Page 1 of A Sword of Ice
1
Dirty Fae Secret
102 years later…
Dreams of icy waves pulling her to her death kept Iona tossing all night. Memories of another time. Of war and bloodshed, of the screaming song of battle and unrelenting pain. Of loss and fallen courts, and the final battle that pushed her face-first into the vicious hands of an ocean that would see her dead.
She hadn’t died with the rest of the Resistance in those early years of the war. Mana had been forgiving, had given her a second chance at life.
A broken, fucked up life.
But life just the same.
One she was determined to live. She’d decided that the moment the ocean spit her out on the shores of human lands. Grains of sand, ice, and rock dug into her cold, shivering skin. A cold she’d never felt before invaded her senses, pressed down deep to her bones, making her teeth clatter together in hard movements that jarred her skull.
But Iona pushed herself up on her knuckles, to her knees, and finally, to her feet. Her legs had threatened to buckle beneath her, but she planted her heels firmly in the ground and looked at her surroundings.
She’d come from courts of saturated skies and sparkling water. Of lush, vibrant jungles bursting in blooms of exotic colors and scents. Of relentless, beating arms of the sun enveloping warm skin. Of sea glass protruding from the shoreline, winking against the rays of light, and of selkies and merfolk breaching the waves to sing their songs.
Skies in white and gray greeted her when she looked up. Smog threatened to choke her lungs, laced through the frosty air with flecks of iron that chipped from surrounding buildings. The waters were black, the shores gray, and the water tasted like putrid fish against her lips.
She’d always hated fish.
Iona had landed in the kingdom of Teg that day. In the city of Porir just along the coast, where she’d been ever since. She’d built her life among humans, rented a cheap room in one of the few wooden buildings left in Illyk along with other illegal Fae immigrants who hid from the emperor’s soldiers.
It was in Teg where she dreamt of her death every night. Where nightmares suffocated her and filled her with images of her family lying in blood and sand, ash coating their still bodies. Every night her legs tangled against her old, torn sheet as she struggled to breathe until she realized where she was.
Tonight was just another one of those nights. Where her nails dug through the skin at her throat, where her lungs choked on imaginary water that no longer took up residence in her body. She woke up to tears drying a sticky pathway down her warm cheeks, her family’s names on her lips, memories burning like painted photographs behind her eyelids.
Heart pounding against her chest, Iona stared up at the splintering ceiling of her room, counting the lines spider webbing across the rotting wood. The routine was the same every night. Focusing her breaths, counting lines she already had memorized. She could close her eyes and trace the pattern against her bedding with exact precision a thousand times just to calm her racing heart.
When the anxiety finally ebbed, Iona opened her eyes and let loose a soft breath and with it, the tiniest sliver of magic, causing a cold cloud to puff in front of her face. Pushing herself up to a sitting position, she stretched her arms over her head with a yawn. It was early; even without windows she could tell. It was in the sounds that filtered through the walls and front door.
Her neighbors were up, banging through their own rooms with stomping footsteps and shouted words.
Just another day in paradise.
Kicking the sheet from her legs, Iona got up to begin her day. She cleaned her teeth after a quick breakfast of bread and fruit, then wiped her body down with a damp rag. Afterwards, she slipped into her work uniform; an ugly pant jumpsuit in gray tones, and looked into the only mirror she owned. A broken fragment that she’d fished out of the garbage on a side street.
Her tight, silver-white curls surrounded her head in a cloud, and she rearranged them as best as she could, pulling them down and over the tips of her pointed ears.
She’d seen Fae surgically alter the tips, hiding the evidence of their heritage to blend in with the humans of Illyk. Many of her neighbors in the building had done so, while others, like Iona, couldn’t seem to let go of that part of their pasts.
Sometimes, hiding what she was felt futile. If only because Teg was one of the most corrupt kingdoms in Illyk. Fae migrated here in abundance and hid in the slummiest parts of Porir. It was the poorest city, overrun with old buildings and rusted iron that had seen better days. Soldiers patrolled the streets with death and emptiness in their eyes. They passed by Fae every day, accepted bribes, money, and favors in exchange for their silence.
As long as the guards of Porir were kept happy, the Emperor of Illyk would not find out about them.
It was why Iona hadn’t altered her ears. It was why she hadn’t left this terrible kingdom. Even being in a cold, icy wasteland of a city where poverty overrun it like shadows snuffing out the light, it was better than death. It was better to be a dirty little secret of Illyk than being hauled into the infamous camps to be burned alive for what she was. Or worse, as it were.
This was her home now.
Tir na Faie was gone.
Sighing at the melancholy turn of her thoughts, Iona grabbed a thick fur coat and pulled it on before stepping out of her room. When she’d first rented the place, they’d called them apartments, but they weren’t big enough to even be considered that.
Each room measured at about ten by ten feet, with a rusted, indoor toilet and a small tub that released murky water. In the grand scheme of things, a shitty room was a luxury in this fucked up world she was now in, so she didn’t complain.
Even if she hated it.
