The Moonmoth Oracle of Glassmere

The Vision That Refused to Behave

Glassmere was not the sort of lake one visited by accident.

For one thing, it did not appear on maps unless the mapmaker had either been invited, cursed, or sufficiently pathetic in a way the lake found amusing. For another, the road leading to it had a nasty habit of rearranging itself behind travelers, which made turning back difficult and complaining about it absolutely useless. There were old kingdoms that had gone to war over Glassmere, not because they wanted the water, but because everyone wanted to say they owned the only lake that reflected the moon even on nights when the moon was elsewhere, sulking behind clouds like a dramatic widow.

The lake sat in a valley of silver-black stone, bordered by frost-pale trees and crystal growths that glowed faintly from within. At its northern edge stood the Moon Pavilion, a domed ruin of marble, glass, and ancient arrogance. Its pillars leaned in graceful decay, wrapped in vines of ice that bloomed with little bells of blue flame. Across the water, towers rose from the mist, thin and sharp as needles, their windows burning gold beneath the moonlight.

And above it all, perched within a crescent of opalescent crystal and feathered wing, waited the Oracle.

The Moonmoth Oracle of Glassmere was older than three dynasties, two dead religions, and one extremely persistent rumor involving a duke, a bathtub, and a goose trained for espionage. She had been called many things over the centuries: Seer of the Silver Shore, Keeper of Reflections, Blessed Wing of the Moon, and, once, by a sweating baron who had not liked his prophecy, “that smug powdered napkin with eyes.”

He had regretted that.

Briefly.

Then for seven generations.

Her true name was Auralys, though only the lake, the moon, and one very old salamander under the pavilion steps were permitted to use it. To everyone else, she was the Oracle, and she preferred it that way. Names encouraged familiarity. Familiarity encouraged touching. Touching encouraged consequences.

On the night Prince Caelion Vey arrived at Glassmere, the Oracle was polishing a prophecy.

This was not metaphorical.

Prophecies, when properly handled, formed in the air as little moonlit films, thin as moth wings and twice as delicate. The Oracle held one between two feathered forelegs, buffing a smudge from its edge with the professional irritation of someone cleaning a mirror after idiots had breathed on it.

The prophecy shimmered with images of a merchant queen, a tower fire, and a man named Barnaby who really should not have eaten the suspicious mushroom no matter how confidently it introduced itself.

Below, the lake rippled.

The Oracle paused.

A carriage was coming.

Not a humble carriage. Not a desperate carriage. Not even the sort of practical, mud-streaked carriage used by pilgrims who came to Glassmere barefoot and weeping, hoping to learn whether their missing children lived, whether their harvest would survive, or whether the strange thing in the cellar was a ghost or merely Uncle Thedrick again.

No, this carriage glittered.

It had six white horses, four armed riders, two banners, and far too many gold accents for a vehicle entering a sacred valley. Its wheels were engraved. Its lanterns were shaped like lions. Its roof bore the crest of House Vey: a crowned stag leaping through a ring of fire, which was bold imagery for a family whose greatest modern achievement had been raising taxes on onions.

The Oracle’s black eyes narrowed.

“Oh, good,” she said to the moon. “Royalty. Because my evening was dangerously close to peaceful.”

The carriage rolled to a halt beside the Moon Pavilion, and a footman leapt down with the urgency of a man paid to look important while accomplishing very little. He unfolded a step. Another servant opened the door. A third held up a silver lamp, though the moonlight was bright enough to read by and Glassmere itself glowed as if the whole lake had swallowed a star and was trying to pretend it had not.

Then Prince Caelion Vey emerged.

He was nineteen, beautiful in the irritating way of people who had never had to scrub anything, and dressed as though he had personally declared war on restraint. His coat was deep midnight blue, embroidered with silver thread and tiny moonstones. His boots shone like mirrors. His blond hair fell in artful waves around his face, the sort that suggested two hours of grooming followed by a servant whispering, “Try to look effortless, Highness.”

He looked up at the Oracle.

The Oracle looked down at him.

Their mutual disappointment was immediate.

“You are smaller than expected,” Caelion said.

“And you are louder than necessary,” said the Oracle.

The footman gasped.

One of the guards reached for his sword.

The Oracle turned one enormous glossy eye toward him.

The guard reconsidered every life choice that had led him to threatening a divine insect in a moonlit murder valley.

Caelion smiled. It was a practiced smile, charming enough to open doors, end arguments, and probably convince mirrors to flatter him.

“I meant no insult.”

“How unfortunate,” said the Oracle. “You could use the practice.”

The prince’s smile tightened.

Excellent, thought the Oracle. There’s a spine in there somewhere. Buried under perfume and parental failure, but still.

Caelion climbed the pavilion steps without waiting for permission. His entourage followed until the lake gave a soft, warning pulse of blue light.

The horses froze.

The guards froze.

The servants froze.

One of the banners caught fire, but politely.

“Only the seeker may approach,” said the Oracle.

Caelion glanced back at his people. “Wait here.”

“Your Highness,” whispered his captain, “we cannot allow you to face unknown magic alone.”

“Then face it emotionally,” said Caelion. “From over there.”

The captain looked wounded.

The Oracle hated that she almost approved.

The prince continued up the steps until he stood beneath her crystal arch. Up close, he smelled of rosewater, cold metal, and anxiety polished to a shine. That was the trouble with royals. They always arrived smelling expensive, but underneath the silk and arrogance, most of them reeked of fear. Fear of being irrelevant. Fear of being ordinary. Fear that the crown they wanted would fit poorly and show everyone the shape of their skull.

