“We need to speak,” Elarion said.

  Siraen’s mother turned—slowly.

  The basket of moss still rested on her hip, hand curled under it like a question half-asked. Her eyes were unreadable.

  Her father stepped into view from behind the doorway.

  Not aggressive. Not welcoming. Just... there.

  “Speak about what?” he asked.

  “About your daughter.”

  “She’s three,” her mother said flatly.

  “Yes,” Elarion said. “That’s why I came in person.”

  She held the basket a moment longer, then set it down at her feet and folded her arms.

  “The Wyrdsong don’t visit Hollowborn homes,” her father said. “Not without reason.”

  “A priest saw something. In the ashfields.”

  “And?” her mother asked.

  “He ran.”

  That quieted them.

  Siraen was crouched nearby, playing in the dust.

  The shimmer-moth flickered above her hand again—wings trembling with imagined wind.

  “He said her eyes were wrong,” Elarion went on.

  “That the light bent strangely when she looked at it.

  That something old moved through the space around her.”

  “Then he should have kept walking,” her father muttered.

  “He didn’t report it to you,” Elarion said.

  “He reported it to me.”

  “Why?” her father asked.

  Elarion paused.

  “Because he was afraid of what it meant.”

  Her mother’s arms tightened across her chest.

  “And what did it mean?”

  Elarion’s eyes drifted to the child.

  “He didn’t say it directly,” Elarion murmured.

  “But I know the signs he described. And the way he said them.”

  Her father’s jaw tightened.

  “And what do you think?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Elarion said quietly.

  “But I know what she’s not.”

  “Which is?” her mother asked.

  He looked at Siraen again. The moth held shape—wings steady.

  Light bent faintly at its edges.

  “Just an elf.”

  ***

  Elder Sorith did not believe in accidents.

  When a Wyrdsong priest walked three layers down into the Hollowborn tunnels—past the ashrooms, past the cracked dripstones, into rootwork so low the air turned wet—something was wrong.

  He didn’t speak. Didn’t announce himself.

  Just walked.

  So Sorith followed.

  Not closely. Not as a challenge. Just far enough to watch the robe move through the lamplight. To watch the weight in his stride.

  The priest didn’t notice.

  Or pretended not to.

  Sorith kept to the edge of the path, near a wall of scraped lichen and soot-stained prayer knots. The tunnel curved ahead.

  Then widened—just slightly.

  And he saw her.

  A child, sitting cross-legged at the bend.

  Silver eyes. Hands open.

  A shimmer-moth hovered in front of her palms—wings too steady for wind.

  Not fire. Not threadlight.

  An illusion.

  But it didn’t flicker.

  The priest stopped. Watched.

  Then he knelt—slowly. Said something Sorith couldn’t hear.

  The child answered.

  Then the door opened.

  A woman stepped out with a basket, braid pulled loose over one shoulder.

  Sorith blinked once.

  The Thariel house.

  He leaned forward a little more, eyes narrowing.

  “Siraen?” he whispered.

  The priest said something else—still too low to catch.

  And then:

  “Just an elf.”

  The words fell strange in Sorith’s ears. Not because they were false. Because of how he said them.

  He hadn’t been invited. But now he couldn’t unhear them.

  Like the child had made the sentence impossible.

  And then it came to him—unbidden, buried, old.

  "When the leaf stirs below the roots, the Thread has already turned."

  He hadn’t heard it in decades.

  Hadn’t believed it even then.

  But now he couldn’t forget it.

  He turned away from the bend in the tunnel.

  Didn’t speak.

  Didn’t pray.

  Just walked back the way he came.

  ***

  “Just an elf.”

  The words barely finished settling before her father stiffened.

  “Don’t say that out in the open,” he muttered. “She’s as much an elf as any of us.”

  Elarion didn’t respond.

  He watched the shimmer-moth fade—slowly this time, like it didn’t want to go.

  Her mother stepped forward. Still wary. Still Hollowborn. But calm.

  “Come in,” she said quietly.

  She turned toward the door and raised her voice just slightly.

  “Siraen. Inside now.”

  The child rose without complaint, brushing her hands on her tunic. She didn’t seem bothered by the priest watching her. Barefoot, berry-stained, she darted toward the doorway.

