33. Interlude 3

Interlude 3

14 years ago

The sylph walks through the woods, the glamor over her making her look like an unusually tall, wispy woman with long auburn hair. An appearance she believes a human family would find regal and authoritative.

In reality, she is air given life. Her body is less a solid thing and more a tempest of silent wind. Her steps are unnecessary as she weighs nothing and can float as easily as a feather, but they, along with everything else, are a part of the mask she wears. No one can know what she is, especially her ward.

No one can know that an Immortal sylph is helping a young Wyrdling in a very forgettable village. A servant of the House of Shadow, she went into hiding along with her mistress, the Queen of Shadows, during the Shattering. Then her Queen gave birth to a daughter.

Now that daughter roams these woods, her pupil, and is nowhere to be found. There's a reason that the sylph had been trusted with the care of the Queen's daughter, though. She believes in her mistress with every bit of her soul. She doesn't need to know the Queen's plan to know that she is trying to right the wrongs that were done to the world.

The sylph's role is not to fix the world. She is no hero or queen. No, her only part is to train a young Wyrdling to claim a Throne and eventually wear the Painted Crown when the time comes. Without allowing that Wyrdling to know of the power she wields.

The Forgotten Ring is the key to it all. The reason Queen Brenna had to leave her only child alone with a human and the sylph. There is only one ring, and the child would undoubtedly leak the scent of shadows as she aged. The Queen could not help but leave a scent behind. There was only one option. The Queen had to leave the child in the sylph and her human father's care.

The sylph has done her best to teach the young girl everything she needs to know about the world. She needed to give the child hidden knowledge without explaining why she would need it. How to keep her emotions leashed. How to access the pieces of her that are stronger than humans. Why she shouldn't be near humans unless necessary.

More than anything, how she won't win a fight if she has to confront an Immortal in battle. It's the best chance to connect her to the Shade when that time comes. When her powers grow too strong for her to ignore them any longer.

Even at the young age of eight years old, the girl is already successfully hunting in the forests alone. The sylph watches her constantly, never needing sleep or food, for the wind does not need nourishment or rest.

That's why it is so strange that the sylph is not secretly at the girl's side today, an invisible wind at her back, always ready to protect and guide her. There has been a commotion in town. Someone saw a harpy in the woods north of Blackgrove, and the sylph went to listen to the story, to decide if it was true or not.

There is only one reason for a harpy to be in this village. The girl's powers have been leaking through the ring, and they're drawing the attention of the House of Steel's hunters.

The story had been inconclusive, but it worries the sylph. She can keep the wild animals from hurting the girl, but a harpy would be too much for her. A harpy would know her as soon as she was close, and harpies are natural predators of sylphs.

The sylph would have to find the harpy and lead her away. There is no other answer. As she considers her possibilities, she follows the scent of her ward. She notices, a passing thought, that the girl's father is with her. It's a strange thing. He rarely leaves the house these days, not seeming to have any interest in doing anything more than staring into the forest.

As unusual as it seems to the sylph, the Queen married the human. A true wedding. The Queen bound their souls forever, even though she knows the human will die long before she will. It's not the sylph's place to judge the actions of her queen, but she does not agree with the pairing.

He is good to the girl, though. A model of kindness and strength for her to see. Not once has the sylph seen him say anything negative about his wife, even though he hasn't seen her in seven years.

As the sylph gets closer to the girl and her father, she smells it. The unmistakable scent of sickened shadows on the wind. Revulsion. What has the girl seen? What has she done?

The sylph leaps into the air, no longer worried about her glamor. No longer worried about anything other than the safety of her ward. Shedding her human appearance, she becomes the wind, and moves through the trees so fast that nothing can keep up, for the wind is everything and everywhere at once.

And the Sylph becomes the wind. Flying faster than she's ever flown before. In seconds, she's found the girl. The scent of those sickened shadows is everywhere. And in the center of it stands the girl, completely unharmed.

She holds the spear that the sylph had made her, her thumb constantly brushing the glyph that she'd set to activate the power that had come directly from her ward. The shadows had dissipated, but what had they taken with them?

What had the eight-year-old girl forced into the darkness?

Coming close to her, still nothing more than the wind, she whispers to the girl as she has done so many times in the past, "What happened?"

