He turned, revealing an unnerving stare. Bright gold eyes. He moved strangely — too smooth, too graceful.
“So I see you received my gift,” he said, with an unfamiliar accent. “By your appearance, perhaps it got to you somewhat late.”
“Let’s start with introductions before we get so familiar,” I said. “Who, exactly, are—”
“I know you.”
Tisaanah’s voice came in a gasp, like she hadn’t realized she was speaking aloud.
“I know you,” she breathed again. The man stepped forward, and I matched the movement, my weapon raised.
“Wait. You tell us who you are before you go anywhere.”
He was looking past me, to Tisaanah, so still that it seemed like he was barely breathing.
My grip tightened around my weapon.
“Who are you?” I said again.
He was silent for a long moment before answering.
“My name is Ishqa Sai’Ess. And I am here to right a wrong that I made very, very long ago.”
Chapter Sixty-Six
Aefe
It was so dark inside that at first, I could see nothing. I heard hushed whispers suddenly go silent. Slowly, the room came into focus around me. We stood in a large, circular room. The bright light from the half-open door spilled in from behind us, casting a violent streak across the ground. The walls, like the columns outside, were carved. A single curved stone bench lined the perimeter of the room.
On that bench sat the humans.
There were perhaps two dozen of them. Most were men, but there were a few women. They wore different styles of dress, though most wore flowing garments that reminded me of the Wyshraj’s apparel. Nearly half of them had colorless skin and white hair, like the man I had encountered in Meriata.
I opened my mouth to speak — though, what would I even say? Would they even understand me? But then one of the humans stepped forward, and all words left me.
The light fell across his pale face, catching silver hair in the sunlight. Silver hair, and a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth all the way to his ear.
Instinctively, my hands shot to my blades. But one of the other humans lifted their hands, and my weapons flew across the floor, scraping the whole way. I tried to lunge, but Ishqa’s hand was still firmly around mine, even though I tried to yank it away in frustration.
“Ishqa, go!” I gasped, but another one of the humans approached me, eyeing me like a cat, and suddenly my head, my thoughts, were in paralyzing agony.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think.
And still, Ishqa was not moving.
He released my hand, and I collapsed to the ground, my muscles suddenly beyond my control.
And that was when I heard eight words that ripped me apart.
“I fulfilled your request,” Ishqa said, to the scarred human. “Now you fulfill ours.”
Everything went numb.
My whole body jerked as I wrenched my head around to stare up at Ishqa. He did not look at me.
What are you doing?! I tried to scream, but my body was not my own.
One of the white-haired humans, a young woman, knelt beside me. She took my face in her hand and turned it, looking at me like one would examine a horse to be purchased. She said something to the scarred human in a language I did not understand — did not understand except for one word:
Essnera.
The scarred human smiled, as if pleased by whatever she had told him.
“You do not know how long and how hard we have worked for this,” he told Ishqa, through a thick accent. “Many of our people’s lives will be saved.”
Ishqa did not return his smile. A sneer twitched at his lip. Still, he carefully avoided my stare. “You have already taken many of ours.”
“Out of desperation alone. Actions that we sincerely regret.”
“Well. Now it will no longer be necessary.” He bowed his head. “Queen Shadya appreciates your alliance.”
The realization dawned. Betrayal bled through me like a dagger’s tear. I tried to scream, tried to shout, tried to lunge for Ishqa. If I could move, I would have ripped his skull from his body. I would have torn his eyes from that beautiful face.
But I could not move.
I could not even weep.
“Likewise,” the scarred human said, and bowed his head.
Ishqa began to turn away. Then he paused, and looked back at me. Something shuddered across his face.
“Is it really so powerful?” he said, quietly. “The thing that she will become?”
The human smiled. “It is the most powerful thing the world will ever see.”
One of the other humans touched me, and agony consumed me. Two sets of hands dragged me to my feet. My limbs were limp, but I fought, fought with everything I had against the spell that sapped me.
For just one moment, I broke through it. My limbs thrashed. Two more humans were on me. My eyes were blurry with tears.
“ISHQA!” I screamed. “You cannot leave me here!”
They were dragging me back, dragging me against the floor. I saw only Ishqa’s gold eyes staring back at me, his face stone.
“You cannot do this to me!”
I thought of the House of Reeds, and those monsters.
Would I become a monster too?
My consciousness waned, my vision going white and blurry. I was being dragged farther and farther from Ishqa.
ISHQA!
I do not know if I screamed it aloud.
The last thing I saw was him turning away, his golden hair flying back in a sudden burst of wind.
And then my vision was consumed by white and white and white.
Chapter Sixty-Seven
Tisaanah
I couldn’t move.
The familiarity was buried deep, somewhere far beneath conscious thought. But the sight of that man’s face, the sight of his bright gold eyes, yanked something visceral to the surface.
Ishqa. Ishqa. How did I know that name?
