Chapter 93

Chapter 93
Kate’s POV

The Queen steps away from the Mother Tree and follows a path that opens between ancient roots and flowers still holding the glow of the celebration. The fairies naturally follow her, forming a silent, attentive procession.
Ashleen grips my hand firmly as we walk.
“What kind of stories is she going to tell us?” she asks, her eyes still lit up from the dancing.
“I don’t know,” I reply. “I don’t know much about old stories, just the basics.”
“Just like you only know the basics about your best and only functional spell,” Dan says at my side with an irritating smile, lifting the right corner of his mouth as he leans slightly toward Ashleen, as if he wants to whisper something to her. “If you want my opinion, you could improve it even more.”
Ashleen makes a small, thoughtful face, and when she speaks again, I see she has absolutely no interest in how much I can or can’t improve, according to Dan’s opinion about my magical abilities.
“Does Niv know?”
Niv’leen hovers right behind us, as if he had always been there, following the group.
“Not exactly,” he answers. “It depends on which memory Mother wants to rekindle.”
“Rekindle?” Ashleen repeats.
“Yes,” he says, his voice serene. He’s been eerily calm since the singing for his beloved Pearl Moon. “Fairies have a habit of retelling these same stories at events like this.”
“Why?” I ask, turning my face slightly toward him.
An amused glint crosses his gaze.
“Because fairies can forget easily. Especially what doesn’t spark our immediate interest. We live too intensely in the present. The past slips away if it isn’t called back.”
We keep walking. The path starts to feel familiar.
I remember this incline in the trail and the way the roots widen beneath our feet. The clearing rests just ahead, suspended like a natural terrace, surrounded by spiral leaves that flutter at the touch of the wind. The ground pulses softly with ancient energy, and the center remains brighter, as if it holds the memory of everything that has ever happened there.
The fairies spread out through the space with delicate order. Some perch along the edge of the ledge, others settle among the leaves encircling the clearing. Tiny lights sprout between the fibers of the living wood, responding to the focus settling in the air. Thin vines glow around us, like strands of starlight outlining the space.
I feel a slight shiver as I cross the center to reach the other side, as if a cold breeze had struck me, even though there’s no cold wind blowing. But I think I know why: I recognize the exact spot where living magic once reacted to my lack of control. Where flowers of light bloomed, and where the energy burst out too strongly. It was right here that Dan brought me to train once, and where I almost kissed him.
The fairies form a large semicircle facing the luminous center and sit scattered across the ground. As Dan, Ashleen, and I settle as well, the Fairy Queen steps forward and gently raises her hands.
Lines of energy weave together before her, appearing like luminous threads crossing one another. The light grows slowly, layer upon layer, until it forms a vertical surface that looks like still water, and something shaped like one of the mirrors I saw stored in that room inside the Mother Tree suddenly rises.
The spiral leaves around us slow their movement, as if paying attention. Ashleen leans slightly forward, very interested in what’s about to come.
The mirror’s surface ripples softly, but it doesn’t break. The image hasn’t formed yet. First comes the sound—a distant chord, just a thread of melody that slips through the air as if it had always been there, waiting to be heard. The fairies exchange glances and then begin to sing together, softly, sustaining the note.
The music slows, and the Fairy Queen begins speaking of the earliest days of Tir na nÓg, when the realm still had no name and the trees grew in directions where new generations of fairies learned to fly. The mirror responds to the narrative, revealing vast forests, trunks widening like natural towers, and suspended rivers running across the sky like liquid ribbons. Small creatures of light dart through the branches in quick leaps, leaving bright trails that fade slowly.
She continues, recalling what she called The First Song, describing it as the moment the fairies discovered that their voices, united, could shape the world around them. The image shows a circle of interwoven wings as a distant mountain opens in gentle fissures. Flowers emerge from the soil at the prolonged touch of a sustained note, and the air itself seems to vibrate in response. I feel Ashleen squeeze my hand tightly and realize my fingers are just as tense around hers.
The Queen then speaks of the first winter that tried to creep into Tir na nÓg. The mirror projects a gray sky advancing over the forest, ice crystals descending like silent threats, and the fairies gathered in a luminous circle holding enough warmth to push back the cold. The season retreats as if gently persuaded to look elsewhere. There’s something in the way this part is told that gives me a subtle chill, a faint sense of displacement I can’t name. The word “frozen” appears in the story like a distant memory, and for a moment, the air feels less warm than it should.
She mentions the Faerie Courts before the division, when alliances had not yet fractured, and celebrations lasted for decades without anyone marking the passage of time. The mirror reveals living halls inside colossal trunks, tables made of hardened sap reflecting real constellations on ceilings of translucent leaves. Fairies and other strange, equally beautiful creatures dance in slow spirals, and every movement slightly alters the glow of the sky above them. The story moves through pacts sealed with wind spirits, agreements with underground beings who traded rare metals for trinkets, and veiled confrontations with humans who learned to steal their Secret Names.
Then she speaks of the raising of the Veil, describing it as a layer of silk invisible to the eye but capable of hiding the fae from human sight.
I don’t pay much attention to that part, because about it, I already know more than enough.
I end up distracted by Ashleen’s hair, which I notice is full of tiny sparkling specks, like fine dust, and I wonder if mine looks the same. It must have been the work of the fairies who helped us get ready for this celebration.
She mentions several other events involving humans, hunters, auction houses, more Secret Names stolen, and fae beings forced to serve the most grotesque human desires. I silently thank her for not going into too much detail, because I didn’t want Ashleen to hear about that, and then I thank her again when the narrative shifts.
