Page 11 of The Nightbound Soldier

“I’ll be there with you,” I promise her.

Evie crawls into my bed and yawns again, making me yawn too.

“By the way, the general asked if you appeared at these gatherings?”

“He asked you that?”

“Mmhm.”

“And what did you say?”

“I said yes.”

I lean in as her eyes flutter closed. No way am I letting her sleep on this. I shake the mattress. “What else?”

Evie’s eyes fly open. “That was all he asked.”

“How do you know if you can’t remember things?”

“I know because he told me what to say to you before I can be released from his compulsion.” Evie’s eyelids slam down like shutters.

I gasp, moving the mattress again. “Evie,” I hiss.

“I’m sleepy.”

“No wonder. A notturno spelled you. Did you even have a sexy night?”

Her eyebrows draw down. “No, no. I danced a lot, and my legs hurt from dancing with…with one of his warlords.”

“Warlords?” I shriek. “One of them means there’s several of them. How many are in the court?” I shake the mattress to no avail because Evie is fast asleep.

6

FLEUR

There’s an iron bench deep inside the maze of the palace’s gardens. Our father claimed it belonged to one of the fairies who went to war and then came back as a notturno. What’s curious, Father had explained, is that notturnos can’t recall memories from when they were fairies, and yet they gravitate toward the places they came from before their transition.

The notturno returned home from war with this bench.

After sunset each span, he would walk up and down the beach carrying his bench and speaking to himself in a tongue older than our oldest book, a tongue he learned during his fae life, before our people solidified our current literature.

Since notturnos started showing up in the world around that time, and they fed on the fae, the fairies feared the notturno. One night, they banded together and attacked him. He slew them, so the fae sent more, and he slew them too. He slew many until a brigade of fae attacked him.

Before dawn, all three hundred soldiers lay dead on the sand, their blood coloring the sea red. After dawn, not a soul remained, only the bench on the sand, the crimson waves washing up between its legs.

Since the bench was made of iron, my people left it on the beach for a long time as a memorial to the fallen fae. Eventually, one of my ancestors removed the bench and used it in the dungeons for torture. My father made Et’enne sit on it down in the dungeons and, later in life, up here.

Iron drains our power, so I use the bench often to help with magic purging. Et’enne chews herbs and drinks other magical remedies to silence the voices in his head and control hisvocamagic. El’jah uses sex, and I’ve used that remedy too.

All three of us have found something that helps us control our powers. If we don’t purge or use tonics, we’ll end up in no better state than the powerful Unseelie king who destroyed two fae courts. He’s found a partner in life now, and by the looks of him when he visits with us, the male’s regaining some of his faculties, but not without paying the price of losing control first.

All power comes with a price, and I pay mine as the iron starts to burn my palms.

Huh, too soon. Normally, my purge lasts from when the sun touches the sea on the horizon to when it sinks into it. The sun has just started setting.

I sit on the iron bench a little longer, gritting my teeth and gripping the seat until smoke rises from my skin. A passerby could smell that, so I lift my palms and look down at the retreating blisters.

It’s odd that I can purge the magic so quickly this evening. As if I’ve been drained already, and now I’m overdoing it. But I haven’t purged in a while, and last night in the gardens, I only went for a long walk and didn’t even come near these parts.

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