Zed inspected himself in the guildhall’s common mirror: dark eyes and tawny skin; long fingers and pointed ears. All of them under his absolute control. Or at least as absolute as anyone could boast. He smiled into the dirty looking glass, but instead of feeling happy at the expression, Zed experienced a jolt of fear. His smile tightened into a grimace before sinking completely.

Even after all these months, sometimes the sight of his own face still scared him. Zed wondered if he’d ever get over the feeling; he wondered how his friends had.

A throat cleared nearby. Zed flicked his eyes to the mirror’s edge, to find Callum standing in the doorway behind him. Zed’s new dress jerkin hung from the elf’s forearm, clean and bright.

“You left it in the main hall,” his uncle said. “Considering how much ambrosia Nirav and Fife were spilling on the floor, I decided it was safest just to bring it to you.”

“Sorry!” Zed chirped, summoning the grin again. “That was silly of me, huh?”

Callum drifted in, opening the jerkin for Zed to slide his arms through the sleeves. As Zed worked it over his doublet, the elf smiled down at him—a bit sadly, it seemed to Zed. “It’s not your fault,” he said. “I imagine there’s a lot on your mind today.”

Zed nodded, fussing over the jerkin’s dainty little buttons. A life in outtown hadn’t prepared him for the demands of fancy clothing, but in recent months his wardrobe had expanded with the adventurers’ reputation. Still, this jerkin was particularly special. It was an elven design, made of a shimmering cloth that the wood elves harvested from fey silkworms.

Once, it had belonged to Zed’s father.

Callum brought it with him when he returned to Freestone, accompanied by a small party of elves sent to check on the human city. Though the strange green lights that erupted from Freestone were visible even from Llethanyl, the worst of the Night of Dangers—as it was now being called—had been contained by the city wards. The very thing meant to keep monsters out of Freestone had instead trapped them within the city, like hornets in a jar.

Zed sometimes wondered if that was why the djinn had performed its ritual in the market, instead of retreating to the forest. What were the wards, really, but a wish for seclusion? For safety from the things out there. One final wish to twist against its makers.

“It’s not your fault,” Callum said again, softly, drawing Zed from his thoughts. Zed caught a glimpse of his own bleak expression in the mirror and sighed.

“I know,” he said.

“Even when we know a thing, sometimes it’s important to hear it. Sometimes it’s important to hear it again and again.” Callum put his hand on Zed’s shoulder, smiling at him in the mirror. “You and your friends defeated a great evil, Zed. The Danger that ended the world. That djinn destroyed countless lives, all without anyone knowing it existed. You accomplished what even your human Champions couldn’t.”

Zed giggled. “So you think elven ones would have done better?”

Callum shrugged, but his usually stoic expression brightened into a grin. “Who can say for sure? It is interesting, though, that there were two elves among the apprentices who finally stopped the djinn.”

“Two?” Zed asked. “Fel and…?”

Callum laughed, his palm squeezing Zed’s shoulder. “And you, Zed. Two very good elves.”

Zed’s ears began to burn, and for once, when he gazed at his reflection, he felt completely safe.

“Zerend would have been so proud of you,” Callum said. “Your mother is. I am. And though Frond may not say it, I know she is t—”

“CALLUM!”

As if on cue, the guildmistress’s voice boomed through the hall. Both Zed and his uncle flinched, then laughed together.

“Duty calls,” Callum said. And with one last squeeze of his nephew’s shoulder, he headed toward the door. “I think Brock was looking for you,” he added, before disappearing from the room.

Though most of the elves had returned to Llethanyl bearing news of Freestone’s ordeal—and its survival—a select few remained in the human city, including the queen’s former High Ranger. Callum now lived among the adventurers in the guildhall, taking up a small portion of the duties that had once been Lotte’s, mostly combat drills and hunting patrols.

The rest—the much larger portion—had fallen to Liza. Or rather she’d taken them up herself, with a zeal matched only by her competence.

Of all Zed’s friends, Liza had been the last to warm to him, avoiding contact even longer than Jayna in the days following his possession. Though she knew intellectually that Zed hadn’t been in control of his own body, and even understood why he’d succumbed to Makiva in the first place, that didn’t seem to bring her much comfort. Eventually, Zed wondered if she’d ever truly forgive him for nearly killing her brother.

Then, without warning, she’d arrived at his room early one morning, hammering against the door with a gauntleted fist.

“Get dressed,” she’d shouted through the wood. “And meet me in the training yard.”

Zed had been terrified, especially when he found Liza in full sparring gear, her metal shield and wooden training sword ready.

They fought all morning, without a word between them. Liza’s hits were nonlethal, but they were still plenty painful. Zed spent most of his energy just trying to elf-step out of her range, but Liza always seemed to be there when he reappeared, as if she could sense where he was jumping.

They finished just as the midday bell rang, both panting and exhausted. Zed had collapsed into the dirt. When Liza offered him her hand with a big smile, cheers broke out from all around them. Half the guild had come to watch.

“Good fight, Magus Zed.” The sun glinted off Liza’s armor as she grinned down at him. She looked like a knight from the stories.

Zed couldn’t help but grin back. “Good fight, Dame Liza.”

Zed peeked into Hexam’s office, where the archivist and Jayna were finally organizing his library.

“It’s almost time!” Zed called inside. “A few of us are heading to the square, to snag good spots. Has either of you seen Brock?”

