16. The Trees Go Mad
The Trees Go Mad
Nevander clutches Seren too tightly, his mind stunned blank.
Thin, blood-stained arms press between them.
Frost silvers the crown of flowers, tracing wet outlines beneath Nevander’s chin.
Seren must be dazed, asking nonsense questions about Nevander’s eyes.
New worries weave from blood, snow, the hoarseness of Seren’s voice.
Yet the relief is most troubling of all. Nevander has become so quickly, so arrogantly accustomed to Seren’s presence. As if the past twenty-one years could be so easily painted over.
This brief separation proves the depths of Nevander’s scars.
A brief separation. Not a safe one. Primrose intends the best for Summer, and that goal only mostly overlaps with Nevander’s. Her haven is too expansive, taking a life of its own.
“We should go,” Seren says, muffled against Nevander’s chest. “There’s a trial for each realm.”
The subtle warmth of his words outweighs the frozen wind. Now isn’t the time for comfort. Nevander unlocks reluctant limbs and steps back. “Which realm did you start in?”
A flush colors Seren’s cheeks. A scabbing cut glitters dark above his brow, but his gaze is bright and breathtaking. “Spring. We’re going backwards.”
“The door is copper,” Nevander agrees, then catches Seren’s confusion. “It’s a symbol of Loria. Summer gold, Autumn copper, Winter silver, and Spring irium.”
Seren wrinkles his nose. “So, I should have expected the blizzard.”
He reaches for the door, then hesitates.
Nevander’s sword leaps to his right hand. With his left, he reaches for Seren. “If there’s danger, stay behind me.”
Seren grabs Nevander back, and his other hand flattens against the copper runes. “Are all havens like this?”
“Definitely not.”
“Good,” Seren says, and pushes.
The door vanishes in a blaze of orange. The icy wasteland shatters into color—the glorious bloom of life, dreaming before slumber. Deep russet crowns the court of trees, and a carpet of dried leaves whispers underfoot.
Above the radiant forest, the false sky is fragile.
“What’s wrong?” Seren asks, hand slipping away.
Nevander barely keeps himself from pinning Seren in place. He must have lost control of his emotions—but no, his shield remains. Seren is just insightful, even without magic.
“The color sets my teeth on edge,” Nevander admits. “Creatures too long from their home realms go sick or mad. Most autumn trees I’ve seen have been dangerous.”
Seren examines the forest suspiciously. “The trees go mad?”
A deep voice dances between rustling branches. Once, passage between the realms was common, Primrose says. Roads through Elsewhere remained solid, without even a lord to tend them.
A squirrel flits to a nearby branch at eye level. Bright orange paws clasp the copper tree bark. Its mouth doesn’t move, but the voice clearly originates there.
Fae wandered most during the thresholds between seasons, Primrose continues. As Summer’s ascendancy waned, the beasts of Autumn would visit as heralds.
There’s something unsettling about the deep bear’s voice coming from a tiny squirrel.
“Has she been doing this the whole time?” Nevander asks.
“She was a log, too,” Seren says absently—fully engrossed in Primrose’s words.
Nevander finds the history lesson less important than the cuts lacing Seren’s arms. Before he can suggest tending them, Seren starts walking down the path. “We need to find the door.”
Sword in hand, still wary of the red trees, Nevander follows.
Primrose’s tiny avatar darts from branch to branch above them. Nearly a thousand years ago, Spring was first to vanish. No longer did Telain’s ambassadors sing in other courts. The irium doors opened only to darkness.
Seren listens, pale, rapt. The Vanishing is ancient history. Nevander never felt the loss until he saw it in Seren’s face.
A realm. A home. Wrenched away, dead or gone.
Nevander can’t imagine losing so much. Losing one person was painful enough.
The Courts of Elladar and Loria blamed Karsiel. Surely Winter benefited most, hoarding the flow of power instead of sending it on.
Something flashes in the fallen leaves.
“Wait,” Nevander says, and plucks the fallen feather. A hand’s length, about the size of Nevander’s own flight feathers, but striped brown and cream. The barbs are crisp, freshly fallen.
Karsiel’s innocence was proven too late, Primrose says. Winter vanished next. Then Autumn.
“Why didn’t Summer vanish?” Seren asks, and the question cuts as sharp as the bare patch Nevander spots in the fallen leaves. The deep scratches on the tree trunk above. White slashes against copper bark.
Primrose hops to a lower branch. That knowledge died with the First Queen. She planned a great ritual to protect the realm. She let none of us help, and she perished in its working.
The echoes ring. An unknown ritual. A fallen queen.
Through her sacrifice, Summer remained.
“We’re getting close,” Seren says, tense. He’s noticed the feathers, leading them forward like a will-o’-the-wisp.
