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“ F enian,” the centaur offered gruffly. The pair had been walking in silence for a time, broken only by the occasional, angry sighs he huffed through his nose when Raif tugged on the rope around his waist.

“Excuse me?” Raif asked. He was annoyed at being drawn so suddenly from his thoughts, dark as they were.

“My name—it’s Fenian. Do you have one as well, or should I continue calling you soldier?”

Tempted though he was to remain anonymous, he nodded tersely and said, “Raif.”

“Raif,” Fenian repeated, more pensive now. “Why have you come here, Raif? Or, perhaps more interesting— how have you come here? In all my time in Elowas, not a single living thing has been granted passage through the door. Truth be told, I wasn’t sure it could even be opened.”

“That is none of your concern.” His response was harsher than he’d intended it to be, but he was still unconvinced that Fenian was not simply another trick sent by the Low One. A trick or an emissary—either way, Raif had little interest in sharing the truth.

“You made it my concern when you roped me like a common calf,” Fenian growled.

Raif ignored the retort, only giving the line another sharp pull to make his point: he was in charge. He would be asking the questions.

But as the trees around them thinned and the pair moved further and further away from the darker parts of the forest, Fenian’s cold features seemed to thaw.

The angry frown lines that marred his forehead grew shallow; his fierce scowl lightened.

He walked alongside Raif more freely, without needing to be tugged along.

Raif felt his own mood lightening to a degree, and his steps along with it.

The oppressive weight slowly lifted from their shoulders and their minds.

“Tell me about this place,” Raif said. “How is it safe?”

Fenian’s eyes were focused ahead on the distant horizon, where starlight broke through a gap in the trees.

“I know little of its history, truth be told. It’s a sacred space as old as the realm.

It predates the collapse, I believe. It has long been a haven for those souls who wish to stay hidden. We call it Antiata —the Enclave.”

“He knows of it?” Raif wondered. Surely, if the Low One knew such a place existed, He would have gone to any length to destroy it. There was little chance that aneiydh were so abundant elsewhere in the realm that He would be disinterested in gaining unfettered access to those hidden there.

“He is blind to it,” Fenian supplied. “He knows of it only as a dark space in an even darker realm. Its true nature is veiled. Though, I’d imagine that he has his own assumptions.

He is aware of every aneiydh in this realm—most he draws here himself.

So he is almost certainly aware when they disappear. ”

The pair came upon a crossroads, where nothing grew but thick swaths of ferns between the divergent paths. Though a murky fog obscured where each ran, Raif was comforted to see them at all. To discover that the whole of the realm wasn’t comprised of only impermeable forest and vast, sandy plains.

Fenian gestured to their left. “This way,” he said. Raif took a moment to study him before nodding. There was no hint of deception in the centaur’s voice, nor any of the aggression that had previously underlined it.

Within moments, the road had all but disappeared beneath waist-high brush and bracken. Fenian now led so unreservedly that the rope hung loose around his hips, and Raif was very nearly tempted to remove it altogether.

Nearly.

“I will leave you with Sudryl,” Fenian said. “She is the keeper of the Enclave and the grove that surrounds it. She alone decides who is allowed to enter.”

Raif’s jaw clenched involuntarily. Another trial to overcome. He hadn’t assumed any part of this journey would be easy, but he wouldn’t have opposed a brief reprieve. “Have you ever tried?”

Fenian shook his head. “As I said, I’ve no interest in hiding. I am trapped here, as are we all, but the realm is vast. I do not wish to be confined to a smaller space than this.”

Gradually, the mist began to thin. Before them, a chambered cairn dissolved into view.

It was the largest Raif had ever encountered—taller even than Fenian, and at least the width of the obsidian structure above the Undercastle.

It was surrounded by a grove of small, twisted rowan trees—six, from what Raif could see, but there were likely more hidden around the structure’s back side.

From the center of the cairn an oak tree rose, this one tall and ancient and gnarled, blackened from the roots on up into the branches.

It looked as if it had been charred by flames, though its bark was not distorted or damaged.

Fenian stopped just before they crossed the perimeter of trees. Their branches were nearly naked, unladen by the ruby-red berries they should have held and baring only sparse leaves.

“This is where I depart, soldier, if you’d keep your promise,” the centaur said. “Sudryl will come to greet you.”

