“I came back.”
The ring of weapons is still up. Still aimed at Kieran. But the energy has shifted—they’re watching Jadeve now, waiting for his signal, and Jadeve is looking at Kestra like she hung the moon and he’s been living in the dark ever since she left.
Kieran makes a sound beside me. Low. Strangled.
“Don’t,” I murmur.
“She never?—”
“I know.” I grip his arm. “I know. But right now you’re going to shut up and let your sister have this, because those arrows are still pointed at you and the man holding her is the only thing standing between you and a very short reunion.”
His jaw works. The ice at his fingertips crackles and spits.
But he stays still.
Jadeve finally looks away from Kestra. His gaze finds me first—assessing, calculating, the look of someone who’s survived a long time by knowing which threats to take seriously. Then Kieran.
His expression doesn’t change, but his hand tightens on Kestra’s waist.
“The prince,” he says. Not a question.
“My brother,” Kestra corrects. “Who I would very much like to keep alive, if it’s all the same to you.”
“It’s not all the same to me.” But his voice has softened. Just a fraction. Just enough. “His father’s soldiers drove my people into this forest. His father’s laws made us exiles. His father’s cruelty?—”
“Moros is not here.” Kestra’s hand covers his on her waist. “Kieran is not his father. And if you kill him, you kill any chance of the alliance she represents.” Her eyes cut to me. “The Wild Court queen. The one the prophecies talk about. The one who could change everything.”
Jadeve’s gaze swings back to me.
I feel the weight of it. The assessment. The decades of anger looking for a reason to aim itself somewhere else.
“You’re the queen,” he says.
“Apparently.”
“You don’t sound certain.”
“I’m certain about very few things right now. But I’m certain that I need to get out of this forest, and I’m certain that Kestra trusts you, and I’m certain that if you kill the man standing behind me, you’ll have to kill me, too.” I hold his gaze. “And I’m fairly certain that would upset her.”
Silence.
Then—impossibly—Jadeve laughs. Short, rough, surprised out of him against his will.
“She talks like you,” he says to Kestra.
“She’s worse than me.”
“I didn’t think that was possible.”
The weapons lower. Not all at once—there’s still tension, still distrust, still decades of blood between Jadeve’s people and anyone wearing an Unseelie face. But the immediate danger passes, and I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“We need safe passage,” Kestra says. “Through the forest. To the borderlands.”
“That’s three days of travel through territory that wants to eat you.”
“I know.”
“My people have no reason to help the Unseelie crown.”