  As she passed him, Elarion felt it.

  Not the girl.

  Around her.

  A presence. Small. Faint. Not hostile—but old. And watching.

  Like dust that remembered light.

  He blinked.

  And it was gone.

  Just a child running through a Hollowborn door.

  He exhaled, slow.

  The mother bent to retrieve the mossbasket.

  The father still hadn’t moved.

  Elarion followed them in.

  The inside of the Thariel home was quiet—low-roofed, root-lit, warmer than Elarion expected.

  The walls were packed bark and ashstone, thin layers of moss lining the seams. A small fire flickered in a stone pit at the center of the floor, surrounded by simple mats and a single carved stool. The air smelled of damp lichen and smoldered tea-root.

  He stepped in slowly. No ritual. No authority.

  Just quiet.

  Siraen’s mother moved without comment. She set the basket down near the shelf, pulled a clay cup from the rack, and filled it from a hanging skin.

  “Sit,” she said. “Please.”

  He took the stool. She handed him the water.

  He drank—once.

  Siraen sat now by the fire, cross-legged, hair tousled, watching the flames like they were whispering secrets only she could hear.

  Elarion looked at her.

  Then at the parents.

  “Do you know what she is?” he asked.

  Her mother and father exchanged a look.

  Then both spoke at once:

  “She’s an elf.”

  “She’s our daughter.”

  Elarion nodded once. Slowly. Then—

  “You’re in no trouble with me.”

  Her mother flinched a little at that.

  Her hands twisted together—nervous, unsure.

  “She’s… half-fae,” she said.

  “Clearly.”

  She didn’t say it defiantly.

  She said it like she was still trying to believe the words herself.

  Her husband turned to her, startled.

  “You think that’s true?” he asked, voice sharp.

  “You think she’s not just—?”

  He stopped. Looked at Siraen.

  She was still staring into the fire. Still listening.

  “She can’t be half-fae,” he said. “That’s not… no one’s seen one since—”

  Elarion looked at him.

  “She is.”

  The room went still.

  The words landed like an iron seed dropped into soil—small, but too heavy to ignore.

  Her father shook his head, not in anger, but in refusal.

  “She can’t be. That’s… stories. Myths. She’s quiet, yes. Strange, maybe. But she’s still—”

  He didn’t finish.

  Elarion didn’t press. He looked at the girl again—bare feet near the fire, fingers tracing lines in the soot beside her knee.

  “Silver hair that never dulls,” he said quietly.

  “Eyes that catch light like wet ink. Not noble silver. Not Wyrdsong shine. Something older.”

  “She makes illusions without words. Without training. They hold shape. They answer her mood.”

  Neither parent interrupted now.

  “No elf has illusion magic,” Elarion went on.

  “Not since Aelira.”

  The name didn’t echo. It settled.

  Her mother sat down slowly beside the fire.

  Her father didn’t sit.

  He stood still, as if the weight of the name had finally caught up.

  “She’s just a girl,” he said.

  “Yes,” Elarion replied.

  “And she’s half-fae.”

  Siraen didn’t move.

  Still sat cross-legged near the fire, eyes on the flame, tracing silent patterns in the soot.

  Then, softly—

  “I’m not broken.”

  No one spoke.

  Not right away.

  Then Elarion turned toward her. Fully.

  His voice was low, steady—not priestly, just honest.

  “No, child,” he said.

  “You aren’t broken.”

  A pause. Small.

  Then—

  “You are beyond special.

  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

  Not even the ones who love you.”

  The flame whispered apart. No one spoke.

  The room held stillness like bark held water.

  Her father shifted. Opened his mouth—closed it.

  Her mother reached out toward the fire, not touching it. Just… grounding herself.

  Then Elarion spoke again.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “Siraen,” he said gently.

  “Do you know what you’re doing? With the moth. With the light?”

  She nodded without looking up.

  “It’s magic,” she said.

  “Yes,” Elarion said. “But not just any magic. It’s illusion magic.”

  She grinned suddenly. Proud.

  “It’s my skill.”

  That turned her father’s head.

  Her mother sat upright.

  Elarion’s voice stayed soft.

  “Your skill? Are you sure?”

  She beamed.

  “Level four!”

