Page 22 of A Legacy of Wrath and Reckoning

Zylah shrugged, waving the empty cup before her face, and seeing nothing but a blur. “Shadow and light, that’s about all. I know you’re there. But when the shadows get too dark, I’m as good as blind.”

“Kej said you didn’t do too badly against the grimms when he found you.” Rin’s shoulder bumped against hers, her friend’s voice edged with pride.

For a heartbeat, she was back in the snow, fighting with nothing but her spear and her senses, the cyon wolf beside her, the flapping of the winged creatures and their shrieks surrounding her. “I had a bit of help.”

“And a great teacher,” Nye added.

Zylah smiled at that. Frowned. Took stock of her body. Where the grimms had attacked, there was no trace of any wounds. A quick press of her fingers to her face told her it was free of scars save for one close to her right eye, that the wounds she’d accrued since escaping Raif had been healed. A light tug on her magic told her she still couldn’t evanesce, but still, she felt better than she had since Aurelia had taken her. Strong. Except for—“Holt,” she whispered.

“We’re so sorry, Zylah.” Rin squeezed her shoulder, her words laced so thickly with emotion Zylah resisted the urge to shove her friend away.

“He’s alive.” The voices around her were silent, but it didn’t matter. His scent on Aurelia, the small flickers ofsomethingin her chest, her heart. “I may not be able to see, but I can certainly feel the way you’re all looking at each other.” He was alive, and she was going to find him.

“We saw the vanquicite sword go through his chest,” Nye explained after a beat of silence. Zylah didn’t need the reminder. It had been all she saw when she closed her eyes in the days that followed, and now it danced in the shadows everywhere her broken gaze fell.

Rin pulled her in for a hug. “No Fae could have survived that.”

But Holthadsurvived it. There was no considering the alternative. Zylah shrugged out of her friend’s grip, tried to stand, but a hand closed around hers again. “He’s alive,” she insisted.

“We saw two priestesses take his body, Zylah.”

Zylah shook her head. It could mean anything. It didn’t mean he was gone. It couldn’t. She would know, would feel it. She pressed a hand to her chest, hating that she couldn’t feel anything at all. “Ranon is using him,” she forced herself to say. “He means to start a war.”

“We’re already at war,” Nye said at her side. “We lost a lot of soldiers during the mine attack.”

Zylah’s breath faltered. There was no use arguing with a general. What mattered was filling them in on all that happened, exchanging information for whatever they knew, so she started from the beginning. Told them everything that had transpired since the mine attack. They listened to her explanation in silence as Deyna’s hands roamed over her face, a damp cloth pressed against her forehead and the scent of celandia in the air. Now and then, water sloshed in a bowl and Kej’s laughter filled the air from somewhere outside the tent.

“How long have I been gone?” Zylah asked when she’d finished her explanation.

“Three months,” Nye told her, a hint of wariness in her tone.

It couldn’t have been that long… could it? There had been so much pain, passing in and out of consciousness… but, three months?

“Three months and you’ve met a Seraphim, slain a water serpent and giant spiders, trapped that asshole vampire with a monster, escaped Ranon’s maze and taken out over a dozen grimms,blind, I might add,” Rin cut in. Her voice was heavy with emotion. Concern, Zylah thought, but there was something that might have been awe there, too.

She ran her hands over her hair, wishing she could pace, get some air, anything but be still. Rin gently pulled her hands away and began to run a brush through the tangled tresses, and Zylah was too mentally exhausted to argue.

Holt had been rallying allies; Nye had an army behind her, ready to fight. But she couldn’t shake the lingering sense that they were running out of time to amass the numbers they’d need to take down Ranon’s forces. “The blood moon. When is that?”

“Two months from now,” Deyna said quickly.

Two months. Zylah knew little of warfare, but an army took time to build, to move, and to an ancient Fae as old as Ranon, months were nothing in the span of his life. “What do you know of it?”

Deyna hummed. “Do you know what I am?”

Zylah looked at the blurry shadow before her that she knew was the old woman, her ruined gaze flicking over the shadows of Deyna’s face. “You’re no Fae.” Her handling of the vanquicite had proven that. “A witch?”

A quiet exhale. “I heard Laydan stole the key Malok sent you to find. Set the wheels in motion for everything that’s happened to you.” A hand closed over Zylah’s. “We’re not all that way.”

“I would never assume—”

“I know. But what that boy did was unforgiveable.” Deyna’s fingers squeezed gently. Laydan had stolen the keyandthe book from the Aquaris Court. Handed them over to Aurelia to free Ranon. Broken Daizin’s heart. “Fae harness the power in their blood,” Deyna went on. “Witches draw from other sources. Nature, mostly.”

She tried to recall what Holt had told her about his mother’s magic, that it had been rooted in nature, that he’d tried to teach Raif the way his mother had taught him. “The blood moon,” Zylah murmured. “Why would Ranon need the blood moon? He’s one of the original Fae.” But he and Sira had always been different to the other seven; their power had always been stranger, darker. Like they were something else entirely. “They’re witches. Ranon and Sira?”

“Sira is both witch and Fae. And Ranon learnt everything from her.” Zylah didn’t miss the remorse in Deyna’s tone, the way she’d pulled back.

She thought of Ranon’s sickly pallor. Aurelia’s weakness, as if she’d been allowing her father to syphon off some of her magic. He needed more power. To fully heal, to command his monsters, to create more of them. To finish what he and Sira started. She tried to recall everything that had happened in his tomb: Laydan and the key, the chanting priestesses and the way they’d used magic, piecing everything together. “The priestesses… they’re witches, too?”

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