Arising Fate

XXV

Striding into the large ivory halls of the Seelie fortress, Lily followed Ash in a hurry, unsure of his destination but not wanting to be left behind to face the shadows of the Summer fortress alone.

Ash was muttering something to himself in a foreign tongue, words soft and humming like a live electrical wire. While he lay buried within his own head, Lily was reluctantly bright and alert, transfixed on the doors as they spontaneously opened before Ash only to close immediately once her hurried steps passed through each archway. He sealed her route, determined her course, without even a glance or word of acknowledgement and she followed almost obediently. Partially because Ash provided her with some false sense of safety, and partially because she was terrified of being left alone.

The shadows had lungs and eyes. With just enough light to see the pale slope of her arms, her fingertips, the sleek ivory castle had transformed under the gloom of evening, wearing an insidious mask instead of its usual pearls. When she asked, Ash had fleetingly explained the change.

"Summer is almost over," he had said. "Its heat and warmth will soon be replaced by the sharp bite of Winter's kiss. The Unseelie are becoming stronger and therefore so is their influence. Flowers would bloom in the Seelie Court, but they'll now have thorns. And if you were to plunge your feet into the rivers you might feel the nip of Winter's chill, might even lose a toe or two."

Lily didn't trust him. Maybe the Unseelie were as treacherous and wicked as she had been told. But she felt there was more to the shadows that he was letting on. The chilling sight of the Nain Rouge did nothing to quell her anxiety, especially when it was hunting her blood. She wanted to believe him, to live in the ignorance of it all.

The fae can't lie, her mind whispered.

Yes, they couldn't. But that also didn't mean they were telling her the whole truth.

Unexpectedly, the smell of parchment, dust and nostalgia hit her. They had stopped walking and for once Lily knew exactly where she was. The final set of large twin doors had opened to reveal the familiar circular library. This time however, it looked more like a warzone than her first cozy encounter.

It faintly reminded her of walking into the cluttered workplace of the service man who had lived in the basement of her apartment building in Chicago. Steve. But instead of spare sheets of scrap metal, axles, fasteners, wrenches – the various innards of some air-conditioning machine or vacuum cleaner lying about in such clustered piles that to the untrained eye it would look like the machines themselves had convulsed and thrown up – it was opened books, paper, ink, and maps.

The only shimmer of light came from a single flickering candle, the wax so thick and melted it stretched like tentacles onto the slab of dark wood that stood in the middle of the room; his desk. Ash plunged into the library without a second thought, candles igniting. Lily flinched unconsciously. The ease of his ability still unnerved her, even though the reality of her own little 'gift' was much worse.

"Are you going to tell me what you're searching for?" Lily asked, watching as Ash sifted quickly through one of the piles that lay on his desk. He obviously didn't find what he was looking for because he started picking up books and tossing them uncaringly out of the way. "Hey wait!" Lily called, leaping forward to grab one of the thick spines he had tossed behind him. "Stop!" He had thrown another, which she barely had time to grasp before a third and fourth were thrown in her direction. "Ash, sto—"

"It's not here," he said, clearly frustrated.

"What's not here?" He ignored her, moving briskly to one end of the obscenely large desk. She now held a jumble of books uncomfortably within her arms. The characters on one of the front covers was a mixture of bizarre illegible swirls. Placing the rest down, she began flipping curiously through the pages, all while listening to Ash as he ransacked more piles further down.