  Silence.

  The fire cracked again.

  Her mother’s hand went to her mouth.

  “Level four?” her father echoed. “At—at three?”

  Elarion stared at the child, a slow breath passing between thought and disbelief.

  “Siraen,” he said. “How? How do you know how to do it?”

  She tilted her head. As if surprised he didn’t already understand.

  “They whispered to me,” she said.

  He blinked.

  “Who whispered to you?”

  She pressed a finger to her lips.

  “Shhh.”

  Then she stood.

  Spun once in place—bare feet thudding softly on the moss-strung floor.

  “I made magic,” she sang, quiet and delighted.

  Then she darted away—skipping toward the back room.

  Her mother stood suddenly.

  “Siraen—”

  Too late.

  The curtain of lichen swung closed behind her.

  Siraen disappeared behind the curtain—bare feet pattering softly into silence.

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  Then her mother exhaled. Soft. Unsteady.

  She stood, brushing her hands on her tunic, and turned toward Elarion.

  “Apologies,” she said quietly, bowing her head.

  “She can be… a handful.”

  Elarion smiled—tired, genuine.

  “There’s no need to apologize,” he said.

  “She is a child.”

  Her mother nodded. But didn’t look fully convinced.

  She stepped through the lichen curtain, calling her daughter’s name in a voice meant to sound calm.

  The silence that followed wasn’t peaceful.

  Her father stood near the fire, arms crossed.

  “Will you tell anyone?”

  Elarion looked at the flames.

  “No.”

  The father blinked.

  Elarion didn’t look up.

  “She deserves a childhood. A real one. As much as your caste will allow.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But,” Elarion said, finally meeting his eyes,

  “we are elves.”

  The words were simple. And cruel.

  “Someone else will notice. The eyes. The magic. The way the Thread bends around her. You won’t be able to hide it.”

  A pause.

  “And they will eventually come to ask you about her,” he added.

  The father didn’t answer.

  But he didn’t argue, either.

  He stared at the fire as if it might give him an answer.

  Then—

  “Why?” he asked.

  “Why not tell them? You’re Wyrdsong. A priest of Aelira. If she’s what you say…”

  Elarion stood and stepped toward the door. Rested a hand on the frame.

  “Because she is the chosen of my god,” he said.

  “And I am as you say a priest of Aelira.

  Not of the crown.

  Not of the castes.

  And I will not upset a god’s will—even for them.”

  He stepped into the tunnel’s quiet and vanished.

  The door settled behind him.

  And her father whispered—

  “She can’t be.”

  But the words rang hollow.

  ***

  Sorith walked the tunnels alone.

  The Wyrdsong priest had vanished into the dark. The Hollowborn door had closed.

  The child—barefoot and silver-eyed—had already slipped inside.

  But the moth remained.

  At least, in his memory.

  Not a conjurer’s trick. Not a parlor rite passed down in secret.

  It had shape. It held. It responded.

  And the way the priest looked at her—not with fear, but reverence…

  "Just an elf." he'd said.

  But Sorith had heard something else in the way he said it.

  It echoed in his skull, twisted around the old verse still clinging to his ribs like root-dust:

  When the leaf stirs below the roots, the Thread has already turned.

  He hadn’t believed it when he first learned it.

  But now? He didn’t know what he believed.

  Only that something had stirred.

  He kept walking.

  The verse looped under his breath—not aloud, just in the places prayer used to live.

  “When the leaf stirs…”

  Sorith had worshipped Aelira his whole life.

  Not out of fear. Not for ritual. Because the stories felt true.

  Because even when the roots dripped rot and the moss turned bitter in winter, there was something in the silence that answered back.

  Most Hollowborn didn’t come to the shrine anymore. Not since the vine-blight. Not since the court ordered the lower tunnels left off the lighting circuit. Not since the faith felt like another thing taken.

  But he stayed.

  He kept the symbol clean, even when the wall behind it cracked.

  He lit a candle every restday, even if no one watched.

  He prayed into silence.

  And now, for the first time in decades…

  The silence might not be empty anymore.

  He turned a corner, lost in the rhythm of thought, the slow loop of breath and verse and questions.

  A voice caught him—soft, familiar.

