Chapter Text
The first purge began on an otherwise ordinary day, and so Eunomia felt like she had been awoken from a dream. Her mentor, Ariadne, took her into the main garden courtyard at the Hall of All Worlds, and bid her to hide in a hollowed-out tree. She pressed an amulet into Nomi’s hands, her eyes wide with fear, and told her not to come out, no matter what she heard.
Amarantha’s soldiers came just moments later, and burned Ariadne alive, right there in the garden.
She heard the screams of the wise old woman who used to spend hours debating her in sunlight corridors. She heard the laughter of the soldiers, pleased with the torture that they inflicted on the gentle councilor who sometimes brought honeycakes and tea for Nomi and her other apprentices during long nights of studying. It took a long, long time for Ariadne to burn.
And the smell – oh, Mother above, the smell.
Even when it was quiet, and they were gone, Nomi did not come out.
It was Pyrrha who found her, a few hours after dawn. She wrapped Nomi in her cloak, and turned her away from where her fellow guards were removing Ariadne’s tiny, charred corpse from the grass. There were tears falling ceaselessly down Pyrrha’s ashen face, and her hands were stained with blood. But never once did Pyrrha break down, or falter, as she walked Nomi back down through White Blossom Plaza, all the way to her apartment.
Pyrrha was always the courageous one, anyway.
Nomi sat on the floor, which seemed like the right thing to do in this situation. Pyrrha left for a time, and then came back, looking exhausted. She began to make tea.
Not long after, Serapion, the fourth member of their childhood crew, came to the apartment to look for them. Serapion had gone to get medical attention, but the hospitals and healing places were completely overwhelmed and he was walking with a pronounced limp. He was a stable-hand – a highly honorable position at Court, and one that had made him uniquely vulnerable to this first attack. As Pyrrha made tea, Serapion announced that many of the Pegasi, the prized winged horses of their Court, had been butchered to prevent the nobility from escaping. Several of the beasts had escaped, and it would be a monumental task to track them down again.
“Where is Thales?” asked Nomi, suddenly.
“I think they took him,” Pyrrha replied. Her voice was brittle; her normally steady hands shook as she put one cup in front of Serapion, and brought the other to down to Nomi. “They killed the Lord, and his family. My captain ordered us all to run and hide.”
Serapion swore. “Who’s High Lord now?”
Pyrrha winced.
“I… I don’t know. I don’t know who is left.”
Fresh tears poured down Pyrrha’s face. Years later, she would tell them the story of how she had gone back for the young princes – one who was just celebrating his fourth year of life. But she never told them exactly what she witnessed that day. It was just another painful memory.
Pyrrha composed herself. “Everyone else was taken. I heard that the… well, you know, her.”
“She took them,” Nomi repeated. “Under the Mountain.”
Their parents, most likely, would be there. Thales. Now, some of what she was feeling – or, rather, not feeling – made sense. Nomi did not consider herself a weak fae, but she also felt like she was reacting the wrong way to whatever she was experiencing now. But she’d never been separated from her twin in this manner. They’d been born seven minutes apart, and were never more than a few blocks away from one another for their entire lives. When they were little, they even had their own language, which Nomi had invented a script for, and which they still used to gossip in public. Once, when they were fifteen, Nomi’s arm had gone numb and she’d been baffled, until she got home and learned that Thales had broken his arm earlier that day. The emptiness inside her was because her twin had gone somewhere that she could not follow.
“Is this the end?” Serapion muttered. “Is it over?”
A few hours later, they got their answer, when Nomi was summoned back to the Hall of All Worlds.
Yvane was the taskmaster for fae like Nomi, who had completed their educations, and who were working towards the lofty formal title of “Keeper.” Her office, like so many, had been completely trashed, but she had taken pains to organize her desk and set out a not-uncomfortable chair to sit in, and righted the grandfather clock against one wall. Its steady tick-tick-tick matched Yvane’s steps. She was so compact that she was barely visible behind the desk without her cloud of black hair.
“This will not be the last attack,” Yvane declared. “It was always a gamble - whether or not she would allow us to live after declaring herself Queen. Our Court holds all the knowledge of this world within it, and though none of us individually may be able to match her, our combined efforts may have been enough to break this curse she’s enacted.”
Tick-tick-tick went the clock. Her golden scholar’s robes swished as she turned on her heel, pacing the length of the room over and over. Nomi was still holding on to the amulet that Ariadne had given her. It was a thin chain with a blue stone like an eye dangling from it – a common ward against evil. A superstition, and all that was left of her mentor.
