**ASH**
The moment Klyesque exits the tent without Daphne in tow, I am ready to burn this place to the bloody ground. My heart stutters and for a moment my eyes light with heat. It is only the raise of Klyesque's hand and the tiny shake of her head that has me tampering down on my power.
“Why did you leave her?” I hiss as she takes her place at my side. The two of us eye Prince Azrael who is giggling merrily to some private joke he’s obviously told himself within the confines of his silly little brain.
Klyesque tips her head toward me and speaks in a breathless whisper. “Calm yourself. It would not do to lose your temper now. Perhaps when we were on the riverbank. But now?” She shakes her head. “The queen has promised no harm will come to us. I suspect she wants to petition Daphne for your favor.”
I snort, “My favor?” I growl. “What?”
Klyesque sighs. “She bid me tell you that she has pardoned our trespasses. Provided that we spend the night.”
“And leave the rest of our party bobbing on the river in our ship? With hungry sprites for company?” I chuckle. “She’s even crazier than I thought.” I shake my head, my body trembling with unleashed power. On the boat, I was certain I was spent. But the moment Daphne went overboard, a surge of renewed strength rose through every pore in my body. I felt as though I could ignite an entire realm and watch it sparkle like flame in the hearth. I had to drop anchor before I could leap into the river, which is why Klyesque got to her first. All my anger at Daphne’s secrecy, my suspicions of her quiet - dissipated with just the threat of losing her to the hungry waters of Faery.
Klyesque chortles, “She has promised safe passage to Rekyr. Land passage, should you promise to renegotiate their plight.”
I roll my eyes. “And what - pray tell - are we to do with our ship in that case?”
“Perhaps we should deny their offer of transport, but accept their invitation for renegotiation,” groans Klyesque. “Dionie and Petra should be fine on the ship until morning. They aren’t without magic.”
"What of Finn, then?" I ask, a smirk turning my lips.
Klyesque snorts, "Who cares about him?"
I chuckle. Her distaste for my half-cousin does not go unnoticed. She has never been a fan of his and it seems, since Daphne's arrival, she likes him even less than before.
“I suppose he could use the practice as well as the punishment, anyhow,” I surmise, my eyes locking on the front of the war tent anxiously. “I do not appreciate the sequestering of *my* Daphne in *any* such capacity that I am not permitted to stand audience. I shouldn’t agree to renegotiate shit!” Electric tendrils dance at my fingertips and I am forced to wave them away like rogue feathers that have cemented to viscid hands. “Damn this place. If we stay here I will get no sleep.”
Klyesque chuckles, her eyes traipsing over the festivities behind us. “Aye, but think you of the games we might play through the night to keep vigilant. The Cinder are lovers of sport and it has been almost an entire week since I have been allowed to flex my blade arm.”
I snort, eyeing the masses behind us with mild interest. Goblins and dwarves, pixies and trolls - they favor gambling the most of all the Fae in existence. Four species of which the Cinder breed many. And here, in the midst of their army, there are probably hundreds of them just biting at the whip to best a selkie at a game of Grog and Grapple. For selkies are known across the realms to be unassailable to any form of crippling drink there is. Mead, wine, firewater… selkies are notorious for their abilities to fight inhibition. Their bodies flow with just the kind of magic needed to purify sensibility. Klyesque will make a killing here should she decide to join the rabble.
“Are you seriously thinking of locking Daphne in the dungeon while you embark on your… journey?” Klyesque inquires softly, looking beyond me toward the war tent at my back.
With a grunt of irritation, I cock my head at her. “You disapprove.”
Still, she doesn’t look at me. “Well, if your aim is to keep her safe, I can achieve that for you. There’s no need to make your people see her as your prisoner. There’s no need for her to *feel* like one.”
“My aim-” I hiss sharply “-is to keep her in Rekyr, shrouded from the eyes of the High Bitch of Winter. You know this. She is not now, nor will she ever be a prisoner.” *Unless of course, she tries to leave me. Then I will chain her to my fucking bed.*
“She will certainly resent you for it ,should you seek to hold her hostage-” Klyesque lifts her chin “-as will I.”
I have to laugh at this. “Oh? Will you?” A dark chuckle shakes from my chest and I scoff, “Resent me all you like, I care not. The only thing that matters is-” I cut off, my words dying out as energy shivers above the dozens of bonfires within my line of sight, snatching my attention. A phantom presence disturbing one pyre after another so subtly, none that masquerade beneath their glow seem to notice. But of course, I do, because my magic sparks to awareness in the wake of foreign power. Whatever heads our way is in posession of high magic. “Do you feel that?” I hiss sharply.
“I do,” Klyesque whispers, shaking her head at the sight of a couple of dwarves so deep in their cups that they’ve turned a brawl with each other into a battle with gravity, both of them so sloshed that they can hardly stay on their feet.
A whisper on the wind has my hackles rising and the hairs on the back of my neck prickling. I am instantly on guard, my body tensing as I survey the landscape before me.
Nothing. I see nothing.
Naught but a thousand foolish Fae and I hear naught but their boisterous war drums and the whistlings of lutes as they dance about the swarms and fires. A quick throb, a fluctuation of power, a vibration that tempers the air, it’s the only warning I have before I spin around to meet the glowing gaze of the Prince of Cinder, who is now smirking from his place at the tent’s entrance like his mother's damned gatekeeper. A rumble of power echoes in the sky above when my eyes catch on the cyclone of leaves that dies about his mother’s tent.
“What is it?” Klyesque hisses, reading my disquiet in the sudden red of my eyes.
“The Woodland Witch,” I growl, lightning cracking in the sky above our heads as my temper comes full circle. “She is inside.”
I start for Azrael, who is grinning like the dragon he is, and I ready myself to zap him from head to dick, but Klyesque places a hand on my shoulder. “Wait,” she says quietly. “Remember the woods?” Klysesque suddenly asks me and I nod. “The Whispering Leaves... the way Daphne spoke about our path to the gate?"
“Yes, Klyesque, what is your point? I bid you make it quickly."
"They were speaking to her, the leaves were."
"No." I say, watching Azrael nod and bow, as if to gloat. "It's not possible."
She laughs, "Fine. Keep denying the truth if you must. But I for one cannot remember a time when the trees walked on a mortal's command, can you?"
*No. I cannot.*