PART SIX — RENEGADE
Only chaos reigned true the day Pasiphae of Eo allied with the Seelie Crown.
Chapter One
In the dead of night, a horrible chorus of screaming echoed into the house.
Pasiphae of Eo startled awake. Her once comfortable bedsheets immediately became too warm and too restrictive as she sat up, blinking rapidly to gather her bearings.
This was her bedroom, her house, her homeland. But in a fashion that she had never seen before, the soft earth underneath her bed was trembling with some unseen force.
"Circe?" she whispered, knocking her knuckles against the wall that divided their rooms.
When there was no response, she focused her attention on listening carefully, trying to determine where the screaming was coming from.
Her initial thought was that perhaps the disasters were occurring again. She hadn't been in Medeis when they first rolled inland, but in that second between waking and dreaming, she had felt an archaic magic whispering down her neck.
That was what the disasters were: magical blowback reverberating from Airsei as the Seelie fae prepared for war.
Pasiphae untangled her legs from the blankets quickly and scrambled to the window. She pulled back the curtains, searching for the cause of the hellish screaming.
Circe had described the ground opening its jaws to form an abyss into the centre of the world; winds that curled into dark, hellish funnels; tides that roared higher than the sky itself.
This—this was not it.
"Oh, deaths."
Pasiphae couldn't quite believe what she was seeing. Well, she could, but she never expected such a scene in Medeis, of all places. Under the bright starlight, shadows chased witches through the streets, pursuers that were nothing more than a swirl of dark, maniacal air. With one glance, they were as flat as a two-dimensional shape, and in the next, they moved and fluttered with almost visible limbs and facial features.
Most witches had never seen a sylph before. With their limited education, they were not being attacked in their home territory by another species, but creatures of nightmares.
Pasiphae watched as her neighbour threw a bolt of tangible magic at the shadow in front of him. It was a feat that required concentrated power and years of study, an attack that could have burned another witch into ash and cinders. But all it did was go straight through the sylph, blowing up a nearby tree instead.
"This is bad," she muttered to herself. "This is really bad."
Pasiphae had run from murderous sylphs in the Unseelie Court, tried to fight off more murderous sylphs in a rotting building, and then somewhat made friends with one sylph named Stavros when she was leaving Khotadi, though she had no clue how that had happened.
Her familiarity with these creatures didn't lessen the heart attack she nearly had when a sylph smashed against her bedroom window. The shock sent her a few steps back, jittering away from the glass.
"Hello," it hissed, shadows that resembled arms pressing up against the glass. "I seek the Seelie Crown."
Pasiphae's horror immediately spiked from mild to intense. She may have escaped Khotadi, but Khotadi had followed her home.
"Circe!" she screamed, backing away from the window and throwing her bedroom door open. "Circe!"
Her sister appeared in her vision immediately, and the two narrowly avoided a collision in their old hallway. Pasiphae's arm shot out to steady herself against the wall, where the wood was slick with moisture.
"What's happening?" Circe breathed. She was the mirror image to Pasiphae even without trying, dressed in a thin nightgown that their unruly, pitch-black hair blended into. "Are those—"
"Sylphs," Pasiphae confirmed.
Circe was blinking with utter incomprehension. "Why are they here?"
Before Pasiphae could answer, the sound of glass shattering sounded from her bedroom. A gust of cold air blew into the hallway, and she was jolted into action.
"Magic doesn't work on them," she shouted quickly, already moving down the hallway. "Take Ma and Pa to the town hall."
Since they were children, they had been drilled tirelessly to go to the town hall—and only the town hall—if the sector ever descended into a state of emergency. There was no doubt that a sylph attack would classify as such.
Usually, the town hall could fit five of the twenty-one covens in Eo with a bit of a squeeze.
After Arche's massacre in the trials for Divine, Pasiphae thought bitterly, it's probably a lot more roomy.
The trials that Pasiphae had missed because she was in the Unseelie Court trying to clear her name.
The massacre that she could have stopped if only she had been around to help.
"Wait, where are you going?" Circe yelled after her.
Pasiphae threw her head back, just in time to catch a sylph fly into the house and scare Circe, who tried to blow the creature back with magic. It didn't work, just as Pasiphae had said.
"These things have a special interest for the guest in our house," she screamed back. "I'll meet you at the hall."
Knowing that Circe would be all right, Pasiphae threw open the door at the end of the hallway, the one leading into a small guest room at the back of the house. Usually, it was empty, but for the past week, it had been hosting a very peculiar occupant: the heir to the Seelie throne.
