“Far too powerful for your own good,” I chuckle. Because damn, if I don’t know the feeling. Lightly, I touch the golden bracelet at my wrist. “And this gift…the briars. I’ll return it if you want. A lot of terrible things have been wrought with this magic.”
She closes her hand over mine and the bracelet. “A lot of good as well. You’re keeping Castletree alive and standing. It’ll be a while yet before my magic returns to what it once was and you can release your briars.”
“Even in the depths of the Green Flame’s power, I never let Castletree fall,” I say. “Maybe the Prince of Thorns longed to rulethere, or perhaps there was always a part of me fighting to keep it standing.”
“Well, it was quite smart of me to gift that to you. Without your magic, without your thorns keeping Castletree alive, all the magic in the Vale would be lost and…” Anya looks back to the festivities. “So would my heart.”
I follow her gaze toward the celebration where George sits next to Dominic. George coaxes a smile out of the young fae, then throws an arm around him. What are they speaking of? Happy moments of his brother, or maybe just a silly joke?
“I always knew George would be a good father,” Anya says.
Rosalina has mentioned how he wasn’t always there for her. But when he was present, he was filled with love.
More love than my own father or mother ever gave me.
“How did you know?” I ask.
“Well,” she says and gives me a smirk, “I saw how he was with you.”
I gaze into the faraway flames until my vision turns blurry.
I can’t remember the exact moment, but it was over a century ago when I packed all my worldly possessions in a bag—a cloak and a few of my favorite books—and stole off into the night. It had probably been after one of my mother’s speeches about how one day I’d rule the Vale. Or maybe it was after the first time she brought me to meet my father. Regardless, I’d studied maps of the Below for weeks until I was confident I could find a path to the surface.
The tunnels were so twisted that I was half-starving and delirious by the time I felt a wind on my face. Of course, the path I’d found had led to the coldest, most barren part of the Vale. My journey would have ended right there, my body turned to a statue of ice, had I not run into another boy, not much older than me.
He had sapphire eyes and white hair as wild as the blustering storm. He gave me a cake of oats and dried berries bound with honey. He showed me a secret path, a way into the human realm.
And when I left, I realized there was now one thing in the Enchanted Vale I’d miss.
Of course, having never been out of the Below, I had no idea my body would start turning to rot in only a few months. Or how hard it was to be a child among humans. But what was there to care about? I had left behind the evil destiny my mother so desperately craved for me.
I also didn’t realize how bound I still was to the Vale, how I was but a moth to the flame of our world’s magic. That’s what the queen was—a bursting signal fire whose energy drew me to Egypt. And that’s how I crossed paths with the anthropologist Anya and the archaeologist George.
I often wonder…without my adventure in the human realm, if I’d never gotten lost in the desert storm and known the love of two explorers, would I be different? Would Sira’s claws have hooked me deeper if I hadn’t had the chance to see what real love looked like?
Sighing, I dig in my cloak. “Let me give this back to you at least. It was a gift for you.”
Anya holds out her palm. In it, I drop a small wooden camel. “Cleo,” she says, running a hand over the figure.
“Thank you,” I say, tilting my gaze from the flames to the stars. “She led me out of the storm one last time. And now I know how to shape my magic.”
66
Farron
Here again. Staring at the alder tree, wondering how I couldhave gotten so many things wrong.
The funeral attendees have moved into Keep Oakheart. I’m alone in the grove. The surrounding trees, thick with orange and red leaves, bow in the breeze, filling the air with the smell of maple. The moon casts a radiant glow over the alder tree, making it appear more of a statue than a living thing. I swear I can see a face within the bark, watching me. Appraising.
I’m not sure what I’m doing here. My mother won’t suddenly emerge from the trunk, and neither will Billy. They’re gone from this realm forever, and I was the last one to hold their life threads.
It feels like such a burden and a blessing all at once.
I want to fall to my knees and beg for forgiveness. From whom? The tree?
Maybe I’ll fall to my knees and scream at the moon, howling with rage and sorrow instead. But that seems an insult to all those I’ve hurt. What good is my grief to them?
They’re gone. And I’m…
