5. Ryewood
Ryewood
“Focus, Rye.”
Grier’s voice cuts across the yard. I’ve lost count of how many times he’s said it. I am focused, just not where he wants me to be.
I read the shift in Finn’s shoulders a fraction too late, and the distraction costs me. He sweeps my legs out in one clean motion, and the ground slams into my back before I can recover. I stare up at the sky for half a heartbeat longer than necessary.
Finn hauls me up. “You planning to tell us what’s wrong or just keep getting your ass handed to you?”
I wipe the dirt from my palms, shirt already soaked through. “I just need some water.”
Finn snorts. “You need something. Pretty sure it’s not water, though.”
He’s not wrong, but I don’t give him the satisfaction. I pull a long swig of water instead. I drop onto the bench, turning the leather-wrapped flask in my hand.
Beyond our ring, the swordmaster barks, “Again,” like saying it louder will change anything.
The noble swings too wide, overcommits, leaving his flank exposed. The swordmaster doesn’t even correct it. Finn teaches instinct, and Grier teaches survival. The rest just teach unearned confidence.
I let my focus drift past the yards, past the shouting swordmaster, toward the edge, where the castle grounds fall away, stone giving way to air, then beach and sea. Waves smash themselves raw below, the sound carrying up on salt and wind.
The fog wall catches my attention like it always does.
It sits too close, too thick, too permanent, never moving or breaking.
Birds know not to fly near it; they veer off before they get close.
Ships can’t get through it either. The few that tried came back battered, their crews hollow and silent for days.
You’d think it would block everything, but it doesn’t. The salt-tinged sea air still finds a way through. Just not people, never people.
My gaze slides to the far edge of the gardens, where the wall takes over, its stone pale and seamless.
The entrance to the Weeping Woods is cut into it like a scar that never healed right, its arch breathing mist, fog spilling low and gray even in full daylight. A different fog, but the same warning.
It’s been nearly two months. Long enough that the little fox has threaded herself through my thoughts, holding them like they’re hers.
I knew she mattered the moment I saw her, a quiet certainty that settled in my chest and stayed.
The kind you don’t question because your body understands it even if you don’t.
I remember the way she said my full name, Ryewood, light and teasing, like she knew exactly what it would do to me.
I don’t pretend it doesn’t matter, but wanting her has made me reckless, and I don’t know who’s noticed.
I’ve looked, followed threads, tried to buy answers, but nothing turns up.
No fox, no whispers, no trail to follow.
Which should be the end of it, and yet every time my thoughts loosen, they drift back to her anyway, gentle and unforced, like something returning to where it belongs.
I loosen my grip on the flask and force my focus back to the ring.
Steel rings out as Finn presses forward, boots biting into the dirt. Hayes retreats half a step, adjusts, then meets him head-on. They’ve been circling each other long enough now that the rest of the yard has started paying attention.
I almost can’t remember a time before Finn, back when Hayes and I were the best in the yard. He showed up and reset the scale in a way I don’t think we’ll ever get back.
“Again,” Grier says, not sharp, not corrective. But his eyes are on me, not Finn.
“Are you actually going to participate in training today, Princeling?” Finn says without looking at me.
The pause stretches just long enough to register, and a few guards curiously glance our way. I push off the bench and roll my shoulders back. “I wasn’t planning to make it that easy for you,” I say.
Finn snorts, and Hayes doesn’t look convinced.
I step toward the ring and the air shifts. I glance over my shoulder. Percival is walking to the edge of the yard with the five freshly awakened nobles flanking him. All silk and smooth edges, where the rest of us are dust and sweat. They stop at the line like it’s beneath them to cross it.
“Your Highness,” Percival says, nodding to Hayes. Then his eyes slide to me. “Prince Ryewood.”
Ryewood. That’s all it takes. The yard blurs, and I’m back in that alley, her voice light and confident as she says my name like it’s already hers. Hearing it come out of Percival’s mouth snaps my jaw tight.
What the fuck is wrong with me?
Grier must feel the shift because he steps in without hesitation, coming up behind me like he’s always done. “Congratulations on your awakening,” he says politely.
I give him a small grin, grateful for the interruption, for something to anchor me back here.
Percival’s attention flicks to me, brief and assessing, the kind of look meant to acknowledge rank without offering respect. Then his gaze slides past Grier and Finn entirely, like they’re part of the yard itself, before settling back on Hayes. Like only the crown prince is worth his time.
