30. Cassiel
Music spills everywhere. It isn’t confined to a stage or a polite corner; it moves, migrates, multiplies.
Fiddles race each other through the roots, drums thrum from hollow trunks, bells answer from somewhere overhead.
Magic lifts with it: sparks of foxfire popping in time, ribbons of light looping dancers’ wrists, laughter leaving faint impressions in the air.
People dance because the music has found them, not because it’s expected.
Circles form and break apart. A brownie spins a moth-fey until her wings scatter gold dust. Someone stamps hard enough that mushrooms flare brighter in protest. I try to look everywhere at once, greedy for it, wanting to swallow the sight whole before it slips away.
Nothing is measured. Nothing is watched.
No ranks, no careful bows, no glances toward my mother’s imaginary dais to see who ought to move first.
Wren tugs me into the tide of it. We don’t so much dance as get carried—hands brushing, shoulders knocking, her laughter sharp and alive in my ear. I lose the thread of time entirely.
There’s no call to dinner. No scraping of chairs, no procession of courses. At the edge of the clearing stands a long table grown from a fallen trunk. People drift to it as hunger strikes, peeling off from the revel and rejoining with mouths sticky and spirits higher.
We do the same.
The food is divine. Loaves split open to steam, studded with nuts and herbs, bowls of berries so dark they shine blue-black, bursting at the lightest touch, roasted roots glazed in something sweet and sharp, cheeses wrapped in leaves, soft as butter or crumbly with bite.
There’s honeycomb dripping amber, mushrooms sliced thin and glistening, a tureen of stew that smells of venison and wine and juniper smoke.
“Try this,” Wren says, already reaching across me with a grin, spearing something golden and crisp. I obey without question.
I fill a plate. Bread, meat, berries, cheese. More than is reasonable. More than I’ve taken for myself in a long time.
I stand there, the weight of it warm in my hands, and pause. “Wait… can I eat the food here?”
Wren frowns. “Why couldn’t you eat the food here?”
“I’ve heard rumours that if you eat faerie food, you’ll be stuck in faerie lands forever…”
“You’ve been eating and drinking faerie food for days and you only thought to ask this now?”
“That is… an excellent point.” It didn’t occur to me before now that the food offered to me by Marnie and Tob counted. It didn’t seem particularly other, being made in their little burrow. But here, in a faerie town… “I take it that’s a yes? The food is safe?”
“Yes,” says Wren, clearly judging me. “Faerie food equals a lifetime in Faerie is a lie.”
“Jolly good.”
“Avoid the gold nectar, though.”
I’ve already had two cups. “Um… why?”
“It’ll get mortals drunk as a duck.”
“Oh.”
“...You’ve already had some, haven’t you?”
“Just a little.”
Wren rolls her eyes.
“What? It was tasty!”
She links her elbow into mine. “I best keep an eye on you, Prince.”
I fold my hand over hers. “I am not adverse to that.”
The music softens as the evening deepens, the lively reels easing into something slower, sweeter.
Lanterns drift higher into the branches, their glow dimming to a warm hush, and conversations settle into low, contented murmurs.
Tallowbark and Juniper step into the centre of the clearing, hand in hand, their movements unhurried and sure, as though the rhythm belongs to them alone.
Around them, brownies sway where they stand, some humming, others wiping at bright, happy eyes.
Even the air seems to still, holding the moment gently.
The Duskfen is more alive than ever. One by one, couples begin to join the bride and groom.
Tob and Marnie thrust baby Eva into my arms to merge with the dancers, and others file in after, until the clearing is full of soft turning and quiet joy.
“I want to protect this,” I whisper, barely looking up from the baby in my arms.
“Come again?”
“This place. These people. I had no idea what happened in these woods, how good the folk could be. I never cared to know. But I do now. They have so much to teach us, and I could have destroyed them—”
“But you didn’t. And you won’t.”
For the first time, it occurs to me that Wren’s decision to bring me here may not purely have been about giving me back my sight.
It was a risk, of course. I might have run into people that hated me, or been terrified off by the thornstag or some other monster, but I think Wren knows me better than that.
I think she knew that the minute I saw her world, I’d love it as much as she did.
If I’ve been manipulated, I don’t care.
“Thank you for bringing me here,” I tell her.
“Thank you for loving them as much as I do.” Wren pauses for a moment. “I almost agreed with you, for a while.”
“What do you mean?”
“After what my grandmother did, what all the elders agreed to… I wondered if your mother wasn’t right, and that maybe we were all dangerous, and we didn’t deserve to live.”
