Chapter 11 #2
Before I could answer—before I could figure out what I would answer—Merithra stood, commanding attention.
The great hall had filled while we’d been talking.
Court members lined the long tables—fae in varying states of autumn, some with bark-textured skin, others with leaves for hair, all beautiful and dangerous in that way unique to the old courts.
They’d been watching us, I realized. Watching Elle specifically, with the kind of hunger that came from witnessing something unprecedented.
Our crew sat scattered along the table—Vashael to Elle’s right, Eltrien further down looking increasingly uncomfortable, Sarnyx and Bryx together across from us.
Nimor had taken a position near the shadows, as was his nature.
Thessaly sat at her mother’s right hand, amber eyes fixed on me with an expression I couldn’t read.
The table itself was a work of impossible craft—living wood that grew and shifted, plates that seemed carved from solidified moonlight, goblets that held liquid starlight.
Elle’s dress caught the fairy-light, making her look like she belonged here, like she was part of the Court’s impossible beauty rather than a human who’d stumbled through a portal.
“We have a tradition in the Autumn Court,” Merithra announced, her voice carrying through the hall with effortless authority.
The low conversations died instantly. “Stories for secrets. Entertainment for information.” Her gaze found Elle, sharp and assessing.
“Tell us a tale from your world, human, and I’ll tell you what you need to know about the convergence. ”
Every eye turned to Elle—and to the beetle on her shoulder, who was regarded with the kind of wary respect usually reserved for unpredictable explosives.
She stood slowly, and I saw her hands tremble slightly before she clasped them together. The dress moved like water as she rose, her marks pulsing gently at her collarbones—the only sign of her nervousness beyond that brief tremor.
“What kind of story?” she asked, and her voice was steady despite the roomful of predators watching her.
“Something true. Something that matters. Something that explains who you are.”
Elle was quiet for a moment, and I could feel the weight of the Court’s attention pressing down on her. Could sense the danger in it—one wrong word, one perceived insult, and Merithra’s protection might evaporate like morning frost.
Then Elle began, and something in her voice made even the ancient fae lean forward to listen.
“My grandmother had a garden. Not a magical one—just vegetables and flowers in Arkansas dirt. But she used to tell me that gardens were honest. They showed you exactly what you put into them. No lies, no pretense, just cause and effect.”
The court had gone silent, listening.
“She died last year. Left me the house, the garden, everything. I went to settle the estate, to sell it all and move on with my neat, controlled life. But the garden was dead. Everything withered and brown.” Elle’s marks pulsed gently.
“I sat in that dead garden and cried for the first time since finding my fiancé in bed with my best friend. Cried because the garden was honest—it showed exactly what happened when no one cared for something. When you assumed it would just keep growing without attention or love.”
She looked directly at Merithra. “That’s when the storm came. When the lightning struck. When I fell through to Wynmire. I think… I think maybe I was meant to. Because I finally understood that nothing grows without being tended. Not plants. Not love. Not even yourself.”
The silence that followed was complete.
My entire body went rigid. My carved marks flared with sudden violence, corruption spreading across the table before I caught it.
I’d known about the ex-fiancé. She’d mentioned him in passing—an explanation for why she’d been at her grandmother’s house, why she’d been vulnerable enough for the portal to take her.
But she’d never told me this. Never said he’d been in bed with her best friend.
Never explained the full scope of the betrayal that had broken her.
The rage that filled me was absolute and consuming. This wasn’t just an ended relationship—it was a double betrayal. Two people she’d trusted most, destroying her in the same moment. Making her feel like she wasn’t enough when the truth was they hadn’t deserved her at all.
I wanted to find this man, this pathetic excuse for a partner. Wanted to show him what real betrayal felt like. What real pain could be. The corruption in my marks responded to the violence of my thoughts, spreading further before I caught it and forced it back.
My hand clenched on the table, wood beginning to transform under my touch.
Then Merithra began to clap, slow and deliberate. “A perfect story. Honest and raw and human.” She smiled, and for once it seemed genuine. “So let me tell you about the convergence. What it really is, not the sanitized version the Crown would have you believe.”
Elle sat back down slowly, still catching her breath from the vulnerability of her story.
“The convergence isn’t Root and Bloom reuniting,” Merithra continued. “It’s the realm trying to reset itself. To return to a state before the split.”
“What split?” Elle asked.
“Root and Bloom were one once. A single force of growth and preservation in perfect balance. But something broke them apart. Something that required them to become opposites instead of complements.”
“What?” I demanded, still fighting the urge to destroy something in honor of Elle’s piece of shit ex.
Merithra’s eyes found mine. “You really don’t know the full story?
Or have you just accepted the sanitized version they teach in the Crown’s histories?