Pasiphae slammed the door after her, keeping her body weight pressed against the entrance just as something on the other side rammed itself against the dull wooden structure.
"Wake up!" she yelled.
To Pasiphae's absolute bemusement, Seth was still blissfully asleep in the bed tucked into the corner of the room, unaware of witches screaming and running for their lives outside.
With their lack of fingers, could sylphs operate door knobs? As she darted away from the door, she would have to hope not, and trust that the door would hold up without her body pinning it closed.
"Seth!"
Pasiphae shook his shoulder roughly, by chance with the hand that was wearing his ring. The ring that had stopped an impending invasion from Queen Evara of Airesi, his mother, and subsequently halted the world from dropping into war.
And if anyone outside of Pasiphae's immediate family found out the marriage was faked, then Callistra would immediately descend into chaos—more chaos than they were currently experiencing, if that was possible.
"What—?" Seth came awake, blinking slowly. "Saf?"
"We need to go," she told him, hauling him up by his arms. She caught a flash of gold as his wings poked out of his shirt, before he shook himself fully awake and tucked them neatly against his back again.
"We have to go?"
"Seth!" Pasiphae hissed. "Come on!"
The door shuddered, and then a low laugh echoed into the room. Seth froze, his dark eyes widening.
"What was that?"
Pasiphae tugged at his arms impatiently, before giving up and marching over to the small window beside the bed. She eased the pane open so it didn't make an obvious noise, then peered through. No sylphs outside seemed to have noticed them.
"Go," she whispered as the bedroom door shook violently again, seconds away from collapsing inwards. Seth climbed out easily, his nightwear doubling as practical, daytime clothing. Pasiphae, meanwhile, had to rip off the lower half of her gown with her hands in order to get her leg through.
"What on Callistra is happening?" Seth hissed once they were outside. Pasiphae shut the window behind them.
"For some bizarre reason," she replied, "we're being attacked by sylphs. For some more bizarre reason, they seem to want you."
"Why do they want me?"
They had been spotted by the sylphs lurking outside.
"I was hoping you could tell me that," Pasiphae said, grabbing his hand. "Down the coast, let's go, it's safer if we take the back roads to the town hall."
It had been a fight and a half to convince the entirety of Eo that Seth was harmless. Perhaps harmless was too broad of a word—even her own parents were horrified at Pasiphae's suggestion that Seth be given the spare room until they could figure out their next step.
"He could drain the magic of every witch in Eo with one flick of the wrist," Nikolaus had reminded, gently.
"I won't use any magic at all while I'm here," Seth had cut in. "Promise on my old, cold heart."
Pasiphae had rolled her eyes. "You're not that old."
The fact was, they needed time to think and plan, time to turn this temporary halt of the Seelie invasion into a permanent solution. Did Pasiphae want Queen Morgana dead for all the damage she had caused with the Somnus? Most certainly. Did she approve of Queen Evara's strategy to swallow Medeis' resources first? Certainly not.
They needed time to work out how they could stop Evara, then take down Morgana, all without sacrificing Medeis.
But it would appear that time was up.
"Have there always been sylphs here?" Seth hissed.
She pulled him along the dirt track that wound a path around Eo, passing the closed marketplace and whizzing by the holding cells that Pasiphae had once escaped from, many moons ago.
"No," Pasiphae said, casting a glance at the path behind them. One, then five, then fifty sylphs were on their tail, cackling into the night air and twirling amidst each other. "Until I saw them in Khotadi, I wasn't completely sure they even existed."
"Are they—" Seth took a deep breath, exhausted, "—here under their own orders?"
"Don't know," she huffed back. "But I don't think Morgana controls them anymore. There must have been a sylph population sent here to spread the Somnus. Perhaps she lost control of them when I slit her back open and released the magic."
Pasiphae hadn't been able to kill Morgana with simply a dagger, but she had created an opening for all the magic that Morgana was stealing—but hadn't quite absorbed yet—to escape back into the aether. It was doubtless that her action had weakened Morgana considerably.
"You think these are the sylphs she lost control over?" Seth asked. "Then why do they want me?"
Pasiphae pointed along the coast. "Run first. Ask questions later."
She didn't know how they could lose the sylphs. She didn't know what would happen once the creatures of air and dust and haze caught up to them.
Pasiphae batted the branches in her face out of the way. In the dark, she was careless with her path, opting to trust her instincts, depending on the map in her head of the land she used to know.
They stumbled through the trees, into a clearing that was supposed to lead to the coast.
But when Pasiphae skidded to an abrupt stop, she only saw a sheer cliff drop. She had been away from Eo for too long. After the disasters, the land had changed, and where it used to drop shallowly onto a small niche on the beach, the cliff now oversaw vicious waves crashing onto sharp, jagged rocks at the very bottom.
