The wildwood at the edge of the Autumn Court had many names.
The mortals, when they remembered it at all, called it things like Blackthorn Copse or Witches’ Walk—a place where compasses spun wild and children were warned not to stray. The older fae called it the Between, the tangle of roots and shadows where bargains were made and oaths were broken.
To Caelan, it was simply the place he kept coming back to.
He stood beneath the twisted boughs of an ash tree older than any human kingdom and watched the shimmer between worlds pulse and thin.
On the mortal side, it looked like an ordinary forest. Damp earth. Leaf mold underfoot. The fading green of late September melting into amber and rust. The air had a human kind of chill to it—sharp, honest, laced with the scent of distant car exhaust and woodsmoke.
On the fae side, the colors ran deeper. Reds that bit the eyes. Golds that hummed. The sky above the Autumn Court burned in permanent twilight, a bruise of violet and flame where the sun never quite set. The wind carried the sound of distant hunting horns and the sweet, sharp scent of apples rotting in the grass.
Caelan stood in the seam between them, one foot on each side of the thin line where the worlds overlapped. To a human, he would have been invisible—a prickle of unease at the back of the neck, a shape in the corner of the eye.
To anything with a hint of magic, his presence was a pressure in the air. A bright, hard point.
His hand rested lightly on the trunk of the ash. The bark was smooth under his palm, the tree humming with old power. Above him, black birds watched with beady eyes, their claws sinking into branches that had held more secrets than most courts.
“You’re late,” a voice drawled.
Caelan didn’t start. He’d heard Rowan Vance’s voice shakier than that tonight. He knew the difference between mortal fear and fae arrogance.
He glanced over his shoulder.
The speaker leaned against a moss-slick rock, arms folded. Tall, all sharp angles and easy grace, his hair the color of wheat left too long in the sun, eyes the exactly shade between green and gold that meant trouble. A lean sword hung at his hip, hilt wrapped in leather so dark it was almost black.
“Lucien,” Caelan said calmly. “I wasn’t aware you were keeping my schedule.”
“Someone has to,” Lucien replied. He pushed off the rock with liquid ease and strolled closer, boots making no sound on the leaf litter. “You disappear for hours at a time. Days, sometimes. The Court starts to talk.”
“The Court always talks,” Caelan said. “It’s their second favorite pastime.”
Lucien’s mouth quirked. “And their first?”
“Scheming,” Caelan said. “Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Lucien echoed, amused. He stopped just short of the shimmer where the two worlds kissed and peered through, as if he could see what Caelan saw. “She was here again, then?”
Caelan’s jaw tightened.
“Yes,” he said. “She was.”
“And?” Lucien lifted a brow. “Is our little prophecy ticking along as it should?”
“She’s not *ours*,” Caelan said sharply.
Lucien made an unconcerned noise. “She will be, if the debt stands.”
Caelan’s hand flexed against the bark. “We have three months,” he said. “Nothing is decided yet.”
Lucien’s gaze slid to him, lazy and sharp. “You’ve been saying that for twenty-five years.”
Because for twenty-five years, Caelan had been waiting.
He remembered the night the bargain had been made—he’d been barely more than a boy by their standards, his wings still stiff with growing magic, his place at Court precarious. The Autumn King had come back from a walk in the mortal woods with a gleam in his eye and blood on his cuffs.
“I made a trade,” he’d said, voice warm with victory. “A life for a life.”
In the early days, no one had told Caelan the details. He’d only heard whispers. A human child sick and failing. A desperate grandmother sobbing in the leaf-strewn dark. An offer made—too quick, too tempting.
Later, when the King had decided to groom him as a potential heir, the details had bled out. A changeling left in the mortal crib. Another child taken to the Court. The old, hanging prophecy brought out of dusty corners like a weapon taken off the wall.
“When the blood of both worlds runs in one vein,” the seer had intoned, eyes rolled glassy white, “our Autumn will rise to glory…or fall to ash.”
Two children. One left. One taken.
One, raised human, already had a foot in both worlds without knowing it.
The other…
“Do you dream of her?” Lucien asked idly.
Caelan’s jaw clenched. “I’m not fourteen,” he said. “I don’t moon over mortal girls in my sleep.”
“Mmm.” Lucien tilted his head. “Then you’ve never answered her in the dreaming ways?”
“Of course not,” Caelan said sharply.
It wasn’t strictly true.
