~Slyn~

I should not be here.

I know that. The pigeons clustered in the rafters ahead of me know that, their beady eyes following my every move. The King knows that, and would have me gutted if he learned of my presence.

But the girl he took this time- she’s just so…

I can’t pinpoint it.

Her name is Fawn Valerin. She has an innocence to her face, encompassed in the heart-shaped cheeks, the freckles, the large black eyes, the big, bouncy curls. She seems so young. Before, he’s taken human women in the adult age range, most in their late twenties or thirties. Spinsters, maids, people no one would notice missing, always from big cities.

Fawn came from Rosebrooke, the town at the edge of Fog Forest, so close to where the Veil bordered the Labyrinth. It seemed…

Reckless.

He was getting desperate.

An ache knots in my left foot from my precarious balance on the beams of Teryn’s throne room. Carefully placing the toe of my boot on the next beam, I shift my weight to move across, wincing as it creaks beneath me. One of the pigeons flutters its wings in indignation and coo-coo’s at me. Below, the cacophony in the throne room drowns any sound I could make.

Over the crowing of the Dusk Realm’s nobles, I hear the deep bellow of Velindrel, High Fae of the Sun Realm:

“This is stupid, Teryn. You know her sister will come looking for her. You took someone who will be missed from a village with close proximity to the Veil! What could possibly be your thought process!? Of all the ridiculous ways you’ve attempted to destroy the Prophecy-”

“It’s the sister,” comes Teryn’s voice, smooth as whiskey, a hair-raising rasp and hiss undertoning the words.

“I know she has a sister- the girl hasn’t shut up about how her heroic older sister will come save her! That’s precisely the problem! We haven’t had a human invasion in-”

“The sister is the prophesied mortal! Velindrel: this girl is bait; her sister is the target!”

Velindrel silences, her glowing blue eyes turning sharply to Fawn where she crouches in a cage of magic.

Behind the two bickering High Fae is Druith, Sovereign of the Dawn Realm. Druith stands with their arms crossed, leaning casually on a column, long marble gray fingers spidering up their thick arms. As Teryn continues his tirade, his long silver hair swishing around with his emphatic hand gestures, Druith clears their throat.

“We have an uninvited guest.”

I stiffen.

Teryn and Velindrel cease their bickering long enough to turn to Druith, who raises one needle-like finger and points directly at me.

“Shit.”

Teryn snaps and the beam falls apart beneath me, disintegrating into dust as the pigeons coo and hurl away. My stomach stays in the ceiling as my body drops, an unbidden cry ripping from me as I hurtle downward. A flash of golden light slows my fall at the last second, my nose only feet from the ground, and then I drop the remaining distance with a graceless umph.

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“Stand.”

Teryn’s voice ripples with a command my body cannot disobey. Though my bones ache, my body little more than blue-gray skin wrapped over a tawdry Fae skeleton, I rise to my feet and stand, hunched, clutching my bruised ribs, before my King, who stares upon me with pitiless pewter gray eyes.

“You’re that rat Jevin’s bastard. I had him hanged with a spiked collar. How did you escape my notice until now?”

Teryn frowns as though mildly displeased as he talks of my father’s gruesome death. How I hate him- but he is my King, and I cannot leave, nor can I defy him. His magic makes sure of that.

“I- I’ve been lying low,” I stammer, a cough pushing its way out around the dust that seems to line my throat from the impact.

“For a hundred years?”

“Yes.”

Quite easily done when one is unconscious for most of that time, but that is not Teryn’s problem, nor am I eager to let him know of my unique circumstances.

“Pity. Hmm. Well, you’re here now, and evidently quite adept at sneaking.” A blade tilts my chin and I stiffen as the curved tip of Teryn’s iron saber burns my chin. Agony pulses from the contact, but here, surrounded by Teryn’s inner circle, with two other High Fae staring me down in displeasure, I can do nothing but bear the pain. “Tell me, boy: do you often eavesdrop on my private meetings?”

“N-no.”

“Mhm.” His tongue slithers like a snakes, pupils narrowing to slits, and for a heartbeat I think I spot scales glistening on the side of his neck as his hair falls aside with the movement of his head tilting. “You’re lying.”

“Not often!” I exclaim, desperate, as the sword tip pushes forward, tickling at the hollow of my throat in a way that I yearn to lurch away from. “Only- only sometimes.”

“Ah. So, Jevin’s offspring is capable of honesty, unlike his worthless, conniving traitor of a father.” Teryn’s head tilt deepens, his pointed ear nearly brushing his spiked black pauldron. “Hear anything interesting?”

“N-no. Not really.”

“Not really?”

I blink rapidly, fighting panic. “Nothing that I would- that I would tell anyone else.”

I have no one to tell. You made sure of that.

A wicked cackle cracks from Teryn’s throat. “How gallant of you. Lingering like a bat in my rafters, but finding my private conversations, meetings with other High Fae, uninteresting. Not even worthy of idle gossip with the impecunious gimcrack Fae that would dare associate with the likes of you. Well, Bat: I will grant you a deal.”

I suppress a shiver, knowing that any deal Teryn offers is only going to end in my slow, agonizing death. I debate whether it’s worth taking the deal or letting him slice my throat like an apple with his iron saber right now, but death by iron blade is a slow, brutal way to go. I’ve seen that with my father. A cowardly impulse has me meeting his eyes with bated breath, almost eager to hear what my death will be. If it will be fast or slow.

“This girl’s sister will soon enter my Labyrinth,” Teryn says, his eyes flicking to Fawn, bound and gagged in her cage below his platformed throne, her hollow eyes fixed on the stone floor. “She looks similar to this one, though her hair is black as night and braided, and her eyes are not so cheerful.” A wicked gleam sparks in his pewter stare at the words and my stomach contorts, disgusted by his descriptions. “You will find her and you will kill her. Should you fail, or, worse, should you help her kill me, I will see your miserable life confined to the Agony Fields for the rest of your waking days, so help me gods. Kill her. The alternative to my deal is that I use your meager body as sustenance for my Flayer right now as punishment for eavesdropping.”

His eyes indicate his words’ meaning once again, and I follow his gaze to the crowd of nobles. Against the back wall, bound in iron chains with links thicker than my legs, a large, hairless, purple-red creature bays and strains at its confines. It is eyeless with four limbs, long and with suckers like a squid along the ends. Its mouth opens in a blood-curdling howl, revealing row after row of teeth.

“The Flayer is a fascinating creature,” Teryn says, “Because it likes to eat Fae feet-first, slowly, digesting only an inch at a time, saving the head for last.” His grin could turn the most spirited fighter’s fire to ice, and my stomach settles leaden at my core.

Velindrel and Druith stare me down, Velindrel clearly unamused by Teryn’s display of cruelty and monstrosity, impatient to return to her own realm. Druith, as ever, is unreadable. Neither of them can, or would, help me now. Teryn’s blade still burns against my chin and throat and I feel the thinnest slice, blood spilling from the wound and down my throat in a crimson stream. A gasp exits me as the singe of iron burns through the flesh of my throat, like an icy-hot hand gripping my neck as it poisons my blood.

“Deal.”