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Yet I hadn't told them.

I hadn'tdaredto tell them.

‘You’re back in your usual rhythm,’ Tared informed me, nudging my sword aside mid-swing with his own. ‘Try again. A bit of actual steel is no reason to make things too easy for yourself.’

Out of habit, I stuck out my tongue at him, avoided the reprimanding flick of his blade only by the grace of old sparring reflexes, and set to work again with gritted teeth. My biceps were starting to hurt. Thin trickles of sweat ran between my shoulder blades in the warm morning sun, sticking my dress to my back. But my thoughts stung fiercer than any physical discomfort, and there was no stoppingthose– not with every word from Tared’s mouth adding to the chorus of merciless realisations.

Make things too easy for yourself.

I had, hadn't I? I’d fooled myself into believing the question was victory or love, soothed my guilty conscience with the reassuring thought that I was keeping my secrets only to save the world … and so I had conveniently avoided the question of what would happen if the family were to find out I was not at all that innocent little half fae they’d so warmly adopted into their household. What the answer would be if the conundrum was not so much victory or love, but rather …

Family or love?

‘Focus, Em.’ Tared’s voice was too calm for my raging mind. That same voice that had scoffed when Agenor asked about Naxi and Creon –Even Naxi has some moral compass …

We housed you for twenty years, Valter had written, and then told me never to contact him and his wife again. I’d spent five lousy months in the Underground, counting generously. What in hell would stop these alves from pushing me out again?

A frightened little shadow of myself, indeed.

And what was I supposed to do, then? If loving openly might lose me the only people who’d ever treated me as family in this world of wolves against wolves, if—

‘Alright,’ Tared said, interrupting his constant stream of comments and adjustments. ‘I’d say that’s enough for the morning, if you—’

An agonised cry tore the silence of the woods to shreds.

Screaming – shrill, unceasing screaming – echoed in threefold from the marble walls around us, making it impossible to determine the direction of danger. I whipped around, breath hitching, sore arm and frantic thoughts forgotten. The temple gates were empty. Nothing moved between the trees that surrounded the ivy-covered buildings. But beside the garden path, half-hidden behind a hawthorn bush gone rogue –

I heard my own voice cry, ‘There!’

Edored.

The alf had fallen to his knees, hands frantically clawing at his skin as he howled in pain – the high-pitched, unintelligible shrieking of a male reduced to nothing but the prospect of death. What I could see of his bare torso was covered in red scrapes, or not scrapes but rather …

Burn wounds.

Plaguewounds.

My heart stood still.

Lunging forward, flinging his sword aside, Tared shouted, ‘Creon!’

Velvet wings burst past me, and I realised he had already been moving – realised that had not been an accusation in Tared’s voice but rather a cry for help. Plague wounds. My thoughts moved too slowly. Edored must have walked off too far in his search for a brook, must have ended up in unprotected plague land, and faded back to the temple courtyard as soon as he realised what had happened –

Which was late.

Which was …toolate?

I stood paralysed in the grass, Beyla’s sword powerless in my hands, as Creon grabbed Edored’s shoulder and Tared grabbed the other and the bright red burn wounds grew even brighter, the sickening colour of tattered flesh. Blue magic flashed, and Edored did not stop screaming, did not stop howling incoherent pleas at whoever was holding him.

The linen of his trousers was changing in texture, turning dry and fractured before my very eyes.

‘Please.’ I’d never heard Tared’s voice crack like that, half-shout, half-plea, as he grabbed Edored’s wrist to restrain his wildly flailing limbs. ‘There has to be something you—’

Water, Creon gestured – a single sign, so snappish I almost missed it.

Tared was already gone.

He was back in the blink of an eye, holding what looked like a tin washing-up bowl still full of soapy dishwater. Creon snatched it from his hands with inhuman speed, slamming the contents of the tub into Edored’s face and chest as if the alf was a fire to be squashed.