He didn’t *speak* to her. He never had. That would have been…too much. Too binding. To brush words against a mortal’s mind in dreams was to forge a link that didn’t easily break.
But he’d gone to her dreams. Stood in the edges of them. Watched.
He couldn’t remember when it had started. At first, he’d only watched from afar—checking that the changeling hadn’t started sprouting thorns or setting rooms on fire, signs that the prophecy bent toward ruin rather than salvation. He told himself it was duty. Prudence.
Then the watching had become…habit.
And then it had become something else.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Lucien remarked mildly. “Your ears always do that thing.”
Caelan scowled and resisted the urge to smooth the tips of his ears down. They were longer than most fae’s, the points a fraction more pronounced—a quirk of his bloodline. “I don’t—”
“You do,” Lucien said. “They twitch. It’s charming. Very princely.”
“I will put you in a bog,” Caelan said.
“Promises,” Lucien purred.
Caelan rolled his eyes. “Why are you here?”
“Because the King sent me to find you,” Lucien said, and some of the idle amusement faded from his face. “And because word’s gotten out that you were at the mortal seam again. There’s talk.”
“There’s always talk,” Caelan said, but his shoulders tensed.
Lucien’s gaze flickered, taking in the taut line of his body, the way his hand had slipped from the tree to rest on the hilt of the knife at his belt. Smaller than Lucien’s sword, more intimate, green metal worked with fine, curling designs—iron alloyed with something else.
“Talking louder, this time,” Lucien said. “You know what the old vulture on the High Seat of Thorns is saying.”
Caelan’s mouth curled. “That our Court is doomed? That the prophecy should be prevented from coming to pass by any means necessary, including slitting the mortal girl’s throat?”
Lucien smiled thinly. “She said it more politely. More words like ‘prudence’ and ‘inevitable sacrifice.’ But yes.”
“Of course she did,” Caelan said. “That woman sees the future in the bottom of a wine cup and always looks for the option that involves the most blood.”
“She’s not alone,” Lucien said quietly. “There are others who…are nervous about a creature with one foot in each world. What she could do, what strings she could pull. Humans are messy at the best of times. Add in our magic, and—”
“I know the arguments,” Caelan cut in. “I’ve heard them since before she was born.”
“You’ve heard them,” Lucien agreed. “You’ve also ignored them. Which was cute when you were young and pretty. Now it’s becoming…political.”
Caelan’s lips flattened. “I am political.”
“You are a prince,” Lucien said. “Those are not the same thing.”
Caelan turned away, back toward the thin place. Through the shimmer, the mortal world gleamed muted and small—the nursing home’s brick wall barely visible through the trees, a rectangle of yellow light marking the window of the room where an old woman’s stubborn life burned low.
He’d watched the grandmother for years too, after he’d realized what she’d done. It wasn’t wise to become attached to mortals—they burned so fast, too bright and then gone. But strolling the edges of their lives was a hard habit to break.
“She knows,” Caelan said.
“Who?” Lucien asked.
“The mortal girl,” Caelan said. “Rowan.” The name tasted like iron and apples on his tongue. “Her grandmother told her.”
Lucien let out a low whistle. “That’s…not according to script.”
“Nothing about this is according to script,” Caelan said. “If it were, someone would have slit both children’s throats years ago and called it a day.”
Lucien’s expression didn’t shift, but something in him stilled. “You wouldn’t have let that happen.”
“I might not have had a choice,” Caelan said. “The King was…different, then.”
Lucien’s jaw flexed. “He’s dying now,” he said flatly. “All the more reason for the vultures to flap their wings.”
Across the thin place, a breeze lifted, stirring the leaves. A single maple leaf tore free and fluttered toward Caelan’s face, its edges glowing faintly where it passed through the seam. He caught it between his fingers. On the mortal side, it was dull red. On the fae side, it burned crimson, veins like black ink.
He twirled it. “I won’t let them touch her.”
Lucien studied him. “This is a mortal we’re talking about.”
“I’m aware.”
“A mortal whose very existence could burn this Court to the ground,” Lucien said. “Some would say that killing one girl to save thousands of lives is…an acceptable trade.”
“Some would,” Caelan said evenly. “I am not some.”
Lucien sighed. “And they call *me* sentimental because I refuse to eat poets.”
“You do eat poets,” Caelan said. “You just make them beg for it first.”
Lucien smirked. “Semantics.”
