“Yes,” Syndra and Tamsin said at the same time.
Syndra added, “It’s very romantic.And currently very annoying.”
That earned her the barest curve of Tamsin’s lips.
She leaned her head back, eyes slipping shut for a heartbeat.Images still lurked there when she closed them, flashes of something she hadn’t remembered for centuries.A circle of elders.The taste of ash.Light and shadow braided so tightly it hurt to look at.A door.And pain.
Her temples throbbed in memory.The forest had not been gentle about forcing the images back.
“Tell me again,” Oakley said suddenly.“What exactly did it say?All of it.”
Syndra opened her eyes.“You heard pieces of it,” Syndra said.“Enough to know it wasn’t meant for you, but not enough to understand what it was saying.”
“Yeah, but you heard it in ...tree,” he said.“I’m working with a translated version here.”
Tamsin’s fingers brushed her wrist, a silent question.Syndra answered it with a small nod.Better to say it aloud than let it fester.
“It called us children of root and crown,” she said slowly, picking through the memory.It wasn’t a new truth.Just an old one spoken aloud for the first time, and only because the forest had decided memory was no longer optional.“It recognized us.Then it said the seam grows thin.That we returned when the balance was tipping.”
“Which is tree for ‘you’re in trouble,’” Oakley muttered.
“And then,” Syndra continued, ignoring him, “it said: Not the former king.Not the former queen.Not the carefully trained almost-warrior.The daughters.Elora.Cassie.One of dark and one of light.”
Oakley’s throat worked.He stared into the cooling embers.“Right.”
Syndra heard the dejection in his voice.The forest hadn’t spokentohim.It had spokenaroundhim, close enough to feel, never close enough to claim.The almost warrior.Those words had obviously bothered him, as hadhearing Elora’s name again, that she was an active player in whatever was happening.The forest hadn’t bothered to soften.
Silence pressed in, thick as the mist hanging low over the moss.
“They’re not meant to be anywhere near this,” he said after a moment.“You know that, right?Cassie and Elora.They’ve already done their saving-the-world bit.They’re supposed to be ...arguing with their mates and eating too much dessert, not walking into ancient magical nonsense.”
“We know,” Tamsin said softly.
“Then why,” Oakley demanded, “do I feel like the whole realm is conspiring to shove them into it anyway?”
Because it is, Syndra thought.Out loud she said, “Because when balance is attempting to be restored, it’s rarely polite.”
He shot her a look that was a little too much like Elora’s when she was unimpressed.“That’s not comforting, Your Former Majestyness.”
“Good,” she said.“I’m not here to comfort you.I’m here to tell you the truth.”She pushed herself to her feet with a flick of her wrist.“And the truth is, sitting in this clearing wringing our hands about destiny isn’t getting us any closer to the girls.”
Oakley stood, too, the stick still in his grip.“So what, we just ...walk until the forest decides to cooperate?”
“Yes,” Tamsin said.
Syndra blinked at him.“Just like that?”
“We know what it wants,” he replied.“It wants them.It wants Cassie and Elora.It does not want us.”
“Again,” Oakley said, “not comforting.”
Tamsin’s gaze sharpened.“But it does not get to decide whether we sit still.We are not its children to be herded.We are its stewards.It remembers that, even if it prefers to sulk about it.”
Syndra huffed.“Listen to you, lecturing the trees.I’m sure they’ve missed you.”
He glanced at her, a hint of ruefulness in his eyes.“They have not.They are merely out of practice at being defied.”
Oakley looked between them like they were mildly insane.“So we’re what, going to defy the forest?The forest that can literally move paths and most likely wrap us up in its roots and strangle us in our sleep?”
