He nodded as he took the extra, carefully slipping it into his pocket, as the others looped their own pendants around their necks. Hopefully they wouldn’t have to use it, but it would be a nightmare to need an extra and not have it.
“Thank you,” he said again, smiling up at her. “Really. This is going to make things so much easier. I really appreciate it.”
She smiled fondly down at him. “Think nothing of it. What are your plans now that you have what you need from me?”
Florian paused, glancing between them. They all looked at him expectantly.
“We’ll be heading to the Winter Court to make some preparations,” he said, hating how uncertain he sounded. “And then we’ll try teleporting to the Summer Court. If that doesn’t work, then I guess we’re hoofing it.”
“Hoofing it?” Koji repeated faintly, sounding perplexed.
“I see,” Elodie replied, and although her tone was light, Florian could tell she wanted him to answer that they would be going to Earth. He bristled, waiting for her to protest, but it never came. “Truly, I wish you the very best of luck. Our world is relying on it.”
His defensiveness melted away all at once, replaced with the anxiety that came whenever he thought too much about what they were doing.
“Thank you,” he said softly. “I... We need all the luck we can get.”
“You’re welcome to stay as long as you need,” Elodie continued, her voice still casual, as if they were not talking about him saving the world. “But I don’t think I’ll see you again before you head out. I have some work to do. So, goodbye, and good luck, King Florian.”
He nodded, unsure how to respond to the sudden formality. “I, uh... thank you. Bye.”
She bowed her head slightly to each of them in turn, then pulled the door open to her tree and retreated into the cottage within. The door closed behind her with a firm finality, the doorknob turning into a mushroom before Florian’s eyes. He blinked, staring at it for a long moment, unsure why it felt so... conclusive, somehow. Like everything was coming to an end.
“You alright?” Kade murmured next to him, shaking him from his thoughts.
“Y-Yeah,” he stammered. “Sorry. I guess I got kind of nervous all of a sudden.”
Kade squeezed his shoulder gently, his expression sympathetic. “Yeah. Makes sense. Why don’t you watch a few matches this time instead?”
“What, too scared to finish what you started?” Rune teased, and Florian chuckled.
“Guess you win, after all,” he sighed, leaning against Kade. “But I think I’ll learn more if I watch you spar with someone whoreallyknows what they’re doing.”
He felt Kade let out a small huff of a laugh, and Rune groaned, turning away.
“Not fair,” she grumbled, stomping back to her spear. “I swear, if we do all this training and end up not even fighting anything...”
She and Kade sparred a few matches, and for all that Florian tried to focus, his thoughts kept going back to the Summer Court. What would it be like when they got there? Where would the final Arrow be? What if they could teleport there, but couldn’t find the Arrow? And what if theycouldn’t teleport there at all?
No, theyneededto be able to teleport there. He held the image of the pond and the garden in his mind’s eye for as long as he could, diving deep into the memory and mining as many details as he could. It had been humid, but the water was cool. The air smelled like honeysuckle as they walked through the garden, and more vegetal near the pond with its lily pads and koi-like fish. The sky had been clear, the sun bright. Soleil’s skin had been warm against him—againstThaddeus, but somehow Florian too. If he thought of himself as Thaddeus in that moment, he could see it more clearly. Maybe that would help them teleport there, too.
He hadn’t realized how long he’d been sitting there zoning out until Rune came to sit next to him, Koji leaving to spar with Kade next.
“You alright in there?” she asked, and he nodded, smiling weakly.
“Yeah,” he replied. “Just a lot to think about.”
She nodded, not saying anything as they sat. For all her bravado, Florian thought, she knew as well as he did how dangerous and difficult this all was. She was just better at keeping it out of view.
“What do you think it’ll be like?” she asked abruptly, pulling him from his thoughts. When he only gave her a confused look, she continued, “When all this is done. What do you think will happen then?”
Florian blinked, not sure if he had ever really thought that far ahead. Ending the Blight seemed so daunting that any specifics of what would come after had been almost impossible to consider.
“Well,” he started slowly, wondering what he would do when he returned to a Winter Court that was free of the Blight. “I’m sure all the clans will start expanding outwards right away. Start looking for resources, building up farmland... Though the soil might not be good for that at first. I don’t know what the land will be like when the Blight is gone, but I don’t think it’ll go back to the way it was before. Then maybe groups will go out searching for anything else that will be helpful, or to contact the other kingdoms, or... Or maybe even look for other groups that survived that no one had contact with—that no one knew were out there. Maybe some of the other shifter clans survived somewhere. Somehow.”
“I bet it’ll all be like a desert at first,” Rune said. “But then it’ll rain over where the Blight was, and things will come back. It’ll take a while, and maybe we’ll need some of your fae magic to getthings to grow, but I think someday it’ll get back to how it used to be. How it is on Earth.”
Florian smiled. “That’s nice to think about.”
