My steps had faltered. I had turned and run, abandoning dignity, fleeing back to my chambers before anyone could witness my weakness.
I barely made it to my washroom before I'd retched, bringing up nothing but bile. My body shook with sobs that felt ripped from somewhere deeper than my chest, grief so overwhelming it has physical weight. I sank to the cold marble floor, pressing my forehead against it as I struggled to breathe.
I don't know how long I remained there, curled on the floor like a broken thing. When I finally dragged myself up, my reflection in the mirror was a stranger's—vacant-eyed, pale as death, with tear tracks cutting through the faint dusting of powder I'd applied earlier in a pitiful attempt at normalcy.
Mother used to say grief has no shape, no end. She said it when my baby sister died, when the house fell silent without her cries. I didn't understand then—I was too young. But now I know. Grief is the empty nursery down the hall. It's waking up reaching for something that will never be there.
By the time I've composed myself enough to return to the war room, the sun had moved across the sky. Hours wasted to grief while decisions about my fate are being made without me.
Servants press themselves against walls as I pass, their eyes averted, as if afraid to get caught in the crossfire of whatever I've become.
"My lady."
Kadir’s voice stops me in my tracks. The tracker looks exhausted despite having clearly cleaned up from his journey—fresh uniform that can't disguise the emptiness beneath his eyes, boots still dusty from travel. The weariness carved into every line of his face tells me this expedition to the Forgotten Grove took its toll. His third attempt in as many months, each one returning with less hope than before.
Behind him, three of his best scouts lean against the corridor wall like men who've forgotten how to stand properly. Their shadows move sluggishly around their feet, lacking the usual fluid grace of Shadow Court magic—as if something in that cursed grove drained the life from them.
"Kadir." I straighten, pushing down the emotional turmoil from the throne room, forcing my healer's calm to the surface. "Did you—" My voice catches despite my best efforts, breaks on the question I've been asking for four months. "Did you find anything about Banu?"
His expression shifts to something gentler, something that looks dangerously close to pity. The change makes my stomach drop.
"Come. Let's discuss this somewhere more private."
He leads me into the war room, and I'm grateful when he dismisses his scouts with a gesture. Whatever he found, I want to hear it without an audience. Without witnesses to watch me break if the news destroys the fragile hope I've been clinging to.
The war room smells of old leather and something sharper—blood magic, maybe, or just the residue of too many desperate strategies planned within these walls. Woodsmoke and steel and the faint metallic tang of shadow-forged weapons. I move to stand near the ebony table where Kaan held his council with the seven lords just minutes ago, my fingers tracing the map's eastern territories while trying to ignore how my light magic flickers weakly beneath my skin, barely a candle flame where it used to be a bonfire.
The healers say my magic is recovering, but "recovering" is generous. My magic responds to emotions—flaring with anger, guttering with despair—but I can't control it anymore. The precise healing work I once did, the delicate manipulation of light to knit flesh and bone? It's impossible now. Some mornings I can barely summon enough light to read by. Other days it surges violently enough that I've shattered three mirrors and cracked the marble floor of my chambers.
Today it responds to hope. Fragile, desperate hope that threatens to choke me.
Because Kadir finally returned from the Forgotten Grove.
The tracker stands across from me, and now that we're alone, some of his professional mask cracks. I see genuine concern beneath the weariness, the kind of care that makes him more than just Kaan's tracker—makes him the man who has searched for my friend as if it was his own.
"Tell me you found something," I say, hating how my voice breaks on the words, how desperate I sound. "Please, Kadir. Tell me she's alive."
I see exactly what you mean - Emir materializes with Kaan at the beginning, then completely disappears until his "I'll go back" line near the end. He's just standing there like a ghost for the entire scene. Let me add some small moments that acknowledge his presence without changing his character (he's the strong, silent type who observes rather than speaks).
Here's the revised version with Emir woven in:
Kaan and Emir materialize from the doorway. Kaan's shadows flow with that silent grace that used to make my heart race. Now it just makes my chest tight with complicated feelings I refuse to examine. He moves to stand beside me—close enough that I can feel the cold radiating from his shadows like winter given form, close enough that his scent of smoke and night-blooming flowers wraps around me. But not touching. Never touching anymore.
Emir positions himself near the door, arms crossed, his dark eyes already scanning the maps on the table. Always the sentinel. Always watching.
The distance between us is measured in inches but feels like miles.
"The Forgotten Grove shows signs of violent struggle," Kadir begins, his voice carefully neutral in that way people use when delivering bad news. "Recent struggle. Within the past few months, maybe longer."
Right around when the false Banu would have taken the real one's place. The timeline slots together in my mind—how long that creature wore my friend's face, slept in her chambers, whispered in my ear with Banu's voice while the real Banu was...
I can't finish the thought.
"What kind of struggle?" Kaan asks, and I hear the carefully controlled fury beneath his words, the rage that makes frost spread across the table beneath his palms. He might not loveBanu the way I do, but she was under his protection. Her capture is a failure he takes personally.
"The ancient trees are damaged—bark stripped away in long gouges, branches snapped at impossible angles. There's fairy blood on the roots." Kadir pulls a small vial from his pocket, and even through the glass I can see the faint silver-blue glow, like moonlight trapped in liquid form. "Enough blood to suggest serious injury, but not... not enough for death."
The relief that floods through me is so intense I have to grip the table edge to stay upright. My light magic surges in response, golden sparks crackling across my fingertips before guttering out just as quickly. "She's alive. She has to be alive."
