Alette is the one who finally says what everyone’s thinking. “Oberon. Are you sure you’re all right?” She says it so softly it almost doesn’t reach the front of the line, but he stops anyway, forced into stillness by her question.
He doesn’t look at her. “Just keep moving.”
She tries again, braver. “You’re sure?”
I see his jaw work as he glances back, the muscle there tense as a bowstring. “I’ll survive.”
For a moment, no one speaks. Then Ashton lets out a breathy laugh that’s meant to cut the tension. “You should see what he’s like in the palace. If a room has no windows, he’ll stand in the corridor and shout through the door instead.”
Oberon glares, but Ashton just smiles, easy and bright. I catch the look Cassius gives Oberon, one I know well from ahundred council meetings. It’s the look of a man who’s weighing whether compassion will do more good than silence.
“Nothing wrong with that,” I say quietly. “Some of us have good reasons to avoid being caged.”
Alette glances at me, and there’s a flash of something like gratitude in her eyes that warms up my entire body. If I could bottle that up, I’d be set for the next hundred winters.
But Oberon just grunts and keeps moving, shouldering aside a low-hanging branch. And for a few minutes, the only sound is the crunch of our boots and the distant, soft hush of wind through leaves.
At a bend in the path, Oberon slows. He doesn’t say why, but I can feel it: the sudden, total silence. No screams, no shifting vines, not even our footsteps. Only the rush of our own breathing. I peer ahead and see nothing but the faint shimmer of blue on wet leaves. Then I hear it: the slow, wet sound of water dripping, and over it, the caw of crows.
We take a couple steps closer, and I get a better view. On a dead tree poking through the hedge, there’s a whole flock of them. Dozens, maybe hundreds, all perched together, their feathers slicked with water, their eyes gold and empty. They’re not quite like the crows from back home. These are longer, leaner, their beaks almost hooked, their calls echoing off the hedges like laughter in a crypt.
Oberon continues forward, and we all reluctantly follow. We’re all unsettled. They watch us as we pass, their heads tilting in unison.
Alette asks, “Why are they all staring at us?”
No one answers at first. Then Cassius, who has barely spoken since the tunnel, says, “In the old stories, crows are the souls of fae who couldn’t find rest in the afterlife. They watch the living, hoping for someone to finish their business.”
Ashton snorts. “Let me guess, you read that in one of your books?”
Cassius turns, one eyebrow raised. “Of course. I’ve read every book I could get my hands on.”
I smile, teasing. “Did you have any childhood at all, Cassius, or did you just live in a library?”
He doesn’t answer right away, which makes me feel bad. I was only joking, after all.
When he does, his voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear. “I don’t remember much of my childhood. My earliest memory is being handed to the Tide Sages at the palace. After that, it was lessons. Then more lessons. Then court.”
Alette’s brow furrows. “Tide Sages? What are they?”
“Scholars,” he says. “Priests of a sort. They believed the only way to prepare a fae child for rule was to rid them of distraction and emotion. I spent my childhood in a tower, surrounded by books and tutors. They told me pain sharpens memory. I suppose they were right.”
There’s a pause, and I see the way his hands shake just slightly, the way his gaze locks onto the crows as if he’d rather be anywhere else.
Alette says, “That sounds… terrible.”
Cassius blinks, startled by her answer. “It made me who I am.”
She shrugs. “I don’t think anyone should grow up like that. You’re smart, probably smarter than anyone I’ve ever met. But if you don’t pair that with kindness, or at least a little compassion, what’s the point? And they couldn’t possibly have been treating you with kindness if they were focusing on giving you pain.”
He actually laughs, but it’s brittle as glass. “Emotion gets in the way of smart decisions.”
Alette steps past a puddle and says, “That’s wrong. You can calculate the perfect outcome. You can predict every move. Butif you don’t care who gets hurt along the way, you stop being a leader. You become the thing everyone fears.”
The silence after her words is so heavy I can hear my own pulse. Oberon glances over his shoulder, mouth twisted in an expression I can’t read. Even Ashton stops smiling. And me? I’m astonished.Beautiful and wise? Who is this little human?
Cassius considers her words, his expression thoughtful. “You really believe that?”
She nods. “My father taught me as much. He ran our farm, but he always made time to explain why he did things. If a lamb was sick, he’d show me how to care for it, but he’d also tell me that it was okay to feel sad if it died. That being strong and being gentle weren’t opposites. I didn’t really understand that fully until he was gone.”
