Page 20 of The Fae Lord

A slow smile spreads across my face as I straighten up. “That, my friend...” I glance towards my tent. “Is where Alana comes in.”

EIGHT

Eldrion

It has been at least half a century since I thought about my mother, really thought about her. But since the night in the tavern, I have not been able to rid her from my mind.

Perhaps it was the way the patrons talked about me. He’s losing it. He’s past it. Rebellion.

She never said those things to me. She never told me she was disappointed in me or that she wished my brother hadn’t died when he did.

But I could see it in her eyes when she looked at me. As clear as day. She longed for him, not me. She believed the family’s gift died with him.

I am standing on the roof, staring out at the sunrise. Usually, I prefer sunset because it brings with it the shadows I find comforting, but today I decided to try and remind myself what it is I’m fighting for.

Early, like this, with the sea glistening under the sun’s warm orange glow, and the rooftops of Luminael slowly being brought back into the world of colour, the city is almost beautiful.

I am reminded of the days when gold-tipped spires glistened, and music rung out in the streets.

The days before I drove it to ruin in an effort to save it from itself.

The visions began soon after my mother died. As she was lowered into the family tomb, beside my father and my brother, something shifted inside me. I felt it. Like my bones were creaking and trying to bend, like my skull was too tight for my mind.

My wings itched to stretch and be free and soar over the city, even though I was told as a child that flying like that was a foolish pastime.

Something the frivolous Leafborne practised.

Not us.

Not the Sunborne.

I ignored the sensations, drowning them with whisky. I pretended they were not there, or that they were some form of grief, and that any moment I’d wake from the haze of my loss and feel able to rule the way I was supposed to.

They did not disappear.

They intensified.

The first vision almost broke me. It was one of the most vicious, visceral visions I’ve ever had. Even now, two hundred years later, I remember how it felt.

So real, so tangible. I woke convinced it had already happened; that the city had gone to ruin and everyone who lived in Luminael had been swallowed by darkness and fire and flood.

As I realised what had happened, something else settled in my core. Deep. So deep it has remained there for two centuries, digging in, gnawing, scratching.

I knew, after that vision, that something was coming to end us. Something within the city. Something no one could see or feel. Something that was creeping in plain sight.

I knew I had to control it, contain it, watch the city like the cruel overlord they expected me to be so that the moment the evil revealed itself, I would be there to stop it.

Two centuries. I still don’t know what’s coming.

All I can hold on to, the only true thing I know, is that Alana is important.

I started seeing her face soon after that first vision, and she was so different to the others that she drew me in without even trying.

My nightmares brought me darkness, and pain. Anguish and terror.

And then there was her... Porcelain skin, freckles on her nose, hair the colour of autumn. She was a light in the darkness, and yet despite the comfort she brought me, I did not trust her.

I craved her, and I loathed her. Because I wanted to believe she was the key to my salvation, and knowing how much I wanted it made me think she could be the opposite. She could be the one to end it all.

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