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Nothing was the same after that moment.
When Cosette returned from the hunt, early the next morning, Ellanden walked with purpose out of the tent and gathered her into his arms. She resisted, fiercely. First in mutters, then in threats, then in outright rebellion, stomping on his feet and shoving a bag of bloodied rabbits between them.
Then she started to cry...a lot.
The others kept a respectful distance, taking a needless trip down to the river, giving the fae time to slowly reconnect. When they finally returned, Evie witnessed something she hadn’t seen for ten long years. Something Freya had probably only seen a handful of times herself.
Cosette was smiling.
“Good morning,” she called, with the hint of a blush. “You guys get some water?”
She and Ellanden had finally detached and were preparing the last of the game—drying strips of meat above a fire. His shirt was wet and crumpled, still bearing the evidence of their tearful reunion. But a beaming happiness radiated out of him, lighting him up in a way the others hadn’t seen since they left the castle, like after all this time some part of him had finally been set free.
“You certainly took your time,” he teased, eyes twinkling as he stoked the coals. “If I had known you’d get lost, I would have drawn you a map.”
Asher rolled his eyes, giving Cosette a quick kiss on the forehead before settling down beside them. While Evie surveyed the scene with her hands on her hips, committing it all to memory.
Such a familiar sight, the four of them together. Making jokes, working at some trivial nonsense, until at last they would be called inside for supper. Her mind was already beginning to reconcile Cosette’s new age, slipping it into place like another piece of the puzzle. In a strange way, it felt like how things were always meant to be. There was something tender and nostalgic about it.
...then suddenly they were joined by another.
“I didn’t want to go in the first place,” Freya declared loudly, tying back her hair in a loose braid as she plopped down beside the fire. “If this one hadn’t decided to have some kind of emotional breakdown, then we all could have slept in.”
The others stiffened involuntarily, turning with nervous eyes to Cosette. But the fae only laughed, piling strips of dried meat into the bag. She seemed well-accustomed to insensitive outbursts from the witch. If anything, they were met with an affectionate exasperation, one that made the princess wonder how long the two had been travelling together and how such a thing came about.
As usual, her friends were thinking the same thing.
“Of all the things to happen,” Ellanden murmured, glancing between the girls with an incredulous smile, “In the whole realm...I can’t believe you two found each other.”
Freya flashed a grin, whilst Cosette’s eyes narrowed accusingly. “We had a lot of time to look.”
He clutched at his chest, like she’d plunged in a dagger, and she turned away quickly before he could see her smile. He could always make her smile.
“How did it happen?” Evie asked curiously, still bowled over by the astronomical odds. “We left one of you on the road to Taviel and another in Harenthall—all the way across the realm.”
The girls shared a quick look before Cosette lashed the bag shut with a sigh. “Like I said...we had a lot of time to look.”
There was sadness in her voice, but no anger behind it. All the anger seemed to have faded as she wept into her cousin’s chest. What remained was a quiet kind of steadiness.
“I told you before that the world had changed,” she began softly. “Well, that’s very true. After the three of you disappeared, the entire realm started shifting. Alliances that had been frail in the first place shattered, old enemies seizing upon the crown’s distraction as a moment to strike.”
The friends went very still, then settled closer around the fire. Trying their best not to imagine it, while picturing it very clearly at the same time.
The children of the monarchy abducted from a royal caravan?
It would have been chaos. Absolute chaos.
“But our parents,” Ellanden began with a frown, “surely our parents—”
“Our parents hardly noticed,” Cosette interrupted quietly. “They had one focus, one singular agenda constantly on their minds. Finding you. Compared to that, nothing else mattered.”
Much as she hated to admit it, Evie found this very easy to believe.
Once, when she was no more than six years old, her parents had taken her to a summer solstice celebration in the woods around Vale. The festivities had been wilder and more fantastical than anything she’d ever seen, and it wasn’t long before she slipped the guards meant to be watching her and wandered off on her own. Her parents had been frantic.
Her father stormed through the center of the carnival, tearing up the tents one by one, while her mother shifted into a fire-breathing dragon and took to the skies. By the time they finally found her, obliviously eating ice cream at the booth of a friendly witch, the entire celebration had been ripped apart at the seams. The vendors and patrons went home. She’d been grounded for a month.
Kidnapped by Tikosi raiders...? Yep, that would do it.
“For a while,” Cosette continued, “there was no getting out. The gates of all the capital cities were locked. All merchants and visitors were detained until further notice. The same rules applied in the castles themselves. It was suffocating. The guards around my quarters were tripled. My parents wouldn’t let me out of their sight. I’d wake up some nights to find one of them holding me, staring blankly out the window, telling me to go back to sleep. Your parents were almost worse.”
