Chapter 15

My bare feet were bloody, bruised, and aching with pain that I couldn't quite feel. I was numb. Everywhere I should have felt something was just empty.

I could see it. Almost like I was standing outside of myself, I could see it. Where I should have been hungry, I merely noticed the growling of my stomach. Where I should have been afraid, I only felt the blankness of my stare, and where I should have felt the pain of my bleeding feet, I only felt the emptiness of all I'd lost.

"The point of it is so fleeting," the thing with the face of Darcy Vega sighed, her finger pressing hard into my cheek as she watched my eyes for a reaction which I couldn't summon into being. It hadn't taken me long to realise that these creatures were not the True Queens. Not that I knew what they were, but I was fairly certain they weren't even Fae at all.

"This one knows but doesn't care," Tory seemed to agree from behind me.

I had watched blankly while these creatures had killed and burned their way across the land until nothing but soot and ash remained of the places they stopped. I had watched as they filled their stomachs to bursting, eating all kinds of strange things. I had watched as they dove into deep water and flung themselves from high peaks. And I had seen the way none of it touched them, none of it mattered to them. Yet still they sought some answer which none of those things could offer.

They were starving, but nothing could sate the hunger that gnawed at them. And I could only observe as they gorged themselves on the world to no avail. Amid it all, they were hunting though. I had noticed that. Searching for something which eluded them and growing in rage when they failed to discover it time and again.

A sound of pure frustration burst from the lips of the blue-haired thing, its foot cracking against the stone before me and carving a great rift through its centre which knocked me off balance. The thing watched as I stumbled, then righted myself, my body reacting while my face remained vacant.

They had discussed cutting me up to see if I would scream, but they hadn't done it. I should have run. But I had nothing in me left to stir the urge to do so.

My gaze trailed from the twins to the riverbank we stood upon, the rush of the water like the rustle of dead leaves scuffing over dry rocks. There was something about it which seemed unnatural even to my uncaring eyes.

The tree that loomed over us had a trunk as black as midnight with tiny veins of deepest red carving their way up the scarred bark, marking it as though with blood. A thick bough reached out across the water, almost crossing to the other side of the unnatural river and ending with gnarled branches spread like fingers as though they were trying to grasp the distant bank.

Movement drew my attention to the centre of that bough where a thick rope was tied into a noose, swinging slowly in a breeze I couldn't feel.

A low, repetitive splashing sound made me look back towards the water and I stilled as I spotted a figure approaching from further upstream, using a long pole to guide a raft towards us. He was cloaked all in black, nothing of his features on show, and yet a coldness approached the riverbank with him which chilled everything down to the air in my lungs.

The twins noticed his approach too and moved to stand before him on the riverbank.

"Why does a thing without life wait upon the passageway to death?" The Ferryman's voice rasped over the river, the chill in the air deepening like fingers of ice were carving their way into my bones.

"I wish to bargain," the twins said as one, their voices merging into something unearthly, something more true to the thing which wore their faces. "I want no part in death."

I may not have been able to feel anything now, but I could tell that the things claiming to be the Vega Queens were not Fae. I had no idea what kind of monster could craft such a lie, but the time I had spent locked in their company had shown me that much.

"I will make no bargain with a cursed creature such as you," The Ferryman hissed, his voice as brittle as bark. "There is no place for you beyond The Veil. Your kind cannot cross the river."

The twins exchanged a look. "Then we have no further need of you."

Tension crackled in the space between the impossibly powerful creatures on the bank and the one in the river. I found myself holding my breath, like I expected the world to fall or the sky to explode.

Instead, The Ferryman simply pressed his pole to the edge of the river and pushed away from the bank once more.

"Death does not want us," the black-haired twin said to the other, her face ethereal and unmoving, void of expression just as I supposed mine must have been.

"What now?" the blue-haired one questioned. "Our search has turned up nothing."

"Perhaps I can help you there."

I turned at the sound of the man's voice, the coldness which The Ferryman had brought to my limbs solidifying into a pit of ice at my core as I took in his emerald green robes and the towering crown placed upon his blonde head. He was a huge man, far bigger than I had pictured him when seeing him on the TV. He was the one who had ordered those agents to come to my home. He was the reason my family were gone and I had been placed in that Inquisition Centre. He was the one who had taken it all.

"I got your location from another of your kind. I was hoping we might strike a deal," the King of Solaria purred.