For several days the weather gave no quarter, alternating between rainy and merely moist, but always chill. The Vessel pressed us north at the pace the horses could withstand, and we labored in her wake, reduced to grim endurance. In the evenings, while the knights erected our camp, she offered healing, and my comrades availed themselves of the gift more often than not. Once we were settled, whether it was clear or fog-swept or raining, I gave myself to Last’s attentions and learned to pit myself against his greater skill. Most of those evenings, Chester accompanied me, and if the weather permitted, we had company: sometimes our classmates, sometimes just Eyre or one of the genets. I tasted more mud than I liked to recall… but the weight of the staff in my hand was another promise, one I’d made to my brother, and through him to the genets and everyone else whose life had been marred by history and its betrayals. I soldiered on.

I was not the only one who felt the strain. Following one such practice, after the others had repaired to their bedrolls, I went for a walk to dispel the restlessness brought on by my inadequacy only to find the priestess seated by herself beneath a tree, her smooth brown face lifted to Heaven and her lashes dark against her cheeks.

“Vessel Rose,” I said. “You have wandered afield from your flock.”

“Prince Morgan,” she replied. “Priestesses do have need of solitude. More than ordinary folk, even.”

“Do I inconvenience?” I asked. “I will withdraw if so.”

“No….” She sighed. “No. You are one of the few whose company would not vex me.” With a smile that seemed more tired than mysterious, she added, “Sit, if you wish. The earth feels good.”

“Does it?” I asked. Joining her I settled my limbs. “I feel the sickness before us. And an agitation besides. The soil feels good to me, but there is… a congestion I cannot fathom. Do you suppose it to be the weather?”

She rested her head back against the trunk, dark hands loosely clasped in her lap. “It may be the reverse, actually. That the weather is a reflection of the congestion. It often is.”

“Do you feel it?” I wondered.

“The way you do?” She shook her head. “I doubt it, my lord. Humans may have magic, but it is a very thin water we collect. I have read the accounts of the battle at Threnody-Calling-Forward. The magics of the elves are peerless. My little healing spells, which so quickly use up my vital powers, are small indeed in compare to women who can unmake the diseases that afflict a child at birth, or who can breathe underwater.”

“Breathe underwater!”

She laughed. “Yes, I always liked that story. If you had wondered where our fanciful tales of merfolk and sirens come from, you have only to look as far as female elves, remaking themselves so they can seek the treasures of the sea floor.”

I reflected on the many ways my world would be reshaped by the knowledge I had stumbled onto: mer-elves indeed. “You do not seem taxed by your spellcasting, if I may be bold.”

“Discipline,” she said, one hand twitching, as if she wished to wave it but had not the energy. “One learns not to show fatigue before one’s people. It disheartens them.”

“A lie?” I suggested.

“A wisdom.” She lifted her brows. “We are all of us affected by our fellow men and women. We are affected by ourselves, and our own beliefs about ourselves. To wallow in despair creates a spell of its own, my lord. It reproduces its effects in all those who enter its aegis.”

My own long history of falsifying my health rose like the unquiet dead. “One cannot ask for help without admitting to weakness. Some would suggest that accepting aid has its own beneficent effect on those around one.”

“True.” When I looked at her, she laughed. “Who said life was simply navigated? If the answers were easy, sir, we would have them all already, and then what would we do with ourselves?”

I thought of the elves, wasting away from ennui and madness. “Very little we would be proud of.”

“You are certainly correct.” She sighed. “Thinking on it, I should pray.”

I rose and bowed. “Vessel. I leave you to your solitude.”

It wasn’t until I was bedding down alongside Ivy that I wondered if I could have somehow fed the empty well in the priestess and restored some of her vital energy to her. Would she have welcomed it? Would I have had to bleed into her, as I did with the genets? Or would a kiss have sufficed? Did I really want to kiss another woman after having kissed Ivy?

I looked across the ground and met Ivy’s impish smile, her face almost entirely shrouded in her blanket. A very easy question to answer, that.

We rode north, and as we did I experimented, reaching for the land, the sky, the distant battlefield. The thickness and closeness I’d sensed never faltered, and it made my skin ache. I felt it as confinement, and found my breath tight in my throat.

“It continues to chafe me,” I said to Last. “That I cannot do more magic. I thought the royal gifts would be stronger than the needs of the immortality enchantment.” We were riding just behind Ivy and Chester during one of the spells where it was merely gusty and wet rather than actively raining. I steeled myself to ask the final question, glad that I was speaking a language none of my friends could understand. “Am I weaker than most royals?”

“I would not know,” Last admitted. “For I have never met another. You and Lord Amhric are the only elves I’ve known with the royal gifts.”

“Were you born after the exile?” I guessed, and at his nod frowned. “I was told by my brother and Lord Kemses that those with the gifts never rose again, or were perhaps destroyed. It seems hard to believe to me, still. That you might never have met an elf with the gifts.”

“And yet it is so,” Last said. “The last elven king we were certain of fell here, amid the humans, on the battlefield the priestess mentioned. His prince vanished, presumed lost as well. The two of them drew off the living dead and were never heard from again. Since our exile, we have had the council of elders... formed from the blood-flag lords of Nudain, Ekadet, and Suleris. They said that as a people we could no longer support the royalty, for we no longer had enough magic to share. What use someone to tend the garden of magic in our souls? We should not be surprised then, that no one with the gifts had come forth to lead us.”

I glanced at him. “And you believe this?”