“I expect that I, along with most of our leadership,” said Yvane, “will be dead within a week.”
Nomi closed her fist around the amulet, feeling its cool weight on her palm.
“What about the Spring Court?” she found herself asking. “I heard a rumor that Lord Tamlin is willing to take refugees.”
“I don’t think that will work for us,” came the grim reply. “We pose a direct threat to Amarantha as it stands. If we attempt to escape, she’ll search for us. I doubt even Lord Tamlin would be able to shield us from her wrath. And he has enough on his plate as it is.”
A curse this complex, and this powerful, held together with thread woven from each individual High Lord, not to mention Amarantha’s considerable personal resources – even in a normal situation, a puzzle like that would require a team of curse-breakers working around the clock. For all that she was, there was no finer sorceress in all the world. It was impossible, unless the precise conditions were met. But that would not matter to Amarantha. She’d kill them all to save herself the trouble. Nomi nodded, exhausted.
“To that end, we are promoting you.”
And suddenly, Nomi was wide awake.
“Congratulations, Keeper Eunomia. You will receive the full rank and titles of a Day Court scholar. Henceforth and until your dying day, you will carry on our legacy and guard our sacred knowledge. Rest assured, you are not the only one of your peers being promoted today, but I am giving all of you your assignments separately.”
In case they were discovered, and tortured for information on the others.
Confirming this, Yvane added, “To be on the safe side, I’ve destroyed the last one hundred years of our staffing records.”
She produced a folded letter from her desk and handed it to Nomi.
“Memorize this, and then burn it. Your assignment will be to protect the remaining Academy students - specifically, the female dormitory. This sheet contains instructions for what to do after the attack is finished. Keeper Eunomia, do you accept your assignment?”
Nomi nodded, and took the paper, and put it into her pocket, along with Ariadne’s amulet.
“I must say, you’re handling this awfully well,” Yvane remarked, raising one eyebrow. “In fact, you’re the only one who hasn’t cried yet.”
Without really thinking about it, Nomi replied, “Ariadne wasted time hiding me, and they burned her alive in the gardens. I heard everything. And I just learned that they took my family. Thales is Under the Mountain now. I can’t really feel anything anymore.”
Normally, she would never say such a thing to Yvane. Even though both she and her husband were good, decent fae who had dedicated their lives to this library and this Court, it wasn’t their job to be sympathetic to the apprentices and junior librarians. Yvane’s typical response to anything that even vaguely sounded like a complaint was, “There’s still time to change your vocation if you think you can’t keep up with the requirements.” Or, if she wasn’t feeling nice, she’d say, “Suck it up or I’ll give you a real reason to cry.”
But today, everything was upside down. Yvane’s expression softened.
“I remember your brother,” she said. “A bright young thing, wasn’t he? I’m sure that his light will give comfort to our people, until they are able to return to us.”
But Yvane would not live to see that future, and now, both of them knew it.
Five days later, a city watchman spotted Illyrians gathering on the mountains to the north, so they had a few hours warning of the next attack. Nomi donned her new golden robes, figuring that if she were going to die, she might as well do it as a fully-fledged scholar of the Day Court. She said her farewells to Pyrrha and Serapion, who were also tasked with defending the city’s remaining civilians. Orders made things easier to bear. Today, they were ordered to survive. So, they would.
Nomi was halfway there when the bells began to peal. She paused, and looked to the skies – but no Illyrians swooped overhead, and there were no signs of monsters, or soldiers of any kind. Which meant that the hastily-repaired wards were still holding, for now.
But there was something else in the air – beyond the general atmosphere of panic and tension, dread of another attack.
It was a scent. So sweet it was poisonous, thick and heady, making its way through the city on a dry, almost gentle wind. It burned Nomi’s throat when she inhaled it, like an acid. It was the unquestionable scent of magic. Even the truly uneducated would have recognized that scent, because it belonged to an individual whose name was known to all in Prythian.
Amarantha had come personally to burn them.
For a split second, Nomi reconsidered her plan. It was well-known by now that the Lord of Night had become Amarantha’s consort, and everyone knew what he was capable of. He could rip open your mind and tear your innermost thoughts out of you, drive you mad with terrible illusions – or he could simply find the vital parts of you, and break them, so you were as good as dead either way. He could make you forget how to walk, or how to speak, or even how to breathe.
