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Poet’s green eyes cartwheeled between us. “Enemies to lovers.” His face swung toward the princess. “This looks familiar.”

At that proclamation, I diverted my gaze from Aspen’s and, I suspected, she from me. Briar sighed and laced her hand through Poet’s. “But will it end the same?”

“Let us find out,” he said. “’Tis up to them.”

That reaped a reward, a hint of amusement from his lady love. “Truly? You’re declining the chance to narrate a prediction for your audience?”

“I am talented, my love. But not so talented as to foresee the future. ’Tisn’t a jester’s job. I suppose I could pretend to know what might happen next.” He smirked. “But I’m not that good of a liar.”

“I am,” Aspen said.

It alarmed me to witness her pluck before the monarchy. Yet it rang true, an unsettling melody to my ears, knowing she had not forsaken her pert attitude entirely. That aside, simpering would get her nowhere with Briar and Poet, a fact that she had become aware of.

Many things occurred within her statement. We heard the self-deprecation, the wry denial that this could turn out remotely similar to the princess and jester’s story—yet she would aim for some version of it, some draft with an ending close to happy, with or without my involvement.

I sensed this, as well her apology, her compliance.

Intrigue lit Poet’s face. “Then challenge me: Speak two truths and one lie. I shall guess which is the lie. If I guess wrong, we’ll hear your second appeal. If I guess right, we’ll still hear it.”

Aspen wavered, then drew in a breath. “I like you.”

The jester grinned. “Everyone likes me.”

I ducked my smile, understanding her meaning even if the jester had not.

Aspen bit back sudden humor, her beauty mark skipping near her lip, my gaze suddenly stranded upon that mark. “Well, actually...,” she clarified. “Actually, what I meant was...that was the first challenge.”

Astonished, Briar curled a fist over her mirthful mouth.

Poet blinked, then threw back his head and laughed.

***

They led us to a separate wing of the castle. With the guards stationed outside the sitting room, we had our privacy as dawn trickled through the window. I had not occupied this space before, ripe with the scent of nutmeg, a weathered hobbyhorse tucked into the corner, and a crackling hearth.

As the jester took a cushioned seat beside the princess, he inquired, “Why is it that we always seem to end up here when unexpected alliances come calling?”

Though I hadn’t been privy to the meeting, the only time I’d witnessed them favor this room with an unlikely candidate had been years ago, when they’d received a visit from the Prince of Winter. Since then, Jeryn of Iradis had become King, and my sovereigns considered him a friend and ally, as much as a fellow monarch of the Seasons.

With Briar’s consent, I stationed myself against a book shelf, my limbs too restless to sit. While Aspen settled opposite the princess and jester, I noticed that Punk had left for some air, electing to perch outside the window.

Briar cupped her palms in her lap, the picture of diplomacy, while her lover sprawled beside her, the picture of disheveled elegance. His arm slung across the seat behind her, toying with a lock of her hair, twining it around his finger.

She shifted closer to him while addressing Aspen. “There is something I have never understood. Why did you bury the acorn? Why, when you had previously intended it for your mother?”

Aspen’s pause stretched as long as my nerves. “I realized it wouldn’t work on her.”

First, she defined her mother’s condition in even greater detail than she had in the throne room, a feat that brought her no comfort but won empathy from the princess and jester. They knew what it felt like to love someone with a hindered mind, particularly in this world of born fools and intolerance.

Aspen informed us of the woodland’s aura, that it seemed to know her—to know of her acorn heart. Hence, she’d felt as if she were being tested by Autumn, and by her own consciousness, enticed to think the treasure might be meant for her.

But upon her final quest into that fabled wild, she understood the test.

“The acorn was never mine, or my mother’s, or yours. Aire’s wife found it, and she was buried along with her wishes, so I thought...none of us should have it. I’d known that you were planning to share it as a symbol, but I got an inkling of a different purpose that voided everything else.”

She’d given the acorn back to the land, to the Season, to Autumn, offering what she’d once hoped to keep for herself, just as the lumberjack had once offered a precious ration of acorns to the trapped animal.

More astounding, Aspen revealed what she had expected to happen in that abandoned place as a result. Though merely speculation, her conviction made me step closer to her, and it drew our sovereigns closer as well.