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He has found a way to destroy it.
But he has not found a way to save anything it has touched.
“What will you do now, Silver Flame?” Nyctarian asks. “Will you return to your shining spire and tell the Courts of all the troubling things you believe you discovered tonight?”
I lift my attention to him. “And if I do?”
Nyctarian gives an elegant shrug. “Then I imagine there will be inquiries. Accusations. Deliberations. Perhaps, if we are especially fortunate, a committee.”
My mouth tightens. “And while the Courts deliberate?”
His amusement vanishes. “My people will continue to disappear.”
The shattered crystal crunches beneath his boot as he steps toward me.
“I would never presume to advise the great Silver King on what he should report to his fellow rulers.” He bares his teeth. “I but wonder how much faith you place in their ability to solve a problem before fear convinces them elimination is the safer course.”
The question remains unanswered, though neither of us can dismiss it.
He does not ask for my silence.
I do not promise it.
“I will do what kings have always done, Dark Brother.” I meet his stare. “I will prepare for what comes next.”
Dark satisfaction settles over Nyctarian. “Then we are not so different after all.”
But we are, I think, as I turn back toward the celebration.
For while he bets on centuries of experimentation and his mastery of resonance to save what remains of his sithe, I am betting everything on the stubbornness of one prickly mortal witch to bring my brother home.
17
THE SONG BENEATH THE STONE
AMALIA
We find a wide open room through a passage that splits the stone in the same unsettling way as the meeting hall of the Dark fae.
The entrance gapes before us, its arched ceiling shattered into jagged teeth, each one hanging overhead as if waiting to fall. My steps echo in the vast space, causing a tremor, and dust motes whirl in fractured beams of fading light that seep inside.
“The Great Hall,” Kelaros breathes. “I’ve never made it this far before.”
As my vision adjusts to the half-light, I take in the broken columns rising like the ribs of some ancient beast, the opal laced into the white stone catching and splintering the light. An intricate pattern forms a tapestry on the floor in spirals and whorls from the center, some of the lines pulsing with trapped magic.
“What was this place for?” I ask, and the emptiness swallows my question.
“Everything that mattered.” Kelaros steps forward, his boots stirring dust left untouched for centuries. “Coronations. Judgments. Celebrations.”
We move deeper, and the enormity of the space becomes clear. The ceiling must have soared hundreds of feet high before it collapsed, and what remains glitters with embedded crystals, arranged in constellations I don’t recognize. Chunks of it litter the ground, the massive shards of carved stone lying where they fell.
At the center stands a dais, raised three steps above the floor. Unlike the white stone around it, the platform gleams black as midnight, shot through with veins of opal that pulse with a faint, irregular glow.
Kelaros scans the empty dais. “The throne is gone.”
I move closer, drawn by the pull of the stone, and step up to the dais. Here, the black stone absorbs the light, swallowing it whole.
Of its own accord, my hand moves toward the surface.