And if Amarantha had come personally – what were the odds of the Lord of Night accompanying her? Given that there were Illyrians in the skies…
Nomi took hold of herself and breathed through her mouth, limiting her exposure to that scent.
It did not matter if the Lord of Night was here right now, if he could see into her thoughts and know just how deeply and intimately Nomi hated his new lover. She had been ordered to survive, and so she would. It only had to be that simple.
She dragged the collar of her robes up over her nose, and kept going.
The Celestine Academy of Spell-craft was not the only magical school in Rhodes, or in Prythian, but it was the finest of all of them. Students from across the world were accepted starting at age twelve, and were educated for ten years. Afterwards, the skies were the limit. Its famous alumni included High Lords – not just here, but in other Courts as well – and leaders in all fields of magic and politics. Great philosophers, alchemists, and sorcerers of all types had studied here. And of course, every single librarian of the Day Court was educated here.
It was located on the southernmost edge of the city, with excellent views of the green, hilly countryside in the distance. Nomi had decided that she would attend this school when she was just a toddler, before she was really even capable of understanding the commitment she’d made. But she’d never regretted it once. She’d loved every minute of her time here.
As she walked through the empty halls and courtyards, she only hoped that this place would survive. She wondered if one of her mysterious new peers had been sent to guard the male dormitory across campus, and if they’d have the same idea as she did. She hoped that the desperation drove them to unify, rather than to fight over the best hiding spots.
The bells were still clanging, and now there was a definitive taint of smoke on the wind. The sun was falling over the horizon, and soon it would be dark – apart from the fires, which they were already setting. Burning the books, and the scholars with them.
Nomi went to the female dormitory and roused the students one by one. Most had fled, and many had gone to be with their parents in the city, or elsewhere. But some had no place else to go, because their families were lost or killed, or they were from other Courts, and were trapped here because Amarantha had made their passage home unsafe.
At least, Nomi thought, the Lord of Night wouldn’t know about the Crypt.
There hadn’t been a student from the Night Court at Celestine in over eight-hundred years.
Nomi didn’t light a lantern. She had a dozen charges, all of whom were teenagers, barely into their educations at all. She ordered them to stick close to her, and to step quietly.
The Crypt was a semi-legendary spot on campus, which contained statues and placards of the various famous alums, including the school founder, some High Lord of ages past. There were all sorts of superstitions and rumors associated with it, rumors which only grew more intense around exam times. Nomi had once spent a night locked inside on a dare. She’d sat beneath the bust of a legalist and lit candles, chanted some nonsense while listening to her friends giggling as they locked her in. Thales had thrown a fit when he heard – sleeping in a tomb! Students weren’t even allowed in the Crypt. She’d had to do his chores for a month to prevent him from tattling to their parents.
But the Crypt wasn’t a tomb. It was just a private memorial site for the school. A record of their history.
A cacophony of sound rose from the city, but the campus was quiet as they made their way. One of them clung to Nomi’s arm. Another did not stop crying the entire way; another prayed, incessantly, under her breath. But they kept quiet, and even if they flinched at the rising sounds of combat, the sight of smoke in the distance, they did not flee.
Nomi directed the students inside, and then waited – just for a minute.
She was sheltered in this position, but she could hear the persistent sound of wingbeats. Illyrian scouts would arrive soon enough. Still –
A minute passed, then two. No other students emerged, frantic and hopeful, from the shadows. None of the professors did, either. There was no sign of anyone, anywhere on the campus.
So, Nomi loaded her pack from her shoulder, and locked them all inside the Crypt.
They had enough food and water for three days, but Nomi anticipated that the fires would rage for at least a week. The assassination of the High Lord’s family had been a concentrated effort; the chaotic hours that followed was merely an effect of the soldiers letting off steam, making headway before the next attack. And now, with the Night Court’s monstrous armies on their side, Amarantha’s Hybernian troops would be well-equipped to traverse the length of Prythian. Only the Spring Court was technically safe, and only for the next fifty years, until the curse might be broken.
Nomi was a law student – magical law, natural law, the laws of governance. So much of it was entirely theoretical. There had been no tribunals since before the War, which she only knew of from history textbooks. She didn’t know a thing about war. War was a thing of her parents’ and grandparents’ generation. Petty spats between Courts did not count.
Time became meaningless in the Crypt. The students were terrified, but no one screamed – not even when there were tremendous bangs from overhead. Privately, Nomi’s worst fear was that they’d burn the school. If debris confined them in this darkness, there was a risk of them being cooked alive like Ariadne had been.
