Her Cinder Throne (Completed)

Chapter 3

Cole sucked in panicked breaths as her eyes darted across the uncanny scenery surrounding her. The blue grass came to her knees, breathing against her as if it was alive. The mirror-lake reflected a pristine image of the perfectly full moon above them, only this moon was too large to be the one back home, and was a delicate shade of blushing rose. The man who had brought her there stood a few feet away, his long black hair stirring against his shoulders in the breeze.

"Where am I?" she asked, taking a step backward and nearly ending up in the lake. The water licked the heel of her worn boot, and almost immediately ripples formed across the surface. Only they weren't coming from Cole.

A hand parted the surface of the water, reaching out into the air, its fingers connected by a delicate webbing. Its skin was a shade of sickly green, like mold covering a bowl of milk left to spoil. The hand snatched at Cole's ankle, lightning fast and accompanied by a muffled and piercing cry. Cole barely had time to even register that it was coming toward her before its fingers brushed against the leather of her boot.

The man grabbed her waist, spinning her away from the water and the hand that closed around thin air. The muffled scream grew more intense, and Cole spotted a pair of murky points of light, right around where the rest of the hand's body might be. The lights followed their movements as the man set Cole back onto her feet.

"You should be more careful," he said, his face only a few inches from hers. She swallowed, staring into his aqua eyes and trying to figure out just who he was.

But then he stepped back, breaking their gaze, and pointed to the lake. "The kappas will drown you the instant you touch their water. Make sure you check with either me or another Eldritch before you attempt to bathe or drink from a wild source."

Cole blinked, trying to take in his words. "I want to know where I am," she said, her instincts finally kicking in and telling her that this was not good. She shouldn't trust the man, no matter how handsome or intelligent he looked.

"You are in Avallen," the man responded. "And before you ask, it does not exist in the human realm or any realm but that of Avallen."

Cole drew in a sharp breath. Avallen. She'd heard of the place, but only in handed down myths and stories of the ancient times when magic had been commonplace.. It was supposedly the home to a race of beautiful creatures with gorgeous golden wings and capricious personalities that often caused devastation to whatever human that was unlucky enough to meet one. If this man was one of those creatures, she should be making it her priority to get away as fast as she could before he turned her into a lizard or made her fall in love with an ugly king.

Yet, as she looked at the man staring back at her with his eyes the color of the purest ocean waters, she found herself more curious about him and this place than afraid. Perhaps it was the years in the Sparkstone mines, breaking her down until threats to her safety were commonplace, but she wanted to ask questions more than she wanted to scream. 

Taking a deep breath, she squared her shoulders and tried to remember that her arms were strong enough to pry Sparkstone from its rocky bed, and swing her pickaxe throughout the night. She wasn't someone who would go down without a skilled fight.

"If this is Avallen, does that mean you're a fae?" she asked.

The man laughed in contempt and rolled his eyes. "What a horrible name the humans came up with for us," he responded.

"So you are a fae."

The man shrugged. "If that is what you would like to call us, be my guest. We are the Eldritch, but perhaps it is too much to expect a human to know something like that when they only have access to hundreds of ancient texts referring to us as such."