The Veil of Darkness
Chapter 57: The Real Seelie Realm

Chapter 57: The Real Seelie Realm

Annalise stared at Pristine who had appeared inside the carriage from thin air. She looked a lot different in the light of the day but still as beautiful as ever.

She was surprised that even though it was already her third meeting with the fairy, she was still easily dazzled by the latter’s beauty and charisma.

"Are you the one who attacked me?" She asked the fairy even though she already knew the answer, and what surprised her was that she didn’t feel even a little bit angry or sad, just surprised that it was her.

Pristine scrunched her nose in unhappiness as she spoke, "Who attacked you? I just wanted to help you out from your insane husband’s claws, who would have known that my power would go a little out of control and knock you down?"

Annalise observed the woman, not really believing her words this time. "Really? Are you telling me that you can’t even control your powers now?"

Pristine turned her emerald green eyes to stare at Annalise in return as she responded, "What’s with that accusing look? This was my first time using my powers outside the castle grounds, of course, I wasn’t able to handle it properly."

"And what were you doing at my home, to begin with?" Annalise didn’t back down as there were other answers she needed from the fairy.

"I just wanted to follow you out of the castle to take a look around the place. I wanted to see how much the outside world has changed in the past several hundreds of years." Pristine replied with a sincere look on her face and finally managed to convince Annalise with her answers.

"Thank you." Annalise finally spoke after a couple of minutes of silence. Her voice was low and barely audible but she knew that the fairy had heard her clearly.

Pristine let out a sigh as she turned to face her before asking, "What exactly happened between you and Lord Damian? I thought all three lords were close to you, then why did he do something like that? Was he really going to strangle you to death if I didn’t end up interfering?"

Annalise was silent for a while before she slowly shook her head. "I have no idea. Everything was fine till the day before yesterday but he’s now acting like I have betrayed him and the other lords by using them for some sort of plan that he believes is my ultimate reason behind marrying them. Or at least, this is what I understood from all the accusations that he threw at me."

Pristine gave her a sorry look as she spoke, "You should talk about this with him before this misunderstanding develops into something really big and ill advise you to have this conversation in the presence of your other two husbands, they will be able to protect you in case Lord Damian ended up losing his mind all over again. I really don’t trust that man with his mood."

Annalise knew that Pristine’s advice was a good one and she should talk to Lord Damian to clear out the misunderstanding that he had developed towards her. However, thinking about the incident from the day, she felt like she was in no state to face that man even if it was in the presence of Lord Valerius and Kenric.

Shaking her head, she decided to get rid of the thoughts and not think about the matter for the time being. Instead, she turned her attention to Pristine as she questioned, "So, did you take a look around the city?"

Pristine nodded her head in the affirmative.

"And?" Annalise stressed as she wanted to hear what the fairy had to say about her first experience of seeing the world that had changed in the past several hundred years while she, Pristine, was sleeping under the effect of the curse.

"The world sure has changed a lot," Pristine spoke as she let out another small sigh. "And while I still found a lot of beautiful places, nothing matched the beauty that I used to see in the Seelie Realm. Though you all named your empire as the Seelie Realm, you are nowhere close to the reality."

There it was again - her talking about a different Seelie Realm that was actually supposed to be the real Seelie Realm and the one that they called Seelie Realm was nothing but an illusion..., or a lie.

"Why do you say that? If I’m not missing something, then you want to say that the real Seelie Realm is a completely different realm from our empire?" She questioned and waited for the fairy to finally reveal some more answers.

"That’s right. This empire, it is only named as Seelie Realm but it’s not the real Seelie Realm in reality. The real Seelie Realm no longer exists ever since the darkness took over it and ended the race of the Elemental Faes. Since the faes disappeared, so did the realm. This empire is actually located at the border of the Seelie Realm that is now nothing more than an abandoned place."

Annalise listened quietly and tried to wrap her mind around all the information that Pristine was suddenly supplying.

"Then why is our empire known as the Seelie Realm?" This was the first question that she ended up asking after thinking about all that she just learned.

"The man who established this empire was actually an elemental fae halfling. Since back then, all the elemental faes disappeared and he was one of those few from the Seelie Realm who survived, he ended up establishing this empire and named it as Seelie Realm. His main job was to protect the wards surrounding the real Seelie Realm but with time, he became more focused on building his own empire than paying attention to his assigned job."

Pristine stopped to take a breath before she continued, "The cursed castle, it was used to be his palace - the most magnificent palace to exist at that time, but it ended up cursed because of his negligence of duty and desire for glory."