Finally, the stag said,“Do you find me to be a cruel god?”
The answer rose from my chest without permission, without thought.“Yes.”
“Because you are small and naïve. Because you have never seen your people cull chaff from wheat.”
Culling. That word again.
I didn’t know anything about chaff or wheat. I only knew Faun’s face—and that she was still alive in that maze.Twenty alive.She had cleaned my room, graced it with some small portion of her life. I knew from my mother what it meant to serve and to go unseen.
“I am small,”I said.“I will always be small, and perhaps naïve. I admit I don’t understand?—”
“Silence.”The stag’s hoof struck the earth, and the sound of it froze me to the spot.“You would ripple the pond when you understand nothing of how it formed. There are reasons for the world’s turn, human, of which you know naught.”
“Yes, but?—”
“This is a betrayal of the Sylvanwild Court. Do you know what such betrayal merits?”
I stayed still except for the back-and-forth shake of my head. But I did know. I did.
“Death. Your death.”
The stag’s nostrils widened and shrank, widened and shrank. I had no doubt it could leap the pond and spear me with those antlers before I even rose to my feet.
My eyes wanted to drop to the pond’s surface, to the reflected moon—but they remained locked on the creature’s. My mother wouldn’t have allowed me to die that way.
“And yet…”The stag exhaled a great huff and lowered its head until the enormous crown of its antlers nearly touched the earth.“Betrayal is outdone by courage. You, Eurydice Waters, have no dearth of it.”
I sucked in the sweet air like I’d been given back my life. I didn’t?—
“I know your request,”the stag said, its head still bowed before me,“but you must state it for me to grant it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Across the water,a god had lowered its head to me. If Theo were alive, I could recount the entire story without a detail left out—and he would believe every word, except this one impossible part:
I had seen the crown of a god’s head.
“Tell them,” I breathed. “Tell them the way out of the Eldermaze.”
“For me to fulfill a request such as this,”the stag said, head still lowered,“there is a consequence.”
My voice came out soft, too small. “What is it?”
The stag’s antlers glinted in the moonlight, its breath fogging faintly in the air.“That is for nature to decide.”
“But…”You are nature.
“I am of nature, not the maker of it. I am its pulse, not its hand. Its witness, not its judge.”
“But you can interfere with the trials,” I said. Stars and shadows, now I was backtalking a god. “You already have.”
“Just as you can bring down a tree,”the stag said.“And even you know such an action is never without consequence.”
I did know that. Even in my kingdom, sad as it was, we cut trees.When we brought them down, the stumps rotted, the birds abandoned them, the scraggly grass died under the unfiltered acid rain. The roots died.
“Do you know,” I said, “what will become of the fae in the maze if left alone?”
The stag’s head rose. Its black eyes didn’t blink.“That future hasn’t yet chosen a shape. But nature always finds one.”
