Page 115 of A Dance With Fire
Those words were chilling, telling. They felt of violence and a promise of death.
Still, her stubbornness didn’t allow her to keep quiet. She wanted to know. Needed to know to assuage the ache in her chest, like little claws tearing through her body and mind and soul.
“Tell me, Ryker. Who is Mairin?”
She was a fool if she thought he’d answer. He turned and stomped away, and Shula watched, the claws of truths unanswered digging deep in her chest.
* * *
Clay feltthe weariness creep over him like smoke. It wasn’t borne of being tired, even if he felt that too. Bone-deep and with all the eternity that came with a long lifespan, he felt that. Yet this was different. Not because they’d been walking for weeks.
His weariness came from something else entirely.
It came from the iron that seeped deep into the ground.
They’d left the lush woods behind, each tree becoming scarcer than the last until there was nothing left to cover their presence. Nothing but dried, skeletal limbs of old, dead trees and a vast expanse of wasteland. They had made their way into the lands where things didn’t grow.
The middle point where Orknie met Tir na Faie. The blight on the earth.
The poisoned lands.
It was close. He could feel it in the aching joints of his bones and the struggle it took to breathe.
Valerio stopped walking and they followed suit, staring at the horizon where dead land lay. All they had to do was walk the slope and make it to what had once been called ‘home.’
“Do you feel that?” Shula stood next to him. Her whole body shivered, and he placed a hand against her shoulder for comfort.
“The iron has spread,” Valerio whispered darkly. “I feel it pulsing.”
“How is that possible?” Uric turned to the prince. “It was not so far spread before.”
“It’s been years,” Clay supplied.
Years since they last were anywhere near their homeland. Before they’d been driven out of it with iron. The humans had really assured that the Fae could never go back without consequences.
And here they were, ready to venture into it.
Clay remembered a time when these lands had been ripe with beauty. Even with the Ley Line separating the human from the Fae, he’d seen what southern Orknie had been once upon a time. It had been lush with bright fields and grazing animals.
The humans had never possessed magic in the traditional sense, but Mana had gifted them with their earth. That in and of itself was magical, and they couldn’t see their own magic around them. They’d destroyed it all.
Clay’s heart clenched as he remembered home. The Seelie Courts, his own home, with glittering castles and roads paved with blue gems.
But those castles had long since fallen, the roads dug up for their riches and set with iron and death.
Clay adjusted his bag and rolled his neck. “Well,” he tried for a tone to lighten the mood. “What are we waiting for? Let’s go.”
Home.
And he didn’t need to say the words that he knew everyone else thought.
Whatever was left of their home.
39
Ley Line
The Ley Line that separated Orknie and Tir na Faie wasn’t a real line at all. Rather, it was an invisible border of magic. Even though the land was covered in iron and weakened Shula with every step she took, she felt the magic of the Ley Line the moment she passed over it.
