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“Preferably with a little spice,” Lark pleads. “Can’t be all action and tragedy. Who wants to read that after all the shit we’ve been through?”

Puck sniggers. “No wonder you and I get along.”

“You wish, bloke.”

Our mirth is tired and fleeting. Or so I gather. I’m the only one who does not react at all, their discussion fogging to the background while my mind strays.

“Wait,” I mutter. “Wait a moment.”

The group pivots toward me while my eyes jump through the darkness, and my thoughts cycle.

“A story that has not been written,” I contemplate. “A new one.”

“Elixir?” Cove inquires.

“What’s he doing?” Lark asks.

The spaces behind my eyelids brim. It forces everyone but my lady to hop backward. And how offensive. Even if the iron hadn’t already reduced that magic, I have enough willpower to stop myself from harming them.

I grunt, “I won’t blind you.”

Puck insists, “Then what—”

“Be quiet. I am thinking.”

The suggestion of a new story written by Juniper blends in with the words from the Fable she had deconstructed. The one that had revealed the hidden message—the second way to save our world.

Fragments spin through my mind. The Fable’s enigmatic contents. My Unseelie ancestor and her Seelie nemesis, both of whom played roles in the scribes’ campaign to write the Book of Fables. Testimonial from the Horizon that Never Lies, who’d told us we have the capacity to discover this second way.

The second way is something far older than us. It is something that has existed since before our time, as has its source.

Sacrifice is the first option to restore our fauna and our realm. It is the one my kin have been enacting over the years through games.

From there, our band had made two loose conclusions. This means the second method is unity, which is older than sacrifice. And the source of this information is older than the Pegasi.

My ancestor was older, as was her nemesis. Both witches existed during the Pegasi’s era, in addition to the era of the scribes.

My ancestor had installed a curse on a water well, and her nemesis placed a counter spell in one of the Fables. Both had linked Cove and me throughout her game.

But what else had the Unseelie and Seelie witches contributed to this chapter in history? If given the opportunity, would they not manipulate other bits of the Fables?

“Juniper.” I lick my lips. “Tell me again. Recite the hidden message. Do it slowly.”

Puzzled, she draws out the sentences. In my psyche, I picture the words, each one linking to the next like chains. The cadence is fluid, passing through me as water does. I recall how my mothers bequeathed to me some of the knowledge they’d inherited from my ancestor about brewing. Lorelei and Marine had memorized the instructions that were passed down to them.

The rhythms of those instructions match the Fable’s text. The choice of words is familiar, explicitly so. The connection is concrete, I am certain of it.

I see those words like I see the darkness. I see what others cannot.

“The Seelie witch,” I realize. “She created the second way.”

Cove gasps. “The counter spell she’d forged to combat the curse your ancestor placed on the water well,” she interprets. “Do you think it wasn’t the only time the Seelie witch conjured such magic?”

Quiet floods the group until Juniper translates, “The second way is another of her counter spells.”

I nod once. “Which means—”

“The Unseelie witch must have placed a spell on Faerie, in the first place,” Cerulean theorizes. “Something she’d felt was necessary. Something her adversary was compelled to act against.”