” She laughed, bitter and ancient. “Humans. Humans broke them apart. The first one to fall through, specifically. They made a choice that forced the split, and the realm has been trying to heal itself ever since.”
I went still. I’d heard whispers, fragments of old stories that suggested humans were involved in the original schism. But the Crown had always dismissed them as myth, propaganda from the early wars. “That’s not possible. The split happened before recorded history.”
“Before official history,” Merithra corrected. “The Crown has spent millennia burying the truth. Easier to blame natural forces than admit a human unmade the realm’s fundamental nature.”
Elle went very still. “Are you saying…?”
“I’m saying every human who falls through is an echo of that first breaking.
And you, my dear, with your unprecedented marks and your impossible transformation—you might be the echo that finally shatters everything completely.
” Merithra leaned forward. “Or the one that finally heals it. The convergence will force you to choose.”
“Choose what?”
“Whether to maintain the split or merge the forces back together. But here’s what the Crown doesn’t want you to know—both choices have been made before. Multiple times. And both have failed.”
“That’s impossible,” I said. “The convergence is supposed to be a singular event.”
“Is it?” Merithra’s smile was sharp. “Or is that just what you’ve been told?”
The great hall went very still.
“How many times?” Elle’s voice was barely a whisper.
I noticed Eltrien tense across the table, his hands stilling on his wine glass. He knew something—had known something all along. His eyes met mine briefly, a warning there I couldn’t interpret.
“Who can say? The memories blur, fade, get overwritten. But sometimes they bleed through. In dreams. In moments of déjà vu. In the sense that you’ve done this before.”
Elle’s marks were glowing brighter now, pulsing with distress. I wanted to reach for her, to offer comfort, but my corruption would only hurt her.
“So I’m trapped?” she asked. “Doomed to make the same choice over and over?”
“Unless you make a different choice. One that’s never been made before.” Merithra stood. “But to do that, you’d have to become something that’s never existed before. Something neither Root nor Bloom nor human.”
“Something like what?”
“That, my dear, is what you’ll have to discover for yourself.”
I wanted to demand more answers. Wanted to force Merithra to explain exactly what Elle was supposed to become, how to stop the Wild Hunt, how to break a cycle that had apparently been repeating for who knew how long.
But the Duchess had already turned away, the conversation clearly over by her decree.
The feast continued in form but not substance—people went through the motions of eating, drinking, conversing, but the earlier ease had evaporated.
Within the hour, court members began making excuses and departing.
I watched Elle leave with Vashael and the others, the starlight dress making her look like she belonged to this impossible place even as I knew she must be drowning in revelations.
I retreated to my quarters, needing space to think. The room’s constantly shifting timeline was actually soothing—it matched the chaos in my mind.
I was standing at my window, watching three seasons turn simultaneously, when Nimor materialized from the shadows.
“We have a problem,” he said without preamble.
“Beyond the Wild Hunt coming to kill Elle at sunrise?”
“The Duchess’s protection ends at her borders. The moment we step outside the Autumn Court, we’re vulnerable. And the paths out are limited.”
I turned to face him. “You’ve been scouting.”
“Old habits.” He solidified more fully, which meant he was genuinely concerned. “There’s something else. Eltrien has been… strange. More than usual.”
“Define strange.”
“He keeps muttering about patterns and iterations. Drawing symbols I don’t recognize. And tonight, when the Duchess mentioned deja vu and repetition, he looked terrified.”
I thought of how Eltrien had tensed at dinner, that warning look he’d given me. “You think he knows something.”
“I think he knows everything. The question is why he hasn’t told us.” As concerning as this was, we had more immediate issues to discuss.
“The Wild Hunt,” I said, changing the subject. “What do we know about their weaknesses?”
“They don’t have any. That’s rather the point.”
“Everything has weaknesses.”
“Not things that exist outside normal reality.” Nimor began to fade again. “But I’ll keep scouting. Maybe there’s something in the old stories.”
He disappeared completely, leaving me alone with my thoughts and the turning seasons outside my window.
Tomorrow, we’d face something that had never been defeated.
Tomorrow, Elle would need me to be the strategist, the protector, the cold and calculating leader who could find victory in impossible odds.
But tonight, I stood in my impossible room and admitted a different truth: my carved marks were spreading faster since we’d arrived here.
The corruption responded to emotion, and being near Elle—watching her in that dress, hearing her story, feeling her presence through the space where our bond existed—was accelerating my decline.
I was dying faster because of her.
And I didn’t care.
The Wild Hunt could come. The convergence could demand its impossible choice. The realm could tear itself apart.
As long as Elle survived it, nothing else mattered.
That probably should have terrified me.
Instead, it felt like clarity.