But she was wise enough not to tell the students that.
Eventually, they fell into sleep. Nomi sat beneath the plaque marking the school’s foundation, with one student tucked under each arm, and another with her head in Nomi’s lap. Her legs went numb, but she didn’t dare to move.
She and Thales used to joke about Amarantha. They hadn’t really believed in High Queens.
But just a few months ago, the so-called Queen of Prythian left to announce her triumph in her home country, and the High Lords had held council right here in Rhodes. Nomi and Thales had climbed up on the roof of one of the pavilions lining the Palatial Plaza to see them ascend the steps to the High Lord’s residence. They drank wine from the bottle even though Nomi had the foresight to bring a pair of crystal goblets from their parents’ collection, and ate hard-boiled eggs and fresh fruits with cheese and crackers as if they had gone to the theater for a great show.
The Dawn Court arrived first, and followed by Summer. Both of them, the twins agreed, were finely dressed but they didn’t make much of a show. Their retinues were small, and hard-faced. Very unusual, and no fun to watch at all.
They were most excited to see the brand-new Lord of Winter, who had rarely been seen since his ascension to the throne four years ago. When he arrived with his small, cloistered entourage, Nomi declared him, “Handsome, but tragically over-dressed.” Thales replied that the Winter Court was always overdressed. Fur coats in this weather – could you ever imagine?
He was followed by the Night Court, and Nomi declared that she wanted to throw food at them. After all, the Night Court insisted on wearing black to everything. It was so awfully drab and dull. Even funerals had more cheer in them. Perhaps a well-aimed fresh tomato would liven things up. A pop of color! Thales had shuddered – a tomato would make their coats look like they’d been splattered with blood and guts.
The Autumn Court, as always, was best dressed in spectacular reds. Beron was now the oldest of the High Lords, with the Lord of Winter’s passing. It might be centuries more before he passed, given his tight grip on his power. One of the sons looked over and spotted the twins on the pavilion, and they had waved, and toasted to him. It was the first time either of them had been acknowledged by a lord of any Court, after all, and cause for celebration. They cried, “Cheers to you, Lords of Autumn, fairest of them all!” The son of Autumn merely frowned at them quizzically before moving on.
The Spring Court arrived last. Nomi declared Tamlin to be the most handsome of the Lords, to which Thales had playfully smacked her on the head and gasped, “You would forsake our own Lord so quickly? Is that all it takes to sway your loyalty? For shame!”
With the parade of attendance over, and a fine afternoon fading, the twins had climbed down and gone home, completely oblivious to the fact that a rebellion was simmering, and they had just witnessed the event that would ruin their simple lives forever.
Nomi wondered what it was like. “Under the Mountain.” The Mountain in the Middle was sacred, where all the magic of Prythian lay. But with the queen and her dark court beneath it, and now all the High Lords and their courts contained – was it like this crypt? Dark and cramped and full of despair? Did her parents think she was dead? Was the Lord of Night torturing them with his dark magic? Was it possible that her family was already…?
No. Thales would know if she were dead, and vice versa. They’d feel it.
Thales is alive.
This became her mantra. So long as they both stayed alive, survival was possible.
Thales is alive, and I’ll see him again.
When their food and water ran out, Nomi announced that she would go and fill her canteens at the fountain. The students begged her not to, but she promised that she would return. It would be bad if the enemy caught her, but they’d die anyway without water. Nomi told them that she’d knock three times when she returned.
The campus was deadly quiet. The air was saturated now with the smell of smoke and ash.
Nomi lifted the collar of her robe over her face again and kept to the shadows as she walked. It was impossible to tell what time of day it was; the sky was a sickly, burnt orange. The fires must be very high indeed. If she strained her ears, she could still hear the clang of armor and leather. Were the city watch and the palace guards still fighting? The Day Court had a standing army, but how long could they last while also defending the surviving citizens?
There didn’t seem to be any signs of life in the school – but that could change in an instant.
Just as the thought crossed her mind, Nomi arrived at the main courtyard’s far entrance. She could see the fountain, which was over an underground spring and would provide them with fresh water. But directly across from her was the door of the main lecture hall, hanging wide open.
Nomi stood, poised to run.
But there were no signs of life from it. No signs of soldiers, friend or foe.
There was, however, the strong smell of spoiled, cooked meat.
And so Nomi learned what had become of the professors.
