CHAPTER SIX #3
"I know," Briar said, before he could ask, meeting his gaze steadily. "I told him again, clearly. Nothing's changed. I need you to trust that, Kade, without needing me to prove it every single time someone else's feelings collide with mine."
Something in Kade's jaw eased, old jealousy giving slow ground to something more settled. "I'm trying."
"I know you are." She closed the distance between them, resting her palm against his chest, over the steady, banked warmth of his heart.
"Trying is enough. I don't need perfect, Kade.
I've had perfect offered to me plenty of times lately, dressed up as something safer and easier.
I chose you instead, and I'll keep choosing you, every time it matters. "
He kissed her then, slow and grateful, and it built unhurried into something deeper, both of them needing the reassurance as much as the heat.
When they came together that night, there was less desperation in it than there had been weeks earlier and more quiet, aching certainty — two people who had already survived a great deal, choosing, once again, exactly what they wanted.
Afterward, wrapped together in the dark, Kade broke a comfortable silence with news of his own.
"There's a Hollow Court gathering in five days," he said.
"All three clans, formally convened to address the Unbinding threat directly.
My father will be there. Sable's house. Torin's father, likely, given Stormreach's exposure.
" His arms tightened slightly around her.
"And now, I imagine, given what Master Endrick has discovered — you as well, whether my father wishes it or not. "
"That sounds like a great deal of powerful people who already have reasons to distrust me, gathered in one place."
"It does," Kade admitted. "I don't like it either. But if the Rootborn bloodline is real, the Hollow Court needs to know."
Briar closed her eyes, feeling the weight of the coming days settle heavy alongside everything else — the prophecy, the blackmail, Rhys's letter, Torin's unresolved grief — and, for the first time in longer than she could easily remember, something that felt almost like steadiness underneath all of it.
"Five days," she said quietly. "I suppose we'd better be ready."
The Hollow Court was unlike anything Briar had seen in either Duskmere or the Ember Reaches — a vast, ancient amphitheater built into a natural crater where the borders of all three territories technically met, its stone seats worn smooth by centuries of gathered clan leaders, its center dominated by a massive, half-living tree whose roots had grown so deep and wide over the ages that they'd cracked through the amphitheater's floor in places, silver-barked and eerily luminous even in daylight.
"The Wardroot," Kade said quietly, following her gaze as their delegation crossed into the amphitheater proper. "Older than any clan currently living."
Briar felt the pull of it the moment they drew close — a low, resonant hum beneath her feet, distinct from anything she'd felt in Duskmere or Pyrhollow, like the tree itself recognized something in her blood and was straining, patient and ancient, to acknowledge it.
Wren walked a half-step behind her, having talked her way into the traveling party with a mix of charm and sheer stubbornness that Briar suspected Kade had allowed mostly out of fondness.
"I've never seen this many clan leaders in one place," Wren murmured, eyes wide despite her usual easy composure.
"I feel like I should have worn something nicer than my second-best linen dress. "
"You'll be fine," Briar said, grateful for the small, steadying presence of her.
"Easy for you to say. You're the one everyone's actually here to discuss."
The gathering was already well underway by the time their party settled into the Ember Reaches' designated section — Lord Ashgrove rigid and imposing at its head, Sable beside him in formal court silks, expression carefully composed.
Across the amphitheater, Stormreach's delegation had claimed their own section, Torin seated near his father, Lord Sedgewick.
And in the Duskmere section, unmistakable even after months apart, sat Alpha Corrin.
Briar's stomach dropped the instant she recognized him — broader and grayer than she remembered, flanked by pack council members she'd grown up fearing, his gaze finding hers across the crater with an expression she couldn't read from this distance.
Beside her, she felt Kade go tense, following the direction of her stare.
"You didn't tell me he'd be here," she said, quiet, throat tight.
"I didn't know," Kade said. "Briar, if this is too much—"
"It's fine." It wasn't, not really, but she straightened her spine anyway, refusing to let old fear shrink her in front of an entire gathered court. "I can face him. I've faced worse this month."
Near the amphitheater's central dais, robed in unremarkable gray that somehow drew more attention than any court finery could have, stood a woman Briar had never seen before — sharp, pale, depthless eyes sweeping the assembling clans with an ancient patience that made something wary stir low in Briar's chest.
"Who is that?" she asked.
"Isolde Wren. Last known seer of Thessaly's bloodline." Kade's expression sharpened with recognition. "If she's chosen to appear today, of all days—"
"Then this gathering just became considerably more complicated," Briar finished.
The council proper opened with reports on the escalating incursions — Councilor Vantha Rook presenting the Ember Reaches' data with clipped precision, followed by grim accounts from Duskmere and Stormreach scouts describing similar fractures widening along their own borders.
The mood in the amphitheater grew heavier with each report.
It was Isolde who finally rose from her place near the dais, silencing the gathered murmurs with nothing more than her presence.
"You have all spent the last month treating this as a border problem," she said, voice carrying easily across the amphitheater despite its quiet, measured pitch.
"It was never a wall problem. It is a prophecy fulfilling itself, precisely as my ancestor foretold two hundred years ago, and I would advise every leader in this amphitheater to stop pretending otherwise before it costs you all considerably more than border stone. "
Whispers erupted across the gathered clans, and Lord Ashgrove rose sharply to his feet. "With respect, seer, prophecy is a matter for scholars and festivals, not border security."
"Is it." Isolde's gaze didn't waver. "Then perhaps my lord Ashgrove can explain why the fractures have grown most severe specifically around the Ember Reaches, since the same week a Rootborn wolf fell through his territory's border and into his son's protection."
The amphitheater went utterly silent. Every eye shifted toward Briar at once, and beside her, Kade's hand found hers beneath the cover of the delegation's formal robes.
"Rootborn." Alpha Corrin's voice cut across the crater, rough with something between disbelief and dawning horror, and every Duskmere wolf present turned to stare at their own alpha as much as at Briar. "That's — Old Mirren's dream. The one she warned us of, before the equinox."
"You knew," Briar said, before she could stop herself, voice carrying further than she intended. "You knew there was a warning, and instead of asking what it meant, you threw me out into the world with no explanation and let me believe you simply hated what I'd become."
Corrin's jaw tightened, old shame visible even across the distance separating them. "I was afraid, Briar. I am not proud of what that fear made me do. But I will not pretend, in front of every clan leader in Aetherfell, that I don't owe you considerably more than an explanation for it."
It wasn't an apology, not really — not the kind she'd once imagined demanding of him in a hundred private, furious daydreams. But it was more honesty than she'd ever gotten from him before, and something in her chest, old and tightly wound, loosened slightly at hearing it spoken aloud, witnessed, rather than buried in Duskmere's quiet, cowardly silence.