Now all they had to do was wait for dawn.


Mab watches the creature carefully

That shouldn't...take too long.

When dawn turned the sky pink and the envoys came for them again.

The glamour wavers, and she glimpses vibrant scales. A siren.

They really came at dawn.

Lise went outside to tell them her answer.

Mab's lips curled into a smile, and not a nice one.


Faery hadn't stayed the same.

And it was dying.

It was a subtle thing, the taint that had sunk deep into the land and forest, corrupting them from the inside. Here and there, a tree was empty of leaves, and a rosebush had steel thorns that glinted in the light. Outwardly, the change was faint, almost invisible. But the beating heart of the Nevernever, in every tree, every leaf and blade of grass, was pulsing with rot. Everything was touched with Iron glamour, and it was slowly eating away the Nevernever, like paper held above a flame. And, judging from the twin looks of horror on the faces of Ash and Puck, they felt it, too.

This isn't the first time a siren has come here; occasionally one or two come to try to save captured sirens. But, none of them have ever come directly to her.

It was really sad, honestly. her will to stop the iron king grew stronger, because this was horrifying.

Yes. She found this kind of amusing.




"Its awful, isnt it?" said the gnome envoy, gazing around solemnly. "Not long after you were...ahem...banished, the Iron Kings army attacked, and wherever they went, the Iron Realm spread with them. The combined forces of Summer and Winter were able to drive them back, but even after they were gone, the poison remained. Our armies are camped on the edge, where the wyldwood meets the Iron Kingdom, to try to halt the Iron fey that keep pouring from the breach."

" what are you going to do if we can't beat the iron king? "