  “Elder Sorith? The shrine will be open for restday, I’ve set the stones to dry—”

  He nodded. Didn’t slow. Didn’t quite hear the rest.

  The words filtered past him like moss-smoke through old stone.

  Another corner. Another tunnel.

  And then he stopped.

  The Mosslight Shrine stood before him.

  He hadn’t realized he’d walked the whole way.

  It was smaller than memory made it.

  The vinework sagged on one side. The clay basin near the altar had cracked down the middle and been sealed with ash-twine. The walls still smelled of lichen oil and old warmth.

  It should have felt like failure.

  But something was different.

  He stepped inside. Let the silence settle.

  Then, with fingers slower than they once were, he struck flint. Lit a single candle.

  The wick caught. Held.

  Sorith stared at the flame for a long time before he spoke.

  Not aloud. Not fully.

  Just enough for the quiet to hear him.

  “When the leaf stirs below the roots,” he whispered,

  “the ink has begun to run.”

  “When silence breathes, and eyes see light not given…”

  “The Thread has turned.”

  He exhaled slowly. Bowed his head. Let the flame speak for him.

  Footsteps approached behind him—soft, uneven.

  He didn’t look back.

  Three figures stepped through the doorway.

  Ashworkers. Restday regulars. Faces he knew by posture more than name.

  One of them shifted awkwardly, glancing at the lit candle.

  “Elder? We weren’t sure if it was still restday rites,” she said. “We heard you speaking.”

  Sorith rose slowly.

  His voice was quiet, but steady.

  “Today’s prayer is different.”

  The youngest tilted his head. “Didn’t sound like a prayer I knew.”

  Another stepped forward. “It sounded old.”

  Sorith didn’t answer right away.

  He reached for the candle, adjusted the wick.

  Then—softly—

  “It’s a verse. One not recited anymore.”

  “Why not?” the first one asked.

  “Because we were told to forget it.”

  The three looked at one another. Uneasy. Curious.

  The third, older than the others, frowned gently. “Are you alright, Elder?”

  “Should we come back another day?”

  Sorith turned to them. He looked older than usual.

  But something in his eyes had caught fire.

  “No,” he said. “Today is… different.”

  A silence stretched.

  Then the youngest gave a weak smile.

  “You look like you’ve seen Aelira herself.”

  Sorith didn’t smile.

  He looked at the candle again.

  Watched the light ripple across the cracked altar.

  Then, just above a whisper—

  “I think I may have.”

  ***

  The tunnels behind him were still.

  Elarion didn’t look back.

  Each step upward felt heavier than the last. He passed the moss-damp roots and faintly glowing ward-knots of the Hollowborn quarter, his boots whispering over stone damp with memory. No one stopped him. No one dared. A Wyrdsong priest moving alone through the lower reaches drew only silence—respectful or fearful, he could never tell.

  But the weight wasn’t theirs.

  It was hers.

  The child with the stormsilver eyes. The moth that didn’t fade. The way her presence bent the air like old verse made new.

  Not touched by a god. Not inspired. Chosen.

  And I will not upset a god’s will—

  His own words echoed.

  He’d never said that aloud before.

  Not even when he first read the verse.

  The lift platform hummed as it rose. Rootwalls gave way to polished resin. The air sharpened—scented with fireleaf and clean-threaded incense. The light changed too, thinner and more exact. The upper sanctum wasn’t lit by lanterns. It reflected.

  He passed the whitebark gates in silence.

  No initiates greeted him. No bells rang. The Wyrdsong quarter observed no hour but meaning.

  Above him, bridge-threads stretched between towers, carrying wind across scripture gardens and breathleaf shrines. Below: nothing. The Hollowborn levels fell away like something forgotten.

  He stepped beneath the quiet arches of the first sanctum. The walls here bore no decoration, only texture—lines pressed into bark and wax, unreadable to most. But he knew them. Names that had once held nations. Verses that could end wars or start them.

  None heavier than the part of one echoing now.

  "the elves kneel low, and call her Flame.

  For she is lore the gods forgot—

  the keeper, the chooser, the turning thread."

  It had stirred.

  He passed the Hall of Tongueless Ink—what the younger priests called the Well of Unspoken Verses. Even it didn’t hold the full verse.

  No one stopped him.

