“I pulled her down from the iron crucifix where they’d nailed her body,” Soren says, voice thrumming with untempered distaste. “Gave her a proper pyre. Then, I razed the priests’ temple to the ground—with them inside it.”
A fresh shiver moves through me at his admission. At the wrath in his voice, still fresh despite the lifetime that’s passed since the atrocity occurred. I feel no condemnation for his actions, only horror at the barbarity that necessitated them.
He forces a lighter tone. “It is good you were born where youwere. Seahaven’s sheltered shores gave you a chance most others did not live long enough to take.”
I blink, concealing my surprise. I cannot recall ever telling him where I come from. Evidently, he was not exaggerating when he said he’d made it his business to learn about my life before I journeyed north.
“Any other questions?” he asks.
Only one I can think of.
“Did…” I pull in a breath. “Did they look like me? The others?”
His head tilts, examining me in the darkness. “Not really. Similar coloring, perhaps, but different builds, different features…The crucified one in Aranthon was far taller than you. And Enid was all curves whereas you are…” He trails off, then grins.“Not.”
I fight the urge to throw a pillow at him.
His grin widens, noticing my annoyed expression. “I’d say a passing resemblance, at best. Well. Except for…”
I wait, brows high on my head.
“Your eyes,” he finishes. “Every wind weaver has those stormy irises.” The grin fades into a new smile—less sardonic, more sentimental. One I’ve never seen on his face. “Even Enid, in all her softness, could unleash a tempest with her gaze alone.”
My stomach twists into a knot. “Penn said—” I start, then falter.
His expression clears. “Go on.”
I gather my courage. “He said she was beautiful, but…broken by all she had endured. The slaughter of her family. The loss of her home.”
“Beautifully broken. Mmm, that was Enid. Wildly intellectual, but exceptionally introverted. It was difficult to draw herout of her shell. Unless you wanted to discuss whatever book she had most recently devoured—in which case, it was impossible to stop her chattering. She spent hours and hours in my library when Penn brought her here to visit.”
The unguarded fondness in his voice makes the knot in my gut twist even tighter. Speaking of her feels intrusive, somehow. I begin to regret my own insufferable curiosity, and wish I’d never broached the topic of my venerated predecessor.
For who can ever live up to a ghost?
“What else did Pendefyre tell you about her?” Soren asks, gaze sharpening on me when he notices I’ve fallen silent.
Only that he believes himself responsible for her death.
And that you both thought yourselves in love with her.
I bury the words deep inside. “Not much of anything.”
He looks as though he does not quite believe me, but blessedly does not push.
“So…” I swallow hard. “Besides those two wind weavers who died in the Midlands, you have no record of any other Air Remnants?”
I do not ask about Earth. I know better. Whoever they are, wherever they are…they have never been located. Not once in two hundred years.
“No, unfortunately not,” Soren admits. “I did not begin to search in earnest for other Remnants for several decades after I became king. Frankly, whispered prophecies simply were not a priority at that time.Survivalwas our priority. War raged on a grand scale for a dozen years after the Cull, in every corner of the realm. It had died down slightly by the time I took the throne, though not by much. My formative memories are of bloodshed and death.”
I tense at the thought of such an upbringing. While my own childhood had hardly been one of privilege, it was safe enoughuntil, at last, war overtook us. But for twenty years, Eli had carved out a quiet life for us in Seahaven. Like Soren said, the peninsula’s shelter gave me a chance never afforded to my fellow wind weavers. I was lucky to have experienced relative peace, away from the brutality encompassing other stretches of the Midlands.
Soren crosses his arms over his chest. “Llyr lost so many of our strongest fighters in those first years of battle. My father proved formidable enough to hold off the encroaching mortal armies…but only just. Much of our population was lost even before the oldest bloodlines began to falter.”
I nod, for this is not new knowledge. I had read of the slow erosion of maegic. How our strongest fae families began to produce maegicless children, how the divine gifts of our people slowly died out. Advanced healing, long life, enhanced eyesight, attuned hearing…all of it, lost within the space of a few generations.
And Soren had lived through it all; had watched so many perish, as he remained. He and Arwen and a handful of others from the oldest bloodlines are all that is left of a bygone era.