I glanced at Quinn, whose face had gone pale.
“We don’t have a fae warder,” I whispered. “I’m not even sure one exists in the Fae Sanctuary.”
“Then you must find one,” Alahathrial said, rising to his feet.
Alahathrial stood tall now, his hand drifting away from the water’s surface, its glow softening again, but still brighter than before. The cavern was quiet, the magic almost… listening.
He turned to face us, his expression unreadable, eyes like polished gold. “Everything alive has an expiry date,” he said calmly, as if reciting a truth carved into stone. “Even magic that thinks itself eternal. The pool has reachedits.”
Zander frowned. “But it’s still working. Barely.”
“It would have lasted longer,” Alahathrial replied, voice darkening slightly, “if its magic hadn’t been squandered.”
I felt the chill settle deeper into the air. “What do you mean?”
Alahathrial’s gaze flicked to Zander. “Every stone. Every non-magical person that wades in the pool. They take from it. They feed from its essence. The first king of Warriath wanted morehalflings than were ever necessary to protect the realm. He was greedy. Instead of allowing nature to take its course, he forced it.”
Zander’s brow furrowed. “He created more than needed.”
“Exactly,” Alahathrial said, pacing slowly along the edge of the water. “The number of stones dipped. The rituals performed. The attempts to grant fleeting magic to unworthy bloodlines. All of it drained the pool.”
He turned back to us, eyes hard now. “They infused far more wardstones than were needed to defend the towers. They wanted power. Status. Control. And in doing so, they accelerated this pool’s demise.”
Zander exhaled, voice quiet but sharp. “So it began failing… long before now.”
Alahathrial nodded. “Before you were born. Before your father ruled.”
Quinn’s voice cracked from behind us. “What happens if there are no full fae warders left?”
Alahathrial didn’t hesitate.
“The pool will fall,” he said, simply. “With or without one. Its death is inevitable. You cannot stop it. You can only delay it.”
Zander’s shoulders tensed. “Then what do we do?”
“There is only one other option,” Alahathrial said, voice low, as heavy as judgment. “Defeat the Blood Fae. End the threat. End the war. Because once the pool is gone, the wards will fall. And if they are still rising… they will not stop.”
Zander crossed his arms, his gaze steady on Alahathrial. “How can you tell the pool’s been failing that long? You said it started before my father’s rule.”
Alahathrial turned toward the rippling surface, his reflection fractured by light and memory. “Because Emlem’s father—your grandfather—asked me how to replenish it. Over fifty years ago.”
I straightened. “What?”
“I explained then what I’m telling you now,” Alahathrial said, his voice calm, but laced with the ache of old wounds. “The only way to replenish a pool like this is to create balance again. To return the flow of magic through new bonds, not stolen ones. I suggested he enlist the commoners who were born with magic—even then, they were emerging.”
Quinn looked up, startled. His fingers flexed at his sides, but he said nothing.
Alahathrial continued, his expression cooling. “But he refused. Said he wouldn’t have ‘dirty blood’ infecting the sanctity of the pool. That halflings were rare for a reason, and that magic belonged only to the blessed and born.”
Quinn’s gaze dropped to the stone beneath our feet.
And suddenly I remembered—Quinn was a commoner once. Before the warders claimed him. Before his gift made him too valuable to ignore.
Alahathrial turned to him now, lifting a hand gently.
“Warder,” he said with surprising warmth, “you are a credit to your order. You’ve placed yourself in danger for the good of the realm. Had the former king been more open-minded—had he embraced the gifts rising among your people—the pool may have lasted much longer. But he clung to the old ways.”
He looked at the dark veins threading through the water.