Max, who had planted himself firmly between the me and the golden-haired man, peered at me over his shoulder, asking a silent question.
Nothing but white and white and white, for so many days.
The voice floated through the back of my mind.
How many times had I heard that? Seen that? Felt it?
You were betrayed by someone that you thought cared for you.
And with that hurt, it was always the same: white and white and white… and a flash of long, golden hair. A man turning away.
This man.
“You knew Reshaye,” I forced out. And Max’s eyes went wide.
Ishqa’s stare darkened.
“Reshaye?” he said, quietly. “That’s what she calls herself?”
“She?” Max said.
“Does it mean something?” I murmured.
A wince flickered across the man’s face.
“It means, ‘No one.’”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
Aefe
{Reshaye}
There is much I do not remember.
I remember the pain. My body is opened and closed and opened again, my organs rearranged, blood removed and returned to me. The humans are monstrous and cruel and vicious.
To them I am not a living thing. To them I am a tool to be used, or created, or harvested.
There is no past or future. There is only this.
The first time they link me to another, it is through the melding of our veins, yanked out of my wrist and dangling and dripping between us.
The humans keep dying. I know because I feel their deaths. I know because their deaths are mine. I do not see the bodies. I see nothing but white.
They take pieces of me. I do not know what they do with them, or why they take them. First fingers. Then my hands. Then my arms. Slowly, they carve me away, piece by piece. Perhaps one day I will not have a body at all.
For a long time, I think of Ishqa, and how much I hate him. I tell myself that m
y hate is important because it keeps me alive. But the terrible truth is that I have no choice but to live, even though I wish I could die.
I hate Ishqa so much that I sear my hate into my soul. I hold onto it even when everything else fades away. One day, I realize that I cannot remember my home. I know it was beautiful and safe and that when I was there, I felt connected to a thousand other souls. Now, I wonder what that feels like. To be connected to others. To be safe.
Faces and memories slip through my fingers like I’m trying to cradle fistfuls of sand. First it is the peripheral ones, Ashraia’s, Shadya’s, people who wove in and out of my life for brief moments at a time. And then friends. One day I cannot remember the shade of Caduan’s eyes, or the way that Siobhan’s proud smile made me feel. I clutch Ishqa’s face, suspend it in the amber of my hatred. But soon, I remember only the sharpest of fragments — his hair flying out behind him as he turned away from me. As he left me here.
I hate my father, too, for his lies, and my mother for allowing him to be such a monster. But my hate is not enough to keep their faces, either, and soon they too are gone.
I cling the most to Orscheid. I try to etch her features into whatever is left of me — her beautiful smile, her bright eyes, the way she smelled when she wrapped me in an embrace. Long after everything else fades away, my love for Orscheid remains. I try to remind myself of it every night. I recite the angles of her face to myself, and I tell myself, There is still someone out there who loves you.
But one day, I cannot recall her name. Soon, her features blur, one by one. I lose the tilt of her eyes, the cadence of her voice, the path her smile tread across her face. And one day, I cannot remember what love is at all.
The humans carve pieces of me away. Chunks of flesh fall away, and so do chunks of whatever lies beneath.
I try so hard to remember my name.
Sometimes I hear the human’s voices. They ask me, Who are you? And I tell them, I am Aefe, Teirness of the House of Obsidian.
I am Aefe. I am Aefe. I am Aefe.
But the time rolls by.
And when I have lost everything else that makes me who I am, what does a name mean, anyway?
One day there is nothing left of my body. I am nothing but raw energy, and they force me into bodies and minds, they trap me in rooms of white and white and white. I am nothing but loss and anger and the overwhelming feeling that perhaps, long ago, I was something else.
When I meet another human, and their gaze turns to me and asks, Who are you? Now I say, I am no one.
And it is true.
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Tisaanah
“You know… Reshaye?” Max’s brow creased, and he eyed Ishqa with abject suspicion. He still stood partially in front of me, as if to guard me. But Ishqa did not look as if he had any interest in violence. It was strange, actually, the way he was looking at me.
“Before,” he said quietly. “Long ago. Yes.”
Perhaps there was some scrap of Reshaye that still lived within me, because I could feel something thrashing in my core, raging at the sight of him.
“You have it,” he said. “I can feel it in you.”
He stepped forward, and at the movement, flames tore up Max’s staff, simmering at the edge of the blade. And at that, Ishqa stopped short, his eyes snapping to Max.
“You. You held it too. Your magic, it feels like…”
He trailed off, as if he didn’t know which word to choose.
My eyes fell to his ears. His pointed ears.
“You are Fey.” The worlds slipped from my lips without my permission.
“I am.”
“But the Fey are… gone.”
“No. Though for a long time, we preferred the humans to think we were.” Ishqa eyed Max, who was still staring him down warily, weapon ready. “You can put that down. I would not save you just to kill you.”
“And why, exactly, would you save us?”