  Let them guess why he walked with weight.

  Siraen.

  She hadn’t called herself anything but Hollowborn. Hadn’t asked why her illusions shimmered true when even trained casters failed. She didn’t answer who whispered. She just danced.

  She was three.

  And the priest had seen her.

  Not with fear.

  With reverence.

  He reached the last corridor. It narrowed. The whitebark grew smooth here, unrippled by the veins of written prayer. This was where words ended. Where thought was meant to begin.

  Elarion stood before the final door.

  His own.

  No symbols marked it.

  No seals bound it.

  But the breath behind it had never felt heavier.

  He opened it.

  The chambers were plain by Wyrdsong standards. A carved desk. A basin of cleansing water. Shelves with no labels. A single glyph burned into the ceiling, its meaning known only to those who remembered why it had to be hidden.

  Elarion stepped inside.

  ***

  Oryndel had never stood this high before.

  The air here didn’t carry barkdust or tea-root or even incense. It was colder. Sharper. As if it had forgotten how to hold scent.

  He walked slowly, deliberately, through the outer paths of the Silvermarked tier—his robes too plain, his threadbrand dull compared to the light woven into the guards posted at each arch.

  They didn’t stop him.

  Not yet.

  But they watched.

  No one from Wyrdsong caste came here uninvited. Certainly not without summons or escort. The Gate of the Crown was for one kind of priest only—the ones the Queen herself had marked.

  And he wasn’t one of them.

  But still—he walked.

  Because he couldn’t forget those eyes.

  Stormsilver. Not the silver of nobility or ancestry. Silver that saw. That knew. Like looking into still water and seeing something older ripple back.

  He’d tried to forget.

  He’d repeated Elarion’s command in his mind like a penance: We will not speak of this again. Not to the Queen. Not to the Silvermarked.

  But the verse kept returning.

  Where ink runs deep and silence breathes…

  She was the rest of it.

  He reached the final step before the Queen’s outer chamber.

  Two Silvermarked guards stood watch—bare-armed, unarmored, but threadbrands pulsed like living veins across their skin. They didn’t draw weapons. They didn’t need to.

  One of them stepped forward, expression unreadable. “State your caste and purpose.”

  Oryndel swallowed.

  Then bowed—deep and formal.

  “Wyrdsong. High-Scribe Oryndel. I come with knowledge that touches the oldest law. And the oldest names.”

  That made them pause.

  The second guard stepped back, brushing a hand against the braided sigil-branch beside the gate.

  A quiet ripple passed through the bark.

  A moment later, a voice answered from within.

  “Send him.”

  The door opened.

  The guards stepped aside.

  He entered.

  The last door was thinner than he expected.

  Not weak—nothing in the Silvermarked tier was—but old.

  Pale bark, seamless, polished smooth by time. No knots. No embellishments.

  Just a single inlay at the center:

  A crown of twisted branches—seven points, one broken, one budding, one wreathed in flame.

  The Mark of the First Line.

  Oryndel stared at it.

  He remembered the verse. Not sung in temples anymore. Not written in breathscript. Just whispered in the bones of those who studied too long.

  “From root to crown, six hundred thousand winters—

  The flame unbroken, the thread unspooled.

  She is the last daughter of the first dawn.

  And he, the voice that named the stars.”

  It wasn’t a door.

  It was a bloodline.

  And he was about to knock.

  He lifted his hand.

  Knocked once.

  Not hard. Not soft.

  Just enough.

  A pause.

  Then a voice—low, female, and impossible to mistake. Not loud. Not sharp.

  Just the kind of quiet that made everything else sound too loud.

  “…Enter.”

  The door opened without touch.

  He stepped through.

  The Queen’s hall wasn’t a throne room.

  Not like the old stories told.

  No columns. No banners. No crown.

  Just light—soft and still, pouring through a ceiling of crystalleaf so thin it looked like sky.

  She sat at the far end, not elevated, not robed in excess, but unmistakable.

  Nysera.

  The Queen of elves the highest member of Silvermarked aside from the King.

  Daughter of the Second Flame. Queen by birthright.

  By history.

  She wasn’t looking at him yet.

  Her hands were folded. Her gaze somewhere far behind his shoulder, like she was already seeing past what he came to say.

