Chapter 18 Elle
Elle
The dream had changed everything, and the two days since had been an exercise in pretending it hadn’t.
We’d left the monastery at dawn—too early, moving with the kind of desperate efficiency that came from needing to outrun both the Hunt and our own thoughts.
The crew noticed, of course. How could they not?
Kaelren and I orbited each other like binary stars, pulled together by gravity we couldn’t control but held apart by the very real danger of what might happen if we touched.
Every accidental brush of hands sent flowers blooming. Every shared glance made reality ripple at the edges. The bond between us thrummed with tension that was equal parts desire and terror—one wrong move and we’d either tear the realm apart or finally, finally give in to what we both wanted.
“You’re doing the thing again,” Peeble observed from my shoulder as we navigated another narrow forest path.
“What thing?”
“The ‘staring at him while pretending you’re not staring’ thing. Very subtle. Extremely convincing. Nobody suspects a thing.”
“I’m not—”
“He’s doing it too, by the way. Currently examining the back of your head like it contains the secrets of the universe. Which, given your general situation, it might.”
I didn’t look back to confirm. I didn’t need to—I could feel his attention like heat between my shoulder blades, could sense through our bond that he was remembering exactly what I was remembering. The waterfall. The vines. The promises we’d made.
“This is torture,” I muttered.
“Welcome to sexual tension,” Peeble said cheerfully. “Population: you two idiots who can’t touch without potentially destroying reality. Sad trombone noise.”
The worst part was that everything reminded me of the dream.
The way sunlight filtered through the canopy became the light-waterfall.
The sound of wind through leaves turned into his voice saying my name like a prayer and a threat.
Even the flowers growing along the path seemed to mock me with their innocent beauty.
Sarnyx noticed, because of course she did. On the second morning, she’d pulled me aside with an expression that managed to be both knowing and exasperated.
“Whatever happened in that monastery,” she’d said, “get it under control. We can’t afford distractions right now.”
“Nothing happened,” I’d lied.
She’d given me a look that said she wasn’t buying it. “The flowers growing everywhere you walk say otherwise. As does the way he watches you like a man dying of thirst looking at water he can’t drink.”
I’d had no response to that.
The others handled our tension differently.
Bryx made increasingly inappropriate jokes that nobody laughed at.
Vashael and Nimor exchanged glances that suggested they were taking bets on when we’d finally crack.
Even the Sage seemed amused, though they at least had the grace not to comment directly.
Only Eltrien remained characteristically cryptic.
“The convergence approaches,” he’d said that morning, his mycelial markings pulsing in that unsettling rhythm.
“And you two are preparing for it whether you know it or not. What happens in dreams has a way of becoming real in this realm. Be careful what you promise.”
Now, as the sun began its descent toward the horizon, we finally emerged from the dense forest paths into something that made me stop breathing.
The Thornwood Throne wasn’t what I’d expected.
After days of running, fighting, and nearly dissolving into pure possibility, I’d built up this image in my head of a dark fortress, all thorns and shadows and brooding rebellion.
Instead, as we emerged from the forest paths, I found myself staring at something that looked like it had been dreamed rather than built.
The base spread through a massive hollow where trees had been coaxed into living architecture.
Colossal blossoms—each the size of a small house—had been hollowed out and transformed into dwellings, their petals glowing with soft incandescent light that shifted from rose to bronze to violet as the sun set.
Vines thick as bridge cables wove between the structures, creating walkways that pulsed with their own gentle light.
Pollen lanterns floated freely through the air, casting dancing shadows that seemed to move independently of their light sources.
And it was alive with celebration.
“What is this?” I breathed, taking in the whirl of activity around us.
“The Harvest Moon Festival,” Nimor said, his form solid and stable since Eltrien’s intervention. “I’d forgotten it was tonight.”
“Of course it is,” Peeble muttered. “Because arriving at rebel headquarters during a massive public festival is exactly the kind of tactical brilliance I’ve come to expect from this operation.”
“The Hunt won’t breach our defenses here,” Kaelren said, though his carved marks pulsed with tension that had nothing to do with external threats. “Not tonight. Even they respect certain boundaries.”