It took her several minutes to comprehend what she was looking at. The lecture hall – which was the first classroom that all new students at the Celestine had, and which hosted the graduation assembly every year – was a slaughterhouse. They were hanging from the ceiling, chained to the podium and the lecterns, and there were burnt up pieces of them scattered amongst the drying pools of blood and gore. A bit of leg, an arm, horns and wings, here and there.
There was Marcarius, her favorite philosophy professor, whom she only really recognized because he was still wearing the pendant he’d gotten as an anniversary gift from his husband. It was a circle of perfect crystal with a flower bud encased within, and it was laid neatly across his chest. His face was completely gone – smashed in, just a pool of raw red meat and gray matter.
There was Octavia, the only teacher who had ever given Nomi detention in all her ten years of school. She was a blue-skinned nymph of a woman, but that beautiful skin was peeling off her in sheets, like she’d been flayed. Some of it was scattered around her body, curled in the fetal position, as were clumps of her hair.
And there, in the center aisle, was Rhea. She was the oldest teacher at the school, who was often called away to privately tutor the members of the nobility. She had been carved cleanly in two, and all her insides were outside of her, and her hand was outstretched, as if she had been running for the door when she was cut down. Nomi stared into those empty eyes, the terror frozen on her face.
She lurched, leaning on the scorched and blood-stained door, and even though Nomi’s stomach was all but empty, she began to vomit.
She was outside of her body, rejecting the input of her senses.
At last, there was nothing left but bile inside of her, and that was when she heard a sound like tearing paper and started – only to realize that the sound had come from herself, because Nomi was sobbing hysterically.
She fell down onto the stone, and did not plan on getting back up again.
But almost as soon as she’d slipped over the edge of that despair, something in her mind cracked, splitting neatly in two. And as it did, a strange, foreign calm spread over her body, like she was being filled with ice. It silenced her, coated and numbed her aching stomach.
Thales is alive.
And then she got up, and closed the doors to the lecture hall.
She filled her canteens at the fountain.
And went back, and locked herself inside the Crypt, and did not tell the students what she had seen.
Thales is alive. Thales is alive.
The students were clearly worried about her. She had taken too long to return, and she couldn’t speak, and all of them feared that Something Bad had happened to her. Nomi wanted to reassure them that whatever their frightened imaginations came up with was nothing compared to the horror of what she’d really witnessed. Her throat burned from throwing up, and her teeth felt absolutely rotted. She cried often, and silently, and no matter what the students tried to say to comfort her, words utterly failed Nomi in those next days. She was lost, and in the dark, and she was so, so frightened.
All she had ever wanted was to be here, in this city, with her family. There was no need to leave Rhodes; it was the best and most beautiful city in all the world, and everything she cared about was within its walls. She had never dreamed of love, or adventures, or fortune. Her whole heart was dedicated to the library, and to the books within it.
And now it was all just – blood and ashes.
There was not even a guarantee that Amarantha’s curse could be broken.
What if, in fifty years, they came back and finished everyone off? Shouldn’t she have tried to do something before then – tried to protect Ariadne and died for it – or tried to join her family Under the Mountain? What was the point of surviving if everything you cared about was going to die?
Thales is alive. Thales is alive.
Nomi missed her family so much that it hurt. Like her heart was being ripped out of her chest.
She vowed that she would take it all back, if only she could see them again. All the times she’d been ungrateful, or spoiled, or stubborn– all the times she’d been mean on purpose, or argued, or wished for a different life than the one she was living. If some miracle occurred and her family returned to her alive then she would never complain about anything, ever again, for as long as she lived. And the first thing that she’d do after hugging her parents was tell her brother that she loved him more than anyone else in the world.
That was the truth.
Thales is alive.
Eventually, Nomi deemed it safe to come out of the Crypt. When she opened the doors, she was greeted with the faces of Day Court soldiers, who immediately reached for weapons upon hearing the noise. But when they saw her in her scholar’s robes, and saw the students stumbling into the light behind her – the relief on those soldiers’ faces was something she’d never forget.
One of them took Nomi aside and gave her the news. They had already found the professors and were working to clean up the place. The Night Court’s armies had gone, and Hybern’s monsters with them. The city would be re-warded, and they would pray that the worst had passed.
It would take a lot of power for Amarantha to hold the Lords and their Courts. No matter how much influence she had in Hybern, or how many monsters her lover drew up from his mountains in the north, they simply couldn’t afford to wage siege warfare on five other Courts at once, for fifty years. There was too great a risk of one or the other breaking free. Especially given that they had come so close to open rebellion already. The combined might of Dawn, Day, and Summer may have been enough, particularly if Tamlin or the young Lord of Winter had seized the opportunity to join them.
