Page 25 of Wrath of the Fae Queen
I am unharmed. Alive,Keira’s calm voice whispers in my mind.I am waiting for you.
By the gods, Keira, it feels like you just died and I did nothing.I squeeze my eyes tight as the threat of tears burns behind them.
The mists swirl violently as my subconscious churns up the next nightmare. I focus on my feet, putting one ahead of the other in a minute of reprieve.
Then the screams start.
They are the wails of hundreds of people in the agony of torture. Of beasts in unimaginable pain. It sends bile up my throat and icy claws raking down my spine. I don’t look. I can’t. That sound intensifies until the screeching bounces around inside my head and there is no escape.
“You did this to us,” one voice wails. “Aldrin, the king who turned his back on his people. YOU DID THIS TO US!”
“Your failures have doomed us all!” another screams.
“I trusted you. I followed you and fought for you, and now all my people are dead.”
That last gravelly voice drags my gaze up. I cannot help it. Not when it belongs to Kai.
The towers and stacked roofs of the Haven of Death have disappeared, and there is only smoke and thick sheets of ash swirling all around me. Below are the black voids that fuel my deepest fears. Those great rifts in space that contain no matter or light within them, only absolute nothingness, where the realm is being deconstructed.
Creatures are hunched over and dying everywhere: high fae, tree nymphs, spriggan and kelpies.
I want to fall to my knees and weep at the devastation.
Surely, there is no coming back from this.
I am too late to save my people from our destruction. The magic has fled our realm completely, and I cannot bring it back. Cannot grow something from nothing.
“You have been idle for far too long and the corruption has taken us all,” Kai rasps, the only fae still standing.“You are no king of mine.”
He is in his half-equine, half-humanoid form. Ash floats away in great streams from his cheeks, bare shoulders and torso, and the pelt of his four-legged body. The skin peels away and the red of his muscle is revealed beneath, then the white bone of his skeleton.
“No king of mine!” he screams as his body is flayed.
Tears stream down my face. I find Drake and Klara in the crowd, both weeping over the body of Rainier. Most of his flesh has already dissolved.
Drake turns to me. “You were supposed to stop the corruption! My son—my sonis dead because of you!”
Pain radiates from my chest, so intense I clutch it with a hand and almost double over. I find more loved ones dying: Cyprien, Hawthorne, Silvan, Lilly and Zinnia. I run my hands through my hair, tearing at it, then glimpse my fingers. They are completely black, the flesh mangled and rotten.
When I glance up, Keira is on the parapet ahead of me. She is whole and as healthy and beautiful as the last time I saw her. The curls of her red hair glow with the embers of her fire magic and her eyes are bright. I take a few rushed steps to meet her, but as my hand strokes her cheek, her entire body dissipates completely into a cloud of ash, and then she is gone. I try to catch it, to force it back together, but the particles escape through my hands.
This is an illusion.An illusion,I screech at myself again and again, but I no longer believe it. Not when what my senses show me feels so real.
It is then that I notice the yelling bouncing around in my head, hardly discernible over the pained cries of my people.
It’s not real, Aldrin! Keep moving. I am here. I am alive. Rainier is safe. I can see him. The corruption is still a distant threat,Keira’s voice rings in my head. I already know this, deepdown.Ignore the hallucination. Put one careful foot in front of the other and walk to the door at the end of the parapet. Please.
A hallucination. A night terror from toxic fungus.
That is all this is. I have not forgotten.
I ignore the pain of those before me, no matter how it goes against my every instinct, and make it to that door. My sweat-soaked fingers drop the key multiple times, and I thank the gods for the chain around my neck keeping it within my grasp.
The door opens to a cool, shadowy room. Inside, Dante is sprawled out on a leather armchair, reading a worn book. The low table before him holds a jug of water, two cups and a vial of shimmering liquid.
I slam the door shut and crumple against it, panting while sweat stings my eyes. The screams chase me in here anyway and the shadows of the ceiling swirl as my brain prepares another torment for me.
“Please tell me you don’t have another fucking poison for me,” I growl.
