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"We're going for a walk," he said eventually. "I want to show you something."

"I want to be alone."

"I heard that part too."

"Then you understand the problem."

"I do." He kept walking anyway, the same unhurried pace he used for everything, trying to argue with him always seemed pointless. "You can be alone after."

"That's not how alone works."

"That's how it's going to work today."

I stopped walking. He didn't stop with me, which meant I either stood there proving a point to nobody or caught back up, and standing there proving a point to nobody had never once made me feel better about anything. I caught back up.

He won. I decided not to think too hard about how easily. I still had my dignity.

Ashter trailed a few steps behind, tail low, clearly displeased at being ignored by both of us, until Halver glanced back at him without breaking stride.

"Go home, play with Alex."

Ashter stopped walking.

"It's going to get wet where we're headed," Halver said. "You don't do well wet."

The ember eyes narrowed, offended and for one long moment I thought loyalty might win out over comfort. Then Ashter turned, gave one long-suffering huff, and dissolved into smoke that drifted back toward the house without so much as a glance in my direction.

"Traitor," I called after him.

He didn't dignify that with a response, which felt like the deepest betrayal of the morning. I was surrounded by stupid men and betraying animals, my morning was turning out to be fantastic.

We walked for the better part of forty minutes, deeper into Gledhi than I'd gone on my own, the trees thickening until the light came down in patches instead of sheets. Halver didn't fill the silence, and I found I didn't need him to. My anger had nowhere to attach itself out here, nothing to push against except quiet ground and quiet company, and by the time we reached a slope of grey rock half-swallowed by moss and hanging vine, most of my anger had burned itself down to embers.

A dark opening sat low in the stone, wide enough for one person at a time, the kind of entrance that looked like it wanted to be missed.

"You're taking me into a cave."

"I am."

"Following a strange man into a dark hole in the ground seems like exactly the kind of decision that ends badly in every story I've ever heard."

"I'm not a stranger."

"You're being strange. It’s the same thing."

"Come on, Sprite, live a little." He ducked into the opening expecting me to follow. Sprite? I don't know if that was nice or insulting.

I followed him into the dark anyway.

The passage opened faster than I expected, the low ceiling lifting into something I couldn't see the top of, and light bloomed around us in patches of soft green and blue that hadn't existed a dozen steps back. Moss coated the walls in thick, glowing clusters, threading down from cracks in the stone like something had poured it there on purpose. Clusters of pale mushrooms grew in shelves along the tunnel, each one giving off its own low light, enough that shadows fell soft instead of sharp. Insects drifted through the open space above us, slow and unhurried, trailing faint light behind them like something had dusted their wings in the same glow that lived in the moss.

The air smelled of wet stone and something natural and earthy, cooler than the forest above, carrying the faint mineral edge that meant water somewhere close.

Somewhere beyond the reach of the light, water moved against stone in a steady, patient rhythm, and every few steps a fat drop fell from the ceiling and struck the pool of an older one, sending small ripples of light. The whole place felt untouched in a way nothing at the Citadel ever managed, no boot prints worn into the stone, no marks where someone had catalogued or measured or claimed any part of it.

I stopped walking without meaning to.

"How did you find this?"