Page 2 of A Legacy of Poison and Lies

Sailing the Southern Isles.She shoved the book into her apron as her eyes passed over the tattered remnants of posters plastered to the wall beside her. A coronation notice, a man wanted for stealing a large sum of money, fighters wanted for an event all her regulars gossiped about every week. But none of the posters were of her, not this far from Virian, and she allowed herself to feel a morsel of relief at that knowledge.

The new king certainly wasn’t the rightful ruler of Astaria, that much Zylah knew for certain. But Astaria was a vast sprawling continent, and it was foolish of any man, or Fae, to think he could rule over it alone.King Marcus.The bastard must have been loving the title. Zylah didn’t care that he was a kingbefore—whatever birthright he thought he held claim to—he was a monster for orchestrating his own son’s death.

She paused to listen as she stopped outside a splintered green door. Two heartbeats thumped steadily in the room beyond, one louder than the other.Good. That meant the drunk that also lived here hadn’t yet returned for the day. Zylah might not be able to use her magic, but there were still some benefits to being half Fae that she could utilise, like the heightened senses that she hadn’t known were because of her Fae heritage until she’d escaped King Arnir’s prison.

She raised a hand and paused. A small shrine sat beside the entrance—the goddess Pallia, hands clasped before her, her little owl perched on her shoulder. The goddess who was not a goddess, but a Fae, just like the rest of the gods Zylah had been raised to believe in.

What would the humans of Astaria do if they found out? Would they find something else to believe in?

Would they throw out their old gods in favour of something new?

She rapped her knuckles against the door, and it opened a crack. The room beyond was dark, but Zylah could see plenty. The young woman cowering in the opening balanced a child on her hip, and her eyes widened at the sight of Zylah.

“He’ll be home any minute now,” the woman murmured, eyes darting left and right down the street. Her lips were cracked and split, and a bruise swelled under her eye.

Zylah dropped two coppers into her hand and reached into her apron for a vial. “For the bruise.”

The woman’s lips formed the wordsthank youbefore she gently clicked the door shut, leaving Zylah and Kopi alone on the street. Zylah lingered long enough to hear the familiar sounds of floorboards being pulled back to hide the money—just in case the drunken husband stumbled home and discovered it.

The young mother needed twenty coppers to take the boat from Iskia across the Broken Sea, back to her family, and the first day Zylah had seen her wander through the market, she’d promised she’d get it for her. She pressed on down the street, wary of the fading light. There were still a few more stops to make; her last two remaining coppers and a few vials and poultices.

Kopi shifted on her shoulder as she glanced down an alley to her left, catching sight of a priestess and her acolytes making their way to whatever evening activities they liked to interfere in. Priestesses were not an uncommon sight back in Dalstead, and Zylah had seen a few back in Virian. But over the last few months in Varda, they seemed to be everywhere; perhaps its citizens were more… malleable to their lies.

Zylah’s stomach grumbled as she made her way in the opposite direction, Kopi settling, happy with her decision. She sidestepped a filthy puddle, one hand pressing another besa leaf against her nose to cover the stink, another grasping at her necklace. The necklace Raif had given to her. She may not have been the one to kill Raif, but she’d led him to his death, just as Marcus had. And that made her just as much a monster as Marcus. A curse to those she cared about.

She hadn’t thought it possible for her heart to hurt as much as it had in the days after Raif’s death—her nights alone in the Kerthen forest had given her time for little but thinking and surviving. She’d been warned about the monsters that lingered there, and on many nights, she’d asked herself if she was one of them.

A dangerous creature, the definition she’d read once. She fell into that category, without a doubt.

Zylah sighed. Every night she came to the same conclusion: there was no going back to the person she was before Raif’s death, and all she knew for certain now was that she couldn’t stomach the reflection staring back at her in the mirror each morning.

Her feet brushed against something, dragging her attention to the cobblestones. Another advertisement for the fighting ring. She slid the besa leaf into her pocket and reached for the poster, smoothing the parchment between finger and thumb. Winning fighters received a hefty prize. One that would see anyone here through a difficult winter.

She frowned, shoving the paper into her pocket.

Candles began to flicker within homes. There were no orblights here. There were barely any traces of Fae at all, something Zylah had been careful not to draw attention to. She tucked her necklace inside her tunic, the blue stone warm against her skin.

Kara’s story books had it wrong. There was no happy ending. Only a continuation. One foot in front of the other, one day to the next. Zylah wondered what her friend was doing now; if she still served in the palace after Arnir’s death, and prayed that she didn’t. The thought of Kara anywhere near Marcus was enough to make Zylah want to evanesce back at once every time she thought of it. But she couldn’t.

She placed a vial on a doorstep, knocked once and walked away. The boy within wouldn’t come to the door until she was gone. These back streets were always empty; only the residents that were stuck with these sorry excuses for a home passed through them. And though she’d considered offering up her cabin to those who needed it more, it was too dangerous to risk it. If anyone found out she was half Fae she’d be thrown back into a prison cell, where this whole sorry mess had started. Only this time, she wouldn’t be able to evanesce herself to safety.

“And they all sang ‘three coppers for a kiss, four for something more…’”A group of revellers laughed between the lines of their song in a nearby street. Zylah kept her head down. They were headed to the night’s fight most likely, and there would be more than a few sore heads in the morning.

By the time Zylah had finished her rounds, darkness had fallen, clinging to every filthy corner and crack. Her cabin was on the outskirts of town, nestled in the forest that lay beyond. Quiet. She’d had to sell her horse to pay for it, but the horse had a better chance of surviving the winter this way. It had barely survived Kerthen.

Kopi hooted softly, pushing off from her shoulder to sit on the roof of the cabin, his spot for the night. He stayed with her during the day, but he often snoozed like a cat on her shoulder. And though his presence sometimes drew unwanted attention, Zylah let him. He was all she had left now, and she didn’t think he would leave her even if she told him to go.

Tired wooden steps creaked underfoot as she made her way to the door, pulling her key from her apron and pushing it into the rusty lock. She hadn’t dared to ward it, hadn’t risked using any deceits to disguise her hair. Once the last of the erti root dye had faded, she’d left her hair to its natural shade of blonde, but she still wore her eyeglasses to conceal her eyes. Violet was not a common shade in Astaria, but hardly anyone looked her in the eye in Varda.

She preferred it that way.

The door groaned open, and the familiar musty scent of her cabin hit her. It wasn’t much, but it was hers. She shrugged off her load, lit a candle and unstrapped her bracers, throwing them onto the kitchen counter just as another wave of pain burst through her.

Zylah steadied herself, taking in the sight of her little cabin until the feeling passed. It was a small space: not unlike the cabin her friend, Holt, had taken her to when he’d helped her escape Arnir’s men. The cabin they’d been staying at when—

She couldn’t finish the thought.

Six months she’d been away, and her intention had been to see the world, to travel all over Astaria. She’d studied her map night after night in Virian, thinking how vast the world was, only to discover it wasn’t even half of it. A bitter laugh escaped her at the thought. How far she’d thought she’d come until she’d seen a map framed in a tavern on her first night in Varda. At first, she’d felt a fool, but then the sting of hurt had settled under her skin as she’d realised her father and brother, her adoptive family, had never told her the truth, never taught her, and that sting quickly turned to simmering anger.

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