Still Blue
CAELAN
Ihad spent three days in a carriage with Sera on the way to Verdant.
I had survived two centuries of courts, wars, assassination attempts, and one deeply unpleasant winter siege that stretched six months and ended badly for everyone. Especially Maelor. He still talked about it like it had personally insulted his entire family. I had endured all of it with composure.
The carriage had been a different kind of suffering.
On the first day, she had slept with her arms crossed and her boots propped on the bench beside mine. I kept my opinions to myself. Then I gave her my cloak. She did not return it for the rest of the journey. Even snatched it back once when I reached for it. I’d let her.
On the second day, she had stared out the window with the focused quiet of someone planning something I had decided not to ask about.
She had counted every rivet on the interior paneling on the third day and told me the number abruptly.
As if she wanted me to understand precisely how bored she was and precisely whose fault that was.
That was the day we spoke. About something real that didn’t involve killing each other or the bond.
The assassination attempt at the tavern had complicated things considerably. I planned to send Xander to investigate that when we returned to Twilight. Assuming he survived investigating who had hired Sera first.
Our wonderful experience in the Mourning Wild was also memorable.
I did not miss the way our magic worked together. My powers didn’t just brush against her the way magic usually did when two wielders stood too close. I expected a dual attack. I had not expected it to fuse. The unsettling part was how natural it had felt.
I always kept whatever magic I had left under careful restraint. Afraid of what it might do, who it might hurt. That was the first time I had let it unleash fully.
I was not afraid.
In two hundred years, I had never been able to say that and mean it. Not about this. Not about myself.
I was the untamed.
The first untamed had nearly ended the world. The creation of the Hollow was just the beginning. It would’ve kept spreading if the Mother of Magic hadn’t stopped him. The histories were vague about what that had cost her.
I had built two centuries of careful control around the knowledge that I can end up just like the first untamed. It had felt like building walls around something that couldn't be trusted. Couldn’t be contained.
Each time I thought about what I was capable of, I thought of my mother.
She had said, in those last moments, It’s okay, my little storm.
Her fingers went cold around mine as she lay there. The servants having to pry them loose because they went rigid after death.
It had not been okay.
I had not been okay.
And I was still not okay. Not entirely, at least.
But standing in the forest with Sera's hands on my face and her eyes refusing to look away had done something. It felt like a door had opened in a room that had been sealed for two centuries. Where I had been suffocating, and what came through it was simply air.
You were eight. You are not that anymore.
I had believed her.
I was choosing to keep believing her.
Maybe one day, okay would be possible. For now, believing that day could come was enough.
After the Mourning Wild, the Glassroot Cathedral was barely a problem worth mentioning.
One of the horses had fled during the fight with my shadow self, which Maelor had declared was the worst thing that had happened on the trip. This had required a redistribution of riders, and he was handling it with his usual grace.
“Stop breathing on me,” Maelor said.
“I'm not,” Riven answered flatly.
I glanced back. Maelor was looking quite defeated in the saddle. Riven was behind him. His expression was neutral, posture impeccable, and was apparently breathing in a way that was provoking.
“I swear to every god—“
“You can walk,” Riven said.
Maelor produced a string of creative curses in Primorian that Riven absorbed without reaction.
When I turned back, Sera was looking at them, lip caught between her teeth, suppressing a laugh. She looked up at me, eyes bright. Then her gaze dropped to my mouth, and whatever had been on her face disappeared. She spun forward quickly.
It was adorable.
The Glassroot Cathedral appeared between the trees.
It looked grown rather than built. Pale trunks curved up from the earth and arched toward each other overhead, twisting together so intricately that it was impossible to tell where one ended and another began.
Ivy and foliage filled the gaps, spilling softly toward the ground.
The only things that looked constructed were the windows.
Everything else had simply decided to become a cathedral, so it did.
We tied the horses outside. Fae script was etched across the surface of the double oak doors. The markings were old enough that some characters had worn to suggestions of themselves. They opened with a groan that felt too loud for the quiet of the forest.
Inside, the same pale trees continued upward, vaulting overhead in that same impossible intricacy. Light filtered through the foliage in thin panels. Birds moved in the upper canopy, wings breaking the quiet.
At the center, one tree stood apart from the others. Larger and much older. The one we had come for.
“What is this place?” Sera asked, falling into step beside me.
“It isn't used anymore. But this was built for fae who worshipped the Mother of Magic.”
She looked at me. “Fae worshipped a human sorceress?”
“She stopped the first untamed.” I stepped over a vine. “That was no small ordeal.”
“How did she stop him, anyway?” she asked, swatting bugs that weren’t there.
“No one knows,” I answered. “They say she showed up and his magic simply stopped existing.”
The end for the first and only untamed in existence before me was not a good one. It wasn't encouraging.
The ground was thick with vines, uneven underfoot. I moved over a large one, knee-high, then turned and offered Sera my hand. She took it without pausing. I closed my hand over hers as she climbed over.
A part of me didn't want to let go.