A black bird—a crow, glossy feathers catching the twilight—hopped along a low branch overhead and cawed harshly. Caelan glanced up.
The crow’s beady eyes gleamed with more intelligence than a common bird’s should have. It cocked its head, then flapped onto Caelan’s shoulder, talons digging in just enough to be felt.
“Ash,” Caelan murmured. He reached up and stroked the bird’s chest. “You’re late.”
The crow pecked at his ear in irritable fondness, then ruffled its feathers and turned one bright eye toward Lucien.
“Don’t look at me like that,” Lucien said. “He’s your pet.”
“He’s not a pet,” Caelan said. “He’s a messenger.”
“Then what does he have to say?” Lucien asked.
Ash opened his beak. A whisper spilled out—not caws, not quite words in any human tongue, but meaning. Sense. An image. A girl with dark curls and wary eyes standing in a bookshop aisle, defiant in the face of shadows.
Lucien’s expression sharpened. “She saw you?”
“Not properly,” Caelan said. “But she felt me.”
“She has for a while,” Lucien said. “Hasn’t she?”
“Longer than she should have,” Caelan admitted.
He remembered the first time their gazes had almost met through the veil of dream. She’d been small then, limbs still too long for her body, hair a tangle on her pillow. He’d stood at the foot of her bed, just beyond the circle of moonlight. She’d frowned in her sleep, then sat up abruptly, eyes zeroing in on him like a hawk spotting a mouse.
He’d slipped back into the dark just in time.
Since then, she’d…changed.
Not just in the ways mortals always did—height, curves, lines at the corners of eyes and mouth. She’d grown…edges. She walked like someone waiting for the ground to open up.
“She sees through glamours,” Caelan said. “Even the strong ones.”
“Useful trick,” Lucien said. “And one that certain people would like to cut out of her head.”
“Yes,” Caelan said.
Lucien sighed. “So. Our options.”
“Kill her,” Caelan said flatly. “Take her by force. Or make a bargain.”
Lucien spread his hands. “We are fae. We love bargains.”
“She won’t trust me,” Caelan said, more to himself than to Lucien. “Her grandmother told her enough to be afraid. Enough to hate us.”
Lucien’s eyes softened briefly. “She doesn’t know you.”
“She doesn’t need to,” Caelan said. “She knows what my kind does. It’s enough.”
“And yet you’ve been watching her for years,” Lucien said. “Like some sort of extremely broody guardian spirit. Humans have words for that, you know. Stalker. Creep.”
“Do you have a point, Lucien?”
“Only that you’re not as indifferent as you pretend,” Lucien said lightly. “Which could be a liability. Or…” His mouth tilted. “It could be…leverage.”
Caelan shot him a look. “I don’t want leverage. I want her alive.”
“Then make her an offer she can’t refuse,” Lucien said. “You do love your dramatics.”
Caelan ignored that. “If she comes willingly, I might be able to…bend the terms of the old bargain.”
Lucien’s brows rose. “How?”
Caelan drew the knife at his belt, letting the twilight catch on the blade. Green metal, etched with tiny runes that shifted if you looked at them too long. “By making a new one.”
Lucien’s smile thinned. “You’re going to out-bargain the old one with equal and opposite fine print.”
“Something like that,” Caelan said.
“And if she refuses?” Lucien asked.
Caelan’s eyes went cold. “Then they’ll come for her in chains,” he said. “Whether I like it or not.”
Silence threaded between them. The wind picked up on the fae side, setting the red-gold leaves into a restless shiver. On the mortal side, a car’s headlights swept briefly across the trees, then vanished.
“You can’t protect her forever,” Lucien said quietly. “You’re powerful, Caelan, but you’re not the only factor in this.”
“I know,” Caelan said. His throat felt tight. “That’s the problem.”
Lucien looked at him for a long moment, something like sympathy in his gaze. Then he clapped a hand to Caelan’s shoulder, careless and solid.
“Well,” he said briskly. “If you’re going to seduce a mortal into a bargain, you’d better practice your smile. The one you’re wearing now says ‘I will eat your heart and use your ribs as a xylophone.’”
“A what?”
“Ask her,” Lucien said. “She lives in the world of Smiths’ sonics and tick-tocks.”
Caelan sighed. “That is not how any of that works.”
Lucien only smirked. “Remember, you’re not really one of us to her. You’re the stuff of stories. Big bad wolf, handsome devil. Lean into it.”