His eyes met mine across the space between us, and I felt the echo of the dream—the waterfall, the promises, the way he’d looked at me like I was something he wanted to devour and worship in equal measure.
Two days of walking. Two days of wanting. Two days of knowing exactly what we’d do to each other if we could just touch without consequences.
The festival spread before us like a test, like a dare, like an inevitability we’d been careening toward since the moment we’d woken tangled together on monastery moss.
“Well,” Peeble said with obvious glee, “this is definitely going to end badly. Shall we?”
But I barely heard them. The scene before me was overwhelming in its strange beauty.
Insect drummers created rhythms that seemed to bypass my ears and go straight to my bones.
Florakith acrobats twisted through the air on silk ribbons, their wings catching the light like stained glass.
Tables groaned under the weight of feasts—glowing fruits I’d never seen, sweets that looked like they were enchanted, bread that released luminous steam.
It was magical. It was impossible. And it made my chest ache with a homesickness so sharp I had to catch my breath.
“Elle?” Kaelren’s voice, closer than expected.
“It reminds me of the county fair,” I said, not looking at him.
“Grandma Jo used to take me every summer. The lights, the music, the chaos of it all. Except there the biggest attraction was a butter sculpture of a cow, not…” I gestured at a performer who appeared to be juggling balls of living light.
Through our bond, I felt his conflict—wanting to comfort but not knowing how, not without touching, not without risking another reality-warping moment.
“We should find quarters,” he said instead, falling back on practicality. “Rest while we can.”
But the moment we entered the festival proper, the crew began to scatter like seeds on the wind.
Bryx immediately got pulled into some kind of game involving thrown daggers and moving targets, his laughter bright and genuine.
Vashael drifted toward where Nimor stood watching the acrobats, and I saw her hand brush his—deliberate, testing.
His form solidified further at the touch, and something passed between them that made me look away.
Sarnyx remained with us, but she was on high alert, watching the crowd like a bomb was about to detonate.
“I need to check our supplies,” she said abruptly. “Don’t do anything stupid.”
Then she was gone, leaving Kaelren and me standing awkwardly at the edge of the celebration.
“You should enjoy it,” he said, his voice carefully neutral. “We don’t get many nights like this.”
“What about you?”
“I need to report to the other cell leaders. Explain…” He gestured vaguely at me, at the flowers that had started growing around my feet without my conscious input. “This.”
“Right. The anomaly needs explaining.”
“Elle—”
“Go,” I said, sharper than intended. “Do your rebel leader thing. I’ll try not to accidentally transform reality while you’re gone.”
He hesitated, and through our bond, I felt words he wanted to say but couldn’t. Then he was gone, his corruption leaving cold spots in the warm festival air.
“Well,” Peeble announced, landing on my shoulder with a metallic chime. “That was sufficiently awkward. Should we find something to eat, or would you prefer to stand here growing increasingly elaborate depression flowers?”
I looked down. The flowers around my feet had turned blue—not midnight like the cosmos, but a deep, melancholic blue that hurt to look at.
“Food,” I decided. “And maybe something to drink that will make me forget I’m apparently stuck in a cosmic shit show.”
“That’s the spirit!” Peeble said cheerfully. “Nothing says coping like festival wine and denial!”
We wandered deeper into the celebration, and I tried to lose myself in the wonder of it all.
A vendor offered me something that looked like candied daffodils and tasted like summer rain.
Children ran past trailing ribbons that painted colors in the air.
Music shifted and swirled, sometimes sounding like home, sometimes like nothing that I’d heard before.
But everywhere I went, I felt the stares. Some curious, some fearful, some calculating. I was the anomaly, the thing that shouldn’t be, the human wearing marks meant for their realm.
“She’s the one,” I heard someone whisper. “The one who turned Hunt riders into trees.”
“Look at her marks—they’re spreading.”
I glanced down at my arms. They were right.
The marks had crept past my collarbone, delicate tracings now visible on my forearms when the light hit right.
But there were dark veins too, shadows of corruption that matched Kaelren’s.
They appeared when I woke up from the dream.
