Page 17 of Thief of Souls
The prince.
Keir’s not here, of course, but itfeelslike it.
“Zemira?” His whisper is intimate. “What happened? Where did you go?”
I swallow hard. “You want me to steal the horn? Fine. But I’ll need a little help to do so.”
There’s a long, drawn-out pause. “What do you need?”
“You.”
* * *
This isthe second time I’ve planned to betray the Prince of Dreams.
I wait by an old castle’s ruins, right on the border of the Court of Blood. Trees sprawl over tumbled rock walls, vines snarling around broken towers. It’s as though the forest is trying to reclaim the castle, eating it inch by inch, year by year.
One day, there will be nothing here but trees and future fae will stub their toes on mossy stones and wonder why they’re rectangular.
The eastern road passes by here. It’s one of the least known entry points to the Court of Blood and lightly guarded. There’s no trade into the mountains, and the threat of the Forbidden are far to the north.
Or so the fae think.
Thousands of years ago, when the dragons lived they ruled the world. When the war forced them to treat with the fae, they returned their magic to the cauldron so that their kind could live, and yet a spark remained within their breasts.
The loss of their magic stripped them of their immortality too.
And when they died, it took years for the fae to understand that that spark of magic slowly bled into the world beneath a dragon’s bleached bones.
We call them barrows.
When their bones melded with the soil, they forced the earth around them to becomedifferent. Magic leached into stone, and roots, and trees. Old forests grew—the kind of forests that whisper of an ancient time. It slowly seeps outward, infecting the earth around it. Year by year, the barrows grow. They’re an Other World, a place cleaved from the real world in time and space, even though they look the same as the world around them. You can always tell when you enter a dragon’s barrow. It feels like walking through an invisible shock of lightning. It’s just enough to make your breath catch, and then the world around you is a little brighter, and there’s a faint hum like the far-off buzz of cicadas.
Nothing lives in a barrow beyond the trees and the grass. It’s an eerie, silent place. No wind blows. Nothing moves. And yet, there are eyes on you somehow. Invisible eyes watching and judging you. They even say the dragon’s spirit lives on, lost in dreams, and that if you’re not careful, you can be drawn into such dreams yourself.
Few would ever venture inside willingly, but if you find the heart of the barrow, then you can sidestep into another Other World, another barrow.
And walk out of it a thousand miles from where you entered.
The fae don’t use them, considering them haunted. It’s forbidden to enter one, and without a ward against the barrow’s magic, you can be lost to the Other Worlds.
But my father’s been slowly mapping their paths, sending his wraithen scouts to test the pathways. Many don’t return—the issue with exploring such newfound paths is that nobody knows the dangers of a dragon’s dreams until it’s too late. But the risk is work the reward in my father’s eyes.
He yearns to deliver an army right into the heart of any court in the land if he so wishes.
The Blessed fae would be practically defenseless.
But first we have to shatter our curse so his wraithen armies can walk beneath the sunlight without being struck down.
I saunter through an ancient arch of a broken castle, a shiver running over my skin as I exit the barrow. Sound intrudes again. A chatter of squirrels nearby. None of the fae know just how vulnerable they are. They barely even guard these places.
The jingle of tack echoes through the air.
There. Sunlight sparking off something bright. A carriage, by the look of it. One drawn by a brace of matching fae horses, their coats rippling silver beneath the light. I hide in the shadows, my heart skipping a beat.
Keir.
He’s here.
