It didn’t take long for Leif and Serena to reach Edmund and Filandra. They didn’t slow for anything, not even to drink. After what had happened, neither of them wanted to spend a heartbeat longer in that forest than they had to.

  When they finally reached the prince’s position, relief hit them hard. Edmund was already there with Gualter and a handful of men. The soldiers explained they’d fanned out alongside a few locals after learning the cave had multiple entrances scattered across the area.

  Now, they understood why no villages had ever taken root nearby. The predators didn’t stay buried. Sometimes, they came out.

  “Would’ve been nice to know that sooner,” Leif said.

  “Um, actually,” Filandra cut in, “Minos did.”

  Leif whirled on her. “Then… why did the two of you go in there?”

  Filandra’s expression didn’t change. “Like I said before, because he wanted to see if there was anything valuable inside,” she said flatly.

  As the argument spiraled into a very real debate over whether Minos deserved a lightning bolt or a javelin to the backside, Gualter took the chance to strike flint and send a smoke signal curling into the sky to tell the others they’d found the prince.

  They started back toward camp to the north, and after reaching it, more of his men started arriving as well, running in from the treeline and the slopes, and the tension that had been strangling the group finally snapped. Hands clasped shoulders. Arms wrapped tight around Edmund, Leif, and Serena. Some laughed, some sobbed, some did both at once.

  Filandra stayed just off to the side, quiet as ever, offering cloth to anyone whose face was too wet to speak through. Aristide arrived last, out of breath, eyes shining, and he all but collided with Edmund. He hugged him hard, jaw trembling, fighting the tears like it was another battle. Still, he reached for a cloth from Filandra anyway, just in case. Aristide went on to hug Leif, then Serena, relief and gratitude written all over him. The three were alive, and that was all that mattered.

  Inevitably, the devil finally returned. Minos emerged with a handful of men trailing behind him, all of them hollow-eyed and drenched in sweat and exhaustion from hours of searching, except Minos himself, of course. He looked merely inconvenienced. The moment the camp noticed him, the warmth in the air iced over. Glares followed him like arrows.

  “The kingdom nearly lost its pri—erm—a private because of you!” Damien snapped.

  Minos stumbled back a step, lifting both hands. “Please, accept my most sincere apology. I didn’t know the cave was a nest of hideous creatures.”

  “Actually,” Gualter cut in, “Filandra said you did.”

  Minos’s breath caught. His eyes darted to her immediately, pleading in the way only a man cornered by his own words could plead.

  “Filandra, my dearest, most trusted Temporary Acting Assistant,” he said quickly, forcing charm into every syllable, “tell them that isn’t true.”

  Filandra stared at him. For a heartbeat, her eyes faltered, just enough to suggest she was considering it, although those who knew her were quite familiar with what it meant otherwise.

  “Sir,” she said, voice perfectly even, “if not for the fact that I just had to walk through a dark cave filled with terrifying creatures trying to eat me at every step, I would gladly lie for you.”

  She tilted her head, as if weighing the thought. “Well,” she added, “if you paid me enough, I would have.”

  The glares were sharper this time. Minos clasped his hands together like a man praying for his life, shoulders hunched.

  “What should we do with him?” one of the knights asked Edmund.

  The prince stared at Minos for a long moment with the eyes of someone weighing punishment against the sheer effort it would take. At last, he let out a tired breath. “Nothing,” Edmund simply said. “Leave him be. We’ll let him go as soon as we reach our destination. I’m… too tired.”

  “You’re lucky His—” the knight caught himself sharply—“he is willing to let you breathe.”

  Minos bowed far too many times in quick succession, blurting out gratitude that didn’t sound earned, then hurried off toward his wagon before anyone changed their mind. Filandra followed after him at a steady pace, unbothered by anyone. A few of the men offered her a tent closer to theirs, nearer warmth and safety. More than one asked, half in disbelief, why she would still stay with her boss.

  Filandra didn’t even pause. “He hasn’t paid me in full yet,” she said, as if that explained everything, which, in her mind, it did. “And after tonight, I’m very much looking forward to charging him more. I did, after all, risk my life in that cave.”

  After Minos and Filandra disappeared into their wagon, Aristide headed to their own and came out with a heavy pouch of coins. He pressed it into the hands of the men who had helped search for Edmund, thanking them with a sincerity that made even the gruffest among them soften.

  They urged the party to keep moving once morning came. The forest, they warned, still crawled with strange things, creatures that didn’t fear firelight, and sounds that didn’t belong to any animal a sane man would name. With the worst of the panic finally behind them, the camp shifted into something almost normal.

  Hunger.

  A feast was decided without anyone formally declaring it. The knights had already dressed the elk they’d brought down the day before, and the soldiers set about washing and cutting the roots and vegetables they’d gathered from the forest. Leif inspected every piece with care, turning each one in his hands, sniffing, checking, refusing to trust anything at first glance. The memory of that deranged stranger still sat in his chest like a thorn.

