Dark Queen: The Cybelline Prophecies

Chapter 78

The Road to the City of Light

"The fae? They are evil." It was Jacen who answered, "Every year the shadowland grows. The crops become weaker, there are more and more wars. It is the fae who wreaks havoc on us all."

Cybelline raised an eyebrow, "Who told you that?"

"Everyone knows. It's common knowledge." Jacen said, Lord Evans nodded, "We have been told since we were little that they are a blight on the earth. They must be wiped out if the world is to survive."

Cybelline looked at Killian once more, "You believe it as well?"

Killian reached out and gently swept her fiery red hair away from her cheek with a quiet sigh of relief. Cybelline felt the heat of his trembling fingertips, they seemed to leave a light trail of sparks from her cheek to her ear. But she paid no attention to it, instead, she studied his face intently.

"I am not fond of the fae." Killian said quietly, "They have done nothing except caused pain to me and my family."

Lord Evans sighed and gently tugged at Lord Jacen, "This is not a story for our ears."

Evans and Jacen looked at each other and then bowed to Killian and Cybelline, "We'll do a sweep of the area."

Cybelline said nothing but only waited, for some reason, there was a twinge in her heart. It was a strange sensation, nothing was wrong with her physically, but the pain was still there. She chose to ignore it.

Killian and Cybelline walked to a quiet grove of willow trees. When Killian spoke, it was with a low and quiet voice, "My true father is the King of Londaros, the only kingdom in this world that still bear some friendship to the fae and folk. The Fae and Folk warned him that I was an abomination of sorts, due to my affliction." He tapped his eye.

His smile was bitter, "My cousin, who had the same affliction was celebrated in his country, but I was kept prisoner."

He looked to the direction of Londaros, "The fae soothsayer was a said to be the last of her kind, a fae of great power. On her words, my mother and I was imprisoned and I was forced to watch my mother die." He grew paler as his eyes seemed to turn to a light, icy green.

"In answer to your question, I do not like the fae. But if they do not try to harm me, I will not destroy them." He said quietly, "When all is said and done, it was my father who killed my mother."

Cybelline saw the look in her eyes that she knew all too well. It was the look of a child who had been forced to grow up too fast, forced to battle the world with all of its horrors and ugliness.

In that moment the two lost and lonely souls seemed to find each other. Their hearts drummed in synchrony, in defiance of the cruelty that the world threw at them.

Quietly, almost tenderly, she laid her hand in his, "I'm sorry, Killian." Her thumb grazed against against hand, lighter than a feather but bearing the heat of the sun.

Warmth like flame seeped through his icy skin, it was a familiar feeling that took him back to the first time he had laid eyes on her. The first time he had seen color. The first time he had felt joy.

When he was a child the only person to offer him warmth died before he could understand to cherish it. It was this pair of eyes that given him hope of a future, and for this promise, he had tried to create a better world.

It was that promise that had kept him alive, time after time his father had sent people to kill him. It was for that promise that had sent him to war, to allow him to crawl out of the piles of dead, even when there was no sunlight to guide him out of the river of the dead.