“Because something far worse than what you just witnessed is coming,” he said. “And I need your help to stop it from happening.” He cleared his throat, and for a moment, he actually looked self-conscious — a strange shade on a face that seemed so inhumanly elegant. “I understand that what I am about to tell you will sound… unbelievable. But I am asking you to listen. Please.”
Max paused, then lowered his weapon, though he still held it carefully at his side.
“The Fey were never gone. But for centuries, we came very close to it. Once, we were so divided that nothing was more important to us than destroying rival Houses. Hundreds of years ago, in a conflict that has fallen from your history books, humans and Fey clashed. Your people, war torn and drunk on bloodshed, eventually turned that aggression against us. They murdered entire Fey houses and ripped apart our cities searching for the power they needed to win their own wars.” A flicker of regret passed over Ishqa’s face. “We were so divided, then. Short-sighted. Instead of facing an imminent threat by banding together, we used it as an opportunity to cut down our rivals. I believed in that as much as any other.”
He paused, and those unnerving gold eyes lifted to us, holding just a hint of shame.
“I gave the humans someone…” He stumbled over his words. “…Someone who trusted me, in exchange for their alliance. The power to win their wars in exchange for the power I needed to win mine. She had rare magic among the Fey. And when I gave her to them, they used her power to create a cataclysmic weapon. The weapon you now know.”
My mouth was dry.
“Reshaye,” I said, quietly. “You gave them Reshaye.”
Max swore beneath his breath.
Ishqa said, solemnly, “That betrayal was the greatest mistake I have ever made.”
“A mistake.” Max shook his head. His knuckles were white around his staff. “Do you understand how many people are dead because of that act? That’s bigger than a damned mistake.”
“I do understand. Yes.”
“So why are you here now, hundreds of years later?”
“We had our own battles to fight. The humans and their monsters faded from our minds, just as the Fey faded from yours. But now…” Ishqa’s gaze went far away. “Things began to change. A new king has risen, uniting what remains of the scattered Fey into one House instead of many. Before him, I would have never thought it possible to see my people become whole again. And it has been… greater than I ever imagined.”
And then that admiration faded, his expression hardening.
“My king’s dedication and vision allowed him to rebuild our civilization, yes. But such qualities can so easily be twisted into dark obsession. It is that darkness that is coming for you. Starting with what you experienced tonight.”
A beat of silence. Words escaped me.
“Let me make sure I understand.” Max pinched the bridge of his nose. “You’re saying that a mad Fey king is responsible for the monsters on our doorstep?”
Ridiculous. Utterly ridiculous. My mind struggled to grant it even the slightest chance of truth
“He has plenty of reason to hate you,” Ishqa said, quietly, “Long ago, the humans slaughtered many of our people to save themselves from each other. Your lives are so short compared to ours. Those days are nothing but a distant shadow in your ancestors’ lost memories. But us? We lived it, and that grief and anger still smolders within us. All it needs is a single spark.” His lip twitched, a hint of a sneer. “And someone among you has dared to provoke that.”
My brows lurched of their own accord.
“Provoked how?”
“Fey have gone missing. Not many of them, but the king is certain it is the work of the humans.”
“The work of which humans?” Max said. “There are millions of us, in hundreds of totally unrelated countries.”
“The humans did not care which of our people, our Houses, they had to slaughter to get what they wanted,” Ishqa said, sharply. “Forgive us if many are not willing to extend a greater courtesy, not when our—”
; He shut his mouth abruptly, letting out a long breath. When he spoke again, his words were careful and measured.
“If I am to be honest, I hate your kind too for what you have done. But my king walks a dark, dark path.” He stepped forward, his gold eyes burning. “Perhaps I have not been clear. He wants to kill all of you. Every last one. He is a great king because he values every Fey life. And for that same reason, he will be a ruthless adversary.” Those eyes fell to me. “And he has been looking for you, in order to do it. For what you hold. For who you hold.”
My mouth was dry, my head swimming. And through that fog, a slow realization fell over me.
The stare I felt in my dreams. The whispers. The reaching hand.
I have been looking for you.
No. They were just dreams.
You knew they weren’t just dreams.
My mouth opened, but I couldn’t speak. I felt as if I was going insane. As if the incredible odds against us weren’t enough. As if we didn’t already have such awful threats looming over us.
And now… this?
“Then I have some bad news for him,” Max said. “Reshaye is gone.”
Ishqa’s eyebrows lurched, even though the rest of his face remained completely still. “Gone?”
“Dead,” I said.
Ishqa frowned. “I do not know if it is possible for such a thing to die,” he said, quietly. “And he will still come for it, even if it’s just for the ashes. He is obsessed. He will never stop looking for it. Not in you.” His eyes slid to Max. “And not in you, either.”
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that box full of hands. My nerves were raw, too close to the surface of my skin.
“And the Zorokovs?” I asked. “What role do they play in this?”
Children of Fallen Gods (The War of Lost Hearts Book 2) Page 44