She didn't question how he'd survived. Magic did impossible things. The marks changed people in ways that didn't follow normal rules.
She just knew she couldn't leave another human to suffer alone in the dark.
Chapter twenty-one
The leaf's magic flickered like a dying candle, twenty minutes at most remained.
Briar took the ancient steps two at a time, moss flaring in bright green bursts where her fingers dragged along the wall. Her lungs burned, her thighs screamed, but she couldn't slow down. Thomas knew about golden flowers. Someone who understood, who'd studied the marks, who might have found something.
Footsteps echoed somewhere above. Briar pressed herself against the wall, and the leaf's magic stuttered. For a terrifying moment she felt visible, exposed, before it steadied. Ten minutes left.
The footsteps passed. She waited until silence returned, then ran.
She burst from the servant's stair into a main corridor, forcing herself to slow to a normal walk. Even invisible, running would create disturbance. The warmth in her chest pulsed with her racing heart, but underneath her exhaustion, something else burned—hope. Tiny and dangerous, but real.
Her door appeared just as the leaf's magic died completely, the silver veins going dark in her palm. Two seconds later and she would have materialized in the corridor.
She locked the door and leaned against it, chest heaving. The bath would have to wait. She needed to prepare for dinner, for whatever game Eliam was playing with Lord Malachar.
The silver dress lay where she'd left it. In the afternoon light, the gradient from bright silver to deep pewter seemed to shift and move, creating an effect that was ethereal rather than revealing. The sheer layers would hint at her form without exposing it, the dramatic sleeves adding an otherworldly quality.
As she lifted it, a knock came at her door.
"Enter," she called, expecting a servant.
Thaine filled the doorway instead, his expression unreadable. "His lordship requires your presence in the Blue Hall." His eyes tracked over her still in her emerald day dress. "You have ten minutes to prepare. Lord Malachar has arrived with his full entourage."
"The Blue Hall?" She'd never heard of it.
"His lordship says to remember your lessons." Thaine's tone carried weight. "All of them. Especially about showing nothing they can use."
The warning was clear. This wasn't just dinner, it was a test.
After Thaine left, she changed quickly, hands steady despite her racing thoughts. The silver dress transformed her into something between mortal and fae, neither claimed nor free. The marks Eliam had left were visible but seemed artistic rather than crude against the ethereal fabric.
She thought of the morning's training, his hands positioning her, teaching her to move without exposing weakness. The memory of his desperation when she'd called him home warred with Thaine's warning. Whatever happened in the Blue Hall, she needed to be the stone wrapped in silver he'd described.
The corridors Thaine led her through were unfamiliar, grander than her usual routes. Sound drifted toward them: voices, laughter, the clink of crystal.
"There are others?" Her steps faltered.
"Lord Malachar travels with twenty courtiers. Did his lordship not mention?" At her silence, Thaine added, "Best behavior, little rabbit. Lord Malachar has particular appetites, and his lordship will be watching how well you've learned."
The double doors loomed before them. Through the warmth in her chest, she felt something from Eliam, control held like armor, but underneath it, a tension that matched her own.
Thaine pushed the doors open.
Twenty faces turned toward her. Fae in elaborate court dress, jewels glittering, wine glasses paused halfway to lips. The conversation died instantly.
But it wasn't crude hunger in their eyes, it was curiosity. The silver dress made her look like something from legend, beautiful but untouchable, marked but not broken.
"Ah," Eliam's voice cut through the silence from the head of the table. "Perfect timing."
He looked resplendent in formal court attire—a fitted black doublet with silver buttons carved like tiny thorns running down the front. The high collar framed his jaw, and intricate silver embroidery traced patterns of bare branches across the shoulders and down the sleeves.
His black leather pants were tucked into tall boots polished to a mirror shine, and a chain of silver thorns draped across his chest, marking his rank. The antler crown seemed more prominent tonight, casting dramatic shadows in the candlelight.
He was every inch the Forest King holding court.
