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And I know the smell of him. Scorpio has a particular scent, like distilled algae.

And I know the sound of Faeries. Puck doesn’t need to describe it, nor the troop of new Solitaries that flood the scene.

We had anticipated a battle with each of our enemies. We just hadn’t expected it to happen at the same time.

My hunch had been right. Our Fae rivals must have heard the attack and held back for a dual purpose. They idled while we sliced through the humans. They waited for the mortal iron to penetrate and weaken us. They’d been standing fast until both fronts began to wilt, easy to ambush in one fell swoop.

It’s devious. It’s Fae.

This is their move in the game.

But it’s not just Scorpio and his ilk. At the raging echoes of flapping wings, drumming hooves, and wild hissing, we know.

The merman kept his promise. He’s brought the fauna.

Which…does not make sense. Against iron fire, against humans, they wouldn’t be fighting a natural battle of survival in their habitat. It would invalidate the fauna’s restoration and everything the Solitaries are striving for. That very point had been established during our meeting with Scorpio.

No, this does not make sense. Until…it does.

It does because there is a twist. Cove cries out, despair propelling her blood-stained hand to her mouth. Puck expels a tormented noise. From above, Cerulean’s guttural shout of pain merges with the cacophony.

There are some truths that need to be seen. There are others that only need to be felt.

I know from their anguished reactions. I made the same sounds when my mothers died.

It is loss. It is denial.

It’s the sound one makes when those who matter to them have been violated.

Scorpio hasn’t enhanced the Solitary fauna in droves. He’s chosen only three animals.

He has enhanced Tímien, Sylvan, and Lotus.

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Cerulean had once called this a new game. A scrimmage of moves and countermoves. Full truths and half-truths. Lucid words and distorted words. Nature versus itself. In the end, someone loses, and someone else wins.

Yet that isn’t so. This is a game where no one wins. The difference is how much we forsake, how much slips from our fingers like water.

Tímien spears into the fray. His wingspan shoves the wind out of his way, making it clear he has shifted sizes.

Sylvan gallops on hooves that stamp depressions into the earth. She rages toward the barrage, the weight of her approach testifying to her stature, which has tripled.

Lotus skates across the grass at an accelerated pace. The Evermore Blossom has worked on him despite his mortality, so while his slither is unmistakable, Lotus’s violent hiss rings like a blade.

Their wild calls dominate the landscape. The furious caw of a Solitary raptor. The stomping limbs of a Fae stag. The rapid vibration of a mortal serpent.

This is why we have not seen or heard from Tímien. Scorpio must have gotten to him, trapped him when we weren’t aware, along with our other companions while we were occupied.

And this is why Scorpio has not manipulated more animals from our wild. Such an action would have held water if the fight had been internal, had been in their habitat, and if any deaths had been natural.

Iron fire wielded by mortals has cancelled that option out. It has forced Scorpio to get creative.

The dwellers he’s enhanced are sufficient. They’re enough to make a vicious difference in battle, enough to jettison for the sake of our wild, enough without having to forfeit additional casualties of war—a few fauna martyrs in favor of the rest. Crucially, Scorpio has used the Evermore Blossom on three figures who would strike his opponents where it hurts the most.

He has made his choice. And he’s made it well.

Cove’s distraught eyes stray to mine. I grasp her face and beg her to tell me, to help me. Shakily and rapidly, she describes the anarchy in detail, and in this way, I see fragments of the chaos.