Again, Evie found this easy to believe.
Growing up, it had taken her years to discover that ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’ were honorary titles. If it hadn’t been so obvious, it would have been impossible to believe. Family wasn’t some vague idea in the highest echelons of the land; no, the leaders of the five kingdoms had bonded closer than blood.
Things like privacy and secrets didn’t exist between them. They delighted in each other’s happiness, grieved each other’s sorrows, and raised each other’s children as their own.
It was a blessing Evie wouldn’t have traded for anything in the world. But in this case, it had also proved to be the young monarchs’ downfall.
“They were always around,” Cosette murmured, speaking almost to herself. “Always hovering, always watching...until one day, they weren’t.”
The story paused abruptly, and the friends sat up with a start.
“What do you mean?” Asher demanded, every muscle tensed in anticipation.
She shook her head silently, still trying to understand herself. “I remember sneaking downstairs one night. We were at the villa house in Taviel and all of our parents were there. They were arguing. At first they tried to keep their voices down so as not to wake me, but it wasn’t long until they were shouting at the top of their lungs.”
Evie paled with a belated shiver. “What were they saying?”
The fae stared into the fire a suspended moment before slowly lifting her eyes.
“...that they were finished,” she said simply.
Finished.
A charged silence swept over the clearing, chilling the air like a winter breeze. None of the friends was sure exactly what it meant, but the word held power over them all the same.
“Finished...” Ellanden repeated slowly. “Finished with what?”
Cosette let out a quiet sigh, wanting to spare him. The friends had been through enough without adding this burden to it as well. But it was too great a thing to keep from them any longer.
The world had changed and they deserved to know.
“Everything,” she whispered.
* * *
THEY GAVE BACK THE crown.
No matter how many times Evie said the words to herself, she couldn’t believe they were true. She couldn’t believe such a thing was even possible. After uniting the five kingdoms. After saving the realm from an ancient darkness. After bringing forth an era of prosperity and peace...
They gave back the crown.
The others were still talking. Rather, Cosette was still talking—the others were listening with identical expressions of shock. Neither of them was able to believe it any more than she was. And yet, the story continued. Time, it seemed, had a way of marching on.
“—had never seen them like that,” Cosette was saying. “It frightened me. Cursing each other and screaming. Shouting in languages I didn’t understand. After a while, my father saw me standing there and carried me back up to bed. But when I woke up the next morning, they were gone.”
Gone. A word just like finished.
Evie didn’t know exactly what it implied, but it scared her nonetheless.
This time, none of them could bear to ask the question. The very foundations of their every belief had shattered and they were standing on shaky ground. Cosette answered it all the same.
“For years, they’d been travelling from one side of the realm to another. Suppressing rebellions. Battling mercenaries and raiders. Fighting back vampire incursions. But there was always a reason behind it. A hope that one of those missions would lead them to you.”
She paused ever so slightly, hesitant to admit the truth. “I guess that hope finally ran out.”
A heavy silence consumed them once again. In a flash of sheer madness, Evie almost wished for the solitude of the wizard’s cave. At least there she didn’t know what was happening. At least there she’d be able to drift into that perpetual, oblivious sleep.
As it stood, she doubted she’d ever sleep again.
They gave back the crown.
“And my mother...” she interjected suddenly, speaking for the first time. In no version of the world could she imagine Katerina Damaris returning the magical gemstone that was entrusted to her care. In no version of the world could she imagine her simply walking away. “She just gave up like the rest of them? Abdicated the throne and left it all behind?”
The others exchanged a quick glance.
“She did more than that,” Cosette said quietly. “She left the High Kingdom.”
Evie looked up in surprise, her face going both pale and blank at the same time. She didn’t know how to process this. She didn’t understand how it could possibly be true.
But on the other hand...she’d never lost a child.
“They appointed successors before they left,” Cosette continued gently, speaking quickly as if to shield them from the blow. “Your mother turned things over to my father, the fae returned to the old ways—when things were run by a high born council Belaria was placed in the hands of Atticus Gail, and the Kreo chose to abandon the idea of a chiefdom altogether.”
The princess’ lips parted in astonishment, and she bowed her head.
The hits just kept coming. First the loss of a family, then the loss of a throne. Between the two, it was the loss of an entire future. The very future they’d set off ten years ago to protect.
“You said...they were fighting back vampire incursions,” Asher said carefully, as rattled as the rest of them but trying to keep a level head. “But vampires are disorganized, save for a strict policy of non-interference. They would never launch a coordinated attack—”
“They do now.”