  Oryndel bowed low.

  Lower than custom demanded.

  And waited.

  When she spoke, it was without motion.

  “I was told you asked for me directly.”

  “Yes, my queen.”

  Her eyes shifted.

  Met his.

  Like frost had remembered how to burn.

  “You are Wyrdsong. And high-ranked. Why break the thread?”

  Oryndel inhaled. Steadied.

  “I bring something the thread forgot.”

  That made her pause.

  She rose—not quickly, not for effect.

  Like breath. Like thought made flesh.

  “Speak carefully,” she said. “I have no time for madness.”

  Oryndel swallowed.

  “I saw a child.”

  She didn’t blink.

  “In the Hollowborn levels. She looked at me.”

  Still nothing. No change.

  “And?”

  “…She had stormsilver eyes.”

  A small shift.

  Almost nothing.

  But it was there.

  “And you broke your vows to tell me this?”

  Oryndel shook his head.

  “No. I broke them because of what Elarion said after.”

  That got her attention.

  She stepped forward once—light catching in her hair, her mantle, the threadbrand at her wrist.

  “What did Elarion say?”

  “He told me not to speak of her. To no one. Not the Wyrdsong. Not even the Silvermarked .”

  She waited.

  Oryndel forced the next words through a throat that suddenly felt too narrow.

  “But when he said it, he looked afraid.”

  That hung in the air.

  Longer than it should’ve.

  Nysera said nothing at first.

  She just turned her face slightly toward the window—toward the endless canopy of Sylthelenar below, the world wound in root and rule.

  Then:

  “What else did you see?”

  “We didn’t speak,” Oryndel said. “Not a word. But when our eyes met…”

  He shook his head.

  “It felt otherworldly like I should kneel.”

  Nysera’s eyes narrowed. Not in anger.

  In memory.

  “And you think Elarion was wrong to wait.”

  “No,” he said softly. “I think he was right to be afraid.”

  That was when she moved.

  Not sharply.

  But with purpose.

  She turned, crossing the Palewood floor in silence.

  At the far end, she reached for her mantle—silver-threaded, leaf-lined, marked with the pattern of the first Flame-born.

  She lifted it over one shoulder.

  Then turned back.

  Her eyes met his again.

  “I will go with you,” she said. “To the temple.”

  Then—softly—she added:

  “One level down.”

  A beat.

  “Let us see what he’s hiding.”

  ***

  The door shut behind him.

  Elarion exhaled—slow, deliberate. The weight of the tunnels, the girl, the Thread—all left at the threshold for a breath’s reprieve.

  He raised his head.

  Took a single step toward the center of the chamber—

  And stopped.

  Not from sound.

  From presence.

  Two figures stood by the far wall.

  One in priest’s robes—Wyrdsong-cut, too formal for a visit, too wrinkled for a plan. Oryndel. Ringing his hands like a child caught near a broken seal.

  And beside him—

  Nysera.

  No crown. No announcement.

  Just the Queen.

  Still. Watching. Robed in silver-threaded mantle and the kind of silence that didn’t need doors to open.

  Elarion’s spine straightened.

  Not in fear.

  In inevitability.

  Elarion lowered his head.

  Then bowed—low, precise, the kind reserved only for one name in the city above the Thread.

  “My Queen.”

  He straightened slowly, but didn’t lift his eyes past her shoulder.

  Nysera stepped forward, pale mantle shifting like thought given form.

  “I came because of what you did not say,” she said. “And what your priest could not hold.”

  Silence pooled around her words.

  Elarion did not look at Oryndel.

  His attention remained on Nysera, still and steady.

  “I meant no offense to the throne,” he said quietly.

  “Good,” she replied, voice like frost remembering warmth.

  “Because you’ve given none.”

  Not yet.

  She studied him for a moment. Then said simply:

  “Is it true?”

  He straightened slowly. “That depends.”

  “Did you go to see her?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  Her breath hitched once, barely audible. She stepped forward, the light from the glyph above catching in her eyes.

  “And?”

  “She’s… three,” Elarion said. “Untrained. Unaware.”

  He paused.

  “She is already level four in illusion magic.”

  Nysera blinked once. Her hands lowered slightly.

  “And?”

