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“Still, the fact that this ability existed, that this pathway existed, that there were plans to escape already underway, and we knew nothing of them,” Cedric said sullenly from where he sat, leaning against a stack of crates. “You let me prattle on needlessly about my fears, about needing patrols and guards for Elderglade, all the while reassuring me nothing was amiss.” He loosed a breath, his eyebrows drawing together. “I feel quite misled, Shep, I won’t lie.”

The sylvan’s face fell. “That was never my intention. And it was not needless, my lord. Were it not for the patrols, Kit and I would not have been where we were at the exact moment of the attack. It was because of you that we had the maximum warning, that we were able to start evacuating folks as quickly as we did.”

The memory of those blood-magic ribbons wrapping around Shep and pulling him through the gate flashed across Kit’s mind, and she shuddered. “Is this when you explain how you survived said attack?” she asked softly.

“I’d like to think we can take at least a little bit of credit for that, too,” Sephone interjected, and Elyria groaned.

“You would,” she muttered, still pacing.

“We can chalk it up to very good timing,” Shep said. “I was not actually aware of Master Tartanis’s involvement until Sephone and Raefe showed up and freed us from the cultists.”

“That easy, huh?”

Shep frowned. “Well, the enemy left us shackled out front. They’d already gone through the gate when these two appeared. And believe me, I would have followed, would have come to help, to fight. Only . . .”

“Only your dwarven friend had put up a lot of fight on his own before being captured,” said Raefe.

“And he paid for it too,” added Sephone. “He was in decidedly not good shape when we came across the two of them.”

“Convenient that you managed to escape relatively unscathed, then,” Elyria said to Shep, and when Kit met her emerald-green stare, she didn’t need a soul-bond or a mindwielder’s power to know they were both thinking the same thing. Shep wouldn’t be the first sylvan they discovered to have been secretly working with the enemy, after all.

Shep’s face fell. “Go on, then. Say it.”

Elyria arched a brow. “Say what?”

“You wonder if I’ve betrayed you somehow. If there’s something even more nefarious behind what happened tonight. I can’t even blame you—what happened with Zephyr during the Crucible would have made a skeptic of me, too.”

Damn, he was good.

“But I promise you,” he continued, “there’s no ulterior motive, no secret agenda here.”

“Other than the overall general secrecy of, well, all of this, you mean,” grumbled Cedric, gesturing vaguely to their surroundings.

Shep bit his lip. “Yes, other than that.”

“I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised. Elder Larkess had an entirely different identity—a different form entirely—that she kept hidden the whole time I knew her as Alouette. She was the one who kept my mother safe during Malakar’s first coup, wasn’t she? The one who spirited her away the night he killed my grandfather? Secret escape plans were clearly a specialty of hers.” The words were bitter as they fell from Cedric’s tongue, but it wasn’t hard to hear the emotion behind them. He might have been frustrated—wounded, even—by the elder’s secrets, but her death was clearly taking its toll.

“But surely you can understand, then,” Shep said gently. “Her plans were always in service of the greater good. And she did not want to add to your already burdensome plate. Plus, these are . . .” He fiddled with the sleeve of his tunic. “Well, these are sylvan secrets. Ones kept close to the vest for eons. The council is loath to share them with just anyone.”

“Yes, but Ric and Ellie are hardly ‘just anyone,’ are they, Shep?” Kit said, tone curt. The limits of her own patience were certainly being tested tonight. “Your elders are perfectly happy to put the weight of saving all Arcanis on their shoulders but don’t want to let them in on their plans?”

“Noctis take me.” Cedric rubbed at his eyes, his head tipping back against the stack of crates with a gentle thump. “I’m just so fucking tired of secrets.”

Shep cleared his throat. “I’m not entirely sure why the cultists didn’t kill me or Thraigg outright at the onset of their attack. I think they may have intended to use us as leverage. Thraigg needed help, though, and by the time we’d been freed, the evacuation was well underway. We got Thraigg to the healers, but by the time I made it back for you all, the fighting was over.”

Silence fell over the tent, the weight of the losses sustained weighing heavy on them all. Elderglade was supposed to be a sanctuary. Tonight, it had been a battlefield. Lives and homes and all senses of safety had gone up in literal flames, and Kit suspected that if Sephone were to drop the sound barrier she’d erected around the tent, their ears would be filled with the sounds of grieving.

Elyria sighed. “Assuming we believe you, mainly because I’m simply too exhausted to consider any other option at present—fine. You didn’t purposely keep information about my father’s involvement from me. You were helping in other ways. I’m slightly less pissed off at you now.”

Shep huffed a sad laugh.

“But I’m still stuck on the fact that these magical sylvan pathways exist in the first place,” she continued. “While we’ve been spraining our wings flying across the continent, or plodding along on horseback like fools and—wait.” She stopped pacing mid-step. “Four hells. Horseback. The horses! Are Polonius and⁠—”

“The horses are fine. They are here. We got them out too.”

“Fucking when?” Elyria exclaimed. “Evacuating the glade was one thing, but when could you possibly have coordinated everything here? To have supplies and tents and a whole stars-damned refugee camp ready and waiting and⁠—”

“Time could not stop while you recovered, my lady. There was much to be done.” Shep toed the canvas floor of the tent with the tip of his sock-covered foot.