A hint of color crept into Kade’s cheeks. “I’m notshy,” he protested. “I just... You know.”
Florian laughed again, squeezing his hand. “It’s cute. I liked seeing you with your family. Even your parents, I guess.”
Kade made a noncommittal noise at that, glancing away. Florian looked up at him, considering, before he said as casually as he could manage, “It seemed like everyone had babies... I don’t think I’ve held so many babies before in my life.”
Kade snorted. “Yeah. My dad was obsessed with keeping the population up. I think he would have had even more kids if my mom hadn’t been over it all after four of us. He always said...” He trailed off, glancing uncertainly down at Florian. “Well. He loved Jerah, but he had some... opinions about the Winter Court. He thought the fae were going to die out if they didn’t start having more babies, so... He wanted to make sure our clan grew. He didn’t want it to get smaller the way the Winter Court did.”
Florian hesitated. It made sense, he supposed—even he had been unsettled at how small the population of the Winter Court was. The wolf kingdom seemed positively thriving in comparison.
“Do you... want to have kids someday?” he asked, looking down as he said it. The light layer of snow crunching beneath their feet was the only sound for a long moment, as Kade seemed to consider the question.
“No,” Kade finally said, his voice soft. “At least not with the world the way it is now. The Veil is dying. It’s... wrong, I think, to bring new people into a world like this. No one asks to be born, and it just seems wrong to me, when we know what a difficult world we’d be bringing new people into. Either they’re stuck in the wolf kingdom forever, or they go to Earth where they have to hide who they really are. I mean, look at Bowen. He just goes off to get high all day, every day, because there’s nothing else to do, nowhere else to go.”
“Is that what he does all day?” Florian asked, eyebrows raised in surprise. Whatever he had expected to hear, that hadn’t been it. Kade laughed bitterly, nodding once.
“That’s what he does all day,” he echoed with a sigh, glancing back the way they had come. “I worry about him, but… Not much I can do, I guess. Besides this.”
Florian nodded, looking down at his feet as they walked. Revelations about Bowen aside, it seemed they were largely on the same page about kids. It was a relief to hear, sad as his reasoning was.
“And what if we actually manage to pull all this off?” he pressed after a few moments of silence. “Get all the Arrows and save the Veil? Would you want kids then?”
“I guess I never thought of that,” Kade said. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. I like being around kids, but... It’s nice to be able to give them to someone else for the gross parts.”
Florian laughed, turning his head to see Kade smile fondly down at him. “Yeah, I think so too.”
“Is that okay?” Kade asked, though his smile remained.
“I don’t think I’d want them either,” Florian agreed. “I mean, the Earth has its own problems... Neither place seems really great anymore. And I wouldn’t want to... you know, have, like, biological kids.” The very thought made his skin crawl. “So... not really in the cards for me, I guess, which is fine.”
They walked on in quiet contemplation. Kade seemed to be mulling everything over; but with his smaller concerns addressed, and the conversation lulling, all Florian could think about was the Blight.
“I’m really nervous,” he blurted, when the tension roiling in his stomach became unbearable. “All—all that bad stuff happened in the Blight last time. Everything was okay until we went in there. I guess I’m—I’m scared it’ll be the same way again.”
Kade stopped, and Florian stumbled to a halt next to him, their hands still linked.
“I understand,” Kade said, peering down at him. “But it’s just the two of us now. We’ll look after each other. That’ll make it easier than with three people. It’s closer, so it won’t be as difficult to get to. And...”
“And?” Florian prompted, looking up as Kade worried his bottom lip between his teeth, clearly considering what he was going to say.
“And we’re not fighting now,” he finally settled on. “So there’s... none of that tension.”
Florian grimaced. That was true. He could only hope things would stay that way. Something about the heat and the misery of it all had made him feel entirely unhinged the last time they were in the Blight. So much more was resting on his shoulders this time.
“We’re almost there,” Kade added, pointing ahead through the trees with his free hand. Florian could just make out a faint line of white light coming up along the horizon—the same as it had looked in the Winter Court—though here there were more trees in the way, blocking his view. He swallowed hard and nodded, keeping pace alongside Kade as they drew nearer.
The line of light grew taller as they approached, until the bright light filled the entire sky; but it was still kept at bay the same way it was in the Winter Court, as if some invisible wall marked the delineation between the two. Kade’s steps slowed, then stopped as they came right up to the very edge of it. The snow ended in a perfect line, and they could see dry, hard dirt beyond the bright light.
“What keeps it from coming closer?” Florian asked, eyeing it suspiciously. He’d had the same thought the first time that they went into the Blight, but he hadn’t thought to ask Jerah back then. If he had asked Tatiana, it had been during the week that he couldn’t remember. Kade’s lips pursed in thought, as he looked toward the light.
“I don’t know,” he confessed. “The wolf kingdom is pretty far from anything else. I think it was just far enough for the Blight not to reach. I don’t think any part of the ocean to the north of us is Blighted. And we’re not warded against it the way the Winter Court was, I don’t think.”
He started pulling off his coat as he said it, and reluctantly Florian followed his lead. The cold bit into him the moment the warm, thick layers were peeled away, and he was left shivering in just the light cotton undershirt that he wore beneath his coat.
“We can really just leave these?” he asked, watching Kade toss his coat to the ground. The taller man shrugged.
“They’ll be here when we get back,” he said. “Or someone will find them and take them back for us. Bowen’s always wandering around here... I should have had him come with us. Next time.”
Quietly, Florian hoped there wouldn’t be a next time that they would have to enter the Blight from the wolf kingdom. From everything he had gleaned from his father’s notes, no other Arrows were near the wolf kingdom; two were closer to the dragons far to the southeast, two more closer to the krakens east of here; and the last was right near the heart of the Summer Court itself. It seemed unlikely they would return to the Winter Court unless it were for a more... permanent relocation.
