Page 81 of The Crown of the Last Fae Queen
“No!” But it was too late: the memory, or whatever it was, had already faded, leaving them both on an empty balcony. Kolfinna’s hands fisted and she stared at the spot her parents had been. She wanted to see more of their interactions. Sheneededto know more.
“What if these are all lies?”
“Excuse me?”
Blár leaned forward over the railing, peering at the distant lights in tiny houses, the spires of tall buildings brushing the midnight skies, and the thick, aged trees that spotted the city. Mountains scraped along the horizon, the stars dazzling above.
“All of this,” he murmured, “could all be a lie, Kolfinna.”
She didn’t want to face that reality—that all these memories, or dreams, or visions, were fabricated. For what purpose would the sword do such a thing? But she could already think of many reasons. To make her side with the fae. To make her sympathetic for their cause. To show her the peak of fae civilization.
Kolfinna grazed her hand over the balcony railing and turned around slowly until she had her back to it, and her gaze fastened on the doors leading back inside. All the people had disappeared already, but all the finery was still present inside. The thick, rich curtains. The polished marble floors. The gold walls with statues and carvings in them.
It could be a lie. All of it.
But she yearned to know more about the world she came from.
“What …” Blár squinted at the city below. “What isthat?”
She followed his attention to the lines of houses on the horizon; a black gust was sweeping over the town quickly, snuffing out the light and dredging it in a deep blackness. It was coming closer, and closer, the shadows descending. A coldness spread from her chest down to her limbs and she found herself backing away; something wasn’t right.
Goosebumps rose along her flesh. Every instinct within her flared.
They needed to leave this place.Now.
Kolfinna and Blár exchanged bewildered, slightly panicked expressions, and then sprinted toward the balcony doors. He had just yanked the door open when they could hear the hissing of the thing behind them. Kolfinna didn’t bother turning around to face the shadows; she ran inside, and Blár slammed the door shut behind them.
The castle began to tremble, the floor becoming unstable as they skated along the cool surface. Blár pointed to the doubledoors on the side of the hall. “The shadows are making them disappear!”
Sure enough, the blackness was seeping into the corners of their surroundings, webbing out to ensnare the rest in darkness. Her scream caught in her throat, and Kolfinna whipped her head left and right; she tried pulling on her mana, but it was nowhere to be found. She couldn’t even feel it buried deep within her.
“There!” She pointed to one small door that was barely visible behind a set of draping curtains near the thrones. She and Blár began running once more, but the ballroom was so vast, the shadows descending at such speed, that it was hard to feel like they were making any progress.
One glance over her shoulder made her heart stutter; everything the shadows touched turned into a void, and total darkness already covered more than half of their surroundings. If it touched them … would they be stuck here forever?
That nightmarish thought urged her forward. Her lungs seized with every violent breath. Her thighs burned with each step. So close—they just needed to get to that door.
Blár reached it before she did, and he tore it open, his hand stretched out to her. She’d barely slipped her hand in his before he was already hauling her into the hall. He slammed the door shut behind her, and she heard the shadows crash against it.
Heart hammering in her chest, she wildly looked around herself, her eyesight slowly adjusting to the dark corridor. Blár was likely faring worse than her with his human senses and sight.
They were in a thin hallway that led in two directions. One end of the hall had a bend to it, and the other had an arched black doorway. She recognized that door—it was the same one that had been in the previous memory they had encountered.
“This way,” Kolfinna said, pulling him in the direction of the black door.
All at once, the door they had come through rattled, as if the shadows were thumping against it.
A cold fear snatched at her sanity and she ran even harder.
She could hear the throne room door blast open behind them, the shadows writhing down the hallway. Sentient. Evil. Powerful.
She knew deep in her gut that they were looking for her.
She didn’t belong here, and they seemed to know it.
Her vision narrowed to the black door. Nothing else mattered. Not as the floors quivered and cracked, not as the walls crumbled, not even when bits of the ceiling narrowly missed them.
Just a little more. Just a little?—