The fairies’ music changes too, dropping into a lower note that carries the transition. The mirror stabilizes, and the Queen stops the slow pacing she had been doing before it. Her voice takes on a more ancient cadence when she speaks again:
“Before the Faerie Courts, before so many found themselves vulnerable to the frozen claws of the Pale King, and before the world was divided between those born with it and those who came after, there were nine powerful dragon gods.”
She pauses briefly, as if weighing the gravity of what she has just said. The mirror’s surface ripples slowly, as if the story itself were reorganizing to be revealed.
“… Nine?” I frown, feeling the number clash with everything I learned. “But… weren’t there seven?”
I remember the abandoned cathedral well, the stained-glass windows depicting them, even though the seventh was shattered. I couldn’t have miscounted or simply failed to see an eighth or ninth window hidden in some kind of secret chamber. The information was even in old, moldy books, and it was very clear in stating that there were seven.
The Queen doesn’t seem offended by my interruption. She merely tilts her head slightly.
“Human records,” she says, her wings giving a faint flutter around her, “preserve what they can understand. And they forget what challenges them or no longer serve them.”
I imagine this is the first time Ashleen has heard about the dragon gods. She becomes even more captivated by what she sees and hears. However, when I look at Niv, he seems just as confused as I am. Maybe even a little frightened—or very, judging by how his eyes, already large compared to the proportion of his whole body, are wide open. Niv then turns his small face toward Dan, sitting just beyond Ashleen, and I do the same.
I don’t know what kind of expression I expected to see on his face, but it certainly wasn’t that look of horror.
The shadows around him tremble without pause. All the glow Dan had acquired while dancing with me and Ashleen has vanished—even the gold in his eyes seems dimmed, almost swallowed by the black of his scleras. Suddenly, even the dark marks beneath his eyes, trailing down his cheeks like eternal tear stains, seem much darker than I remember.
I feel another shiver.
The Fairy Queen continues her story:
“The greatest and most powerful among them was the one who created the other eight, and he granted them life in pairs, for even while embodying opposing energies and elements, these dragons complemented one another, and the harmony between them was what sustained the balance of the world.”
She gestures with both hands and, obeying the motion, the mirror forms new images, and the dragons of her story appear as luminous silhouettes.
The first was the largest of them, represented by a denser golden color, as if fragments of constellations shimmered within it.
“Hraesvelgr, whose song generated life,” the Fairy Queen names.
The mirror shows the dragon opening its mouth, but there is no fire. There is sound. And the sound condenses into light that spreads outward.
That name and silhouette were unfamiliar to me. Nothing I had read in my personal research mentioned this dragon, because the world’s origin myth attributed the deed to the Seven Dragon Gods depicted in the cathedral.
After him came two silhouettes, one blue and one red.
“Seraphyra and Azharyon, lords of fire and water, who created rivers, seas, and volcanoes upon the earth.”
The images show ocean currents carving paths and lava flowing slowly down still-glowing slopes. Those names and forms I know, as well as the ones that follow: a yellow silhouette like an electric storm, and another cyan-blue, like summer skies.
“Tiamyra and Fenrathis, lords of sky and earth, who created the winds and the mountains.”
The mirror reveals mountain ranges rising slowly as clouds swirl around newly formed peaks.
“She lifted. He sustained,” the Queen says. “And between them, the world found stability.”
The next pair, accompanied by two very familiar silhouettes that look very much like those represented in the stained glass of the abandoned cathedral—one gray, like polished metal, and the other deep green, like an ancient forest.
“Nyma and Morraveth, lords of metal and wood, creators of all natural treasures and of all things that sprout from fertile soil.”
I see ores glittering beneath the ground and trees growing at an almost imperceptible yet imposing speed.
Then the final two silhouettes begin to form, and my entire body reacts before my mind reaches the conclusion.
One is white. Too white. Radiant. As if made of concentrated light. The other is black, matte, absorbing the brightness around it, as if light itself refuses to reach it.
I recognize that second one. Not from books, but because I’m certain I’ve stood before that shadow. I just can’t believe it.
When the Queen pronounces the names, the sound seems to split the air.
“Elyndra and Danthalion, lords of light and shadow, who created nothing, yet embodied the two most important—and most dangerous—elements among all that exists.”
Dan’s tail strikes the ground violently. The impact travels up my legs. Niv’leen lets out a sharp cry beside me, his wings beating too fast for a second. Ashleen shrinks back.
I turn my face toward Dan. He doesn’t look merely distressed. He looks… torn apart. The shadows around him are no longer still; they move like smoke stirred by an invisible wind. The gold in his eyes is almost completely swallowed by the deep black of his sclerae.
The Queen continues, and there is something different in her tone now.
“The light that reveals,” she says, and the mirror shows the white silhouette radiating clarity over entire landscapes. “The light that exposes, that warms, that inspires.”
The image shifts slowly to the dark silhouette.
“The shadow that conceals,” she goes on. “The shadow that devours, eternally hungry, never sated.”
The Queen lifts her chin, and Dan closes his eyes for a second. I want to touch his hand, but I’m afraid that if I do, something will break. And I don’t know if he would be the only one to shatter.
The mirror begins to waver. The white light and the black shadow draw closer in the image, and the brightness around them flickers faintly.
“However,” the Queen says, and the word carries enough weight to bend the air, “where extremes coexist, rupture always lurks.”
The image fragments into reflections too difficult to interpret. Light advancing, shadow retreating. Or perhaps the opposite. It’s impossible to tell. And then she looks at us, though I feel that the Fairy Queen is not looking at me, Niv, or Ashleen.
“And one of them is a murderer.”
Suddenly, Dan rises. His entire body transforms into shadows that slide like serpents away from us and then expand into a black whirlwind that takes the shape of the dragon.
He runs away, and I go after him.