But if the Night Court truly had allied with Amarantha…
Nomi’s head hurt.
Yvane had given her instructions; she followed them.
Rhodes was a smoldering ruin. Ashes drifted on the breeze, because some fires were still alight, where they had spread into residential districts. Much of the city guard was dead, and so, too, were most of the scholars. Yvane and her husband and all of the others had made a stand to guard the Hall of All Worlds – and were put onto a bonfire in the Palatial Plaza for it.
White Blossom Plaza, so named for its many flowering trees, was devastated.
The beautiful trees had been cut down for kindling, and many of the books had been burned here directly. Nomi found herself grieving, deeply, silently, as she made her way through a sea of torn pages, scorched leather bindings, and the heavy, sour scent of burning flowers that lingered even now. She’d thought that by now she had no more tears left – but she was wrong.
When she climbed the stairs to the Hall of All Worlds, it was an effort not to look down.
There were seven of them in total. She recognized three of, vaguely, from the Celestine, but none of them had been in her class. Cio, the oldest among them, was in her tenth year when Nomi was in her first. She part nymph like Octavia had been. Her skin was a rich green, her hair like a sheet of black silk. The pale gold of her robes suited her. Nomi remembered her as being quite popular back in the day, but the friendly smile she’d been known for was absent.
“Is this all?” Cio asked. She was remarkably calm, her arms folded.
For a moment, none of them said anything.
“What do we do now?” murmured Honoria. She was the only one younger than Nomi.
Yvane had not given them instructions on what to do after they survived.
“We fight,” said Lucius, at the same time Darnic said, “We rebuild.”
The two of them looked at each other. Nomi recalled Darnic was once head of the interscholastic debate team. He and Lucius had been rivals starting from their fifth year onward, after Lucius challenged him on a matter of the origins of magic.
“We wait for the High Lord to return,” said Cio. “Amarantha won’t be able to hold them forever.”
Myrtle, who had been a prefect, nodded thoughtfully.
“I can supervise the repair of the wards for now,” she said. “Silvio?”
Their final peer had once shocked all of them with his placement in an apprenticeship at the Hall of All Worlds, despite the fact that no one had ever seen him enter an exam hall even once in all the ten years he’d wandered the halls. Someone had spied and published his aptitude results in the school newsletter, and it turned out that the last person to score so high as a first year was Helion Spell-cleaver, who had gone on to become his great-uncle’s elite spymaster. Nomi wondered if he’d survived the assassination, if he was Under the Mountain with the rest of them now.
“Do you think they’ll really break the curse?” Honoria murmured.
Nobody answered her.
Three Days after the Resurrection
It was strange to be alive.
The last time Helion had left Rhodes, he hadn’t bothered looking back. Giddy, still drunk, stumbling out the city gates at dawn with a lover on his arm. He was aware of the political rumblings but it had all seemed so small then.
Years later, when he was older and apparently not very much wiser (to his eternal shame), Amarantha had personally come to Thira to inform him that all of his relatives had been killed, and that he was now High Lord of Day. She took him Under the Mountain, where he found the other six High Lords waiting for him. The openly rebellious Courts were in shambles; Summer’s new lord was a barely more than teenager compared to him, and the entire line of Dawn had been ripped out, leaving their new High Lord as a complete stranger. And above them all, Rhysand on the arm of the black throne.
Despite all of it, his first official as High Lord had been one of unity, and of gratitude.
As his entourage approached the seven hills of Rhodes, Helion found it in himself to be amazed. The wards were released for his arrival, and to see the High Lord’s palace, the Hall of All Worlds, still standing, somehow…
Their escorts informed him, proudly, reverently, of the hard work of the citizens who had rebuilt the libraries after Amarantha’s purging. Helion was pleased and relieved. He and his administrators had managed to rescue most of the literature that the dead queen had looted from Rhodes. For a time, they’d feared that those few precious tomes were all that was left of the Hall of All Worlds. But now they’d learned that seven librarians had survived, and had persevered in protecting the city’s knowledge all this time. Helion’s new minister for the treasury actual wept with joy at the news.
The gates opened, and music flooded outward. People were dancing and throwing flowers in the street, cheering their arrival.
It was a revelry of purest relief, because they had survived the dark age of their time.
And another day, Helion would have found all of this immensely gratifying, and taken part with pleasure.
But before that, he had business to take care of. His second official act as High Lord of Day.
