goes by it. Just use it to please yourself.”
“Thank you, again, for all your kindness.”
She picked up the food tray. “You deserve better, but it’s my best.”
Before I could respond, she exited the room, closing the door softly behind her. With a moan, I forced myself to my feet and crossed the short expanse of floor to push the lock into place. Settling down once more on the bed, I squeezed my eyes shut and applied the compress to the right side of my face.
I wanted so badly to exhale the tension from my body. But it was no use, not when guilt and sorrow over Zabriel’s death threatened to consume me and ever-present fear clogged my veins, at times almost immobilizing me. Queen Ubiqua—assuming she was still alive—would come to Tairmor with her entourage despite that there was no longer a living Prince to retrieve. Of course, she might not know of Zabriel’s execution, but whether or not she did, the political ramifications of a royal Faerie heir dead at the hands of the humans were potentially colossal. Nothing short of parlay between the leaders of our races could suffocate the impending outcry.
Unbidden, the drawing I had discovered in Illumina’s sketchbook rose once more to the forefront of my mind, the sketch depicting a young woman collapsed in the snow, bleeding out magic at the base of a tree. If my deepest, most secret suspicions were true—that Illumina had been there that night, had been the woman who stroked my hair and shushed me where I lay in agony on the cold ground—then how could I be confident she had conveyed the message she was sent to deliver? Or was this what she had wanted? Me, barred forever from the Faerie Realm, and Zabriel equally unable to return to threaten her ascension to the throne? In the end, it didn’t matter, for the Queen had more than one source of information. The three months upon which Davic and I had agreed were up, and he would bring all the forces of Nature to bear to find me, with my father’s assistance. And the Fae Ambassadors to the Warckum Territory would have sent word of the execution of a member of our race. No, the Queen and her entourage would arrive, the only unknown being when.
And while she was here, grieving her son, I would have to face her with nothing to offer but apologies. I wouldn’t try for excuses. She’d wanted me to succeed her, but I’d abandoned Chrior without her blessing, lost my wings, failed to safeguard the Royal Anlace—a timeless relic from the Old Fae that had never even been held by a non-ruler before me—and watched Zabriel die.
I took a long drink of the cider, hoping its warmth would help me to sleep. But just when I felt my consciousness drift, I sat bolt upright in bed—there was one thing I might be able to reverse. I slapped my cheeks in an effort to come fully alert, then tried to recall the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the Anlace.
Shea and I had been arrested at the West Gate of the city. We’d been searched for weapons, and I’d snapped at one of the men to be careful with the blade. During our escape, when we’d stolen back our packs and supplies, the Anlace hadn’t been there. So what had become of it?
I rubbed my temples, trying to conjure an image of the guard in my mind, and the answer came to me. He’d tucked the Anlace into a pouch at his hip, perhaps realizing the knife was valuable. And that meant I had to find him, and fast, before Ubiqua arrived in the capital.
With some semblance of a plan, I doused the lamp and fell asleep with the image of the Anlace, a brilliant ruby glinting from within its golden grip, floating before me, just out of reach.
THE TRAIL OF THE ANLACE
I gathered my belongings and returned to the streets before the sun had risen, using the exit into the alley to avoid encounters with any of the residents of the Fae-mily Home. The day was wet and gray, and felt somehow colder than if it had been snowing. Rain had a penchant for slithering under clothes and against skin that snow couldn’t rival, and I had been feeling the damp more acutely since the loss of my magic. Water had reverted to treating me like everyone else.
As the sun blinked its dreary way into the sky, shop owners threw drifters out of alleys; coughs and sneers rose in a dissonant chorus; and foul-smelling citizens leaned against lampposts and building-fronts puffing on cigarettes—poor person’s smokes that had none of the richness of traditional tobacco and thus reeked far worse. I hurried along in an effort to avoid unwanted gazes, the cigarette smoke fading as the din of the river mounted.
An enormous marble bridge situated in the center of the city spanned the river to connect the two sides of Tairmor, and I slowed to behold it. It served a practical purpose for transportation, but its origins delved far deeper into human history: it was a memorial to the soldiers who had died during the Faerie-Human War generations ago. In order to put an end to the interracial conflict, my people had created a boundary—known as the Bloody Road—to prevent nonmagical beings from entering our Realm. The use of our elemental connections to earth, fire, water, and air to suit that purpose had been so powerful that it had devastated the enemy’s forces, destroying bodies beyond recognition, and sometimes reclamation, and scattering limbs across a wide swath of the Balsam Forest. The Bloody Road was the barrier that kept me from reaching home.
By this time