Theonlywind weaver.
My face must pale, for the man sitting across from me sighs and runs a hand through his dark hair. “I see he didn’t tell you that part.”
“No,” I breathe, shaken. “No, he didn’t tell me that part.”
“Mmm.” He takes another sip from his goblet. “At any given time, there are four Remnants in existence. No more, no less.”
“Always?”
“Always.”
“What if one dies?”
“Another is sent.”
“Sent? Sent from where? Sent by whom?”
“There are some questions even I do not have the answers to,” he murmurs. “The gods above rarely share their motivations. The ones below are even less inclined.”
I take another sip of wine to steady myself.
“What do you know of Anwyvnian history?” he asks, eyes narrowed. “Before the wars broke out. Before the blight began to sicken the land.”
My nose scrunches as I cast my mind back to Eli’s lessons. They seem a lifetime ago, a distant memory. I recall only basic details, but like a dutiful scholar, I recite them. “Anwyvn was once one great kingdom, ruled by a single fae emperor. During his rule, maegic was not seen as a scourge to be extinguished, but as a gift to be embraced. Humans and high fae lived in harmony, even interbred without consequence. It was supposedly an age of great peace.”
I shake my head, hardly able to fathom such a time. All Iknow is war. I’d been born into it. I’d spent twenty years mired in it, watching shortsighted kings fight for scraps of the wasteland they created, caring little for those of us caught in the cross fire. Any other way of life seems like some snippet from a bedtime tale.
“Go on,” he urges softly.
“I don’t know much more.” My brows furrow. “At some point, things changed. The mortals banded together and overthrew the emperor. After the empire fell, maegic became punishable by death. Bloodline mixing was outlawed. Anyone with even a trace of power was hunted down and killed. It’s been that way ever since. For two hundred years.” I pause a beat. “And I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon, given the dark state of the Midlands.”
He digests that statement for a long while, then murmurs inscrutably, “It is not your foresight that counts.”
“What?”
“The prophecy—that is what counts, far more than your imaginings of the future.”
I stare at him, perplexed. “I know of no prophecy.”
“Unsurprising. The mortals have a nasty habit of eradicating all mention of fae lore from their annals. Beyond the range, such things have been forgotten for generations.” He sighs, as if annoyed by a group of errant children instead of Anwyvn’s most powerful kings. “Alas, there is a prophecy. An old one, remembered now by few. It speaks of a fae tetrad, destined to restore the balance. Remnants, reborn over and over again, until all four elements are once again bound together.”
“The…thebalance?”
“The balance of power. Of maegic. Without it…” His head cants in reflection. “Anwyvn is sick. The land is dying. It has been for a very long time. Since long before your lifetime. Itbegan the day the mortals killed the royal family—slaughtered the fae emperor and wiped out his bloodline.”
“The Cull.”
He nods. “An act so heinous, so abhorrent, it tore apart the fabric of the land. Ripped the seams that held Anwyvn together and left them to unfurl. To fray. It has only worsened with time. A black stain, spreading like a plague across the land.”
“Is it a curse, then?”
“Some certainly think so. That the emperor, with his final breath, doomed those who had betrayed him to the same death they delivered upon him.”
“Is that what you believe?”
“I don’t care about the origin so much as the consequences. Whether the imbalance was born of a curse or is merely a symptom of the mortal war on maegic…Either way, we’re all forced to endure it. Some with more success than others.”
“What do you mean?”