Last’s mouth twitched down, but this was the sole expression of skepticism he allowed himself. “Lord Locke, I was trained to guard a blood-flag... because such elves are necessary. Where there is power in Serala, there are elves who want it for themselves.” He glanced at me. “I think it far more likely that the council has been ensuring the convenient lack of kings.”

Since this was exactly what Kemses and Amhric had suggested, the theory was not surprising. What was surprising was Last’s holding with it.

“And no one has cared?” I said. “No one thought to question them?”

He grimaced. “Why would they? They have seen no evidence that contradicts the claim. In its absence, it is easier to believe. And more pleasing as well, as it allows for the accumulation of power. The council offered reasonable explanations, explanations we were eager to accept in the wake of our exile. Most elves now believe that immortality robbed us of our royalty.” He glanced at the people riding in front of us. “Some blamed humans for that as well. That it was not enough that they stole our deaths from us; they stole our consciences as well.”

“Is that what we are,” I murmured.

“So Lord Kemses has said.”

And he would, for he had dealt with the lawlessness and cruelties of elven society for longer than either I or Last had been alive. How easily he had accepted Amhric, though, and me! “How do you know?” I asked suddenly. “That Amhric is your sovereign, and I his prince?”

“I know because Lord Kemses knows, and the pinnacle of a blood-flag is often privy to truths more sublime than the rest of us are capable of apprehending.”

“On faith.” I glanced at him. “You have accepted me on faith.”

“Trust, rather,” Last replied. “I trust my lord. He trusts you.”

After Last had withdrawn, Almond whispered, “It’s obvious to us, Master.”

“Is it?” I glanced over my shoulder at her, saw only the top of her head, her hair a grim gray in what light the overcast sky diffused.

“Your blood tastes different.”

In front of me, Kelu nodded. “She’s right. Even when you tasted sick and damaged from the mask spell, you were different.”

“I suppose that’s something,” I said, but I wondered. Had all the other kings and princes been culled, as Last and Kemses believed? Or had the immortality enchantment prevented the rise of all but the most powerful of gifts? Perhaps it was because so few children were born to the elves that there was so little opportunity for the gifts to manifest, but if so, why Amhric’s late onset? Had it taken years for his magic to struggle past the thorned chains that wound us round? And yet, if we were truly the king and prince, why did we not have power, and to spare? It was almost as if something was holding us in abeyance.

Why did I feel as if I was missing some part of the puzzle?

At the midday break, Kelu asked to ride with Radburn.

“Why?” I asked. “I thought you were used to me.”

“I am,” she said. “But Seven is spending a lot of time with him, and I’d like to know why.”

“You are serving as chaperone?” I asked, amused.

Kelu glowered at me, ears flattened to her hair.

“Go on,” I said. “Almond and I will keep Seven entertained.”

Radburn seemed delighted to be approached by Kelu. Watching their interaction made it clear that he hadn’t been himself in some time—not since I’d returned, at very least, if not longer. I was still frowning in his direction when Guy walked past on the way to his mount. He stopped, looking at me and then following the direction of my gaze. And sighed. “God Almighty, but you are daft.”

“What?” I said, startled.

“Dumb as a post when it comes to people.”

“And you are such an expert,” I said, but I was feeling less belligerence and more bewilderment. “What am I missing, then? What burr has Radburn got under his saddle?”

“The idiot thinks he’s in love with you, and is all over jealousy that you are with Ivy, and embarrassment because you can’t possibly want him, now that you’ve come back fancy.”

“What!”

“Don’t let it bother you,” Guy said, droll. “He’s not actually in love with you. Fond of you, certainly. But the man will swive anything that’ll hold still for it, and has mistakenly judged that to indicate he is destined to love men and only men for the remainder of his natural life. He half believes himself a rake. It’s ridiculous. He doesn’t have a heart cold enough to be a rake. He’s a swooning poet in search of a muse.”

All this was so stunning that I credited myself for being capable of responding at all. “Radburn. In love with me.”

“Radburn, thinking he’s in love with you, but not. Give him some time, he’ll sort it out. Now Chester…” Guy grimaced. “Likely will marry Minda and never know why his life revolves around a melancholy he cannot understand or solve. Treat him with care. He really is in love with you.” With an airy salute that married poorly with the wry regret in his eyes, he went to his mount.

And left me shocked speechless in his wake. The drake nudged me when I failed to climb into the saddle, like all the others were doing, but it took Almond’s gentle hand on mine to recall me to myself. I boosted her up and then Seven, both of them preferring to ride behind me, and then hauled myself after them.

Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Chester was a fast friend, and no one could ask for finer. And he certainly didn’t love Minda, but that merely meant the woman he was meant to marry had not come for him yet. Thinking back over our years of association, I could not remember him speaking with any eagerness about a woman, but then, neither could I recall him doing so about some man. Not that he would, since such things were considered perverse. Would he have been capable of hiding it?

For several minutes I occupied myself, scouring my memory for any incident that might prove out Guy’s hypothesis, but I found nothing. The only times I’d ever seen Chester truly animated was when chasing his love of languages, and speaking of history. Surely that suggested Guy was wrong?

Glancing at Ivy, who was talking with animation to Nine, I wondered if I was the one engaging in willful denial. I had been an incurable romantic for as long as I could remember, and not even my illness had been able to crush that impulse completely from me. I had loved fairy stories and tales of epic deeds, particularly mythical ones, for as long as I could remember, and the stories of true love had shaped my aspirations. But Ivy herself would tell me that most people did not marry for love, and few could expect to find it in their lifetimes.

I wanted that for Chester, and if Guy was right, he would never have it. And I would be complicit in that tragedy.