He turned to the pallbearers, and said, “Take the boy to the palace and begin preparations. The first rotunda should be suitable. I’ll bring the family along shortly.”
They nodded, and began the process of winnowing the corpse to the palace.
Helion sighed.
He had already taken considerable liberties. The young fae who had survived fifty years Under the Mountain, only to be slain by Feyre Cursebreaker in a last, cruel act by Amarantha, was going to have a public viewing in the palace. It was for the sake of all members of the Day Court, to pay their respects and to grieve – not just for the boy who’d died for their freedom, but for all of their friends and loved ones who would never return from Under the Mountain. For all that they had lost in these last fifty years. Helion was sure that the family would give permission. He was their High Lord, after all.
But at the same time, it felt wrong to just step over them.
So he had planned to go personally.
Helion winnowed to the location he’d been given – a small, separated house in the finance district. It was painted a soft blue, and had a lemon tree in the front yard, and a pair of olive trees beside that. Herbs grew in pots beside the front door. It would have been a fine place to raise a family, he considered, gazing up and down at the mostly residential street. The party here was going strong, and raucous songs of victory were performed with gusto by a musical troupe who’d parked themselves at the corner. A cozy tavern across the way was rolling barrels of wine and ale into the street for people to drink from freely. Hardly anyone even noticed their High Lord as he walked straight up to the front door and knocked politely.
It took such a long time for anyone to answer that he nearly left.
But then, a red-haired young female opened the door. She had a fine, proud face – and upon the sight of her High Lord, she straightened up at once. The apple of her throat bobbed but she remained composed as she said, “My lord. How can we assist you?”
Helion was fairly sure that this was not the owner of the house. Behind her, there was a dark-skinned young male, his hair closely cropped to his head, and a severe expression on his face. Both of them had a tangible aura of anxiety, and the male seemed to be guarding something – or, rather, someone – in the house’s kitchen.
So, they already knew.
“May I come in?” he asked. “I’d like to speak with Keeper Eunomia.”
The pair looked at each other, and seemed to have a silent conversation. The male shook his head, but his friend looked pained, and eventually said, “Of course, my lord,” and stepped aside.
Helion closed the door behind him. The house was spotless, which somehow was the strangest thing. It clearly had markers of life, but everything was so impeccably clean that it felt like a museum. Helion wondered if Keeper Eunomia had tidied things up in anticipation of her family’s return, only to realize that they never would.
The young male did not step aside to let Helion into the kitchen, but rather moved ahead of him and came to stand behind a chair at the dining table – guarding its occupant.
Keeper Eunomia.
One of his surviving librarians, who were already being referred to with reverence as the Seven Lights. She didn’t rise, or acknowledge Helion in any way as he entered the room. In fact, she hardly even seemed to be breathing. She stared at the oak dining table, her eyes glassy and far away, bruised from sleeplessness. Her face was pale and hollowed, and her curly hair was hanging limp.
“Keeper Eunomia?”
Helion waited – a few seconds longer than necessary – for her to react.
“How long has she been like this?”
Her friends exchanged glances that were just barely tinged with relief.
“Three days,” said the redhead. “Can you do something?”
“She doesn’t sleep or eat,” the young male added, his hands gripping the back of Eunomia’s chair. “She walks if you lead her, and I’ve gotten her to drink some water. But she won’t say anything. It’s like she’s died and –”
His voice broke, and he seemed unable to speak.
“Please,” the redhead insisted. “Please, help her.”
But Helion Spell-cleaver couldn’t fix this. There was no magic in the world that could. Because this was not a curse. This was only grief. He closed his eyes for a moment, and braced himself for what he was about to do. He asked the names of the two fae – Pyrrha and Serapion, childhood friends. If they had even guessed what was happening, they didn’t say it. Maybe they couldn’t bear it. But now it was time to face the truth.
“Eunomia, may I sit down?” Helion asked.
Of course, she did not respond, and so Helion sat.
“This is a lovely house,” he remarked. “You must have many fond memories here. And I can see that you have wonderful, loyal friends to look out for you. It can’t have been easy, though, the last fifty years…”
He trailed off. How did one even begin to quantify the suffering they’d all endured?
“I heard you’re one of my Seven Lights,” Helion said. “I hope I’ll be able to count on your continued service now that I’ve become High Lord in a more, ah, official capacity. They told me you apprenticed at the Hall of All Worlds, so you must have quite the mind. I’m sure you were a far better student than I was. Someone once made the mistake of telling me that I was naturally gifted, and so I never bothered actually studying.”
