Page 33 of Children of Fallen Gods

And only then did that mossy stare turn back to us. “That morning, they all left. Thousands of them, shooting into the sky like steam over the lake. Do you know what ten thousand butterfly wings sound like?”

He spoke so calmly. But I looked down to the sheets, and saw that his hands were clenched around them.

His words from the night before, ragged and delirious, curled through my memory.It sounded like rain.

“Rain,” I whispered.

And some grotesque version of a smile twitched at one corner of his mouth as he lowered his chin. “Exactly like it. It was beautiful.”

I could almost hear it. Picture it.

The smile disappeared.

“Not at all like,” he said, “what came after. There was nothing beautiful about that. Thousands of human soldiers descended on Atecco. I did not see them arrive. I was on the edge of the city, working in the archives, when I heard the screaming, the shouting. I looked out the windows, and it was already happening. They were everywhere. Many were magic users.”

A brief pause. A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Most did not escape,” he said, at last. “There were too many. I gathered those of us who had and led them here. We could not stay, and we would not have survived any longer.”

“But humans are so much weaker than us,” Klein said. “How?”

Caduan let out a ghost of a scoff. “‘Weaker.’ That isn’t how nature works. Even the strongest predators have their enemies. And when the numbers are three to one…”

“Three to one?” Siobhan gasped.

“Is that a surprise? The human lifespan is a fraction of ours, yes, and perhaps their bodies are physically weaker. But while a Fey would be lucky to produce one or perhaps two children over the course of five hundred years, humans reproduce frequently and easily. And they, too, have access to magic once again.” His eyes darkened. “We sat here while humans conquered mountains and deserts and seas, rid some of the most inhospitable environments in the world of their most dangerous forces. And yet… we think that we’re too powerful for them.”

“Because we are,” Klein said, forcefully. “The tragedy of the Stoneheld will not be repeated. I swear this to you. They surprised your House. But they will not surprise us, nor any other.”

Caduan gave him a hard stare. “Hubris is not comforting to me. I’m not sure why you thought it would be.”

He said this as if it were simply a matter of fact — and perhaps it was. We could comfort ourselves with our promises of vengeance and swift action. But what would that mean to Caduan? What would that mean for everything his people had already lost?

Nothing.

I thought of all those houses, standing alone in the rain, reduced now to little more than piles of cold brick.

“You can stay here.” The words left my lips before I even knew I was speaking. “For as long as you need it. You and the remaining Stoneheld have a home here, if you— if you want it.”

My cheeks began burning by the end of that sentence. I could feel three sets of eyes drilling into my face. I’d just made an offer that wasn’t mine to give. The House of Obsidian was staunchly separatist, and though we weren’t on bad terms with the House of Stone, they were not among our allies, either.

I carefully avoided my father’s stare, meeting only Caduan’s.

Once again, it seemed that he had no idea that I had committed a faux pas. Instead, the faintest glimpse of... something... flickered behind his expression.

“Thank you,” he said. “That is very kind.”

“Of course you, and the other of your kin, may stay here as long as you wish,” my father said. I blinked in surprise — even considering my inappropriate offer, it would be rare for my father to give indefinite shelter so easily.

“My kin,” Caduan repeated, quietly, as if to himself.

“There are eighteen others, all in the infirmary. Most are not yet conscious, but you may visit them as soon as you're well enough to walk.”

Caduan went a shade paler, the line between his brows deepening.

My father said, “I have been told that you are in line for the Stone Crown.”

Caduan’s gaze snapped to me, then slid back to his hands. “Thirteenth. Barely in line at all.”

“It appears that is not true anymore.”

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