“Unless you make a different choice. One that’s never been made before.” Merithra stood. “But to do that, you’d have to become something that’s never existed before. Something neither Root nor Bloom nor human.”
“Something like what?”
“That, my dear, is what you’ll have to discover for yourself.”
I wanted to demand more answers. Wanted to force Merithra to explain exactly what Elle was supposed to become, how to stop the Wild Hunt, how to break a cycle that had apparently been repeating for who knew how long. But the Duchess had already turned away, the conversation clearly over by her decree.
The feast continued in form but not substance—people went through the motions of eating, drinking, conversing, but the earlier ease had evaporated.Within the hour, court members began making excuses and departing. I watched Elle leave with Vashael and the others, the starlight dress making her look like she belonged to this impossible place even as I knew she must be drowning in revelations.
I retreated to my quarters, needing space to think. The room’s constantly shifting timeline was actually soothing—it matched the chaos in my mind.
I was standing at my window, watching three seasons turn simultaneously, when Nimor materialized from the shadows.
“We have a problem,” he said without preamble.
“Beyond the Wild Hunt coming to kill Elle at sunrise?”
“The Duchess’s protection ends at her borders. The moment we step outside the Autumn Court, we’re vulnerable. And the paths out are limited.”
I turned to face him. “You’ve been scouting.”
“Old habits.” He solidified more fully, which meant he was genuinely concerned. “There’s something else. Eltrien has been… strange. More than usual.”
“Define strange.”
“He keeps muttering about patterns and iterations. Drawing symbols I don’t recognize. And tonight, when the Duchess mentioned deja vu and repetition, he looked terrified.”
I thought of how Eltrien had tensed at dinner, that warning look he’d given me. “You think he knows something.”
“I think he knows everything. The question is why he hasn’t told us.” As concerning as this was, we had more immediate issues to discuss.
“The Wild Hunt,” I said, changing the subject. “What do we know about their weaknesses?”
“They don’t have any. That’s rather the point.”
“Everything has weaknesses.”
“Not things that exist outside normal reality.” Nimor began to fade again. “But I’ll keep scouting. Maybe there’s something in the old stories.”
He disappeared completely, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the turning seasons outside my window.
Tomorrow, we’d face something that had never been defeated.
Tomorrow, Elle would need me to be the strategist, the protector, the cold and calculating leader who could find victory in impossible odds.
But tonight, I stood in my impossible room and admitted a different truth: my carved marks were spreading faster since we’d arrived here. The corruption responded to emotion, and being near Elle—watching her in that dress, hearing her story, feeling her presence through the space where our bond existed—was accelerating my decline.
I was dying faster because of her.
And I didn’t care.
The Wild Hunt could come. The convergence could demand its impossible choice. The realm could tear itself apart.
As long as Elle survived it, nothing else mattered.
That probably should have terrified me.
Instead, it felt like clarity.
