Page 27 of A Sword of Ice
“You think another round with Julius will help you defeat him?” He scoffed, and the sound grated down her nerves.
“You’re such a fucking bastard.”
He snapped his canines in a threat.
Julius whistled low. “I am very confused right now.”
“Save your strength,” Valerio cut in with sharp annoyance. “You will not learn to be a warrior overnight. It took us years to learn the art of the sword and you are trying to cram everything within a few months’ worth of work. Now let’s go. We have been here too long already. The closer we get to Porir, the better.”
Shula gritted her teeth but didn’t argue. Only because the Seelie Prince was right. They needed to get to Porir. Something was urging them on; the closer they got, the quicker the feeling built. It was anxiety, twisting at her gut, demanding, urging. And she had to answer the call.
There was a reason Mana wanted them here first.
Shula was almost afraid to find out why that was.
* * *
Days turned into a few weeks,and the snow thickened, the cold growing worse, slowing their trek through Teg. When they finally made it to Porir, they were exhausted and too weary to go straight to the Elemental, whose location shone brightly on the map in Shula’s hands.
Valerio decided it was best if they all rested, so they snuck into the city. It was a feat that was surprisingly easy to do because it seemed… deserted.
Not that there weren’t people, because there were, but it all seemed so dead. No soldiers littered the streets, and if they did, they stumbled across ice, too drunk to care what everyone else was doing.
And the most surprising part of it all?
Fae walked openly.
Shula knew they were Fae because some of them displayed their ears with pride down the streets, even while their posture spoke of anything but. Hunched and walking in sluggish strides, the Fae here looked more like corpses than anyone else Shula had ever seen, even within the reservations from her youth.
Melancholy seemed to shine over this city in a way she didn’t understand. If they weren’t being forced to hide, why were they so… depressed?
“What the fuck?” Clay echoed her thoughts.
They were hiding in the shadows, the line of them peering over the edge of darkness to catch glimpses at the Fae.
“Must be one of those Fae cities we’ve heard about,” Julius rumbled. “Where they’re so drenched in poverty the soldiers don’t give a flying shit that they’re even here.”
They fell into silence after that, and Shula couldn’t help but feel a strange sensation settle over her as she took their situation in.
Shula had never been free to walk openly like this, but at least she’d worn a smile on her face. At least she’d danced. At least she’d made friendships, for however long and however fake they may have been. They’d felt real enough to break the confines of her own sad cage at the time.
This was a different type of sadness. A sadness that seemed to bleed into the very bones of the city and spread like a disease. Like the iron that eroded deeply in Tir na Faie.
“Let’s go,” Valerio whispered, something in his voice that said he couldn’t look at this any more than Shula could.
Because if this was what the city looked like, if this was what some of its people looked like, then what of their Fae Elemental? How broken was the Fae?
And how willing would they be to help?
She tried not to dwell too hard on that as they weaved their way into abandoned buildings, finding one that had no homeless humans or Fae, far enough from the street so they would be hidden in the shadows.
They spread out in the building, Weylyn taking first watch like always. He sidled up next to a broken window, peering out of it and listening intently. Shula leaned back against a wall, spreading her legs out in front of her and closing her eyes to sleep.
She must have fallen asleep for a moment, because she was jostled awake the next as Ryker dropped to the floor beside her. She eyed him warily.
“You aren’t taking first watch?”
“Do you want me to leave?”
