Silene covered her ears, sinking again to the floor. She clutched the Harp to her chest.
Mother above, open up! a male roared. We have children here! Take the children!
Bryce shook her head in mute horror as the screams and pleading faded. Then stopped entirely. As if sucked into the very stones of this place. Right along with the melting snow around Silene.
“You fucking coward,” Bryce breathed at last. Her voice broke on the last word. This was her heritage.
Heavy quiet fell in the chamber, interrupted only by Silene’s broken rasping as she knelt, cradling the Harp.
At that moment, Silene said, I had only one thought in my mind. That this knowledge would die with me. This world would continue as if the Fae who had gone into Midgard had never been. They would become a story whispered around campfires about people who had vanished. It was the only thing I could think to do to protect this world. To atone.
Too little, too late. And of course, Silene would have benefitted from hiding her past—if she didn’t tell anyone who she was or what she and her family had done, she couldn’t be punished for it. How convenient. How noble.
Silene studied the spot where she knelt on the eight-pointed star in the center of the room. The only adornment.
She slowly set the Harp atop the star. Snow still melting in her hair, she got to her feet and wiped her tears, then rallied her magic, the sheer concentrated power of her light. It sliced through the stone like a knife through warm butter—a laser.
Light that wasn’t just light—light, as the Asteri could wield their power.
Silene carved planets and stars and gods. A map of the cosmos. Of the world she had abandoned. When she finished, she lay beside the Harp, curled around the dagger sheathed at her waist.
Silene traced her fingers over the stone, like she could somehow reach across the stars to her sister. A seed of starlight began to form at her fingertip—
The vision went dark. Then Silene’s face appeared again—older, worn. Her clear blue eyes looked out with a steady gaze. My strength wanes, she said. I hope that my life has been spent wisely. Atoning for my mother’s crimes and foolishness and love—and trying to make it right. I carved these tunnels, the path here, so some record might exist of what we were, what we did. But first I had to erase all of it from recent memory.
Her face faded away, and more images began. A faster montage.
Silene, walking away from the Harp and through the empty, beautiful halls of a palace carved into the mountain—this mountain.
Our home had been left empty since we’d vanished. As if the other Fae thought it cursed. So I made it truly cursed. Damned it all.
She wandered through rooms that must once have been familiar to her, pausing as if lost in memory. Then she waved a hand, and entire hallways were walled off with natural rock. Another wave, and ornate throne rooms were swallowed by the mountain, until only the lowermost passages, the dungeons and this chamber far beneath, remained.
Despite my efforts to hide what this place had once been, a terrible, ancient power hung in the air. It was as my mother had warned us when we were children: evil always lingered, just below us, waiting to snatch us into its jaws.
So I went to find another monster to conceal it.
Beneath another mountain, far to the south, I found a being of blood and rage and nightmares. Once a pet of the Asteri, it had long been in hiding, feeding off the unwitting. With the dagger and my power, I laid a trap for it. And when it came sniffing, I dragged it back here. Locked it in one of the cells. Warded the door.
One after another, I hunted monsters—the remaining pets of the Daglan—until many of the lowest rooms were filled with them. Until my once-beautiful home became a prison. Until even the land was so disgusted by the evil I’d gathered here that the islands shriveled and the earth became barren. The winged horses who hadn’t gone with my mother to Midgard, who had once flown in the skies, playing in the surf … they were nearly gone. Not a single living soul remained, except for the monstrosities in the mountain.
No pity or compassion stirred in Bryce. She didn’t buy Silene’s “for the common good” bullshit. It had all been to cover her own ass, to make sure the Fae in this world never learned how close she and her mother and sister had come to damning them. How Silene and Helena had damned the Fae of Midgard, locking them out along with their children. Another few seconds of keeping the portal open and she could have saved dozens of lives. But she hadn’t.
So boo-fucking-hoo and to Hel with her atonement.
I left, wandering the lands for a time, seeing how they had moved on without Theia’s rule. They’d splintered into several territories, and though they were not at war, they were no longer the unified kingdom I had known.