As Pasiphae tried to keep her balance at the very edge, she could feel salty water spray on her skin, even from so far above.
"Back up, back up," Seth hissed, panicked.
But it was too late. The loose, thin ground underneath Pasiphae's feet crumbled. She was pitching towards the rocks.
Until she wasn't. Seth caught her by the wrist, half his own body dangling over the edge. In their precarious position over the precipice, there was only deathly water underneath and rapidly approaching sylphs from behind.
By his expression, Seth, too, had realised that both their paths were unviable. As soon as he pulled her up, the sylphs would be upon them.
"Do you trust me?" Seth yelled, over the roaring noise of the ocean.
Did she? After all they had gone through, after she had resisted torture to keep his secrets safe, still bearing the jagged scar down her arm.
She would be a fool not to.
"You know I do," she said evenly.
"Then close your eyes."
Pasiphae closed her eyes. And Seth let go.
***
Queen Evara stalked down the southernmost coast of Airesi, fuming.
"No," she roared. "Bring those ships in. Pack up the spears. Do not wave that around!"
"Your Majesty," a baritone voice interrupted from behind. "You really must calm down."
Evara turned around slowly, her eyes narrowing on her new royal advisor. The seconds that she took to examine him drew out between the two fae, like threads of ice, only invisible to the naked eye.
"Do you take this situation lightly?" she asked. The advisor had only reported to the Court to begin his new position today. It had taken a while to find someone who would accept the role of royal advisor, after the last few had been executed for their lack of competence.
From his feline smile, Mirza Volos did not appear to fear the fate of his predecessors.
"Quite the opposite, Majesty," he said. "I have reports."
Evara held up a hand. "I don't have time for this. I have hundreds of ships to pull back lest my own people accuse me of betraying the law—"
"This, you will want to hear," Mirza interrupted. Before Evara could rip into him for cutting her off twice within a minute, he pushed on. "It is about Khotadi."
"What about them?" Evara asked coldly. She resumed pacing down the coast, eyeing the lords and ladies who commanded their townspeople to hurry with their work. "We cannot invade the Unseelies until we have Medeis. Without the witches' resources, an attack now would only come to a mutually destructive standstill."
She could not invade Medeis because Sesostris Basillerius, her own son, had announced out of nowhere that he had married a witch. A witch, of all people. Now, Medeis was legally allied with Airesi, and if Evara were to march on their land, she would be breaking an old law.
That alone would be enough set off the rebelling groups in her land already stirring with dissent. She had already publicly executed five traitors in the past week and put many more in holding cells to await punishment.
If she couldn't have Medeis, then she couldn't succeed in what she really wanted to achieve—destroying Khotadi. At such a weakened state, the Seelies needed more landmass, slave labour, raw materials. Medeis was the only apt contender.
If Morgana Sangallard thought she could get away with sucking the life out of Airesi, get away with draining the northern fae country of its magic, she was wrong. As if that wasn't bad enough, the Mors was still raging in Evara's land, and it would continue until she could hunt down the Unseelie spy—the mediator connection. Even after Seth had informed Evara of the sickness' source, Morgana still had the nerve to continue siphoning magic.
Evara would make the rival queen pay for her actions.
"Before long, Queen Morgana will have the upper hand."
Mirza spoke as if he could hear Evara's internal broiling. Evara whirled around to face him. She looked around to ensure that no one had overheard the advisor, then gestured for him to follow her.
"Why do you say that?"
"I have reports," Mirza said when they had moved far from the coastline, "from Naeyrs Searum."
"The jinni girl," Evara recalled. "What does she have to say?"
Mirza withdrew letters from his coat, wrinkled around the edges and bleeding ink in the centre. He could have received communications through the AI system, but the old-world way was the only method to ensure its safety from other spies.
"After Pasiphae of Eo's disruptions—"
Evara bristled at the simple mention of the witch's name. It was all her fault. Evara had no doubt that Seth faked his union with Pasiphae of Eo—the only problem was that she couldn't figure out why yet.
"—Naeyrs discovered a long-term, covert Unseelie operation," Mirza continued. "Warin Praeston, head of Morgana's personal guard, has been running illegal trade with the Isles."
Evara tilted her head at the letters. "Remind me what a personal guard is?"
Despite being of the same species, the Seelie and Unseelie cultures had diverged so far from each other that the other's way of life was unrecognisable. Morgana kept her country in chaos, allowing fae to grapple with one another for power. The closer they were to Morgana, the stronger they became. Nobles played tricks to win the highest favour, workers became guards to secure a place in Court, and peasants—well, the peasants were nothing.