It was Freya who answered. The girl had been uncharacteristically quiet, watching each of the friends absorb the news in their own way.
“A coven of vampires once attacked Harenthall,” she continued, eyes drifting almost blankly to the fire. “Didn’t even bother with the gate, they just climbed right over the city wall.” She broke off with a faint shudder. “I didn’t know anything could do that...”
Cosette shot her a quick look before steering them back on course.
“Our parents had been the last thing standing between a unified realm and total annihilation. When they stepped down, the last of those tethers broke for good. For the first few years, it seemed inevitable—the grisly fallout of a kingdom shaken to its core. But then...it started to feel more deliberate than that. Old beasts resurfaced, ones that hadn’t been seen roaming the land in a long time. Crops began to wither without explanation, as if some kind of sickness was seeping into the land. Most people blamed it on the resurgence of Carpathia, but it started happening before that.”
Carpathia?
Evie lifted her head with a start. She hadn’t heard that word in a long time.
“I don’t understand,” Ellanden said abruptly, pushing to his feet. “This—this doesn’t make any sense.” He paced manically around the fire, raking his fingers through his hair. “My father wouldn’t just walk away from something like that. He’s been fighting on the side of good his entire life. There isn’t anything that could change that—”
“What about the death of his only son?” Cosette asked softly.
The pacing stopped. The two of them locked eyes.
“I don’t tell you this to make you angry,” she murmured. “Only to help you understand. That night when I said I was frightened...it was your father who frightened me the most. I’ve never seen anyone so beside himself, so completely torn apart by grief. Even to this day...it haunts me.”
The prince had nothing to say in return. It was as if the breath had been stolen right out of him. Instead, he sank slowly onto the grass—staring without blinking into the flames.
For a long time, it was quiet. Longer than anyone cared to admit.
Where did they go from there? How did one go back to the beginning, when the people were missing, when the very structures that defined it had somehow ceased to be?
“That still doesn’t answer our original question.” Asher’s quiet voice finally broke the silence as he glanced between the two girls. “How did the pair of you meet?”
Cosette looked up suddenly, as if she’d quite forgotten. “Time passed, the realm moved on, the royal search parties were eventually diverted to combat instead...but I never stopped looking for you. For months, I tracked down every lead in every city—chasing after rumors, following every trail I could find. But all the trails seemed to stop cold around Harenthall. That was the last place anyone ever saw you alive.”
Michael. She must be talking about Michael.
“Of course, our parents had already ransacked the place. With how thoroughly they ripped apart the forest, it’s honestly a miracle they didn’t break through the enchantment of that cave. But no one ever lingered long in the city, with the actual people who might have seen you.”
The fae’s bright eyes clouded slightly as she stared into the past.
“I was staying at an inn, asking leading questions, picking up bits of gossip...but I wasn’t getting anywhere. I was actually about to leave...and that’s when I met Freya.”
Like clockwork, the friends turned to the witch—the next piece in the puzzle.
“She was trying to blend in,” Freya said with a smirk, as if such a thing was impossible. “At one point, she even claimed to be a local. But she was talking urban legends. Looking like a nut.”
Unlikely as it was, Asher flashed the ghost of a smile. “So, of course, you became the best of friends.”
Freya nodded without batting an eye. “Naturally. I was always saying those same kinds of things myself, trying to get people to take up the cause...but no one ever believed me. Not until I met Cosette. When we left the tavern she told me who she really was, told me her story. I told her a story of my own.”
Their eyes met briefly, warming with a smile.
“Then we set out together to bring the three of you home.”
* * *
THE FIRE WAS DYING. The story was finished. And the three friends weren’t able to keep their composure for a second longer.
Ellanden stalked without a word into the forest, taking nothing but a blunted knife. Asher stared into the trees for a moment before going after him. Evie retreated to the tent, staring unblinkingly at the ceiling, crushed under the weight of all those tangled thoughts.
They gave back the crown. They walked away.
By now, she’d chanted it so many times it had taken on a kind of rhythm in her head, one that provided a subconscious kind of escape. It was a lot easier to curse the decision of her parents than to acknowledge the thing that drove them to it—the reckless decision of a single girl that pushed an entire realm over the edge.
Kingdoms torn asunder. Families ripped apart. Entire villages destroyed. The world as they knew it—torn apart at the seams. And why? What calamity had caused this to happen?
It’s because of me.
The realization stunned her senseless, chasing away every other thought.
All of this happened...because of me.