The girl knows her voice. She trusted the voice on the wind as she climbed trees and raced through the forest. She's learned that the wind knew the world better than she did. It had been one of the first things that the sylph had taught her.

"He was lying…" the girl mutters. "He lied about my mom. He told me she was…" Tears run down her dirty face, but she doesn't wipe them away. She doesn't do anything. She only stares ahead at the forest that she's spent so much of her life in with the sylph.

"He said she was Fae, and I was a Wyrdling," she whispers. "I… He's gone. Where'd he go?" So much confusion. So much pain on her face. The sylph glances at the ground and sees the Forgotten Ring laying on the forest floor at the girl's feet.

The sylph swirls around the girl, blocking out the sound and light of the world, a tempest that only this one girl would trust completely. Grass and dirt billows around her, yet nothing touches her delicate skin, and the sylph whispers to her in a way that only the most powerful of sylphs can do. Directly mind to mind.

There is a reason that this sylph was the Queen of Shadows' handmaiden. More than her loyalty and her cleverness, the Queen valued her strength. Not to fight with, but to manipulate. To whisper. The sylph was one of the few who could whisper directly into someone's mind just as only the strongest of the House of Shadows could move through the darkness.

"Pick up the ring, Maeve," she whispers, not being light with her mind's touch. "Never take that ring off. If you do, you will feel it calling to you."

Without a second thought, the girl bends over and picks up the ring, slipping it over the ring finger of her right hand, and the sylph continues. "Your father is missing, and I need you to hide. I need you to sleep in trees. You're going to be sad, but you must be sad without speaking. Without sound. Sleep and cry, but do not make a sound, and do not touch the ground because the ground is not safe."

The girl doesn't hear the words. They're not sound as much as feelings, unexplainable knowing . The tears fall down her cheeks, but she doesn't respond. "Maeve, do not be afraid. Your father won't come home, but you will be safe. I won't let anything bad happen to you."

She lets out a soft sigh filled with soul-crushing sadness, and the sylph does not understand why this is not enough for her. The sylph's kind do not understand love. Even less than High Fae, they do not understand the way a child feels for her parents.

The sylph believes the girl is crying because she is afraid. The girl hasn't even considered that she is in danger because the wind has always kept her safe. Not her father. The wind and her teacher have been there when things were scary. Her father was there when it was time for hugs. When she wanted a story or needed affection.

But not when she needed saving. Her father was not like the wind. He was human, and the wind was so much more than that. But she did not love the wind. She would not cry for the wind.

"Go now," the sylph whispers to her, and the girl runs. Fleeing the scene of the most terrible thing that has ever happened to the girl.

The sylph waits. With the scent of revulsion and shadows on the wind, there's no doubt that any harpies in the area will be here soon. The sylph must deal with them, but she isn't sure how.

She is a tutor, not a warrior, and sylphs were not meant for battle. Yet, she can't let the harpies find the girl, for they will kill her.

The best she can do is draw them away from this place. With the strength of a storm, she pulls the wind to her, a storm without a cloud. The scents of death and shadows follow her like hounds on the trail of a fox. Where she turns, they turn, and she leads them to the very center of Blackgrove, a place that the harpies will be hesitant to go.

For it is illegal for Immortals to hunt humans outside of the region directly outside of Draenyth, and those harpies' master will be furious if they attack humans without cause. Even if it is in the search of shadows. Instead, they will wait for as long as it takes. They know that someone with shadow magic is here, and they won't leave this area until their prey gives them a reason to.

As long as the girl never takes that ring off again, everything will be safe. The harpies will feed on the wildlife. The humans will be safe. And the harpies won't be able to tell who created those shadows that hang on the winds.

Everyone will be safe. Except the girl's human father. It's only now that the girl is away in the trees that the sylph realizes that her mistress, the Queen of Shadows, had just lost her husband, and the hole in her soul would never heal.

The sylph could not comprehend this, though. She was not made to understand the emotions within High Fae, much less the feeling of loss left in a widow. She knows her mistress is strong, though.

And there is nothing to be done about the human that had been so important to both her ward and the Queen of Shadows.

For now, all she can do is continue to fulfill her role as the girl's protector and tutor.