Of Truth and Beasts

Wynn was ready for this, the first and least of her “crimes.”

Six moons past, she’d returned from abroad, bearing a treasure like none before it—a collection of ancient texts from the time of the Forgotten History, presumably penned by forgotten Noble Dead. These texts hinted at an ancient enemy who’d nearly destroyed the world a thousand years ago ... in a war that many now believed was an overblown myth or had never even taken place.

Wynn knew better.

To her shock, upon returning home, she’d lost this treasure. Out of fear of the contents, her superiors had seized the texts—along with her own journals. They’d locked everything away, to be translated in secret. Wynn had uncovered hints that the original texts were hidden somewhere in the underworld of Dhredze Seatt. Against all orders, she’d found them again, but was only able to take back her journals.

“The journals are not missing, but back where they belong,” Wynn answered. “I wrote them.”

Perhaps they’d expected her to be contrite. Why else would they make her stand alone before them like some miscreant schoolgirl about to be expelled?

“You don’t deny that you took these journals?” Adlam asked, perhaps a little uncertain.

“They’re mine,” Wynn answered.

“You will return them immediately,” Sykion said.

“No.”

“Journeyor Hygeorht—”

“By law, the texts are mine, as well,” Wynn interrupted. “I found them. I brought them back. If you make any attempt to regain my journals, I’ll engage the court’s High Advocate ... with my own case to have all the texts returned to me.”

She spoke without wavering, but her stomach knotted.

Making threats gave her no pleasure, but she’d learned a thing or two about what was right and what was necessary. This place had been her home since the day someone found her abandoned in a box at its outer portcullis. She had no wish to be expelled from the only life she knew. On the other hand, the premins wanted her gone—and yet still under their control. They couldn’t have that without her continued connection to the guild.

But as Wynn’s last words escaped, any pretense of formality vanished from the chamber.

High-Tower turned her way. He was not a premin, and so not part of the council. He didn’t speak, but his breath came strong and hard.

Premin Renäld glared at Wynn and whispered, “And what of the loss of Prince Freädherich?”

He may as well have shouted.

This was the worst of it—her true crime. This was the reason she’d been commanded before the council. Next to the loss of Prince Freädherich, stealing back her journals was a child’s prank.

Wynn slid one foot back a half step before catching herself. She’d known this was coming, but the quick shift in their assault had caught her off guard just the same.

A gleam of righteous ire—but also horror over the consequences—sparked in Renäld’s eyes.

“If the worst comes ... you have cut our hopes in half!” he spat at her.

Wynn knew it all more than he did. During her ordeal in the Stonewalkers’ underworld, she’d uncovered a dark secret unrelated to her purpose.

A prince of Malourné, thought drowned years ago, was alive and locked away in the Stonewalkers’ underworld—to protect him from himself. His wife, Duchess Reine Faunier-Âreskynna, princess of Malourné by marriage, had been caring for him in secret. The family line of the Âreskynna had an ancient blood connection to the Dunidæ—Dwarvish for the “Deep Ones.” A fabled people of the sea, only the Stonewalkers and the royal family knew of them.

Freädherich had been slowly succumbing to sea-lorn sickness, carried in his blood from a forgotten ancestor married in an alliance to one of the Dunidæ. Wynn had unwittingly drawn a black wraith named Sau’ilahk into the underworld, and the threat of the wraith’s presence had accelerated the prince’s illness and its transformation.

Prince Freädherich had fled, escaping to the open ocean with the Dunidæ, who always sought him out at the highest tides. Because of Wynn’s actions, Malourné had lost not only a prince, but the prime emissary to the Deep Ones, and an ancient alliance along with him.

Duchess Reine had lost her husband for the second and final time.

Wynn’s certainty of her choices wasn’t enough to hold down her guilt. She tried not to let it show but smoothed her robe a bit too obviously. The council was watching for weakness, anything to use against her, and they had more than enough.

“If this hadn’t been kept secret for so long,” Premin Renäld went on, “you wouldn’t be standing before us. You would be facing the High Advocate yourself, on trial for—”

“As far as the public is concerned,” Wynn cut in, “the prince died years ago.”

It was a shabby, cruel response, but there was nothing else she could say. What happened couldn’t be undone. She had no intention of justifying herself to those whose fears overrode necessary action, who denied obvious conclusions for all of these events.

The Ancient Enemy was returning. Another war was coming. There was no if; only when. And Wynn had to continue in her determination to stop it.