“I am not going to *seduce* her,” Caelan said. “This isn’t a game.”
“All bargains are,” Lucien said softly. “That’s how we survive them.”
Before Caelan could reply, the air behind them thickened.
It wasn’t a sound, not exactly. More like a change in pressure, a drop in temperature, the way water feels different at the bottom of a deep pool.
Caelan went still.
Lucien turned, face smoothing into something watchful.
From the shadows beneath the ash tree, something unfolded itself. Not a person, not exactly. A shape made of thorns and smoke and the suggestion of limbs. Two burning ember-eyes opened in what could be called a face.
“Your Grace,” the thing said, voice like dry leaves. It didn’t bow. It never did.
“Whisper,” Caelan said. He forced his grip on the knife to loosen. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”
Whisper wasn’t a person. Not the way most fae were. It was an old thing, older than the Courts themselves, bound to the Autumn Court when the first King had spilled his blood in the roots of the ash tree and promised that his line would always feed it.
It had no loyalty to Caelan, or to any crown, beyond what its binding required. It had, however, an uncanny knack for knowing things it shouldn’t.
“The King is coughing blood again,” Whisper said. “He grows brittle, like old bark. The Court is restless.”
“I’m aware,” Caelan said coolly.
“They whisper names in dark corners,” Whisper continued, unbothered by the irony of its own name. “Your name. And others.”
“Others?” Lucien echoed.
“Thorn of the North,” Whisper said. “Mire Queen’s whelp. And the child of two worlds.”
Caelan’s shoulders locked. “She is not of the Court,” he said. “Not yet.”
Whisper’s ember-eyes swiveled toward the shimmer, where the mortal forest pressed close, unaware. “She is where the story bends,” it whispered. “Many hands would like to push.”
“Some would like to cut the story short,” Lucien muttered.
Whisper smiled, a horrible stretching of shadow. “Stories have a way of snarling when you cut them. They drag you with them into the dark.”
“Is that a threat?” Caelan asked.
“A prediction,” Whisper said pleasantly. “I like a good tangle.”
“You always have,” Caelan said.
Whisper’s gaze slid back to him, and for a moment, the burning points of its eyes seemed to look *through* him, as if he were a thin page held up to the light.
“You have been walking in mortal dreams again,” it said.
Caelan’s spine stiffened. “That is my business.”
“And mine,” Whisper said. “All bargains in this Court are my business.”
“I haven’t made any,” Caelan said.
“Not yet,” Whisper agreed. Its shadowy limbs reconfigured, a suggestion of hands coming together. “When you do…remember that words spoken in dreams are not less binding than those spoken in waking. Sometimes, they are more.”
Caelan thought of Rowan’s sleeping face. The way her lips had sometimes parted on half-words, reaching for something she couldn’t name.
“I won’t trap her,” he said.
Whisper’s ember-eyes widened, then crinkled at the corners in what might have been amusement. “Oh, princeling,” it murmured. “You already have.”
Something cold slid down his spine.
Whisper tilted its head, listening to sounds only it could hear. “The King calls,” it said. “He wants you at his bedside.”
Lucien swore under his breath. “And here I thought we might get through one evening without a deathbed drama.”
Whisper’s grin widened, all thorn and no humor. “Drama is our Court’s marrow. Without it, we would crumble.”
It flowed backward into the shadows, the ember-eyes the last thing to go.
Caelan exhaled slowly. His hand ached where he’d been gripping the knife. He sheathed it with a soft click.
“Duty calls,” Lucien said lightly, but his eyes were grave.
Caelan looked once more through the shimmer, at the mortal world beyond.
He could feel her, even from here. A faint humming in his bones, like the echo of a chord struck on hollow metal. She was moving—leaving the nursing home, walking under the heavy sky, breath fogging in front of her like smoke.
Three months.
That was all the time left before the bargain came due. Before the old magic that tied her life to the Autumn Court tightened like a noose.
*Tell him,* the old woman had whispered in her sleep, unaware—or perhaps very aware—of the ears listening in the corners of the room. *If he wants you, he can bleed for it.*
Caelan’s mouth tightened.
Fine.
He’d bled for less.
“Come on, then,” Lucien said quietly. “Let’s go watch the old man cough his lungs up.”
“And after that,” Caelan murmured, “I’ll start planning how to steal a changeling from under the Court’s nose.”
