Page 79
“Why should I trust you?” I ask, though my options narrow with each passing second. “You just confessed that you planned to leave me here to die so you could use him.”
“Call it self-preservation.” He gestures to the walls, where the opalescent veins pulse faster, angrier. “If you merge with the Silver Prince, neither of you will exist when this is finished. And neither will I.”
Maybe not die but become something else. From where I’m standing, that distinction doesn’t offer much comfort.
A deep vibration climbs from somewhere far below, shaking the crystal. The walls ripple, the surfaces soft as wax left too close to flame.
“What’s happening?”
Kelaros pales, snatching up his fallen blade. “The court’s self-defense has been triggered.”
From the melting walls, forms begin to emerge. Hands first, fingers elongated with too many joints, slipping free as easily as if the walls were water. Limbs of perfect transparency follow, catching and refracting light into rainbow patterns across their surfaces.
Bodies pull free from the walls, tall and inhumanly graceful. Their torsos taper to impossible thinness, ribcages visible through clear, crystal flesh. Where faces should be, only smooth glass reflects our horrified expressions back at us.
“Echo-fae.” Kelaros backs toward me, slamming the pommel of his knife into the crystals holding me prisoner. “The court’s memory of what was lost.”
The creatures step forward in perfect synchronization, movements too fluid to be natural. Their feet touch the ground without a sound. Blades grow from their limbs, long crystalline spikes that glitter with deadly promise.
“What do they want?”
“To protect the Opalwell.” Kelaros breaks through the tendril around my leg.
The echo-fae advance, a dozen or more now, emerging from every wall. They move in harmony. Their glass faces catch the light of the sigils, creating an illusion of sorrow, rage, and hunger where none exists.
Elionn struggles within his prison, his irises flickering back and forth between silver and opal. “The court remembers its glory. It wants back what it lost.”
“And these things?” I ask, not taking my attention off the advancing guardians.
“Echoes of its people. Its dancers. Its warriors.” His words come faster now, urgent. “They aren’t real, but their blades are.”
As if to prove his point, one guardian slashes its crystal blade across a pillar, and the stone splits cleanly, the cut edge smoking with residual magic.
Kelaros works to free my other leg.
I scan the crystalline forms for vulnerabilities. “Any weaknesses?”
“They shatter if struck hard enough,” Kelaros replies, now working to free my arm. “But the court will just make more.”
The guardians stop their advance all at once, frozen in an eerie tableau of raised blades and reaching hands. The silence stretches, broken only by our ragged breathing.
“Why aren’t they attacking?” I whisper.
The answer comes from Elionn, his voice now a perfect blend of his own and the Court’s chorus. “They await instruction.”
All the blank faces turn toward him in unison, the gesture so synchronized it sends chills racing across my skin.
“They serve the Opal,” Kelaros murmurs, breaking the last of my bonds. “And now they serve him.”
“Elionn?” I ask. “Can you control them?”
“Not all the way.”
The echo-fae shift, glass limbs catching light as they adjust their stance. Then, with no further warning, they attack.
The first guardian reaches me with impossible speed, crystal blade slicing through the air where my throat was a heartbeat before. I duck and pivot, my knife finding the junction between its arm and torso.
The blade bites deep, and the guardian’s limb detaches in a spray of crystalline shards. No blood, no cry of pain, just the musical tinkle of fragments hitting the floor before they melt back into the court’s structure.
