dark where the Water used to lie,” she said gravely. “Something has taken its place, and it’s destroying the forest. It’s destroying us.”
She scratched at the base of the thumb where the growth met bare skin. She plucked away a tiny leaf, but grayish-red blood bubbled up in its place. I gasped. By the set of her jaw, I could see it was painful.
“That’s what happens when we try to remove it,” she said, answering my unspoken question. “A few have bled to death trying.”
I stared, too horrified to say anything. The ancient fay were supposed to be untouchable, sheltered from the problems that rattled the rest of Nissera. “What could it be?” I finally managed. “A remnant of the Moth King’s power? A disease? A curse?”
“We don’t know. But it’s made Wenryn uninhabitable,” she explained, forcing her voice to remain even as she slid both gloves back on. “Our fruits and grains spoil before we can eat them. We can’t sit idle for even a moment; the growths only spread faster. Those of us who were able to departed from Wenryn, but Malyrra was too weak. She stayed behind. Theslyn is leading the others to safety.”
“What about the nectar?” I asked, sorrow crushing my chest at the thought of Wenryn being invaded, changing and darkening. “It healed me from the blight disease.”
“It’s soured,” she said. “I hope you elicromancers are able to stop this. We can’t seem to.”
The way she so casually counted me among the elicromancers struck fear into my heart. This wouldn’t be like the journey north, when I followed along and fought when necessary. No, I was a leader now. Ridding the forest of this foul intrusion would be as much my responsibility as everyone else’s.
“You came to our aid when we needed you.” I took her gloved hand in mine. “The Realm Alliance will help save Wenryn and your people.”
SIX
KADRI
BUT the Realm Alliance was short two of its members today.
There were so few of us to begin with that the absence of both Glisette and Valory made the pit of fear inside me yawn wider.
Something felt off.
Glisette had departed for Perispos, dispatching her brother to the meeting in her place. After several days, Valory hadn’t returned from answering the distress call that even Mercer knew nothing about.
It was nearly impossible to muster concern for Valory’s safety now that she was so powerful. If anything, I was irritated by her ill-timed absence. She did have a prophetical lover in Mercer, after all, and should have known this meeting would be important. And even though she couldn’t materialize, she could use the portal box King Tiernan had given her to arrive just as swiftly.
Her truancy left six of us, seven including Rynna, scattered along the first row of seats in the meeting chamber overlooking Beyrian Bay: Mercer; his brother, Tilmorn; Fabian; Devorian; Valory’s cousin Melkior; and me.
The other tiers of benches rising from the circular center of the room remained empty. The rest of the former Realm Alliance, those who had not been murdered by the Moth King, had fled back to their towns or countries of origin.
Even Rayed had left. Erdem had given him no choice.
Eventually, we would need to invite more leaders back into the fold: mortals, nonroyals, foreign diplomats, and advisors with governing experience. Yet the hidden rifts and deep-rooted deceit in the former Realm Alliance, which the Moth King had gleefully exploited, gave us pause. Our new administration was too new, too fragile to make the mistake of allowing an untrustworthy person into our ranks.
While Rynna explained the plight of her people, I studied my comrades’ faces. Mercer was a tense shadow perched on the seat nearest the wall of windows, the setting sun skimming the top of his tousled dark-blond hair. Next to him, Tilmorn cut a similar, but bulkier, outline. They both absently stroked their chins, and though I had to squint against the light, I found identical consternation carved into their foreheads. Surely, surely, one of these elicromancers would recall something pertinent from their dense elicrin history books. Surely one of them would recognize the growth on Rynna’s hand as an obscure curse that could be broken, or a matter of magical botany with an antidote—perhaps a potion brewed during a full moon and boiled with the bones of an enemy, or some other archaic elicrin nonsense. But they remained silent.
I toyed with my bangles as Rynna concluded, “It has not worsened since I left the rotting area of the