I raced down the halls of the maze that was the Fae prison, my feet slapping against stone, kicking up dust that threatened to choke me when I skidded to a stop at an intersection of paths. I held my torch low, revealing my own footprints as the only ones that had traversed both paths. I hissed a curse, and the sounds stopped, leaving me in the silent circle of my torchlight.

“Come out, whoever you are. I need answers. Please.”

A tiny face peeked around the corner ahead of me. “You can come with me, now please.” Her voice was dry and cracked, ancient or ageless, I couldn’t tell. But her face was smooth and her eyes wide and round, like she was a child and an old ventriloquist was speaking through her.

I’d been running in circles without knowing it, my torch the only light as the others had all extinguished themselves. Somehow, the paths no longer ran in only one direction, and the terrifying sounds of wild animals had morphed into quiet conversations and the occasional clatter of metal on metal.

“I’m Rosalind, and you’re the princess,” she informed me as she gestured me to sit on a mat next to a child-sized cot. The room, if you could call it that, since it only had three walls, had room for said cot, a small wooden crate filled with an assortment of mushrooms and mosses, and a dirty pile of rags.

As I watched, the rags moved, and an even smaller, grimier version of Rosalind tumbled out of them and edged past me, hiding behind the pixie. "Don't mind Newt, she's not used to strangers."

“Hello, Newt,” I murmured softly. I picked up a piece of loose straw and traced runes into the dirt, drawing on my other magic in the absence of my Fae power. The runes glowed, then flashed with flame and almost instantly were cool to the touch. I picked up the string of symbols and held it out to the young pixie. “It will stretch and always bounce back into shape. I used to play with these for hours.”

Newt didn't need to know that my only childhood toys were ones I could conjure, and my only friends those I could imagine. But I was sure that she'd understand how I'd felt if I had told her. Occasionally, their neighbors would plod by the opening to their ‘room,' and they all felt as ancient in my head as they looked, stooped low to the ground, faces collapsed in on toothless gums, eyes sunken and clouded over.

I’d met Fae that felt just as old but looked like they were in their twenties. It proved the theory that a Fae’s beauty and longevity were not gifts of the race, but again, directly tied to wild magic. None of that mattered to Newt, though, who snatched the chain of runes from my hands and returned to her hiding place behind her mother.

“I’m looking for a new prisoner, someone who would have just arrived,” I explained. “I need to ask her some questions and leave before they decide a stay in the pit will be good for me.”

She scoffed and shook her head, then produced a canteen from somewhere amongst the layers of torn rags she wore. “You came down here on your own, did you?”

“I did.”

She pursed her lips and gave me a long look. “I can take you to the one you seek.” Newt clung to Rosalind’s skirts as the pixie moved through the prison camp, glancing inside the occasional hut made from roots and plaited straw.

Unbelievably, I looked up to see wisps flitting about, brightening the way as Rosalind walked ahead of me. “If magic can’t exist here, how are there wisps above us? How did the torches light when I climbed down the rope?” She glanced up and smiled.

"The torches are the king's magic. He takes ours and leaves us only reminders that wound us, calling it aid. Wild magic does not answer to anyone, not even the king of the Fae."

Wild magic is the answer to all our problems as Fae, it seems.

Ahead, the walls were covered with glowing fungus, a natural phenomenon, not magical. The air was cooler and damp, and I realized we’d moved deeper underground. “Are we still in Fairy?”

She laughed, and Newt peeked around her at me, then grinned and held up the magical elastic chain. "Good magic, I like you."

"Did you have to bring Newt with you when you were brought here or was she born here?"

Rosalind sighed and patted the little Fae’s head. “She was born here, but not to me. Her mother faded fast after the birth, with no healer to help her through a difficult birth. Poor little Newt’s only sin is that she exists, but she will never see the light of day.”

My chest seized up suddenly, painfully, and I bit back a curse. “Who was king when her mother was put down here?”

Rosalind’s eyes glowed softly in the blue light of the wisps. “That, Princess, is a question better left unanswered, I think.”

I did curse then, a string of profanities leveled at my father, my aunt, every witch, Fae, or human that had ever valued class purity over tiny lives. “When I leave, you’re coming with me. You’ve survived without any magic at all, is there any reason you can’t survive outside of Fairy?”

Rosalind shook her head, and plant decay drifted to the ground. I realized that it was her hair, made of leaves and flowers that had not seen the sun in so long they were dying. I held her and examined her head, noting bald patches where it wasn't matted over.

