Page 136 of Promise of Darkness
Bubbles slowly wend their way toward the island we’re standing on.
Finn frowns. “Is that—"
“Move,” Thiago says, shoving me in the back.
According to Kyrian’s sources, Scarshaven is almost abandoned and our best bet to arrive deep in the heart of Unseelie without being noticed. No member of the Seelie courts has been this way in centuries, however, so we have to hope Kyrian’s intelligence is correct.
It’s also directly in the territory of Blaedwyn, one of the fiercest Unseelie queens.
They say her heart turned to stone the moment she used the Sword of Mourning to drive the Erlking into the Underworld, and it’s been that way ever since. Though she was once Seelie, she was driven from the south and cast out of the alliance. She’s no friend of ours.
“Which way?” I whisper.
Thiago strides across the bridge to my left, the one that leads directly into the mist. Shadows beckon there, so of course this is the path we must take.
The journey out of the swamp takes over an hour, and silence masks our footsteps. Anything could be hiding in the mist, and our chances of succeeding rely purely upon stealth. An army couldn’t take this place, but perhaps a small party of five can slip through it unnoticed.
The black ash trees give way to birches and maples, and the ground soon becomes drier.
It’s… beautiful in a wild, feral kind of way.
Waterfalls drip from far distant cliffs, and thickets of thorns climb their way around stone ruins. There are low-lying walls running through the underbrush, as though the forest slowly reclaimed an ancient town that once lay here. Demi-fey skitter through the thickets, hissing at us and whispering to each other as they watch.
If this is Unseelie, then I’m beginning to wonder if the stories were all lies.
They say that when the Old Ones walked the land, they brought darkness into the hearts of the fae they met. They cast curses to twist fae into creatures that became ugly and evil, creatures that would do their bidding, and from these creatures sprang the Unseelie.
The very nature of the beasts changed the lands, as the fae are all connected to the earth, and the queens’ magic most of all.
Magic blackened the skies, the forests became hungry, and the earth violent.
But this is… not what I expected.
“It’s so beautiful here. I thought we’d be walking into a barren, scorched land full of monsters,” I whisper.
“When you want to start a war,” Thiago says softly, at my side, “then you need to unite your people behind a cause. And what is a more powerful tool than fear? Fear of the other. Fear of the unknown. You call them monsters and creatures and Unseelie, and your people will flock to your banners. You show them the bloody carcasses they leave behind, and your people will raise their weapons and vow to eradicate them. You change all the stories until the only ones that are spoken speak of the monstrousness of the enemy.”
He helps me over a rotting log. “But there were other stories, once. The Unseelie were bound to the land more than we ever were. They worshipped nature and they worshipped the Old Ones. Their powers were fiercer and more elemental. They turn away none, no matter how ugly or curse-twisted or violent. They worshipped strength. They were the howl in the night, and the chill on the back of your neck, but they were also the shadows dancing around a bonfire, and the ones who picked up those babies left in the forest to die so they could nurse them as their own.”
I glance at him sharply. “They raise those children?”
There’s always a mother who fears the prophecy spoken over their child at birth. Or misshapen, ugly curse-twisted creatures born to a fae woman. Changelings, they call them, left in their cribs by the Unseelie, but I sometimes wonder if they’re the price of our magic.
It’s always bothered me to hear of those babies left in the forest for nature to grant them justice.
“They raise them all,” he says. “Perhaps not as you or I would raise them, but they take each and every one. Old Mother Hibbert prowls the night, listening for the cries of abandoned babies, and she sends her sprites to spirit them away.”
Old Mother Hibbert is one of the creatures we fear. I grew up listening wide-eyed to stories of how she’d steal me away if I wasn’t tucked in my bed come sundown.
I never knew she took the children we cast aside.
It’s troubling. Because my mother lets her minstrels sing songs of Old Mother Hibbert—and others—in her court, and I’ve seen the horror and fear in my people’s eyes when they listen.
“We must guard our hearts against the treachery of the Unseelie,”she always said.“They’re monsters, Iskvien, and they must be subdued before they come to take what is ours.”
Does she truly believe her words, or was she merely warping the truth to keep my eyes firmly shuttered?
It makes me wonder about the great wars.