Hayes’s jaw ticks subtly. Finn catches it too and claps Hayes on the back, all easy confidence. “Hey, pretty sure I saw Rosie down in the gardens,” he says lightly. “We should go say hi.”
Hayes’s shoulders loosen as he turns. He’s already halfway gone when Rowena Thornwick smiles at him, the trials barely behind her, magic still new on her skin, like surviving puts her above the rest of us.
“Oh, Rosie,” she says. “Sweet girl. Though I suppose she’s more suited to…well, guards than princes, wouldn’t you say?”
Hayes stops and turns, and the air shifts.
“Rosalie made it through those woods without a single guard protecting her,” Hayes says, his voice cutting clean across the yard, causing heads to turn and conversations to die.
“How many of you would’ve survived the trials without guards keeping you alive?
” His voice rises, control slipping even further.
“The same guards you seem so eager to look down on.”
“Hayes—” I start.
But he doesn’t slow. “She earned her place here,” he says, raw and furious. “Can any of you say the same?”
He draws breath again, and I feel what’s coming, the part that won’t be forgiven. I move, stepping fully into his space and closing my hand around his forearm. Not hard, but firm enough, and public.
“That’s enough,” I say, low, pitched only for him, but the yard hears it anyway.
Hayes jerks against my grip once, then stills, his jaw locking. I can see Rosie staring at us from the gardens below, and the other nobles standing stunned. Even the swordmaster doesn’t breathe.
He looks at me, and whatever he was going to say dies there.
Then I hear it. Measured footsteps, controlled and familiar. I don’t have to turn to know who it is.
Father steps out from the atrium with High Commander Voss at his side, and just like that, the yard remembers who it actually belongs to.
“Hayesland,” Father says, his practiced lightness slipping neatly into place.
Hayes doesn’t look at him at first, still staring at the nobles, jaw tight, and shoulders rigid. Father steps in close and clamps a hand on his shoulder, with his smile fixed for the watching nobles.
“Perfect timing. High Commander Voss has some court matters he’d like to review with you.”
The words are polite, but the order isn’t.
High Commander Voss doesn’t move to follow Hayes. He stays where he is, watching me. I watch Hayes go, knowing this won’t end cleanly.
Father draws a slow breath in through his nose before his gaze turns to me. The weight of it lands immediately, the way it always does.
He turns smoothly back to the nobles. “Percival, my boy. I hear your magical training is coming along nicely. Your family must be quite proud.”
“Thank you, Your Majesty,” Percival says, bowing just deep enough to be correct.
Father smiles, the kind meant for an audience, then his eyes return to me.
“Ryewood.” His tone stays pleasant, almost cordial. “Walk with me.”
He’s already turning.
We leave the yard in silence, boots crunching over gravel as we head down the sloped path toward the throne room. I don’t speak and neither does he. His silence is a test, and I’ve learned not to fail it.
Like always, that unsettled feeling hits the moment we step into the atrium.
I miss when Hayes and I were kids, when this place still felt enchanted.
A forest growing inside our home, the atrium soaring up to glass overhead, sun spilling down onto Father’s oaks, rooted straight into marble.
We ran ourselves breathless between the trunks, playing hide-and-seek with wooden swords, one of us always a Savage, while our nursemaid scolded us for believing in fairy tales that she’d probably grown up fearing.
Back then, Father’s magic felt wondrous.
Now, the wrongness hits me every time I step inside, subtle and persistent.
The trees grow without soil, their leaves never browning or falling.
And the sap. Most days it’s clear, sticky and ordinary, but sometimes I notice it’s darkened to a deep amber that catches the light wrong.
The smell shifts, too, still sweet but threaded with something metallic.
I know what it reminds me of. I push that thought deep.
Father’s footsteps echo across the marble as he crosses the atrium.
He pauses for a breath at his throne beneath the canopy, but he’s not looking at it.
He’s looking at the empty space beside it, where the marble is a shade lighter from whatever used to be there.
I used to think it was where my mother’s throne had been.
Hayes told me once that Father never made her one.
He stares at that empty space like he’s waiting for something to return to it. His hand finds his pocket and the pearl comes out, turning it slowly between his fingers. Then his jaw locks. His fist closes around it, as he walks on without looking back.