Chapter 8 #2
The table was sticky with spilled ale. A shallow bowl of stew steamed between them, bread crusted and waiting. Elara looked at it without appetite. She’d eaten in the market, and even if she hadn’t, she was too tightly wound for anything that demanded chewing.
The wine, however, required no effort.
Poured into narrow cups of smoky glass, it asked nothing of her. The first sip tasted of salt and dark berries, mineral enough to prickle. The second went down easier. By the third, warmth slid through her veins like a slow spell.
Reynnar was saying, “We need to decide what we want from the Concord before Eamon arrives. Not what we think they will offer. What we will demand.”
Aoife’s gaze cut to his. “Men.”
“Soldiers,” Reynnar corrected. “Provisions. Smiths. Healers.”
“We cannot muster an army in a week,” Caelion said. “Even with rage. Rage burns hot and dies quickly if there is nothing to feed it.”
Aoife tipped her head. “So we feed it.”
Caelion’s fingers drummed once, thoughtful. “We need to push for a mandate. If they give aid quietly, it can be withdrawn quietly. We need them committed. Publicly. Bound by their own pride.”
Aoife’s smile turned viciously pleased. “Now you’re speaking my language.
Eamon will rein in the worst of the lords—but that’s only the first step.
“What matters is making them understand humans can take Sídhe in volume.” She leaned back slightly.
“And we don’t even know if the Pit was the only prison.
What if it wasn’t? What if there are dozens like it? ”
Elara’s brow furrowed. “Wouldn’t that many people going missing be noticed?”
Caelion shook his head once. “Not necessarily. The Sídhe are nomadic by nature. It isn’t unusual for one of us to disappear into the realms for decades. Centuries, sometimes. We wander. We take service. We follow curiosities.”
Centuries.
The word snagged in Elara’s thoughts like a burr. Mother save her. Did Sídhe simply…not die? She hesitated, then asked carefully, “How long have you all been alive?”
Reynnar and Caelion traded a glance, faintly amused.
Aoife answered for them. “Caelion’s been around a hundred and ten years, give or take.
Reynnar’s older—closer to a century and a half.
I passed the two-hundred mark ages ago, which makes me the ancient one.
” A wry smile tugged at her mouth. “Not old by our measure, but enough to make humans nervous.”
Elara’s lips parted slightly. The numbers should have staggered her—but somehow, they didn’t. They looked so young still. Vibrant. Perhaps for the Sídhe, a century was what a decade was to humans...
“And you all grew up in those circles together?”
Caelion nodded. “The Roving Circles followed the seasons, tracing the points where Draoth runs strongest. Whole generations of the old bloodlines were raised in that rhythm.”
Aoife’s smile softened, though her eyes remained troubled. “It’s where we learned to fight. To heal. To serve. The Circles were everything once.”
Elara tried to imagine it—childhood spent wandering between courts, learning the pulse of the land as language.
A lineage passed not through walls or written record, but through movement, through tradition.
It was so different from anything she’d known.
A hundred questions gathered on her tongue—what the Circles looked like, how they lived, what it felt like to grow up among so many bound by the same power.
But this wasn’t the time to ask them all.
There was still the implication beneath Caelion’s earlier words.
“So it’s normal for Sídhe to leave their Circles without telling anyone?”
Aoife and Caelion both turned to Reynnar.
His jaw ticked once. “Yes,” Reynnar said. “Without telling anyone.”
Aoife nodded slowly, as if the final piece had just slid into place.
“A people who wander,” she said. “Who vanish for decades without raising alarm. That’s the opening.
” Her fingers tapped the table once, decisive.
“The human king learned our customs. Learned what absence looks like among the Sídhe. And once the veil could be crossed…” Her mouth thinned.
“It became easy to use that knowledge against us.”
She leaned back, eyes cold now. “From there, it scales. Infrastructure. Multiple crossings. Transport routes. Holding sites. Food. Guard rotations.”
Reynnar studied her. “You want the Concord to see the scope.”
“First, yes,” Aoife said. “Then inevitability. Because once they understand this is a system—once they grasp how easily it could be turned outward—fear will do the rest.”
“Fear,” Reynnar repeated.
Aoife’s smile didn’t fade. “Fear makes even the most complacent powerful people move. Humans built this carefully enough that the Sídhe should be terrified they didn’t see it coming.”
Elara took another sip and found her cup empty. She hadn’t noticed draining it—only the absence of the tight coil in her chest. After a brief, pointless pause, she reached for the bottle.
Reynnar’s voice stayed even. “Second?”