“I never promised,” Raif warned, his grip tightening briefly. Despite the warning, he acquiesced after a moment and reached a hand out to loosen the rope around Fenian’s waist. The centaur had remained true to his word.

Fenian bowed his head, raising his right fist to his heart in a sign of respect. “Thank you.”

Raif returned the gesture in kind. “I have appreciated your honest assistance. Should you find yourself in want of companions in this realm, I would welcome you into our party.” The centaur was strong, and he knew Elowas well. He was an ally that Raif would be unwise to turn away.

“Perhaps our paths might cross again.” Fenian dipped his head once more before turning to canter back in the direction they’d come. Raif watched until his form was swallowed into the mist, then stepped between the trees.

As though triggered by a silent alarm, the moment Raif crossed into the grove a small alseid scrambled down from where she’d been perched hidden in the top of a rowan tree just adjacent.

Her skin was the same dark green as their leaves, her hair woven in intricate plaits that mimicked the swirling lines of their bark.

Gossamer wings shaped like those of a dragonfly fluttered behind her as she hurried over.

“Stay where you are,” she ordered. Her voice was far more forceful than her appearance might have suggested.

Raif raised both hands, then slowly lowered himself down onto one knee.

The faerie was little more than the height of his longsword; he thought the gesture might make him appear less threatening.

If he was to earn her favor, he hoped to do so from the start.

“You are Sudryl?” he asked.

“Who’s asking?” She carried with her a tiny bow, already nocked with an arrow crudely fashioned from a thin branch. It was curved and tipped with a chiseled stone head. Raif couldn’t imagine it would fly straight or cover any great distance, but he remained wary of it all the same.

“I am Raif,” he said. “I was told I might find safe haven here.”

Sudryl sniffed the air and her dark eyes widened, then narrowed. “You’re alive. How?”

“If you’ll grant me entry to the Enclave, I will explain my purpose for being here.” He chose his words carefully, guarding the truth close until he was certain she—and the Enclave—were all that Fenian claimed.

“You opened the gate yourself?” she challenged. Her thin fingers played along the length of the arrow. It was still balanced on the bow, but she hadn’t yet made to draw.

“We’ve been aided by the Silver Saints.” If their name was known, and their favor currency, Raif wouldn’t hesitate to make it clear he had their backing.

Sudryl fell back a step, dropping the bow to the ground at her feet. “The last of the first race. They still live?”

Raif gave a solemn nod, pushing off his knee. “We brought them back.”

He thought of Kael, of Aisling. Of the sacrifices they’d made to see Merak’s return. He felt almost foolish now claiming to be a part of their bitter victory.

“It was so long ago that they fled into hiding,” Sudryl breathed.

“You’ve met them?” Raif did his best not to sound smug. Currency, indeed.

“You stand amidst the gods who created them.” Sudryl gestured around the grove. Raif half-expected the appearance of glowing, veiled deities, but no such figures manifested. “The trees,” the alseid clarified.

Raif raised an eyebrow, peering closely at their trunks, their branches. All indistinguishable from any other tree he’d seen, unmarked by sacred runes and absolutely motionless. “The trees are gods?”

“They were. And Orist—she is the oldest and strongest of them all.” Sudryl tipped her chin to gaze up at the blackened oak. Her expression was one of awe and adoration, as though she were seeing the tree for the very first time.

“How did the Enclave come to be?”

“A great stag was once buried in the cairn, and Orist grew from a seed in his stomach. An oak tree of pure white, she was.” Having recovered from her initial surprise, Sudryl bent and collected her bow.

She slung it across her back and stashed the arrow away in her satchel.

She rummaged inside for a moment, then produced a tiny wood-carved stag figurine.

She held it in her palm for Raif to study, briefly, before stowing it away once more.

“There are legends of a white oak in Wyldraíocht,” Raif murmured pensively. A frown creased his forehead as he attempted to remember the old stories, ones he hadn’t heard since he was a child. “It protects the Síoranam .”

Sudryl hummed. “Orist’s mirror. The white oak of your stories is no legend. It is her foothold in your realm, just as other places of worship are the footholds of lesser gods.”

The Cut would have been the foothold of the Low One, then. And the temple Solanthis, for the Seelie Court’s beloved Aethar.