She didn’t say anything, didn’t pull away or excuse herself. As vain as the Fae are, she was long past caring if I thought her beautiful.

“You’re fading.”

"Oh, aye. The fading begins the moment the darkness closes in over your head, Princess. You'll likely survive longer since you aren't pure blooded, but eventually, you'll feel it too."

I already could feel it, the pressure of the darkness only marginally lessened by the wisps, the weight of mortality dragging at my skin and internal organs. For the first time in memory, I felt like I was aging, and faster than any human would. It wasn't the absence of magic, but magic itself, evil, vampiric magic draining me. I looked down at Newt again and nodded before I realized I was agreeing with an internal conversation. Great, now you really look insane, I scolded myself, and almost laughed. I must be losing my mind.

“I have someone above, ensuring I climb out of the pit again. Take me to the one who came before me, and I will carry you out of here.”

She pointed toward the low sound of disconsolate moans ahead of me, near the underground well. “Her name is Geallta, the betrothed.”

I startled. “Her parents named her that?”

Rosalind shrugged, sending more brown and Gray flakes of leaves to the stone floor. “It is not an uncommon name among the daughters of the nobles. She claimed she was promised to the future king of the Unseelie the moment she was born and will die loyal to the rightful king of the Fae.”

She thought she was going to marry my cousin, and then he lost the chance to be the Unseelie king. I shuddered to think that her other option might actually be worse than the man who had been merrily planning my demise. But with every horror I thought I beheld in the light court, I knew the dark was more vicious, more terrifying. How desperate had her father been, to bind his family to the court of night?

Geallta stared blankly at the water as I approached her, my hand on my knife. She was still in only the linen sheath she’d been wearing at whatever joke of a trial she’d submitted to, she shivered and clutched her shoulders tightly, rocking. When I got closer, I realized she was muttering to herself, staring at her reflection in the water.

“Look, look, look, he’s in the water. He said he would come for me and now he’s in the water.”

I tilted her head up and forced her eyes to mine, but she strained to look back at the water. “She’s not right. This isn’t how she was before she was brought here,” I told Rosalind. “She’s only been here a day, how is her mind broken?”

Rosalind gave another of her shallow, dusty shrugs. "I haven't seen her any other way. Some are sent to us broken so they cannot speak of what they know."

Shit. I needed questions answered and didn’t know how to get them. “Okay, I’m going to try a spell. It’s the only magic I have down here, but it might get me somewhere.

Rosalind nodded, and dew closer, little Newt, venturing out from behind her as curiosity about the new, clean face overrode her shyness. Geallta was as blind to the little girl as to us, until Newt reached out and touched the white linen. Then she screamed and leaped back like she'd been burned, repeating, "dirty little urchin" over and over until I held her tight and calmed her.

“Better keep little one back Rosalind, I don’t want this one to attack her.”

Geallta was back to rocking and staring at her reflection in the water, so I began to trace runes for a protective circle, to keep her back from Rosalind and Newt if things went south, as they sometimes do for me.

"Okay, her name is pronounced Gell-tah, right?" Rosalind nodded, and I cleared my throat and began to weave a clarity spell. I'd never done it before but had seen my aunt perform them on witches too tortured and pain-addled to make sense during interrogation.

I hadn't expected the visceral memory to attack me, overwhelming me with the smell of freshly spilled blood, burnt human skin, and hair. My tongue refused to work, and I sank to my knees, grateful I'd thought to protect the pixies before I'd started.

"You won't best me here, aunt Portia," I hissed at no one. The Fae above ground were wrong, though. There was magic in the pit. Magic that stole the light and life from prisoners, that attacked when it felt threatened. A magic that could very well be controlled by the same nobles my father accused of siphoning the magic of lesser Fae, or even the king himself.

I began again, speaking carefully, my tongue swollen and slow. The memories rushed back. I quit again, panting and wiping the icy sweat from my forehead. "It's no good, I can't do it. I need both my halves to break the magical hold on her." I grabbed Geallta's shoulders and shook her until her teeth clacked together. "Can I take Penelope from Fairy without harming her?" I was shouting, and the walls threw my words back to me, mocking me.

“He’s in the water, you know,” she whispered conspiratorially. “He can see that I’m still beautiful. He’ll come for me.”

I left her there, admiring her reflection. “There’s nothing I can do here. The mark of the Goddess barely tingled on my calf, she felt so distant in the darkness. “Come on, we’ll have to see what we can do from above.”