“He left early,” Jayna answered. “He said you should save him a seat.” She squinted down at the book in her hand. “The Book of…oh, it’s so dark.”

Zed snapped his fingers, and a glowing mote of fire—beautiful, natural, orange fire—appeared over Jayna’s head. With the death of the djinn, Zed had lost the ability to conjure the green-hued flames, but apparently the fiend had only altered what was already inside him. He was a natural fire mage, Hexam said, and in the last few months Zed had gained a fine control over his powers that amazed even himself. The orange flames were never as strong as the fiendfire had been—never as hungry.

But Zed was grateful for that.

“Thanks,” Jayna called. “Let’s see. The Book of . . . Cruelest Curses. Ah. Lovely.”

“Add it to the pile,” Hexam said from his desk.

Jayna rolled her eyes, then set the book atop the rather large stack reserved for Hexam’s less savory grimoires. “We’ll just…deal with these later,” she said doubtfully.

The workroom was looking more like its old self every day. The beautiful color-changing orbs had been replaced, and a selection of new monster skulls even decorated the tables. Hexam had survived the Night of Dangers thanks to necromancy, but his right arm was never quite the same. It was now small and withered, and his hand sometimes trembled violently when he attempted to lift heavy books.

But in a surprising act of magnanimity, the Silverglows had gifted the adventurers with a manual for one-handed spell-casting. Now, with daily exercises, Hexam was nearly as potent a mage as ever, though he still acquiesced to letting Jayna help him organize the office.

What took longer to rebuild was the archivist’s relationship with Frond. Hexam was never outwardly angry with the guildmistress, but he always seemed to have a pressing task when she called him to meetings.

Finally, after nearly a month of awkwardness between the guild’s two surviving leaders, Frond stormed into the guild mess one evening and slammed her fist against the table. In the silence that followed, her eyes found the wizard.

“Hexam,” she said thickly. “I’m…I’m sorry. It’s not enough, I know. For weeks, I’ve been trying to find the words that would be, but I don’t think they exist. We betrayed you. I betrayed you. …” The guildmistress took a deep breath. “And we were betrayed in turn. For now, this is all I can do. I want everyone in the guild to know: I made a mistake. A bad one. And I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to make up for it.”

The room was utterly quiet when Frond finished. Slowly, she turned to leave.

“I miss her, too,” Hexam said.

Frond turned, her gray eyes downcast.

“And I miss you,” he added.

Frond’s expression pinched, her eyes squeezing shut. For a moment, Zed had thought the fearsome Alabasel Frond—the Basilisk, guildmistress of the Adventurers—might actually cry.

Instead, she turned and spat on the floor.

“I’m holding a meeting tomorrow at second bell,” she barked. “Master-rank adventurers only.” Then she hurried from the room.

Micah was waiting for him at the guild’s front door.

“Brock was looking for you earlier,” the boy said with an exasperated expression. “He wants you to—”

“Save him a seat, I know.” Zed skipped up to the healer and smiled.

Two dots of color touched Micah’s cheeks as he gazed down at Zed, then he quickly turned away. “You look…uh…nice. Very…elven? In a good way.”

“Thanks. You do, too. Human, I mean. In a good way.”

Micah took a deep breath and squared his feet, as if bracing himself to fight a particularly nasty Danger. “I got you something.” Then, before Zed could respond, he pulled a small handful of flowers from his satchel. “They’re elfgrass blossoms, from outside. Hexam looked over them. No parasites or body-stealing spirits that he could find.”

Zed gazed down at the small, colorful flowers. Based on their current temperature, he could only imagine how red his ears were right now.

Flowers. From a boy. To a boy. It felt utterly strange and wonderful. Zed gently took the bouquet, cradling it against his chest. The red-orange petals of the elfgrass reminded him of a fox’s fur.

On the day after the djinn’s defeat, Zed had one last dream of the animal, as clear and vivid as a memory. He dreamed he was in the forest outside Freestone, exploring with his friends, when they came upon a wide, treeless hill. The fox waited atop, its fur bright as copper under the sun.

And the fox was something else. A young woman in the dashing clothes of an adventurer grinned warmly at him. Many figures surrounded her, but they weren’t stooped and ghostly like the last time Zed had seen them. In the dream they were all real: men and women and others; humans, elves, and dwarves—and some peoples Zed had no names for. They were smiling at Zed and his friends. They were waving.

And Foster Pendleton waved the most energetically of all, practically leaping into the air. For the first time in his life, Zed awoke laughing.

“You two tomatoes ready for the Guildculling?” Jett said, arriving with a wink. He leaned on the cane Liza had made for him nearly a year ago. “My, it’s gotten very red in here.”

“Ready!” Zed blurted, more loudly than he meant to.

“Let’s get this over with,” muttered Micah.

“Liza’s already at the stage preparing,” said Jett. “And Fel’s on an errand. Jayna said she’d catch up. For now it’s just us chickens.”

Jett passed through the door with a chuckle. “Adorably bright-red chickens.”

“I hate having friends,” Micah said, following him out.

Zed didn’t move. He tried to follow the others, but found himself unable to take a single step. He was awash in gratitude, a whole reservoir of it, as wide and impossible as an ocean. Zed floated in the feeling for a moment, knowing that it couldn’t last forever.

Monsters still roamed the world. There would always be darkness, and creeping claws which scratched their way through even the toughest wards.

But here, now, Zed was safe.

And happy.

And loved.

And as he took that first step into the daylight, Zed finally let himself believe that he deserved it.