I let my hold linger. Just to see what happened. My thumb brushed against her hand deliberately for a moment as she cleared the vine. Her eyes came up to mine. I held her gaze and fought a smile.
She looked away and cleared her throat. But she didn't pull her hand back. Not until I released it, slowly, barely.
I couldn't help but smile now. She noticed it and her face went red, which was something I intended to think about later.
We stopped in front of the glassroot tree. There were vines that came out of the trunk like it was trying to escape itself. They all climbed up the tree and split into different directions throughout the ceiling.
“Once I make the cut,” I said to the group, “the vines are going to react.”
“React how?” Sera said, stopping beside me.
“By wrapping around us like a snake and strangling us to death,” Maelor offered helpfully.
Sera turned to stare at him.
Riven materialized beside her. “It stops if you don't react.”
She looked him up and down. “Easy for you to say. You'd watch an execution and critique the technique.”
Maelor snorted.
I pressed the blade to the root. “Ready?”
Maelor nodded. Riven looked at Sera, then at me.
Sera sighed, shook out her arms, and rolled her neck once. “Okay. Don't react to vines that want to kill me. Got it.”
I cut the root and took a small bundle. I had just gotten it into my pocket when the vines began to move.
The ones on the ground went first. Slowly, then faster.
One nearly swept Sera off her feet. I grabbed her arm as she pitched forward and fell against me willingly. She gripped my sleeve to steady herself.
Maelor jumped one vine, laughed at it, and was promptly swept off his feet. He stared at the ceiling with the expression of a man having a serious conversation with his life choices.
Riven moved through them effortlessly, and the vines had decided he wasn't worth the effort.
Whether it was the proximity or simply luck, Sera and I were taken together. The vines wrapped and pulled us flush. My arms went around her waist by instinct. Her hands braced against my chest.
“Oh,” she exhaled.
She shifted, which made it worse. Or better. Her face was level with mine now. Her breath on my lips.
I could not wipe the grin off my face. I had tried. It was not working.
“Do not,” she said.
“I didn't say anything.”
All four of us became suspended. Hovering high enough that the fall might not be dignified, but low enough that it wouldn’t break our bones. The vines held but did not tighten.
“This isn't half bad,” Maelor said from somewhere behind me. “I could nap like this.”
Riven was already working his way free with the quiet efficiency of someone who refused to be inconvenienced by ancient vegetation.
Sera was trying very hard not to look at me. The vine tightened a fraction.
Her hair smelled of lavender. A new addition to her usual scent of honey and citrus. I decided that I liked it very much.
“You need to relax,” I said.
She turned to answer, and her lips brushed my chin with the movement.
The vine tightened again.
“I am relaxed.”
“You're not.” I kept my voice low. “You're reacting. The vines feel it.”
Riven dropped to the ground. Maelor followed with considerably more noise.
Sera and I were not making progress at all. In fact, we were making it worse.
Her eyes dropped to my mouth.
She was thinking the same thing I was. In the middle of a cathedral. Suspended by an ancient tree that was actively trying to kill us.
The vine tightened. There was no space left.
“Sera.”
Her eyes came back up.
“I know what you're thinking about.” I was going to get us both killed, and I couldn't stop. “The vines are reacting to your heart rate.”
She glared at me before shutting her eyes.
I pressed my forehead against hers. “Breathe with me.”
The vine tightened.
I groaned.
“That,” she said, “is not helping.”
“Then talk to me. I'll distract you from whatever you’re thinking of.”
Her eyes shot open.
The vine tightened again. This was actually starting to hurt.
“I was not—“ she stopped. Swallowed. Smoothed her expression with the particular ease of someone who had been doing it since childhood. “Talk about what?”
“Tell me about the chickens.”
A pause.
Her eyes softened before she could decide whether to let them. “I always wanted to go south. Have a cottage. Raise my own chickens.” A small smile. “Somewhere I never have to take orders again.”
I thought about that.
“Where would the cottage be?” I asked.
“Somewhere on a coast. With a view of the sea.”
The vine loosened enough that my fingertips warmed from the rush of blood returning.
“What color would you paint it?”
She considered this with more seriousness than the question required. Her eyes moved across my face like she was looking for something. Then, quietly, she said, “Blue.”
“The walls?”
“Still blue. Turquoise, perhaps”
The corner of my mouth moved. “You want to wake up to blue,” I said. “Every single day?”
A short pause, and she blinked.
“It’s a nice color.”
I didn’t stop whatever my face was doing.
The vine eased, releasing us toward the ground. My hand stayed at her waist as we landed, knees bent. She steadied herself against me for a moment before we both stepped back.
Maelor stood with his arms crossed. “Finally decided to come down?”
Sera insulted Maelor in Primorian pleasantly and walked past him.
My eyebrows went up.
Riven's lips twitched.
Maelor turned to stare after her. “Who taught you that!” he shouted.
I patted his shoulder and followed her out.
I made a note, somewhere I would not forget, that Sera wanted a cottage on the coast. Chickens. A sea view. Blue walls, because she wanted to wake up to blue every single day.
I was going to remember that.