  In the end, he nodded. “It’s clean.”

  The two Alvarynn took only vegetables and kept their distance from the elk. They didn’t eat meat, and tonight, the smell of the game alone was enough to turn Serena’s stomach. They settled around the nearest campfire with Edmund and Aristide, and when the first bowls were passed and the first bites taken, the story finally came spilling out, ragged at first, becoming clearer as the heat and safety of the flames did their work.

  The monsters. The giant fungus. The seed.

  Men listened with wide eyes, bowls forgotten in their hands. Even the knights who had faced war went quiet when Leif described the raptors and the giant spider, and the way the cave itself had seemed to breathe around them.

  Aristide leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “That seed,” he said, unable to hide his fascination, “the moment you held it… those things obeyed you.”

  Edmund turned to him. “Do you know what it is? Anything at all?”

  Aristide shook his head slowly. “Not precisely. Most of what I’ve studied is history, not… living things.” His gaze drifted to the dark beyond the fire. “But I’ve read stories, old accounts of different plants and animals that can influence other creatures around them, drive them, guide them. Some even claim men can fall under the same kind of influence.”

  His eyes returned to Leif, sharp with thought. “And if that’s what this is, then it should have been you who fell under its control.”

  That conclusion, however, was quite the opposite of what happened. “But somehow,” he continued, “it was you who ended up controlling it… or at least took control of the creatures protecting it.”

  Leif had no answer. No one did. The only explanation that almost fit was Leif’s strange gift, his ability to coax life, to feel a plant’s will and guide its growth. Maybe the seed recognized that in him, and it answered. Perhaps it had simply made a mistake. Every guess made less sense than the last. In the end, they set it aside.

  Whatever the truth was, it didn’t need to be solved tonight. Not while their hands still trembled and the forest still loomed beyond the firelight. Their discussions shifted gradually to plans. Without hesitation, the soldiers declared that the first thing they would do upon arrival was find a tavern.

  Damien scolded them for the lack of discipline, only for the men to argue earnestly, even reasonably, that it was for the sake of disguise. A hired mercenary wouldn’t stride into town like a court knight. He would drink, laugh too loud, and complain about his feet.

  Edmund let the bickering run its course. For once, he didn’t mind the noise. It was… normal. And perhaps, he thought, it was good practice. Letting them get used to speaking casually, to blend, to sound like men who belonged on the road rather than men carrying a prince in their midst.

  As the fire burned low, Serena’s eyelids grew heavy. Leif whispered an excuse and guided her up, returning with her toward their tents. Edmund and the others weren’t far behind as exhaustion had settled into their bones. With meals finished and stories spent, the men slowly retreated to their tents.

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  The night had fallen.

  It was dark and quiet, one of those nights that pretended to be peaceful. Inside their tent, Leif and Serena slept on separate mats, their bedrolls laid on either side of a low table. A single oil lamp sat atop it, its flame unsteady, casting a faint, trembling light that made the canvas walls breathe with shadows. For a while, nothing stirred but the soft rise and fall of sleep, that is, until Leif heard it.

  At first, he ignored the noise. The forest made sounds. It always did. A gust against the canvas, a branch settling, the distant creak of trees. Nothing worth waking for. But the noise didn’t fade. It repeated, persistently. A whispering scrape beyond the tent wall. Leif’s eyes opened fully. He lay still for a moment, listening, waiting for the wind to take it away. It didn’t.

  Something was wrong with the way it moved. Wrong in a way that prickled the skin. Leaves rustled outside, but not in the loose, wandering pattern of air. This had a rhythm. A deliberate cadence, like something nosing through underbrush, similar to the way hares dug at roots, only this one felt somewhat… bigger. Leif slowly pushed himself up, careful not to disturb Serena. The lamp’s thin light caught in his eyes as he leaned closer to the tent’s opening. He parted the flap and took a cautious peek outside.

  Just as he’d suspected, there was no wind at all. The night air was so still it could’t have stirred branches. However, not far from their tent, beneath the dark silhouettes of trees, a cluster of bushes shifted, leaves trembling as something moved within them. He tried to ignore it. Truly, he told himself it was nothing, just some small animal, or maybe his mind was still jumpy from the cave. But the rustling grew louder, more insistent. A thread of concern tightened in his chest.

  Another predator? The thought came uninvited, and with it the memory of claws on stone, teeth in darkness. Leif pushed himself to his feet and slipped out of the tent, intending to scare whatever it was away before it wandered closer. His bare feet met cool ground as he walked toward the bushes in steady, quiet steps. Just as he neared them, the movement stopped. Leif froze, listening, but there was nothing. The noises were gone.