Lucien’s mouth twitched. “Now *that* sounds like fun.”
They stepped fully back into the Autumn side. The shimmer behind them smoothed, the thin place knitting itself until it was only a darker patch between trees.
The wildwood watched them go, branches arching overhead like ribs. Somewhere, high above, a crow took wing, its black shape cutting across the bruised sky.
***
The Autumn Palace rose out of the heart of the Court like a wound.
It was beautiful, of course. All their palaces were. Beauty was how they baited traps; it was how they softened blows. But there was something uneasy about this particular grandeur, a sense that the building itself was…listening.
Spiraled towers of red stone climbed toward the perpetual twilight, their surfaces veined with gold like marble infected with lightning. Iron filigree twisted around balconies and arched windows, not plain dark metal but a strange alloy—greenish, slick, humming with layered protection. Vines heavy with blood-red blossoms crawled up the walls, their petals dripping a sap that smelled like sugar and copper.
Inside, corridors glowed with candlelight that never went out, no matter how long they burned. The floors were polished wooden mosaics depicting scenes from past Courts—huntings, coronations, beheadings—each tiny piece held in place by magic instead of glue.
Caelan’s boots made no sound as he hastened through them, Lucien a silent shadow at his side. Courtiers parted like water before them, silks whispering, eyes assessing. Some bowed. Some only inclined their heads just enough to avoid insult.
Whisper had been right. The air *was* restless.
They reached the King’s chambers. Two guards stood outside the carved double doors, their armor a weirdly beautiful mix of leather and that same greenish metal. When they saw Caelan, they saluted.
“Your Highness,” one said. “He’s expecting you.”
“Or dying without meaning to,” the other muttered under his breath.
Caelan’s eyes flicked to him. The guard paled and snapped his mouth shut.
Lucien smoothed a hand down the front of his tunic. “Shall I wait here?” he asked.
“Come in,” Caelan said. “He likes you.”
Lucien made a face. “He likes that I insult him to his face and compliment him behind his back. It makes him feel secure.”
“Exactly,” Caelan said.
The doors swung open, responding more to his intent than any physical push. The King’s chambers were dim, the only light coming from a bank of candles by the bed and the faint glow of the ever-burning hearth.
On the bed—a grand, canopied thing draped in autumnal silks—the King lay propped on cushions. Once, he’d been broad-shouldered and terrifying in his beauty, hair a tumble of copper and gold, eyes like polished amber. Time had not touched his face the way it touched humans, but it had eaten at him in other ways.
His hair was still thick, but streaked now with gray at the temples. His skin was pallid, the sharp bones beneath too prominent. His hands, lying on the coverlet, were thin, the veins standing out like ink traces.
When he coughed, the sound was wet, and the copper tang of blood layered itself over the smoke-scent.
“Caelan,” he rasped, turning his head. That, at least, was still strong—his voice, his gaze, the weight of his regard. Even dying, the King could pin a person in place with a look.
“Father,” Caelan said, stepping closer. He went to one knee by the side of the bed. It wasn’t required, but some old habits were hard to break. “You sent for me.”
“I did,” the King said. “And you came. Miracles upon miracles.”
Lucien cleared his throat. “Your Majesty,” he said, bowing with a little flourish. “Still terrifying, I see.”
The King snorted, then winced. His hand came away from his mouth stained dark red. He eyed the blood thoughtfully, as if considering what omen it might be.
“Lucien,” he said. “And here I thought they’d finally succeeded in assassinating you.”
“Alas,” Lucien said. “I remain a disappointment.”
The King’s mouth twitched. “Leave us.”
Lucien’s brows lifted. He glanced at Caelan.
“It’s fine,” Caelan said. “Wait outside. If he tries to throw a candlestick at me, you can come rescue me.”
“He hasn’t the strength,” the King muttered. “I can still curse you, though.”
“That’s precisely what I’m worried about,” Caelan said dryly.
Lucien inclined his head and slipped out, the doors whispering closed behind him. The room felt immediately smaller, the air denser.
Caelan rose from his knee and took the chair beside the bed instead. Too many times, he’d knelt in this room—first as a scared child, then as a young man desperate for approval. He was done with that.
The King watched him with narrowed eyes. “You were at the seam again.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” Caelan said.
The King’s mouth curved faintly. “Checking on your pet mortal.”
“She’s not a pet,” Caelan said tightly.
