“Yes, but—”
My knees buckled at the onslaught of relief. “And Lucien?”
“Alive as well. But—.”
“Tell me what happened—tell me everything.” I kept an eye on the window, listening to the manor and grounds around us. Not a sound.
Alis grasped my arm and pulled me from the room. She didn’t speak as we hurried through the empty, too-quiet halls—all of them wrecked and bloodied, but … no bodies. Either they’d been hauled away, or—I didn’t let myself consider it as we entered the kitchen.
A fire had scorched the giant room, and it was little more than cinders and blackened stone. After sniffing about and listening for any signs of danger, Alis released me. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to come back. I thought something had gone wrong—I couldn’t stay away. I had to help.”
“He told you not to come back,” Alis snapped.
“Where is he?”
Alis covered her face with her long, bony hands, her fingertips grappling into the upper edge of her mask as if trying to tear it from her face. But the mask remained, and Alis sighed as she lowered her tree-bark hands. “She took him,” she said, and my blood went cold. “She took him to her court Under the Mountain.”
“Who?” But I already knew the answer.
“Amarantha,” Alis whispered, and glanced again around the kitchen as if fearful that speaking her name would summon her.
“Why? And who is she—what is she? Please, please just tell me—just give me the truth.”
Alis shuddered. “You want the truth, girl? Then here it is: she took him for the curse—because the seven times seven years were over, and he hadn’t shattered her curse. She’s summoned all the High Lords to her court this time—to make them watch her break him.”
“What is she—wh-what curse?” A curse—the curse she had put on this place. A curse that I had failed to even see.
“Amarantha is High Queen of this land. The High Queen of Prythian,” Alis breathed, her eyes wide with some memory of horror.
“But the seven High Lords rule Prythian—equally. There’s no High Queen.”
“That’s how it used to be—how it’s always been. Until a hundred years ago, when she appeared in these lands as an emissary from Hybern.” Alis grabbed a large satchel that she must have left by the door. It was already half full of what looked like clothes and supplies.
As she began sifting through the ruined kitchen, gathering up knives and any food that had survived, I wondered at the information the Suriel had given me—of a wicked faerie king who had spent centuries resenting the Treaty he’d been forced to sign, and who had sent out his deadliest commanders to infiltrate the other faerie kingdoms and courts to see if they felt as he did—to see if they might consider reclaiming the human lands for themselves. I leaned against one of the soot-stained walls.
“She went from court to court,” Alis went on, turning an apple over in her hands as she inspected it, deemed it good enough, and stuffed it into the bag, “charming the High Lords with talk of more trade between Hybern and Prythian, more communication, more sharing of assets. The Never-Fading Flower, they called her. And for fifty years, she lived here as a courtier bound to no court, making amends, she claimed, for her own actions and the actions of Hybern during the War.”
“She fought in the War against mortals?”
Alis paused her gathering. “Her story is legend among our kind—legend, and nightmare. She was the King of Hybern’s most lethal general—she fought on the front lines, slaughtering humans and any High Fae and faeries who dared defend them. But she had a younger sister, Clythia, who fought at her side, as vicious and wretched as she … until Clythia fell in love with a mortal warrior. Jurian.” Alis loosed a shaking sigh. “Jurian commanded mighty human armies, but Clythia still secretly sought him out, still loved him with an unrelenting madness. She was too blind to realize that Jurian was using her for information about Amarantha’s forces. Amarantha suspected, but could not persuade Clythia to leave him—and could not bring herself to kill him, not when it would cause her sister such pain.” Alis clicked her tongue and began opening the cabinets, scanning their ravaged insides. “Amarantha delighted in torture and killing, and yet she loved her sister enough to stay her hand.”
“What happened?” I breathed.