  “She bends light. Shapes it. Speaks with those we cannot see. She does not cast. She does not incant. She… expresses. And the Thread moves.”

  Another pause.

  And then—

  “She is half-fae.”

  That did it.

  Nysera’s breath caught. Her mantle shifted with the motion, her eyes wide with something between joy and terror.

  “Half—” she whispered.

  Then she staggered back a step, one hand pressed to her chest.

  Elarion didn’t move.

  “You’re certain,” she said, not as a question. As a demand.

  “Yes.”

  Her lips parted. Then closed again. Then opened.

  And what came out was not a sentence.

  It was a sound—like wonder exhaled through ancient reverence.

  “No elf alive,” she said softly, “has seen one. Not a full fae. Not even half. Not in eight hundred centuries.”

  Her eyes were bright now. Brighter than they should’ve been.

  “And Aelira…” she whispered. “Our Lady was half.”

  Elarion said nothing.

  Nysera turned slowly. Walked toward the shelf where he kept the unlabeled tomes. She didn’t touch them.

  “She’s not the god reborn,” the Queen said. “I know that.”

  Her voice dropped low.

  “But she is the Chosen from the verse.”

  Elarion let the silence speak for him.

  Nysera turned back to face him.

  “I will protect her,” she said, almost to herself. “At any cost.”

  She didn’t move.

  Didn’t look at him.

  Her eyes were far now—out past the towers, past the Thread itself. Somewhere deeper.

  “I should tell the King,” she murmured. “I should summon the Silvermarked, call the court, bind it all in breathscript—”

  She stopped.

  Her hand touched her chest, just over the threadbrand.

  “No,” she said, quieter now. “They wouldn’t see her.”

  A pause.

  Then softer:

  “They would weigh her. Measure her. Decide.”

  And then—firmly, fiercely:

  “She is not for them.”

  She turned back to Elarion, fire low in her voice.

  “She is for Her.”

  Elarion studied her.

  The way her fingers trembled. The way her threadbrand pulsed like breath.

  “You mean to hide her?”

  “I mean to preserve her.”

  Her gaze locked with his.

  “The court will not understand. The nobles will panic. The Sanctum will divide. But the Wyrdsong will hold the line. And so will I.”

  She took one final step forward.

  “You are still a priest of Aelira,” she said.

  Elarion closed his eyes.

  And bowed again.

  Deeper, this time.

  Because he knew what she meant.

  And what it would cost them all.

  ***

  The fourth gift arrived before dawn.

  A year had passed since Elarion’s visit to the Thariel house. Three gifts had arrived in that time. Today marked the fourth—on Siraen’s birthday.

  No footsteps. No knock.

  Just a shape at the door—wrapped in linen so fine it caught the lamplight like frost.

  Siraen found it first.

  She always did.

  Barefoot, hair wild from sleep, she cracked the latch with the slow confidence of someone who had never feared what waited.

  Mist pooled at her toes.

  And there—resting quiet in the haze—another bundle.

  She smiled.

  “Mom,” she called softly. “It came again.”

  She bent low. Lifted the parcel with both hands.

  “It’s soft,” she whispered. “And heavy.”

  Her mother stepped into the arch behind her, braid undone, eyes still fogged with dreams. She stopped short.

  Then—quietly—her father joined them.

  He didn’t ask.

  He didn’t need to.

  They knew the wrapping. The weight. The silence it carried.

  The third had been a woven satchel.

  The second, barkwool-lined boots.

  The first… a toy that hummed when she touched it.

  None marked.

  None explainable.

  Siraen set the bundle near the hearth and peeled the cloth aside.

  The robe fell open.

  Deep green. Threadleaf-lined. Buttons of polished stoneglass, each etched with a pattern no Hollowborn artisan could’ve made.

  Her father swore under his breath.

  Her mother said nothing.

  Siraen smiled down at it like it had been made from sunlight.

  Then looked up.

  “She didn’t forget!” she said.

  Her mother blinked. “Who?”

  Siraen tilted her head—like she was listening to something just out of reach.

  Then whispered, almost playfully:

  “The shiny lady.”

  The fire cracked.

  Neither parent moved.

  And somewhere far above,

  a queen exhaled beside a lit candle—