“No,” the King agreed. “She’s a weapon. Or a bomb. Depending on how you use her.”
“I don’t intend to use her at all,” Caelan said. “I intend to make certain she doesn’t kill us.”
“Ah,” the King said. “Altruism. How novel.”
Caelan bit back the first response that came to his tongue. “You sent for me,” he said instead. “Why?”
The King’s amber eyes glittered with something like dark amusement. “Straight to business. Very well.” He shifted, grimacing as his lungs caught. “I’m dying, boy.”
“You’ve been dying for years,” Caelan said. The edge in his voice wasn’t disrespect. It was…tiredness. “You enjoy the drama.”
The King barked a short laugh that turned into another coughing fit. This time, when it passed, he looked smaller. Dimmer.
“You get your disrespect from your mother,” he said once he could speak again. “She never knew when to hold her tongue either.”
Caelan’s shoulders tightened. “You didn’t bring me here to reminisce about my mother,” he said.
“No,” the King said. “I brought you here to talk about you. And your…hobby.”
Caelan’s jaw clenched. “If this is about the girl—”
“It is always about the girl,” the King cut in. “Don’t pretend otherwise. You’ve been haunting the mortal realm like a lovesick ghost for decades. Do you think I didn’t notice?”
Heat crept up the back of Caelan’s neck. “It’s not—”
“Spare me,” the King said. “I have very little patience and even less time. You think you’re the first of our kind to become fascinated with a mortal? To wear a groove in the floor between worlds pacing and pining? You’re not special, Caelan. You’re just stubborn.”
His gaze sharpened. “What *is* special is the blood in that girl’s veins. Human and ours, twisted together. You know what the seers say.”
“When the blood of both worlds runs in one vein,” Caelan recited, voice flat, “Autumn will rise to glory or fall to ash.”
“Mm,” the King said. “You forgot the rest. ‘And the choice will be made by thorn and flame.’”
Caelan’s mouth thinned. “The rest is nonsense. Seers babble. It’s their nature.”
“Perhaps,” the King said. “But sometimes the babble sticks. Sometimes it shapes what comes after.”
Caelan stared at his hands. His right one bore faint scars, thin white lines from a battle he’d fought in the southern swamps. His left hand was unmarked.
“For what it’s worth,” the King said conversationally, “I think you’ve been going about this all wrong.”
“Oh?” Caelan said. “Do tell.”
“You’ve been watching her,” the King said. “Guarding her. Herding threats away from her path. Very noble. Very stupid.”
Caelan’s teeth clenched. “I couldn’t let the Court’s cowards slit the throat of a sleeping child.”
“Why not?” the King asked mildly. “We’ve killed for less. You’ve killed for less.”
“I’ve killed in battle,” Caelan said. “I’ve killed monsters, and traitors, and things that would have eaten villages whole.”
“And if she becomes such a thing?” the King asked. “If she becomes the flame that devours us?”
Caelan met his gaze. “Then I will put her down myself,” he said. The words tasted like ash. “But not before I know who she is. Not before she has a chance to be more than your prophecy.”
The King studied him. The silence stretched.
Finally, he snorted. “Sentimental,” he said. “Like your mother.”
“You keep saying that like it’s an insult,” Caelan said. “She’s the reason we have half our alliances. People liked her. They trusted her.”
“They liked her because she made them feel like they mattered,” the King said. “They trusted her because she told them pretty stories.” His jaw clenched. “Pretty stories don’t win wars.”
“No,” Caelan said quietly. “But they make people willing to die for you.”
The King’s eyes flashed.
They glared at each other for a heartbeat too long.
Then, unexpectedly, the King laughed. It was softer this time, genuine amusement under the rasp.
“You *have* grown up,” he said. “I remember when you couldn’t look me in the eye without flinching.”
“That was before I realized you were just a man with better cheekbones,” Caelan said.
The King smiled, sharp and brief. “Careful, boy. I can still disinherit you.”
“You haven’t yet,” Caelan said.
“You’re my best option,” the King said, as if it were an unfortunate fact. “The others are worse.”
He shifted again, wincing. “Which brings us back to the girl.”
Caelan waited.
“The High Seat of Thorns,” the King said, and his lip curled faintly around the title, “thinks we should kill her before the debt comes due. Save ourselves the risk. A…preemptive pruning of the tree, if you will.”
