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I had reeled backward, thinking she would slam the mallet against me, break me into pieces to mollify the so-called violated trees. But she hadn’t. She’d stopped herself at that last moment, her eyes shimmering with recognition and horror, remembering who I was.

The mallet had smacked the ground. She’d grabbed me, and hearing her cry out, I had grabbed her back. We held each other, shocked and shaking. It had been an accident, and it took weeks for her to stop tearing up whenever she glanced at me, to stop smothering me with affection.

I tried brushing it off. I believed it when Mother said she’d club her own skull before allowing herself to do me harm.

But the incident fled from her mind soon after. And her fears still lurked. I wondered if she’d have an episode against me again, if she’d see me that way again someday. If she’d see me as something to get rid of.

Hearing my story, Aire gave me a look of empathy.

I never had a father, but he didn’t broach the subject.

I omitted the particulars of Mother’s trade. Just a matter of giving broad details about her mind deteriorating, that she had illusions of me being a threat because of my woodskin, like the trees resented her for having me.

Sure, carpentry was a way of life in Mista. The same as harvesting and milling.

And apparently, Aire either didn’t know of the acorn’s existence in the vault—it was a secret item for a reason, and maybe not his jurisdiction to protect valuables—or he hadn’t been privy to enough details to get skeptical.

But still, he shouldn’t know Mother was the woodworker in service to the Crown. I kept my mouth shut about that, even if I wanted to be honest, even if I wanted to be honest about so many things, about Mother’s craft, about my fairytale birth, about taking the acorn.

I wanted to tell him badly. So badly.

“What if I’m wrong?” I asked. “What if there is no cure for her?”

“There is still time,” he said. “The forest is not idle, and neither should you be.”

“I’m not finding the answers I’d hoped for—from anyone.”

Aire winced. He matched my position, settling on the terrace floor and sliding his limbs through the railing. A leaf had flattened under his boot.

“You once accused me, saying I am not a perfect soldier,” he recounted. “You were right. It is a fear of mine. I know what it means for loss to inspire your every move.”

He watched the sky, his jaw at a sharp angle. “On the day Robin died, she had been picking blooms in the woods, fixing to make them into straw flowers. While gathering, she’d found something in the brush.”

I felt an urge to smooth out the terrible lapse in his voice. My hands choked the rungs to kept me from reaching out, even though he stood too far away.

“It was an item of value. Being a generous soul, she’d meant to donate it.” His head bent, his throat bobbing. “Robin insisted too often on traveling without a guard, though I’d told her over and over—” He cut himself off. “A group of renegades intercepted her carriage. They meant to strip the jewels from her neck, the wedding ring from her finger. Little did they know, they’d find a more priceless gem instead.”

Some macabre part of me wanted to know more. “What gem?” I asked, unsure if he’d heard me and realizing that he wouldn’t offer that much anyway.

Aire’s eyes grew distant. At times like this, it usually escaped me how young he was, a scant four years older than I.

His voice broke. “She fought back.”

She lost. He told me the rest, describing it in such harrowing detail that I witnessed the scene through his eyes. The renegades slit the driver’s neck and ransacked the carriage, and when they checked Robin, they found the valuable, which she’d only uncovered an hour before, an item which she refused to give up.

This woman who owned Aire’s heart, who’d been lucky to win him, didn’t give a shallow impression. She didn’t sound like somebody willing to risk her life for a mere donation bauble. Whatever the gem, it must have been worth fighting for.

The struggle ended with a knife in her stomach.

Aire had planned to meet her partway through the woods after finishing a patrol nearby. He found his wife bleeding on the side of the road, just as the renegades had been relieving the woman of her possessions.

Aire had seen red. The men bolted toward him, spoiling for violence in order to keep their loot. I pictured it, how they hadn’t stood a chance against him.

Among the fallen and bloodied, Aire sunk to his knees and cradled his bleeding wife, who still clutched that gem in her fist, who whispered a wish to him, who made him swear to honor this wish.

She told him not to cry, but he hadn’t listened.

For all that Aire could sense and predict, he hadn’t anticipated that end. He’d been trained to save anybody, yet he’d been helpless to save the one person who mattered most.