Kaelren assumed it was a symptom of the deepening connection of our bond.
I paused at a stall selling bottled memories—actual memories trapped in perriwinkle-like gems that played when you held them to the light. The vendor, a creature made entirely of shifting sand, offered me one for free.
“For the prophet,” they whispered, pressing it into my palm before I could refuse.
The memory bloomed in my mind—warm and comforting, like a hug from the person you love most.
A Florakith mother teaching her daughter to dance for the first time.
The child’s wings weren’t fully formed yet, just translucent nubs that trembled with excitement.
They stood in a garden that had existed a hundred years ago, maybe more, surrounded by flowers that no longer grew in Wynmire.
The mother’s laughter was like wind chimes, and when the little one stumbled over her own feet, she caught her gently, spinning her in the air until the stumble became part of the dance itself.
“See?” the mother’s voice echoed across time. “There are no mistakes in dancing, my bloom. Only new steps we haven’t learned yet.”
The child giggled—a sound so pure it made my chest ache—and tried again. This time her wings caught the rhythm, and for a moment, just a moment, she floated. The joy in her face was so fierce, so bright, that it hurt to witness.
Then the memory shifted. The same daughter, grown now, teaching her own child the same dance in the same garden—except the flowers were different, the realm older, the steps slightly changed. She spoke the same words her mother had spoken: “There are no mistakes in dancing, my bloom.”
It was a tradition, I realized. Passed down through generations, evolving but never lost. A small moment of beauty and continuity in a realm that seemed built on chaos and change.
The memory faded, leaving me gasping—not with horror this time, but with something deeper. Loss, maybe. Longing for traditions I’d never had, for roots that went deeper than one generation, for the kind of love that survived through teaching and time.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” The sand vendor’s voice rippled like water over stone. “That family line stretches back four hundred years. The current daughter still teaches that dance every Harvest Moon.”
I looked down at the crystal in my palm, its surface still warm. “Why give this to me?”
“Because you’re building something new,” they said simply. “And sometimes, when building the new, it helps to remember what’s worth keeping from the old.”
Despite everything, I smiled. It felt good, real.
That’s when I saw the dancers. The vendor nodded his head in their direction and shooed me away.
They moved in the center of the festival, bodies telling stories without words. Some had wings, some had too many limbs, some seemed to be made of plants themselves. But they all moved together, creating patterns mesmerizing.
“You should join,” a voice said beside me. A local, her bark-skin glowing with health, her leaf-hair rustling with the music. “The dance chooses its partners, and tonight, it’s calling for you.”
“I don’t know the steps.”
“The dance knows them for you.” She smiled, and it was kind despite the sharp thorns that served as her teeth. “Besides, the one with stormy eyes has been watching you all night. Perhaps the dance will call him too.”
I didn’t have to ask who she meant. Even without looking, I could feel Kaelren’s presence at the edge of the festival, his attention like a weight between my shoulder blades.
“Maybe later,” I said.
But later had a way of becoming now in this realm.
The music shifted, and suddenly dancers were reaching for me, pulling me into their spiral.
I tried to resist, but their joy was infectious, their movement hypnotic.
Before I knew it, I was spinning with them, my feet finding steps I didn’t know, my body moving to rhythms that were both beautiful and sensual all in one.
The world became a blur of light and sound and motion. I forgot about death and doom. Forgot about choosing between love and realm. Forgot everything except the dance and the way it made me feel—alive, present, real.
That’s when I felt him.
Kaelren stood at the edge of the dance, his darkness a sharp contrast to the swirling lights. Our eyes met across the spinning bodies, and something electric passed between us.
Come, the dance seemed to whisper. Both of you. Show us what impossible looks like.
“This is definitely going to end badly,” Peeble observed from somewhere above. “Which means it’ll be entertaining. Carry on!”
The dancers parted, creating a path between us. The music slowed, deepened, became something that thrummed in my bones.
Kaelren took a step forward. Then another.
And I knew, with the certainty of someone who’d been warned by oracles, that this dance would change everything.
Or destroy everything.
With us, there never seemed to be a middle ground.