He allowed a chuckle, remembering the carefree youth he’d once been.
The attempts at conversation, however, still did not rouse Eunomia from her catatonia.
So, there was only one thing left to do.
“Eunomia, I’m sorry that I have to be the one to tell you this. But as High Lord, it is my responsibility to inform of the situation.”
Silently, Helion prayed for her to say something. Don’t make me say it. She already knew what had happened. She had sensed it, and that was why she’d gone into this state to begin with. But nothing happened. Her friends only hovered anxiously. Waiting, waiting.
“Thales,” said Helion, “was killed just before the curse upon us was broken.”
At once, Helion wanted to kick himself. Putting it like that almost felt like a lie. But there was no way to quantify Amarantha’s cruelty. Thales’s desperate pleas for mercy, his dying cry – it had shocked them, broken their hearts. Their own Cursebreaker had begun sobbing even as she yanked the dagger out of Thales’s heart, even as she picked up the second dagger and prepared to do it again. Serapion and Pyrrha staggered as if he had hit them.
“No,” said Pyrrha. “That can’t be. Not Thales.”
Serapion just looked down at Eunomia, his eyes starkly wide. Slowly, he pulled out the chair besides her and sat down in it with a thud.
“What happened?” he asked, his voice shaking. “How?”
For a moment, Helion debated telling them at all. His eyes went to Eunomia, who didn’t so much as blink.
“Amarantha decreed that the final act to break the curse,” he explained, “was for Tamlin’s chosen cursebreaker to snuff out three innocent lives. Thales was one of them.”
Pyrrha began weeping behind him. Serapion put his head in his hands.
It was worse than he’d anticipated. From the beginning of Amarantha’s domination, it had become clear that the cruelty was the point. The power and influence she held in Hybern simply was not enough. The reasons she gave for vengeance against Prythian were superficial. She was evil; the cruelty was always the point. And seeing the three of them in their grief, thinking about Thales’s body lying still and cold in the rotunda of his own palace, Helion could not help but think that somehow, in some way, Amarantha had achieved a terrible final victory over them all.
“I wish there was something more I could say to make this easier,” he told Eunomia. “Your brother was a bright light for all of our people in that dark place. His determination inspired all of us to survive. And I know that his spirit came from you. He spoke of you often. He wanted more than anything to see you again.”
“I know.”
Eunomia’s voice was hoarse from lack of use. But Helion couldn’t help but feel relieved. At least, now, there was hope that she was still alive somewhere in the fugue of her grief.
“I would like to discuss funeral arrangements with you, if possible.”
No response.
He tried a different tactic. “Would you like to see him?”
And Eunomia lifted her head. Her eyes cleared ever-so-slightly as she rasped, “Yes, please.”
So Helion took the three of them to the palace. Because of course, her friends would not leave Eunomia’s side for even a second. Pyrrha helped Eunomia change into cleaner clothes beforehand, and Helion winnowed all of them directly into the rotunda, to avoid the crowds.
They had already pulled up a dais to lay Thales’s covered corpse upon, but Helion shooed the funeral attendants away beforehand. He bid the three young fae to stand back as he personally went up to the dais, bracing himself for what he was about to see.
He pulled back the white sheet, revealing Thales’s face.
Dead people did not look like they were sleeping. Helion had always found that saying to be a crock of utter horseshit, but Thales proved it. He was pale and lifeless, and not in the least bit peaceful. He had not gone quietly; he did not look asleep, or really anything like the handsome, lively youth he had once been. He looked like a corpse, and it was awful.
Pyrrha burst into sobs, the sound briefly echoing on the rotunda’s walls before she turned her face into Serapion’s chest to muffle the sounds. Her friend embraced her, but his eyes were fixed on Thales’s face like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He opened and closed his mouth, stunned into silence even as tears began to fall from his eyes.
Only Eunomia approached.
She walked up to the dais quietly, her expression unfathomable, and gazed down into her brother’s empty face. Helion watched as she reached up, and gently brushed his hair back, the way she might have done a thousand times before.
Then, she spoke in a language that Helion didn’t know, and kissed his forehead.
Eunomia straightened up, and turned away. Her face was ghostly white, not entirely unlike her brother’s in that moment. But rather than walk back to her friends and accept the comfort they may have offered her, she collapsed, swaying slightly before leaning back against the dais and sinking slowly to the ground.
She put her head into her hands, and did not get up for a long, long time.