Fae of the South (Court of Crown and Compass Book 3) by E. Hall (libby ebook reader .txt) 📕

how we’ll get to land, but I’ll figure something out...if I can find her amidst the storming sea.

I open my eyes, ready to dive over the edge when I meet Lea’s gaze. I blink, confused. Overjoyed.

Val and Kiki hold their sister close, having rescued her.

They land on the rocky ground. Soren, in raven form and as big as the wolf, heaves Callen over the edge.

Callen shifts but remains on his back and catches his breath. “I’ve done a lot of dumb things, but that was definitely the scariest.”

Val laughs. “I expected you to say asking me to marry you and be your queen was the scariest.”

He winks. “Nah, I knew you’d say yes.”

At that, she leaps on him and they play-wrestle for a moment before embracing.

Soren is human again, closes his eyes, and hugs Kiki.

I wrap my arms around Lea. “I’m never letting you go,” I say.

She leans into me and then sputters, “You’ll have to because you’re kind of crushing me.”

I release her a little. “Oh, right. Vampire strength.”

Val peers over the edge. “Grunder is gone.”

“I didn’t properly notice before because we were preoccupied, but this place...” Callen turns in a slow circle, stopping when he’s facing away from the water.

We all turn around.

“Good job getting us here, by the way, I guess,” Kiki tells Soren.

“It’s like perpetual bloody twilight,” I say.

“It is a vampire dominion, but are you hungry?” Lea asks me.

“I mean the blotch on the sun.”

“Fae lived here too though. Court of Fire and Iron. Anyway, it should be brighter, hotter,” Callen starts. “Something is wrong. It’s like the sky is going to swallow the sun.”

Soren’s tone is grim when he says, “That means the shadows are increasing.”

“Do you think this is where they keep the shadow fae?” I ask.

We start walking inland.

An indent in the rock-strewn ground shows where we landed with the Grunder. In the distance, a haze hangs over a many-spired palace. It’s eerily quiet. There isn’t a breeze. It’s a barren wasteland where nothing grows. Just stones in all shapes and sizes, desert dust, and stillness. Soren’s tale about Oeten the Devourer and his pet Grunter playing toss with the stones comes to mind.

Callen scrambles down an incline and points. “That’s unusual.”

“That looks like a chasm,” Soren says.

In the distance, a blood-red fissure cuts through the landscape. We stand on a stone precipice that drops steeply into the valley below. A sudden gust of wind blows.

Lea’s gaze flashes with fury and sorrow. “I’ve never seen something so ugly and so wrong.”

A vein of fire and molten rock spews from a deep cleft, cutting a line through the ground.

“It’s like a wound,” Kiki says, joining us.

“It reminds me of a story about my kind. It’s said that long ago, a fissure in the land swallowed up a murder of ravens. They struggled to exist in the embers, but those that survived, rose triumphantly, becoming Phoenix, who will forever find renewal from the ashes.”

“The story I heard in the whisperings and murmurings of the castle was that the king of the Southlands had something sinister going on. I didn’t imagine this was it.” Callen wipes his brow.

“The king is dead,” Lea says. “But Glandias could’ve picked up where he left off just as she did in Terra.”

“Likely,” I say.

We follow a rocky path winding into the valley, treading carefully in the dim light with our backs to a wall of sandy stone. I have to pay attention to my footing, but the red line of the chasm repeatedly draws my eyes to it.

When we stop to assess what direction to go, even when my eyes are closed, the red line blazes through my vision. It gets hotter the closer we get. Fire and molten rock erupt from it like a geyser of blood. We creep through the empty landscape until we reach a low building. The palace looms in the distance.

There’s no sign of movement or life. Nonetheless, my posture changes as I prepare for trouble. Callen stands tall and takes the lead in alpha mode. He opens a heavy door and enters slowly. It’s silent and pitch black.

Val sends a little orb of light ahead of us to illuminate a stairwell. We pad down about ten flights and stop at a window-like opening on a landing. Through it, conveyors move chunks of giant coal-like embers. People operate stations with tanks of water, pulverizing machines, and something that looks like it sifts chunks of the embers. The workers are dirty and covered in soot—even their teeth are black and their eyes empty, hard. They wear clothing the color of burned metal and singed at the edges. In the distance, I hear the familiar, clink, clink of a hammer and anvil.

“Shadow fae,” Lea whispers.

We all look to Callen for an explanation.

He urges us away from the window. “She’s right. They’re working in the forge...mining for metal.” He glances over his shoulder. “Must be elven metal.”

Val wipes sweat from her forehead. “Does this mean they’re making weapons for the fae, who’re also weapons?”

I wrinkle my brow confused and alarmed in equal measure. I’ve seen this kind of metal before. I clear my throat. “Looks that way.”

“We have to do something to free them,” Kiki says.

Soren presses his lips together. “Where I came from, in Raven’s Landing, fae were expendable. Whoever is doing this has them hooked on stijl. Even if we freed them, they wouldn’t know what to do. They’d come back, needing more of the drink.”

“Stijl? Jurik had the fae at RIP Jr drink that.” Lea swallows hard, shrinking deeper into her shadow.

Back outside, I’m glad the sun isn’t bright, but the red suffused gloom is creepy.

Soren says, “Fae who get hooked on stijl will do anything to