“Bend?” he finishes.
I step away from the branch, closer now to my makeshift path, and we stare at it. Unblinking. Slowly, with a soft creak, the tree seems to stretch upward again—as if sighing.
“Vale…” There is a tremor in my voice as I turn into him, still watching the limb. My eyes flutter. No trick of light. Just a tree.
A tree—but not.
It is still you—and yet… not.
My hands begin to shake. But when I look at Vale, he is smiling.
His arms tighten around me, and I think he might lift me from the ground in pure, unguarded joy if I didn’t look so perplexed in his hold.
His smile doesn’t fade. It softens.
Not the grin of amusement or triumph—but something older. Reverent. As if he is looking not just at me, but through me.
“That,” he breathes, barely louder than the wind in the branches, “is how it used to be.”
My heart stutters. “What do you mean?”
He doesn’t answer right away. Instead, he slips his hand into mine and gently leads me a few steps deeper into the trees. Not urgency—an invitation. We find a fallen log bathed in broken sunlight, and he settles beside me, still watching the forest as though it had begun to whisper again.
“I haven’t seen the world move like that since I was a boy,” he says quietly.
After the raw closeness of last night, I follow his words into a stranger, purer space. I see a side of him I have never known.
He tilts his head, exploring the corners of his mind.
“Magic,” he explains, “it’s not what your stories made it out to be. There were those who wielded it, yes—but in its purest form, it was this.” He gestures to the forest, to the impossible tree. “Harmony. Gods, Mira… I haven’t seen anything like this since I was a child. I almost forgot.”
His jaw loosens, and I see it. Recognition. As if the pieces have suddenly snapped into place. From gentle awe he shifts to enthusiasm.
He is overcome in the best way. I have a thousand questions, but I dare not interrupt.
“We don’t yet know what has changed in you,” he says, his fingers tightening around mine. “But this—this magic—I know this. I have not seen it since the Fade.”
As much as I want his hope to rise in me, I am still too heavy with questions. “Do you think magic has come back?” I ask softly.
“I don’t know how we would even tell,” he admits. “It was so long ago. I lived alongside it—but I never used it, if that makes sense.” Then his voice drifts farther—into memory. “My mother… she had a natural affinity. The gardens she tended—oh, Mira, you should have seen them. The way the flowers?—”
He stops. And looks at me. The conservatoryflashes through my mind in full, impossible bloom. “That’s it!” He rises suddenly. “I don’t know whether you share her gift—or something entirely different. But I know where we must look.”
He offers his hand and pulls me to my feet. Our leisurely morning forgotten, we move back across the valley toward the manor—and its waiting secrets.
Chapter Forty
My hair catches the wind as we rush back to the manor. Vale laughs, unrestrained, as he pulls me along. When he looks back at me, his smile loosens something deep within my chest. I have never seen him so free.
My skirt billows wildly in our wake, the entire valley alive around us. Tall grasses glow gold in the sun, and part of me longs to stop and simply drink it all in.
But Vale is a man on a mission. He doesn’t waver as we burst through the doors, heading straight for the royal quarters at the far end of the manor.
From the parlor, Ace’s voice carries after us, indolent and knowing.
“Please at least wait until the doors are shut, Your Majesties.”
Vale doesn’t slow.