  Maybe I scared it off, he thought, but he remained cautious. Leif turned around and started back toward the tent. He’d taken only a couple of steps when a low thud sounded behind him, dull and heavy, like something had dropped onto the earth. His spine stiffened. Leif spun on instinct, one hand already lifting as the other pulled power from the ground. A vine whip snapped into being, coiling around his forearm. But when he faced the bushes, there was no predator, no glinting eyes, no shape crouched low in the shadows. Only something lying on the ground a few paces away. Small, circular, with a single, unmoving needle.

  A compass.

  Leif’s grip tightened on the vine. His eyes swept the trees, the darkness between trunks, the empty spaces where something could be watching. “Where did this come from?” he whispered, more to steady himself than because he expected an answer. “Was it here before?”

  Slowly, he stepped closer. The unease didn’t fade, even as the compass remained motionless and harmless in the dirt. After a moment’s hesitation, Leif knelt and picked it up. Nothing happened at first, not in the first heartbeat, at least. The instant his fingers closed around it, the world tilted. The camp vanished. The trees blinked out like someone had snuffed a candle. Leif’s stomach lurched, and when his sight steadied, he was still surrounded by darkness, but he was no longer outside.

  He stood in a corridor, one that didn’t belong to the palace. This place was too wide, too bare, too… different. No rugs softening footsteps, no vases, no gilded trim, and no chandeliers hanging like frozen suns. Just plain walls and a hard floor stretching ahead, with small crystals set along the sides at measured intervals, each one bleeding a dim, cold light into the dark. His unease inched toward fear.

  “This is a dream,” Leif murmured, closing his eyes, forcing air into his lungs. “Just another—”

  “Forego the Sacrament.”

  The words came in a woman’s voice, firm and gentle at the same time. Leif’s head snapped toward the sound. A woman stood in the dark hallway with her back to him, and all Leif could make out was that she was wearing a white cloak.

  Another woman responded, her voice just as firm, though she lacked the gentleness of the first. Hers was more serious, less kind, and somewhat colder. “Why would I abandon my faith?”

  “What you are following isn’t faith, but resignation,” the first woman responded. “Yours is the path of someone who has given up on living.”

  “And whose way should I follow?” the second woman asked, harshly and with a hint of sarcasm. “Yours? That of a coward? Of someone who did nothing but hide from the world and watch it suffer from afar?”

  It was subtle, quite easy to miss, but somehow, the more the second woman spoke, the more Leif could recognize her voice. It was someone he knew.

  “Please, I beseech you,” the first woman pleaded. “For your child, leave this cruel path.”

  “How did you—” the second woman responded, startled. “No, it doesn’t matter how you found out. Get out, before your presence here is made known.”

  Leif tried to walk closer, hoping to see the second woman, her voice becoming unmistakably clearer. As he inched forward, stepping beside the white-cloaked woman, he could make out a few details of the other despite the darkness. Her loose brown hair, silver-silked sleeping gown, light skin… pointed ears. He narrowed his eyes, more curious now, wanting to see more of her face, until the first woman confirmed his intuition.

  “I ask you one more time before I am compelled to use force,” the first woman said in a more commanding tone this time. “For your sake, and your child’s, leave the Sacrament, Idun.”

  “Mo—mother?” Leif muttered, eyes wide.

  After that exchange, before Leif could step any closer, before he could even form a question, the vision shifted again. The corridor vanished. He was back in the camp, standing in the cold night air, exactly where he stood before. He blinked once. His breath came shallow, confused. For a moment, he only remained there, staring ahead, trying to understand what had just happened. His eyes dropped to his hands.

  The compass was gone. A chill slid down his spine. He stepped back, glancing to his side, then toward the treeline, and stumbled as his gaze returned to the forest and fell hard onto the ground. Right in front of him was a pair of eyes. The same deep, purple gaze he’d seen in that dream back in the cave, now staring at him from only inches away.

  Leif scrambled backward on his elbows, terror flooding in as the rest of her silhouette took shape against the dark. A woman stood over him, half-swallowed by shadow, her presence so heavy it made the night feel smaller. She spoke with the same gentle voice as before. “We meet again, Leif.”

  Leif trembled on the ground, too frightened to answer.

  The woman tilted her head. “Did you witness a frightening memory?”

  “I—I don’t,” Leif stammered, barely managing sound.

  “As terrible as it is, it happens when I intrude into someone’s mind,” the woman said. “People are forced to endure a memory they wish to no longer experience again, or of those close to them.”

  “Wha—who—” he mumbled, too terrified to ask questions, never mind form words.

  “But there is no need for alarm,” she said. “I told you, didn’t I? You remind me of someone important to me. I am simply here to—”

  Her gaze slid past him, toward the tent behind him, the one he and Serena had been sleeping in. “Why is that obscenity here?”

