All That Falls

21 A Different Kind of Fae

"If it's fear you need, then feel it, but block this one."

Ursa flicked her wrist and another half dozen shards of hardened night materialized in thin air and shot toward me at high velocity. I focused on their approach, lifting my hand to block them, and hissed when I failed to produce an adequate shield and the black daggers pierced my skin, slicing me from wrist to elbow on my left arm and piercing my right shoulder. I staggered back a step, biting back the curse on my tongue.

"No," Ursa barked. "Again."

She waved her hand and the daggers from before disappeared, the skin of my arms healing itself, though the pain remained. I grit my teeth and faced her again, fighting back tears as another round of knives shot forth, one of which plunged deep into the tissue of my thigh. I roared in agony, falling to my knees.

"No!" Ursa snapped, a thick cloud of darkness emanating from her in her fury. "It's just a shield, Seren. This is the most basic thing I can teach you and we've been at this for two weeks."

"I just... I need a break," I wheezed, kneeling.

She just shook her head, turned on a heel, and stormed from the training room. She waved her hand on the way out and the dagger was gone from my thigh, the gash already closed and healing. I rubbed the spot where I'd been struck, staring down at my arms where they had bled before, again and again.

The King had disappeared after his son's execution, the last of his orders appearing to have been for his daughter to train me to use my newfound magic. But Ursa only knew one way to train, through torture, and it wasn't working for me. It was exhausting me, all the healing, the split second concentration, the agony. I wasn't able to use any of my emotions because she wasn't allowing me to feel anything but hurt.

I wondered if they had trained Lark like this, in this court, if they had cut him apart just to piece him back together again, stronger than ever. Cass too. I wondered if the twins had suffered the same strict regiment from Ursa or perhaps even the King. I wondered if this was the only way the Bone Court knew; pain and torment, exile and executions, blood rights and sacrifice. And then I remembered what he had said, so long ago, when we had set across a dinner table in the Court of Wanderers and looked to the future with bright eyes and high hopes.

If Taurus or Ursa took the throne, things would get even worse than they have under my father. I can't let that happen.

Would he have been a better leader? Would he have been kinder? Would he have taken away the suffering, made the world a better place? Now, we would never know.

The moment he died, the twins had disappeared and no one had seen them since. That fact seemed to irk Ursa. She had gone on a tirade the first day of our training when I'd brought them up, claiming that they should have known they would always be welcome at the Bone Court, with or without her brother. I had made the mistake of pointing out they'd been banished for sixty years and she made me pay for the remark with a shining black spear through my calf.

Cass was gone too. They had taken her to her rooms afterwards. The guards outside claimed they'd heard sobs for hours but then they suddenly stopped and, when they entered the room to check on her, she was gone. And that was that.

So all the people I had believed once were my friends were gone, had abandoned me again as they had before. And I was here, under the tutelage of Ursa and the dominion of the absent King, a hostage because of my blood, because of my ancestry. I spent my days training with Ursa and my nights staring at the stars, trying to shatter them into a million pieces as I had the glass before.

But my magic hadn't returned to me since that day, not even a trace of it. I hadn't even felt it coursing through my veins. And that emotional connection, those visions of auras and feelings of spiritual bonding with the people and the world around me, they were all gone. As if Lark's final breath had stolen all my power away. As if his death had been mine as well.