“Of course she does,” Caelan said. “She always did like pruning.”
“The Mire Queen agrees with her,” the King added.
Caelan’s hands tightened. “Of course she does.”
“And the Hound of Winter sent me a charming message about ‘prevention being better than restoration,’” the King said dryly. “Which is his way of saying he’d love to use the excuse of a prophecy to send his wolves south and tear a hole in our borders.”
“How reassuring,” Caelan said.
The King looked at him, expression unreadable. “What do *you* think we should do?”
Caelan blinked.
“You’re asking my opinion,” he said.
“I’m not so far gone that I can’t recognize when someone sees angles I don’t,” the King said. “You’ve always been…good with knots. With finding the loose thread.”
“Is that what this is?” Caelan asked. “A knot?”
“It’s a snare,” the King said. “The question is whose.”
Caelan thought of Rowan’s face in the bookstore aisle, set in that stubborn, stubborn line. He thought of the way she’d squared her shoulders against the dark.
He thought of the girl who’d grown up in their Court instead of her—Aisling, they called her now. The stolen child. Human-born, fae-raised, with a laugh like breaking glass and a talent for making people hurt exactly where they thought they were safest.
He thought of the prophecy, curling like smoke around both of them.
He thought of his own reflection in the thin places—two faces layered on top of each other. Prince and watcher. Hunter and guard.
“I think,” he said slowly, “that if we let the Court make this choice for us, they’ll pick the option that gives them the illusion of control. They’ll kill what scares them. They’ll chain what they don’t understand.”
“And you?” the King asked. “What will *you* do?”
Caelan looked at his father. Really looked. At the man who’d signed more death warrants than peace treaties, who’d made bargains that left scars on the land, who’d never once told his son he was proud of him.
“You always told me,” Caelan said slowly, “that the best way to win a game is to change the rules without anyone noticing.”
The King’s mouth curved faintly. “Did I? Must have been one of my better days.”
Caelan took a breath. “The original bargain was simple,” he said. “A life for a life. The grandmother’s child for one we chose. They fulfilled their side. We fulfilled ours.”
“And the debt that comes due at her twenty-sixth?” the King asked.
“Is not a death warrant,” Caelan said. “It’s a…collection notice. She was always meant to come to our Court. To be…integrated. Bound. Useful.”
The King scoffed. “You make it sound so polite.”
“I’m saying the terms are broader than they look,” Caelan said. “There’s nothing in the original words about her coming unwillingly. About her being dragged in chains.”
The King’s gaze sharpened. “Go on.”
“We’ve spent twenty-five years treating her like a bomb counting down,” Caelan said. “Keeping our distance. Watching. Waiting for her to explode in our faces. Meanwhile, she’s been living her own life. Making her own choices. Picking up…attachments.” His mouth twisted. “If we snatch her now, with no warning, she’ll hate us on principle.”
“As any sensible person would,” the King said.
“But if I go to her,” Caelan said, “if I speak to her *before* the deadline…if I offer her a different bargain—”
The King’s brows rose slowly. “Grooming her to her fate, are you?”
“I’m not trying to trick her into chains,” Caelan said sharply. “I want her consent.”
The King laughed. “You’re a terrible fae, boy.”
“Thank you,” Caelan said.
“You want her to choose to come,” the King said. “Even if that choice damns her.”
“I think the only way we survive this,” Caelan said quietly, “is if she’s on our side. Truly. Not because we forced her, not because we threatened her…because she decided we were worth saving.”
The King stared at him. Something slow and dangerous built in his eyes.
“Do you *love* her?” he asked suddenly.
Caelan went very still.
“I don’t know her,” he said. It was almost true.
“But you’ve watched her,” the King said. “You’ve guarded her. You’ve crawled into her dreams like fog. You’ve fed the Court lies about accidents and coincidences every time one of the more enterprising assassins tried to slit her throat in a supermarket aisle.”
Caelan’s jaw clenched. “Someone poisoned her coffee once. It was a mess.”
The King just kept looking at him. “Answer the question, boy.”
Caelan felt the word on the back of his tongue. No. Of course not. Don’t be ridiculous.
What came out was, “I want her to live.”
The King’s eyes glinted. “That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one I have,” Caelan snapped. “I don’t know what I feel. I watch. I protect. I get annoyed when she does reckless human things like cross the street without looking. I want to strangle her grandmother and drag her out of that facility and wrap her in every spell I know so she never dies. I…don’t know what that is.”