  Leif swallowed, following her stare. “What do you—what are you talking about?”

  The shadow beneath the woman spilled outward, stretching across the earth like ink. From the soil at her feet, hands began to emerge, shadowy shapes clawing their way up, fingers flexing, reaching, crawling as they moved toward the tent. The woman stepped past Leif, drifting closer as the shadow-limbs slithered with her.

  “It seems this revolting nuisance is preventing you from speaking,” she said. “It must be a mistake. Let me eliminate it first before we proceed with our talk.”

  “Wait,” Leif gasped, pushing himself up to his knees. “Don’t.”

  The hands reached the canvas. With a slow, unnatural ease, they lifted it, peeling the tent upward, revealing Serena inside, still asleep, peaceful and unaware. More hands surfaced, all grasping for her. Fingers curled around her arms and legs. Others hovered close, waiting for their turn.

  “Allow me to shred it to pieces,” the woman said, voice still gentle. “Its presence here is agonizing, even for me.”

  “No—please, don’t!” Leif pleaded.

  The hands tightened, pulling Serena from different directions, and panic tore through him.

  “Elleina, don’t!” Leif yelled.

  Everything stopped. The arms froze, then went slack. One by one, they sank back into the soil. The tent lowered, settling again. The woman halted mid-step and turned slowly toward Leif, her eyes locking onto him. “How did you know my name? I don’t recall sharing it with you yet.”

  “Be—because,” Leif stammered, forcing himself to sit up. “I—I heard it… earlier… just before I saw you.”

  “Strange,” the woman said, somewhat amused. “No one in your vision uttered my name.”

  “I—I remember,” Leif went on, eyes flicking to the tent, making sure his feigned certainty was enough to keep her from turning on Serena again. “I’m an Alvarynn… so you see… I feel, or hear, more than what a human could… I think…”

  He did his best to stand, to look brave, even as Elleina lifted a hand and gently caressed his cheek. An intimate touch that felt far too calm for the terror she carried.

  “Are you trying to trick me?” she asked softly. “Because that just makes you remind me even more of the person I was talking about earlier. He liked tricking and teasing me all the time, you know.”

  Leif’s breath hitched. He had to try his best and keep her attention on himself. But before he could say more, the world began to come apart. The forest, shadows, even the clearing itself started to unravel at the edges, like threads being pulled from a tapestry. The air shimmered, and the ground seemed to lose its certainty beneath him. Elleina looked around, irritation slipping into her voice.

  “This again,” she muttered. “Another damn interruption.”

  Her gaze returned to Leif. “It seems we won’t see each other again for long after this… unless someone finds a way to make it so.”

  Leif swallowed, biting back the urge to show relief. He couldn’t risk provoking her, not when Serena was only a few steps behind him.

  “But I can happily wait another century,” Elleina continued, “or more.” Her voice softened, almost reverent. She brought both hands to his face as the world continued to peel away around them. And despite everything, despite the fear, Leif felt something strangely soothing in her touch.

  “Wait for me…” Elleina whispered. “Leif.”

  Her purple eyes held his. Darkness swallowed his vision whole, and his eyes opened. He was back inside the tent. The lamp on the low table gave off a faint, warm glow, its flame flickering softly beside him. Leif’s breath caught as he turned his head. Serena was still there, sound asleep, safe, and unmoved. Relief washed through him fast. He let his head sink back into the pillow and drew in a slow, shaky breath when another sound came.

  The tent flap shifted just slightly, letting in cold breeze from outside. Leif’s gaze snapped to it, muscles tensing. In the opening stood a small shape, pale against the darkness. A bird, one he could only assume was a dove, stayed there for a heartbeat. It met his eyes, and before he could move, it fluttered away into the night. Leif blinked once, brows knitting, and that was when he realized something else. His fingers were curled around an object. He looked down and saw a flower in his grasp.

  It looked simple, delicate, a thin green stem with six petals. Three longer outer ones and three shorter inner ones. Unquestionably, it was a snowdrop, except it carried the faintest glow, almost similar to moonlight. Leif rubbed his eyes hard, tightening his grip until the petals bent under his fingers. He thought the flower would vanish, like another mirage, but it didn’t. It was real.

  “What in the Creator's name is going on?” he muttered.

  He sat up quickly, crossed the small space, and pulled the flap fully closed, tying it shut with careful hands. Only then did he glance back at Serena again, checking to make sure she wasn’t harmed, not even touched. She lay exactly as she had, unharmed, without so much as a scratch. Leif returned to his mat and lowered himself down, slow this time. He set the snowdrop on the table beside the lamp, watching its faint glow linger. His hands rose to his face, covering his eyes.

  “Please,” he whispered into his palms, voice tight. “Please… let this trip be done.”