Aoife’s eyes gleamed. “Second: we establish that it wasn’t random. They weren’t harvesting blindly. They selected for bloodlines. For gifts. Draoth was the prize, yes—but what I saw in there suggests they were after more than bodies.” She hesitated, searching. “There was a pattern to it.”
Caelion inclined his head. “Ellylldan and Sylph were overrepresented.”
“Sylph?” Elara asked, setting her glass down.
Reynnar turned slightly toward her. “Ellylldan are a Sídhe bound to flame—Sylph to wind.”
Elara’s brow creased. “And you believe they were targeted?” She took another sip. The warmth had begun to creep into her cheeks, into her fingertips.
Caelion leaned forward, forearms braced on the table. “We don’t know,” he said evenly. “There’s no proof. What we see could be coincidence. Geography. Access. The human king may have struck where the veil thinned most easily, nothing more.”
Elara scraped a fingernail along the table. “The Concord has already chosen their position.”
Aoife tilted her head.
“They’re not going to act because it’s right,” Elara clarified.
Aoife’s mouth curved faintly. “No.”
Elara lifted her cup, took a slow sip. The wine steadied her enough to keep her voice level. “So we stop asking them to be moral.”
Caelion’s eyes flashed.
“We make it practical,” Elara said. “Self-interest. Survival. Something they can’t dismiss as unfortunate but distant.”
“Go on,” Aoife murmured.
Elara’s heart kicked—annoyingly pleased at the invitation.
“We present the breach as a precedent. If humans can cross once, they can cross again. If one king can take Sídhe as trophies, another can try next season, and the season after that. And if the Concord refuses to act, they are effectively announcing to every court and clan that the Turlaith Kingdom is…permeable.”
Reynnar’s grin spread. “Weak.”
Elara nodded. “Exactly. They care about power. About borders. About being seen as untouchable. So we make it about that.”
Aoife laughed. “A human girl, threatening their pride. I almost forgive you for being one.”
Elara rolled her eyes, raised her glass, and Aoife air-toasted her.
She looked to Reynnar, and his eyes were already on her with an expression she couldn’t quite name—something like approval, but also worry.
She took a sip, bought herself a heartbeat.
“I’ve lived among humans and Sídhe alike long enough to know pride is a universal language. ”
Aoife’s laugh was soft. “It is.”
Caelion leaned back in his seat. “If the Concord are made to consider the alternative,” he continued, his voice dropping, “that certain lineages were marked with intent…”
Aoife’s mouth curved, grim. “Then the conversation changes.”
Caelion’s gaze sharpened, cold as cut glass. “Every house that carries power in its veins will hear its own children screaming in those tunnels.”
Reynnar scoffed. “Self-serving cowards.”
“Self-serving realists,” Aoife said. “Cowards can be bought. Realists must be cornered.”
Caelion nodded. “Which is why we bring proof of ongoing threat. Not only what happened—what will happen again if they refuse.”
Aoife downed the rest of her drink. “And if that doesn’t work—we’ll invoke the geasea.”
Geasea. Oath.
Reynnar’s gaze went distant for a fraction of a second—gone somewhere dark. “That won’t be necessary. They will have my testimony.”
“They will discount yours,” Aoife said, matter-of-fact. “Again. You are Ellylldan. And not a very likeable one at that.”
Aoife’s eyes slid to Elara.
“No,” Reynnar said at once. “She stays out of it. We will not parade her.”
Something twisted in Elara’s chest—the familiar irritation of being decided around instead of with. She opened her mouth, then closed it again as Aoife spoke.
“They will try regardless,” Aoife said. “Better we decide the terms than let them decide for us.”
“No.”
The word cut clean, and Aoife held his stare for a long moment, then lifted her hands in surrender. “Very well.”
Caelion’s mouth twitched, just barely. “I will testify.” He shifted his shoulders, and Elara had the uncomfortable sense that he was feeling something that was no longer there.
“They will listen to a Sylph differently,” he continued. “Because they believe we do not involve ourselves. They expect neutrality. Restraint.”
Na?ve of them, Elara thought, recalling what she had witnessed from him in the Pit—and with the memory, she promptly decided thinking required more wine.
“Are you both Sylph, then?” she asked, reaching for the bottle and tipping the remainder into her cup. It sloshed higher than she intended.
“We are, but I was raised in Ellylldan territory, so I’m considered ‘compromised’ by the Turlaith,” Aoife said—and then her gaze slid to the now-empty bottle, assessing in a way that felt both approving and mildly alarmed. “Bold, aren’t you?”