“That,” the King said dryly, “is why we avoid humans. They make everything messy.”
He coughed again, a long, racking spasm. When it finally subsided, he sagged against the pillows, spent.
“You want to go to her,” he said. “To bargain.”
“Yes,” Caelan said.
“You want my blessing,” the King said. “So that when the Court howls, you can say you had the dying King’s leave.”
“Yes,” Caelan said again.
The King smiled faintly. “Always playing angles,” he murmured. “Good. You’ll need that.”
He closed his eyes briefly, then opened them again. “You may go,” he said. “You may offer her whatever you like. Bring her here if you can. Kill anyone who tries to stop you.”
Relief loosened something in Caelan’s chest. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” the King said. “There’s one condition.”
Of course there was.
Caelan’s fingers tightened on the arm of the chair. “Name it.”
“If she comes,” the King said softly, “if she sets foot in this Court under your protection…she is yours.”
Caelan frowned. “Mine?”
“Yours to guard,” the King said. “Yours to answer for. If she saves us, the glory is yours. If she destroys us…” His lips peeled back in something like a smile. “So is the blame.”
A chill crawled over Caelan’s skin. “You want a scapegoat.”
“I want a center of gravity,” the King said. “A fulcrum. A place where pressure can be applied.” His gaze sharpened. “I want you to have something you can’t afford to lose.”
“I already do,” Caelan said.
The King’s expression flickered. For a second, something like…regret?…crossed his face. Then it was gone.
“You’ll need to bleed for this, boy,” he said. “One way or another. Might as well do it on your own terms.”
Gran’s words echoed in Caelan’s mind, carried on a mortal’s shaky breath. *If he wants you, he can bleed for it.*
“I’ll bleed,” Caelan said.
“Good,” the King said. “Make it impressive. We have a reputation.”
He closed his eyes again, this time more fully. The conversation was over. He’d given what he wanted to give. Taken what he wanted to take.
Caelan stared at him for a moment, then stood.
“Rest,” he said.
The King grunted. “Try not to doom us all while I’m napping.”
Lucien was waiting outside the doors, leaning against the wall, arms folded. His gaze flicked to Caelan’s face and sharpened.
“Well?” he asked. “Are we murdering anyone tonight, or is this a planning sort of evening?”
“I have his blessing,” Caelan said. “To go to her.”
Lucien’s brows climbed. “Just like that?”
“Not just like that,” Caelan said. “With conditions.”
“Of course,” Lucien said. “He does love those.”
Caelan started down the corridor. Lucien fell into step beside him.
“You’ll be leaving soon, then,” Lucien said. There was something almost…careful in his tone.
“Yes,” Caelan said. “The seam will be weakest as we move into October. Best time to cross.”
Lucien nodded. “And you’ll talk to her. Charm her. Make your case. Hope she doesn’t stab you with something.”
“She doesn’t carry iron,” Caelan said. “She can’t. It hurts her.”
Lucien glanced at him, eyes warming with something like sympathy. “You know that much about her.”
“I know…enough,” Caelan said.
They stepped out onto a balcony that overlooked the inner courtyards of the Palace. Below, the Court had gathered for some event—a feast, a hunt, an excuse to dress in their most elaborate finery and circle each other like bright, poisonous insects.
Music floated up, sweet and eerie. Laughter sparkled like shattering glass. The scent of spiced wine and roasted meat rose on the wind.
Leaning on the balcony rail, Lucien watched them with hooded eyes. “Leaving them to their games for a while,” he mused. “I’m almost jealous.”
“You can come,” Caelan said. “I could use someone at my back whose first instinct isn’t to poison the wine.”
Lucien snorted. “Oh, I intend to come. Someone has to make sure you don’t get distracted by big human eyes and forget you’re supposed to bring her *back.*”
“I know what my duty is,” Caelan said.
“Do you?” Lucien asked quietly.
Caelan didn’t answer.
Below, laughter rose, bright and brittle. Above, the twilight sky glowed as if lit from within, bruised and burning all at once.
In three months, the seam between worlds would pull tight around one mortal girl’s throat.
Before that happened, Caelan intended to change the terms.
Even if it meant walking into her life openly, stepping out of the shadows he’d watched her from for so long.
Even if it meant giving her a knife and asking her to hold it at his throat while he made his offer.
He’d bled for less.