Once, power ebbed and flowed between the realms. The squirrel darts into a hollow tree, then reappears across the path. Now Summer stands alone, and that power has nowhere to travel.
“What does that mean?” Seren asks.
It must be used, Primrose says, and vanishes.
Another feather gleams on the ground. Nevander can guess what creature it belongs to, though he’s never seen one. He forces himself to guard against their surroundings, instead of fixing all his attention on his prince.
Seren crouches and almost touches the feather. “Am I related to her?”
Nevander imagines he’s starting to understand Seren. Cut off from his home for so long, the changeling prince grasps for the shape of Summer. He reaches for sharp edges and soft shadows, figuring out how he fits in.
“The First Queen had no children,” Nevander says. “After she fell, your grandfather claimed the Summer throne.”
“A thousand years ago,” Seren says. “Gods.”
Movement. Danger. A shift in the wind. Primrose has been quiet for too long. Nevander pulls Seren back. “Stay behind me.”
“What’s wrong?” Seren asks, before a griffon plunges from the trees.
Nevander braces to meet it. Talons clash into his blade, backed by tremendous weight. A great feathered head tilts, fixing Nevander with one copper eye. Muscles bunch in its neck. Nevander shoves, pouring energy into his blade, and manages to disengage before the massive beak slices his throat.
He keeps his back to Seren’s scrambling footsteps. The griffon stalks with him, watching intently.
An Autumn fable brought to life, the griffon is as tall at the shoulders as Primrose herself. Its taloned forelegs should be awkward on the ground, but it prowls with the grace of its leonine hindquarters.
The fallen leaves should be splattered with the griffon’s blood, but no injuries score its talons. The griffon’s magical essence is too strong against Nevander’s blade—a disconcerting realization.
Not a true griffon. Just a figment of Primrose’s haven.
But figments can kill. And Seren still bears the scars of Nevander’s last failure. For a moment, an image of Wymond’s green woods overlays the haven.
“Run ahead,” Nevander says, without taking his eyes from the griffon. “Find the door.”
Seren’s breath is loud, and his fear carries on the crisp air. “I’m not leaving you.”
A king should be brave. Nevander wishes Seren weren’t. “I’ll follow,” Nevander promises—but has to add, “when I can.”
The griffon lunges on the caveat’s heels. No artful trickery like sparring with Valerian. This opponent rushes with pure power.
Leaves spray from skidding boots. Nevander drives gauntlet and hilt into the griffon’s throat, barely punching it away from his own. He wants to spread his own wings for mobility, but the trees crowd too close. His wings would just be another target for the griffon to shred.
Fury disrupts Nevander’s cold battle instincts. This phantom griffon is too fast. Too fierce. If Nevander wasn’t here, untrained Seren wouldn’t survive this fight. Either Primrose misjudged, or her haven is out of control.
Or the betrayal is deliberate.
A wing bludgeons Nevander’s shoulder. He stumbles, barely avoiding the darting beak. Eagle eyes seem to brighten with laughter.
Illusions don’t tire. Eventually, Nevander will. Not now, not yet, but he’s outmatched. No chance of fleeing to more favorable terrain, if any exists in Primrose’s haven. Nevander has to stay engaged, if Seren will just run.
But Seren waits a mere twenty feet away.
“Find the door,” Nevander growls, then shakes with the griffon’s next impact.
“Wait!” Seren shouts. “Stop fighting it!”
Spirits’ breath. Kings need courage, not foolishness. Nevander parries a deafening blur of claws. “You need to run.”
Seren skids in the leaves, following behind Nevander. “This test is for me! I couldn’t fight like this, so fighting can’t be the answer.”
Nevander’s instincts clash against the logic. Seren is in danger. Nevander must protect him. And even this is better than the long years apart. The figment griffon may battle him to deadly exhaustion, but at least his thorns are dormant.
The griffon crouches, readying for another strike. As it moves, Seren seizes Nevander’s sword arm.
“Wait!” Seren orders.
Nevander staggers. No time to switch hands. He raises his empty left arm, ready to meet the griffon’s beak with defiance and snapping bones.
The griffon stops. Bright eyes blink inches from Nevander’s face.
“Will you listen to me now?” Seren demands.
Nevander trembles, heart thrumming with danger. Both the griffon and the new confidence in Seren’s voice. If this test had been for Nevander, he would have failed.
His sword vanishes from his aching hand. The griffon retreats, no longer breathing in Nevander’s face, but still too close. There are dark specks in its copper eyes.
“I dislike this trial,” Nevander says.
“It’s better than the flower petals,” Seren says. He still holds Nevander’s wrist, a light, inescapable tether.
“Flower petals?”