Page 63 of Children of Fallen Gods

My fingernails bit into my palms. He was right. We should have acted sooner.

“Humans?” I ground out.

“I cannot say.” Ishqa shook his head. “It would stand to reason, but…” He turned back to the gates. “We need to go inside and see for ourselves, up close.”

“There may be survivors,” Siobhan said.

Caduan approached the entrance. “There are no survivors. But there may be answers.”

I wrapped my hands around the rusted metal. “Help me open this,” I said.

* * *

We split into two groups.Ishqa and I paired with each other, while Siobhan, Ashraia, and Caduan veered off toward the shoreline.

Ishqa headed the front and I followed, my Sidnee hearing straining to pick up every ripple of water or rustle of the reeds. I watched Ishqa’s shoulders, golden skin damp in the humidity, muscles tensed. His sword, normally sheathed down his spine, was in his hands. I noticed that two symmetrical scars ran down his shoulder blades, perfectly straight and perfectly parallel.

The House of Reeds built out rather than up, their structures balanced on stilts to lift them out of the brackish tidewater. We were up to our ankles, and then our shins in water. Only then did the paths turn into stone stairs, then raised pathways lined with moss-covered railings. We came first to tiny homes built of wood and moss. Ahead, closer to the main city, the larger, more ornate homes rose through the fog.

It was very, very still.

“Did you see bodies?” I asked, quietly.

“No. We did not.”

“Then perhaps they fled.”

“Perhaps.” His voice said what his words didn’t. This place reeked of death.

The little homes were empty. Some were in great disarray, plates smashed on the floor, blankets torn off of beds, bookshelves overturned. Others looked untouched. None held any signs of the Fey who had once lived there.

Ahead, the central capital of the House of Reeds loomed. These buildings were constructed of iron and stone rather than wood. At the center of it all stood the Reeds’ temple, the only building that rose up towards the sky, a moss-draped spire of metal surrounded by taller bamboo shoots topped with crimson flowers. The stalks were so tall that the petals hovered high up in the mist, fluttering in the breeze, like blurry, bloody butterflies.

When we reached the door, I touched the stone, then brushed my fingertips to my lips. The taste made my entire body recoil.

“What?” Ishqa said, reading my face. “What do you sense?”

“I don’t know. On the surface it’s right, but something deeper… it’s…”

“What?”

“Just… wrong.” I unsheathed both of my blades. “Be ready.”

Ishqa inclined his chin, and tightened his grip around his sword as he pushed the temple gates open.

I had never been within the temples of the House of Reeds before. They were built like mazes, narrow hallways lined with of exquisitely etched stonework and decorated with tapestries that now swung lazily in the wind. Swamp water ran along the edges of the halls, and the floor sometimes broke like stone lily pads. I could imagine that under normal circumstances, lit with the ceremonial lanterns that dangled in the open-air arches above our heads, all of this intricacy was beautiful and haunting. Now, it just felt dangerous — so many corners to hide behind, and so many twists to lose track of.

We were deep into the temple when we heard the voice.

It was a woman’s voice, broken up with a terrified sob. At first, too far away for us to understand her words.

Ishqa and I both froze, then shot each other wary stares. His entire demeanor changed, as if shifting into a version of himself built only for a single task.

“Survivors,” I breathed, but Ishqa was already off, and we hurried down the hall, around a corner, and then another, until—

“Don’t take them…!”

This time, I understood the words. They were barely legible with terror and the Reedsborns’ brogue, and… something else, something that was barely a voice. It ran together like water and was as thin as the wind.

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