"Morgana's personal guard surround her at all times," Mirza explained, though Evara could tell he already knew she was testing him. "There are many of them. It prevents one of them going rogue and killing her for power."
In Airesi, there were no peasants. There were only townspeople, each and every single one of them protected under a lord or lady who owned the land they lived on. Evara ruled the nobility, and the nobility controlled the common people on their land. Everyone knew their place; everyone was satisfied with their magic.
"The Unseelies always have to complicate everything," Evara muttered. Morgana just couldn't have been happy with what she had.
Mirza directed Evara's attention to a line at the very bottom of the letter.
"Your Majesty," he said sharply. "Morgana is poised to invade the Isles. For the past few years, Warin has been offering the humans essential trade items that they cannot afford. He accepts their children as payment, and they are sent to Khotadi as human consorts."
The fae were not supposed to approach the humans. That had been agreed upon when the fae civil war ended, and the Courts realised they had killed most of the human population. Evara knew of the human consorts in the Unseelie Court, of course, but she had thought the humans were willing.
"So he is very familiar with the terrain and customs of the Isles," Evara concluded. A dull throbbing was starting at her temples, but she refused to let it show. "He has been keeping up with the line between the Habitable Zone and the Wastes."
Mirza nodded empathetically. "It is only a matter of time."
"And what do you propose we do about it?" Evara asked coldly. She was rapidly becoming sick of the condescending tone that Mirza used.
"My queen," Mirza whispered. "The people are screaming for Sesostris to take the throne instead. Callistra will only crumble from this point forward. They will blame you for every event, even those that you have nothing to do with. They will blame you as Morgana's sickness continues, for the deaths, for the hunger. You have become a scapegoat."
Evara had gone cold. If she brushed her neck at that moment, perhaps her fingers would come back dusted with ice crystals, as sharp and piercing as unpolished diamonds.
"What do you propose we do about what they think?" she hissed. "I am their queen. I do not care if they are starving, this is my rightful position. I reign as the figurehead regardless of the situation."
"You will reign in the most terrible of times, and that will be their excuse to impeach you."
Evara's teeth clenched. She had never felt old despite her hundreds of years on Callistra, but in that moment, it felt like Deaths was on her tail.
"I have no choice."
"Oh, but you do," Mirza purred, his voice low. "It's called a glass cliff, Majesty. Callistra is on a downward decline, and there is nothing you nor I can do about it except allow it to run its course. So let Sesostris return. Let him take the throne, take the position of power, and when everything goes wrong, he will be blamed."
Evara was silent. She ran her eyes over this faery who had appeared from nowhere, and wondered how his brash behaviour hadn't ejected him from his royal training in the first week.
"I will not hand over my throne—"
"Once he is blamed and cast out, you can return to your throne stronger than ever."
Evara remained stoic, but judging by Mirza's slow smile, he could see the idea meet approval in Evara's head. The Seelie Queen would do anything to keep her power.
"The crown is not passed down unless I am dead," Evara said, posing the statement as a question requiring a solution.
"All you have to do is go missing."
Evara frowned. "I cannot simply go missing. It will leave a power vacuum."
It was then that Mirza brought his mouth close to the queen's ear, whispering at a volume barely loud enough to tickle his throat.
"Perhaps you can," he said. "If a new King Consort rules in your place."
***
Falon Knightla stumbled off the rickety boat, gasping for air.
The journey home had taken close to a week. At first, it had been night after night after night, creeping away from Khotadi so slowly that Falon wondered if they were even leaving its shores at all.
On the third day, when she finally woke on the dirty floor to a sunrise along the watery horizon, she burst into tears.
It had been the warmest sensation Falon had felt in a long time.
"Everybody off, come on, come on!" Lauha Hollblood yelled from the head of the boat. "I have hundreds of more humans to volley back and they're all desperate too. Let's move!"
Falon and the other disoriented humans squinted at the land in front of them. Along this side of the world, the Isles crept into early morning. It would take Falon a while to become accustomed to the bright rays again.
There had to have been about fifty other humans with her in that small boat, smuggled out of the city while the Unseelie fae turned on each other, grappling to get close to the queen as rumours of invasion flitted about the city and hissed into unsuspecting ears.
There was no doubt that something was coming. A wave of magic had torn through the country, so potent that every human woke from their drugged stupor. Upon realising, some had been killed by their keepers. Others had run for it.
