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Each step we take down the winding stone street, the bones of her fingers tremble against mine. There is a contradictory strength in her grip, the kind that reminds me of elders whose bones are like metal,needles, beneath frail muscles.

Since the night in the human lands, Daxeel has been gentler with me. Kind, even. That part of him I fell in love with all that time ago, it has returned, it embraces me—and I snuggle up to it every Quiet in his bed, in his arms.

I’m just waiting now, waiting for him to give me the answer for how he will keep me out of the second passage, and his proposal…

Only a matter of time, now.

We are in such a fine space that he’s loosened the reins on my confinement. Not much, but a little. Enough to let me go for lunch in Kithe.

But with the second passage less than two weeks away, the streets flood with fae from all over the lands.

Seems like anyone who wasn’t here for the first passage has arrived at the heart of Kithe and brought their entire bloodline with them.

My mood rots a bit more with every youngling that runs into me, every hissed ‘move’ from a stubborn elder and the growing stench of steed manure that the townkeepers can’t actually keep up with.

Ridge calls over his shoulder at us, “Want to walk up to Comlar?”

The sneer I aim at his back goes unnoticed, but not by Eamon who looks over the heads of pushy fae and stragglers alike. A small smile plays on his full lips.

There is a huff to my voice, “You said we would go to the scripture room—mind your boots!” I shove the youngling who stumbles into my legs.

The child only bites up at me before he runs off for his parents. Hope he falls and scrapes his knee.

“Scripture first, then Comlar?” Ridge offers with a throwaway grin back at us.

I shrink my shoulders into myself and squeeze between two groups of dokkalves waiting on the side of the road where the rental carriages are usually lined up. But there are no carriages waiting there this busy phase.

“Ok.” It’s all I say, because if I risk more, I might be unkind.

I always imagined I would love to live in a place like the Royal City of the Queen’s Court, but since I pass through those streets mostly at night when the parties carry on in the halls of the High Court, I’m beginning to doubt myself. Could I manage this boasting of folk all day, every day? To not be able to take a step without almost smacking into someone’s back or not even to stand still a moment without another knocking into me?

I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.

Kithe is best when it’s quiet; when it’s slow; when its cosy. I find beauty in the calm of it, so maybe I will always be a villager at heart.

Aleana’s palm is clammy on mine. “What is there to do at Comlar this phase?”

My boots creak around the strewn hay and bloody flesh that the kelpies feast on between rides. By the wet, salty stench of the fatty meat, I guess it to be blobshark blubber.

My nose wrinkles.

I manoeuvre around the waste littered all over the street.

Aleana isn’t so lucky.

The heel of her boot catches on a dump of kelpie waste, as pungent as the blubber. She curses under her breath.

I bare my teeth in a look of blatant disgust.

Firming her grip on my hand, she pauses to kick her heel against the stalk of a street lantern.

Ridge and Eamon hook around a merchant with stacks of freshly inked parchment scrolls at his feet, then round back to us.

Ridge’s gaze wanders away from us, fast. The impatience of waiting is quick to steal his attention to the snaps of the firecrackers some younglings throw at shop faces across the street.

“The tower is just as we left it,” Eamon answers and crouches down at Aleana’s raised foot. With a twig he snags from the edge of the road, he picks at the kelpie manure stuck to her heel. “There’s always gambling in the woods, watching the battle blocks, and the Hall is livelier than ever.”

Aleana shrugs. “I could do that.”