I swallow, not wanting to think of Wren believing that. “What changed?”
She smiles. “Marnie and Tob,” she admits. “They found me in the forest at a particularly low point, and they took me in and looked after me until I recovered a little of myself. I remembered that there was some good in the world, and it was worth living for. Worth fighting for.”
“I’m very glad you found them.”
“Me too.”
“Wren?”
“Yes?”
“I… I’m not sure I can be glad about the circumstances that brought you into my life, but I am very, very glad I found you.”
Wren opens her mouth to say something else, but we’re interrupted by a shift in the music. She smiles, taking to her feet and disappearing into the throngs of dancers.
The music shifts like a heartbeat—low, steady, thrumming through the earth beneath my feet.
Lights bloom above the clearing, weaving through the branches like living ribbons of gold and violet.
Fey laughter echoes somewhere near the treetops, and when I tilt my head back, I can see shapes—winged and wild—scattering sparks across the sky.
It’s too much, too vivid. My eyes ache with wonder.
A year in darkness and now… this.
I can hardly breathe for the beauty of it. The air shimmers with pollen and magic, the kind that glows faintly when caught on the skin. The dancers whirl and I stand there, helpless, drunk on colour and movement.
Rain begins to fall. Soft, at first, a mere hush across the leaves, then heavier. Drops strike the lanterns and scatter into prisms. The whole forest seems to glitter. Gold on the bark, gold in the grass, gold trembling in Wren’s hair.
My eyes catch on her, and everything else folds away. The music fades to a hum, the world narrows, and all I can see is her face—her eyes reflecting every colour I never thought I’d see again.
My feet move before my mind catches up. I weave through the dancers, the blur of silk and leaves and laughter parting around me, until I’m standing before her.
“What is it?” she whispers, voice soft.
“I can’t believe it,” I say. My voice sounds strange, unsteady. I feel as nervous as a school boy and equally sure that nothing I ever felt as a child can possibly measure up to this moment. My heart thunders in my chest.
She tilts her head, rain glittering on her lashes. “Can’t believe what?”
“That the world is full of infinite wonders,” I murmur, “and all I want to do is stare at you.”
For a moment, the rain forgets to fall. Her smile breaks the night open wider than any magic ever could.
“Dance with me,” I say.
She nods, and her hand finds mine. Her palm is warm, rain-slicked, trembling faintly. The moment our fingers fit together, the rest of the world recedes again: the lights, the laughter, the glimmering forest. All of it dissolves into the music that threads between us.
I draw her closer. She doesn’t resist.
I’ve danced with her before, but not like this.
Her gown brushes my legs, the butterfly wings catching droplets and scattering them like rubies.
Every step is a rediscovery: the curve of her shoulder, the way her breath catches when I spin her, the faint scent of pine and smoke and flowers in her hair.
I can feel her heartbeat through the space between us. Too close. Too far. I don’t know which.
“I keep thinking I’ll wake up,” I murmur. “That I’ll open my eyes and it’ll all be gone again.”
She looks up at me. There’s sorrow in her smile, and something else beneath it—something tender and dangerous. “Then don’t wake up,” she says.
The rain grows heavier, running in silver trails down her neck. The foxfire lights dim to a soft gold. We move in slow circles, the forest spinning around us.
I take her hand and press it to my chest. “I missed you,” I whisper.
“I know.” Her voice breaks, just a little. “Me too.”
“I used to dream of you,” I confess. “Even when I thought I hated you, I wanted you.” I reach up, curving a lock of hair over her ear, and letting my fingers linger on her cheek. I touch her like I used to, cradling her face against my palm. This is the way I first saw her.
“But I didn’t hate you,” I clarify. “I never have. I could never—”
Wren’s mouth meets mine, and all thoughts dissolve. The kiss is soft, rain-sweet and aching. Familiar and brand new all at once. Her hands rise to my face, fingertips trembling as if to make sure I’m real, and I taste the breath she draws between us.
When we part, the forest hums again, but I only see her.
“I… I know we shouldn’t,” she whispers, mouth red, eyes shining. “I know it’s a truly, spectacularly bad idea but… I don’t care. I don’t care about anything but you, Cass. So, if you want to—”
I bring my lips crashing against hers, deeper this time. Her hands slip to my shoulders; mine find the curve of her back, the silk of her gown damp beneath my fingers.
Every second feels like a week lost and found again. We’ve both changed, but when she looks at me like this, I know the core of it hasn’t. It never could.