“Where does she live?” If there’s a Human Queen then maybe I can find my way to her. Surely she would be sympathetic to me, right? I curse inwardly. What am I thinking? Make it to a Human Queen? Even if Giles told me where to find her, I wouldn’t know one city from another here. I don’t know anything about this world. The sickening feeling of helplessness settles on my shoulders and I want to scream.
“Nowhere you want to go. She’s married to the Elf King and lives far to the south.”
“May they rot with all elves behind their wall,” Hol mutters under his breath.
“Let me get this straight, you’re saying that humans can’t survive here, so all humans were long ago pushed out into the—” I try and remember what he called my world “—Natural World.”
“Look at that, she can be taught. I’m like a proud papa over here.” Giles wipes an imaginary tear from the corner of his eye, sniffling dramatically.
I ignore the remark. It’s the closest I’m going to get to affirmation so I continue. “And because humans can’t survive here…I’m going to die?”
“More or less.” Giles shrugs. “Can’t say we’ve ever really tested it. Shaye, you once saw a human dragged to Midscape, right?”
Shaye glares at him for putting her on the spot. But she answers anyway. “I did. It was a horrible idea from a horrible person who did horrible things.” Her eyes are distant as she speaks. She doesn’t seem to look at anything. “It’s the food, the water. In Midscape humans aren’t nourished the way they should be. They wither and die alarmingly fast.”
I swallow thickly and glance back toward the mountains. I try and ask as casually as possible, “How does someone cross the Fade?”
“Don’t even think about trying to do it.” Hol sees right through me. He ties his long auburn hair back at the nape of his neck, combing it around his horns. They look more like mother-of-pearl than bone. “The Fade is a dangerous place, even for us. Remember, no one is supposed to be able to cross it. We can only navigate it with magic and broken passageways that are a risk every time we try. If you tried to go into it, you would certainly die.”
It sounds like I’m going to die either way. But I don’t say the remark aloud. They’ve given me enough food for thought that I chew on the silence for a while. Every now and then I look back up at them. The three talk between themselves. Shaye’s shimmering butterfly wings twitch on occasion, proof that they’re real.
Or that I’m having the most horrible, vivid dream ever.
I hold out my forearm and give it a firm pinch. It hurts. No, not a dream.
Sighing, I run my fingers through my hair. They catch on a series of knots. I begin tugging and teasing out the tangles. It gives my hands something to do while I think. As if untangling my hair will help untangle me from the mess I’m in.
I don’t even notice the group has stopped until I’m a few steps away from them. Jostled from my thoughts, I look around. The ruins of old houses, long forgotten, spread among the trees like a child’s toys forgotten and left out. A large oak tree rises up from the remains of one home, boxed in by the crumbling walls.
“We’ll stay there tonight.” Davien points toward the building I was just looking at.
“Must we?” Giles shivers and wraps his arms around himself. “This is a cursed place.”
“It’s only cursed if you allow it to be,” Hol says firmly, though I can’t tell who he’s trying to convince, the rest of us or himself.
Oren has come to a stop beside me. I glance over at him and whisper, “Is that how curses work?”
“No, curses are—” he begins to say but is cut off by Davien.
“This place is not actually cursed.” His low voice rumbles through me. I hate that it is the same voice I spoke to all those evenings this past month. The same voice that kept me up in my bed late at night, sighing softly and yearning for just a glimpse of the face that went along with it. It would’ve been kinder if his voice changed when we entered this world. I still don’t know how to remedy the difference between the handsome, kind, and safe Lord Fenwood I was imagining, and the powerful, deadly fae standing before me. “It is merely a place of brutality and great trauma.”
“The sort of trauma not even the trees forget.” Shaye looks up at the leafy canopies we walk under, as if trying to commune with those very sentries.
We enter into the ruins through a crumbled archway and work our way over the boulders and rubble, around the central oak, and to the back corner.
Giles picks up a stick from the ground and draws a circle around him. Oren motions to me to stand back with the rest of them. I watch with fascination as he marks four lines on the circle—each pointing in a different cardinal direction. As he makes the markings he murmurs, “North, South, East, and West, anchor me into this world.” He digs the stick into the ground at his feet. “Fill my body with magic; allow me to wield all the power of the rock and leaves of the trees.”
Lifting the stick, he points it at the tree in the center of the stone walls. The tip of the stick barely touches the bark. “Let us be safe within your boughs; let your bark be our shield, and branches be our walls.”
His normally hazel eyes glow a faint emerald at their edges and the tree comes to life with a symphony of groaning and creaking wood.
I stumble backward. Oren catches me with a hand, helping me stay upright. I watch as the bark peels away from the tree and arches overhead. New branches sprout and weave together to form walls that merge with the stone remnants around us. Leaves unfurl to turn a canopy into a roof. When the light fades, there is a hut waiting for us.
“How…” I breathe. I can’t form a cohesive sentence. I should be terrified. I should want to run at the sight of that. And yet… It was stunning. Magic was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever laid eyes on. The feeling of power steeping in the air. The rush as it swirled around us and the tree came to life. The way it moved…
“It’s called ritumancy,” Oren answers my unfinished question. “Every type of creature in this world has their own form of magic, different from the others. The fae have ritumancy—meaning we use rituals to harness and use our powers. We cannot perform magic feats greater than a simple glamour, or using our physical gifts, without first performing a series of steps to charge and/or store it.”
Giles holds up his hands as if on cue. Tensing his fingers, claws shoot out of them. They’re the same as I saw last night when he was dancing around the fire. As he relaxes his hands, the claws vanish.
