Epilogue: The Blood of Kings

“The Heroes of Faengard will ride again. Let the sun rise, and the world be reborn through the ashes of war.”

—Morene Gylfaginor, The Codex Gylfaginor

Cinnamin woke with a start, gasping for air. Sweat soaked her nightdress, stinging her eyes. She reached for her bedside table and found her waterskin, taking a deep swig of cool water.

It seemed so real, she thought, recalling the dreams that were already fading. All she could remember was a crescent moon shining down from above, a bloodshot eye, a serpent thrashing in the depths of the ocean. Stormclouds gathering in the distance, chains of lightning flickering back and forth between the sky and the sea.

She’d had the same dream night after night now, ever since her brother had left Felhaven. Not a day passed that she didn’t worry about Ein. She’d seen him sitting in a carriage at times, other times sleeping in a foreign bed. She’d seen him fighting, swinging his sword through Worgals. She’d seen him lying battered and broken in the snow, blood leaking from his forehead.

But this dream, it was the worst. The dream of a great, evil serpent, so long that its tail stretched from one end of the earth to the other, and his brother fighting it atop the high seas. It always ended the same way, with Ein sinking beneath the waters, never to appear again.

It worried her. After all, many of the dreams she had turned out to be true.

Cinnamin climbed out of her bed and approached her window. A crescent moon shone down upon Felhaven, lighting it silver. It had been quiet lately, not just in the forge but the village itself. It might have just been the absence of Ein, Merrill and Evaine, but Cinnamin doubted it.

It felt like a different type of quiet. The quiet before a storm.

A cloud drifted in front of the moon, and Cinnamin went back to sleep.

As they stopped to rest several hours after braving the unmarked roads, Ein found himself playing with the ebony box again. Aeos was tending to the horses, feeding them the winter turnips they’d managed to scrounge from the camp.

They’d ridden hard for a few hours before slowing down a more manageable pace. Although Aeos could tell which direction Rhinne had gone, he had no idea how far away she was. The one thing they knew was that she was on horseback. There was no other way she could have amassed such a lead on them.

Ein turned the box over in his hands, testing his voice again. His lips formed the beginnings of a note, but the burning feeling took over his throat again and he quickly stopped.

I’ll be damned if I can never sing again, he thought. How will I ever use Lady Reyalin’s power?

Yselin appeared next to him, the silent, sudden way she always did. She’d grown more talkative along the way, slowly opening up to both he and the Prince. Being a half-fae who’d grown up with her people, she held a wealth of information the legends never touched on.

“What’s that?” she asked.

“Some sort of box,” Ein said, handing it to her. “My biological father gave it to my mother before he left her. Be careful with it, it’s lockless.”

She held it to her ear and shook it gently. “Did you know your father?”

Ein shook his head. “Whatever’s inside the box is a hint to my ancestry,” he said. “That’s why I really want to open it.”

Yselin held it in front of her face and sang. “Ein Thoren.”

There was a click, and the cube unfolded. Ein’s jaw dropped open.

“How did you do that?” he asked.

“It’s a fae puzzlebox,” she said, as if it were the simplest thing in the world. “I used to play with them all the time. They open with a certain passcode or passphrase. Usually the elders put riddles on them, and the boxes can only be opened by singing the answers. If you try to force it open, the contents will be destroyed.” She lifted up the open panels and folded them back together with a click. “This one doesn’t have anything inscribed on it, though, but since it was intended to be handed to you, I guessed that your name was the answer. And it was.”

Ein picked up the object that had been inside, a plain golden ring with an insignia fixed to it. Turning it over in his hands, he felt his world turn upside down.

It was an insignia of a sword and a tree.

Here ends The Blood of Kings, Book One of The Winds of Fate.

The journey will continue in Book Two, The Well of Eternity.