Mireth, undeterred, only pushed harder. Her tone turned solemn. “There was this one time when Fenric helped his best friend stop wetting the bed,” she said.
I stifled a laugh as I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye, expecting annoyance. His expression didn’t change, not outright. But his wings betrayed him with a twitch, and a faint exhale—dangerously close to a sigh—escaped him.
The absurdity of it all made my chest ache with the irrational urge to laugh.
As we walked, I studied him. The make of his clothing was both elegant and practical, a dark jacket adorned with intricate gold accents, functional yet finely crafted. One insignia caught the light: a golden shield marked by an eye, flanked by a griffin and a stag crowned in starlight. Above it, a single opal shimmered, holding light itself.
No one who wore that kind of craftsmanship had ever knelt in mud or prayed for another mouthful of bread.
In the distance, somethingsang.
A melody woven into the air itself.It lingered on the cusp of hearing, threading through the trees, a whisper that never quite faded. I turned, searching for its source, but it came from everywhere. A pulse of unease ran through me, but I swallowed it down, turning my attention to the more immediate strangeness.
It wore the shape of a forest, but that was a lie.
Towering trees stretched intoan impossibly high canopy, their bark a deep, cool grey, yet every few seconds,they shimmered beneath the surface, molten silver weaving in their veins before disappearing. The wind should have rustled their leaves, but instead, theymoved in unison, their branches shifting with a slow, deliberate motion.
The ground was uneven beneath me,thick with moss that carried an emerald glow. Tiny flecks of light embedded in the undergrowthflared beneath my steps before dimming again.
It smelled of earth after rain, crisp and rich. Another scent flowed beneath it. Sweet. Floral. Metallic. A smell that belonged nowhere I had ever known.
Eryx’s head had dropped against my shoulder. His breathing was slow and even, the fragile weight of him pressing warm against my chest. I adjusted my grip slightly, careful not to wake him, and brushed a curl from his temple.
“He sleeps deeply,” the fae said without looking back.
I glanced up, startled that he’d noticed. “He’s exhausted.”
“Still,” he replied, “the forest doesn’t usually allow such rest.”
Mireth nodded solemnly from his shoulder, matter of fact in that way only children had, so young they didn’t yet understand the weight of what they said. “He always does that. The monsters came to our uncle’s house. Mama made us hide under the bed. I thought Eryx was pretending at first. But nope. He just snored through it.”
The fae’s stride didn’t falter, but I felt the change in the air.
“I didn’t even cry,” Mireth added, head held high. “Not until after.”
I swallowed hard and adjusted Eryx’s weight, searching for steadiness in the familiar motion. The silence that followed stretched a little too long, a little too thin.
I looked to the fae’s back. He didn’t respond to her, but I saw the way his shoulders tensed.
Mireth leaned down toward him, voice hushed. “Do you think he’s dreaming?”
“If he is,” the fae said quietly, “let it be of something kinder than where he’s been.”
My mouth opened, then closed. No words came.
I just kept walking.
Eventually, the forest thinned. The trees broke. The world opened.
A city loomed, carved from bone and mist. Towering structures gleamed pale against slow-curling fog, their surfaces smooth and untouched. Figures drifted through the haze, their conversations hushed to murmurs I couldn’t quite catch. As though they knew the city listened.
Statues lined the path, their arms outstretched, faces blank where features should’ve been.
Beneath my exhaustion, beneath the fear I refused to let show, part of me bristled at the structure of it. At the way the city wrapped around itself so neatly, so completely, a web woven too perfectly to be natural.
I exhaled slowly, willing my body to move like I belonged here. Every step was lying to the ground beneath me.
My eyes drifted back to the man, the waythe other fae watched him.