Falon shivered, treading lightly on the coast. Underneath her feet, for miles and miles until the Habitable Zone ended, were fishbones. Even though the fish that humans once consumed had died with the rest of Earth, there were still bones that washed up with the tide everyday.
"If you have family here, go along the left path into the nearest village," Lauha hollered. "If you don't, proceed along the mountains for your best chance of survival."
Lauha giggled to herself quietly after speaking, though Falon couldn't see what was so funny.
The banshee was peering down at the humans, and Falon found herself unable to make eye contact with her. Despite how grateful she was that Lauha was smuggling all the humans out of Khotadi to return to their homes, there was something unsettling in her gaze, as if the girl couldn't quite conceal the emptiness that made up her soul.
Something about her also reminded Falon of the Unseelie faery that had been her keeper: Blanche. Falon hadn't been mistreated, but she still shuddered thinking of the faery girl. Her memories of the Unseelie Court were a glistening haze, shielded with a mist of white to put everything she recalled in an ethereal glow.
There was only one night she could remember in startling clarity. Night was the wrong term—Khotadi was under perpetual night, and it would be for the next few months. But Falon thought it would have been near the zero hour when she was interrupted from her usual schedule, yanked out of her kitchen duties by Warin Praeston.
She had been the nearest human available.
He had pressed a bag of powder into her hand.
"I want you to put this in a cup of tea," he had commanded, "and take it to the room of Kalis Tren. Do you understand?"
Warin had stared at Falon with a steely, unwavering hold until she nodded with three disconnected jerks. He had hair so blond it resembled the Unseelie wings, silver shards that fell into his face as he narrowed his eyes.
"Good," he had said simply. "A guard will direct you there. Forget this incident."
It had been so unnerving that Falon had almost pushed through the spell of the Devil's Breath collar around her neck. Almost. She had delivered the cup of tea, then heard a banshee scream in a few hours like everybody else.
Kalis had died that night. Perhaps the human girl had broken through the haze and threatened Warin.
Falon shook her head free of thought. It didn't matter now. She had escaped the wrath of the Unseelie Court, and she was home.
To the left, a vast wasteland crept closer by the day, but she could smell the constant aroma of smoke, of herbs wafting free of the village beacon.
It was as if she had never left.
Until the screaming started.
Startled, Falon hurried to grip the side of the boat, keeping her feet steady as the humans around her became desperate to run further inland. She turned to and fro, breathing fast as she tried to find what it was that had scared them so badly.
Falon was looking in the wrong place.
A shadow fell above her, and only then did she lift her gaze, frozen in horror.
"Move, move, move!" Lauha was shouting. Falon heard her mutter a brief, "Deaths!" before the banshee sprinted heavily along the edge of the boat to reach the other side. She jumped, sinking her two feet deep into the fishbones, before pausing to stare up at the black wave.
It was made of toxic sludge, and climbed higher than the palace of the Unseelie Court as it approached nearer and nearer. There was no longer any hint of the blue sky that had been present only seconds ago.
Falon had seen these black waves before, of course. When she was a child, there would be one per year, if they were unlucky. Before Falon had left for Khotadi, they were getting about one per month. She supposed the frequency had only increased in the time she was away.
Still, every time a black wave arrived, she saw them from a distance, with an abundance of supplies next to her, preparing to ride out however long it would take until the sludge receded from their home. Sometimes, it wouldn't recede at all. When that happened, more of the Habitable Zone had been swallowed by the Wastes.
"What are you going to do?" Falon whispered to Lauha.
She hadn't moved, and neither had five other humans. She figured they were doomed anyway. She couldn't outrun that.
Lauha glanced back, at the humans who had huddled behind her, at the humans who were preparing to die. She smiled faintly.
"The spirits are whispering."
The wave approached.
Falon prepared to feel its impact, she prepared to be punished by the higher forces for her insubordination.
Only Lauha was raising her arms with concrete force, using the motion to push, push, push, like she could stop the wave with nothing save her sheer will.
The wave towered completely and utterly over them.
It was in that moment that Lauha screamed, a terrible, screeching wail that was so loud it was felt more than heard.
And the wave collapsed backward, blown away with a force mightier than ten thousand war cries combined.
----
Author's Note: I didn't want to ruin the nice formatting by putting a note at the top, so it's being stuck down here instead. Hi! Welcome back! This first chapter was supposed to go up far earlier, but then it ended up being 4500 words, and editing was a mission and a half. Like the last book, Vengeance Throne will mostly be Pasiphae + Circe narrating, with other characters taking minor sections -- this first chapter is an exception while we set the scene! Anyway, let me know what you think, I'll be here eagerly awaiting <3