Page 2 of The First Trial
‘What information are you seeking, Uncle?’ I asked warily. He was the one who had arrested me for my crime in the first place, so to say I was shocked that he was seeking the information I had gleaned while I still had access to the Old Texts was an understatement. But perhaps the tides were changing, and their minds were opening to receive the information we needed to finally win this war.
‘Anything you can tell us, Nephew. Anything that can help us push back against us contracting the disease,’ he said gravely, but his strange wording struck a chord.Us. It was the first time he had ever even come close to acknowledging that the Infectedhad once been Fae, just like the rest of us, that even he was at risk for contracting the disease that plagued our people.
Alarm bells chimed inside my head, and pieces of the puzzle suddenly slotted together.
‘Who?’ I asked him, avoiding his question.
He blinked at me, his face suddenly slack in false ignorance. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Don’t play dumb with me, Uncle. Who was it that you apparentlycaught?Who was it that succumbed to the infection?’ I demanded.
I could see the battle raging inside his head. He didn’t want to tell me, but he also knew I was stubborn enough to refuse him if he didn’t give me at least some of the answers I sought. He already knew that I would find out what I wanted to know, on my own terms, if I had to, and that could have been disastrous for his sad little social climbing ways. We were both well aware that there was an abundance of skeletons in his closet, and I was more than willing to shine a light on them if he pushed me to it.
It was a delicate line we toed, he and I.
‘Councilwoman Morgana,’ he finally gritted out through clenched teeth, the admission obviously costing him a great deal of pride. No wonder he and the others were coming to me. One of their own had been infected. They’d just had their own mortality, their own vulnerability shoved in their faces, and they didn’t like it.
Welcome to reality, you self-righteous assholes.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ I said, though I was anything but. Councilwoman Morgana was a bitch and a homewrecker. We Fae may have been rather relaxed in our stance towards sexuality and polyamory, but when fated bonds were involved, there was no tolerance for infidelity. Morgana had been in a rather tumultuous relationship with my uncle before she’d tricked my father into sleeping with her. The event that had ledhis twin flame,my mother, to kill herself rather than live with that betrayal.
Yet, my dearest uncle had remained with the whore and flaunted their relationship in front of Father as often as he could. I had been too young to speak up when it happened, but I wasn’t that grieving little boy anymore, and my lips were more than happy to spread my true thoughts. No wonder he was so reluctant to tell me.
I held in the smile that wanted to break free from the good news. Anyone else and I might have felt a smidgen of sorrow – or if not that, then regret – but I was going to celebrate her demise as soon as these council assholes went back to the gilded hole they’d crawled out of.
His beady eyes narrowed on me with contempt. Despite my expressionless face, my eyes must have betrayed me.
‘Well?’ he prompted when I didn’t immediately offer up the information he was seeking.
I sighed, not wanting to provide these people with information that could potentially doom us all, but not seeing any way out of it. If they were finally willing to listen, then we could finally have a real chance to find the cure for our troubles.
‘They’re called the Unity Trials,’ I stated.
All three councillors frowned, confused. ‘What are the Unity Trials?’
I shrugged. ‘I don’t really know. All I can recall is that to defeat the Darkness, we need to unite all the magics and work in tandem to beat it back.’
His eyes squinted even further, sceptical as ever. ‘And you’re certain you have translated them correctly?’
I held back my smirk. Reading the Old Texts may have been forbidden, but he had never tried to hide his envy that Icouldread them. They were written in a long-forgotten language that I suspected was not Fae, and I had studied extensively to translatethem. He had tried once, too, which was where I got the idea in the first place, only he was unsuccessful.
‘Of course,’ I confirmed, unable to completely hide the bragging note in my tone. My lips twitched when his face burned red.
‘And what do these trials entail?’ the third councilman asked, finally partaking instead of simply observing.
‘They didn’t say,’ I admitted. ‘The Old Texts suggest a ritual to initiate the Trials in the event the Darkness is released, but beyond that, there was no more information,’ I told them.
‘And why did you not come forth with this information before, Master Evander?’ Councilman Number Two asked, his disapproval abundant.
I huffed, my annoyance at these pompous idiots growing into something almost uncontrollable, but I held back my desire to strike against them. Mostly. ‘I did,’ I all but snarled. ‘Isn’t that right,Uncle?’
Both councilmen turned to level him with accusing glares, but he merely responded with a scoff. ‘And how was I supposed to know you were telling the truth,Nephew?You had broken the law, committed a grave crime, and your words made no sense. Anything you spewed that day was written off as the ramblings of a man obsessed with the dark arts, and rightly so.’
I lifted a brow to express my disbelief, but he merely ignored me. His peers seemed mollified for the time being, though, and I frowned at their complete lack of independence. Anything my uncle said, they believed without question. It was disgusting. The Council was filled with Fae who refused to think for themselves. Their opinions were my Uncle’s opinions, or they didn’t have any at all.
‘And how do we initiate theseUnity Trials?’ he asked, nudging us back on topic.
With a world-weary sigh, I told them what I could remember of the steps needed to perform the ritual. It was a simple set-up, even if it was unusual – and many considered it unnatural – to perform spells. That was something the Humans of myths and legends had done, stealing their magic from the world around them in what they’d consideredwitchcraft. I didn’t know if there was any truth to those tales, but I hoped they were nothing more than stories. Yet, I couldn’t completely discount it. I was a strong believer that every story held a grain of truth, though how much truth the stories of Witches and Warlocks held, I had no idea. They were depicted as barely more than magical thieves with no real innate power. They took, and they took until nothing natural remained, moulding the world into their image and sucking up all the raw power they could find until the world around them died.