“I have come for a vision,” Caelion announced.

“No,” said the Oracle.

He blinked. “No?”

“I heard you. I simply disliked it.”

“You do not even know what I seek.”

“You are a prince in embroidered boots standing in front of an ancient oracle at midnight. You seek either destiny, validation, or permission to do something stupid while calling it brave.”

Caelion opened his mouth.

The Oracle lifted one delicate foreleg. “Do not strain yourself. I have watched generations of noble children arrive at Glassmere with their chins high and their souls making little squeaking noises. You all think destiny is a throne-shaped chair waiting in a sunbeam. It is not. Destiny is usually a wet staircase, a screaming goat, and someone asking whether you brought a shovel.”

The prince stared at her.

Then, unexpectedly, he laughed.

It was not the court laugh, bright and empty. It was startled, sharp, and real.

“I was told you were majestic.”

“I am majestic.”

“You just compared destiny to a goat.”

“A majestic goat.”

His laugh faded, but something in him remained open a crack. “My father is dying.”

The Oracle’s wings stilled.

There it was. Beneath the moonstones, beneath the polished hair, beneath the royal performance: grief, fresh and ugly, chewing through the gilding.

“King Odran has not left his bed in six weeks,” Caelion said. “The court knows. The neighboring houses know. My uncle knows, and he has begun smiling too much. The succession will not be clean unless I make it clean.”

“Ah,” said the Oracle. “Blood politics. How quaintly disgusting.”

“I need to know whether I will be king.”

“You do not.”

“I do.”

“You need to know whether you should be.”

Caelion’s jaw tightened. “That is not the same question.”

“No. It is the one with teeth.”

He looked past her, toward the lake. The moon floated there, enormous and white, its reflection trembling on the dark water. “My kingdom is splitting. My father cannot hold it. My uncle would sell half our borderlands for a better wine cellar. The southern lords are already counting soldiers. I have spent my life being told I was born for the crown.”

“By people paid to survive your moods?”

His eyes snapped back to her.

The Oracle smiled without lips, which was an unsettling achievement.

“Careful,” Caelion said.

“Darling boy, I am a moonbound oracle older than your family line. You are wearing decorative buttons. Let us not pretend this is a balanced threat environment.”

For a moment, he looked genuinely furious. Then he looked away, and the anger collapsed into something smaller.

“I am not useless,” he said.

It was not a boast.

It was a plea wearing armor.

The Oracle studied him.

Caelion Vey was spoiled, yes. Vain, certainly. Overdressed to a degree that suggested either insecurity or a tailor with no friends. But he was not empty. There was a sharpness behind his eyes. He noticed details. The placement of guards. The cracks in the pavilion floor. The way the lake pulsed when he lied too near it. He had dismissed his escort without flinching. He had laughed when insulted, which was either a promising sign of humility or an early symptom of madness.

Possibly both. Royals often liked to multitask.

“Very well,” said the Oracle. “You may ask Glassmere.”

Caelion exhaled as if he had been holding his breath since childhood.

“What must I do?”

“First, remove your boots.”

He looked down. “My boots?”

“No, the concept of boots. Yes, your boots.”

“These are ceremonial riding boots from the House of Vaul.”

“And yet they come off.”

“They are worth more than most farms.”

“Then place them carefully, so the farms do not feel insulted.”

Caelion stared at her for three full seconds, then sat on the edge of the pavilion and removed his boots with the expression of a man being asked to surrender his dignity one buckle at a time.

When his bare feet touched the moonlit stone, the lake brightened.

“Now step into the water.”

He hesitated.

“Is it dangerous?”

“Obviously.”

“Will it kill me?”

“That depends on how melodramatic you become.”

He gave her a flat look.

“Fine,” said the Oracle. “Probably not.”

“Probably?”

“I do not control every fish.”

Caelion stepped down from the pavilion and entered Glassmere.

The water took him to the ankles. It was black, silver, and perfectly still, yet every step sent ripples outward in rings of pale light. When he reached the center of the shallow moonpool, the Oracle descended from her crystal perch. Her wings moved soundlessly, shedding frost and tiny sparks of opal fire. She hovered before him, large as a hunting falcon, delicate as spun glass, and radiating the barely contained annoyance of a schoolmistress forced to explain ethics to a cabbage.

“Look into the water,” she said.

Caelion obeyed.

The lake reflected his face first: handsome, pale, composed. Then the reflection changed.

The crown appeared on his head.

He smiled despite himself.

The Oracle groaned softly.

“Try not to flirt with your own reflection. It has suffered enough.”

The crown darkened.

Gold became iron. Iron became bone. The reflection widened until the whole lake filled with vision.

Caelion saw himself standing in the throne room of Veyrhold, older by only a few years. He wore the crown. He held the scepter. Courtiers bowed around him like wheat before a storm. At first, pride flashed across his face.

Then the vision shifted.

The throne room was cracked. Windows shattered. Smoke poured through the arches. A map of the kingdom burned on the floor, curling at the borders first. Men and women shouted. A child cried somewhere out of sight.

Vision-Caelion stood frozen, crown crooked, lips parted.

At his feet lay the scepter, broken in two.

Before him knelt a woman in armor, bleeding from one shoulder, begging him to give an order.

He did not.

Behind him, his uncle smiled.

Then came another scene.

A bridge collapsed under fleeing villagers because repairs had been delayed to fund a coronation parade.

Another.

A treaty table overturned because Caelion could not bear to apologize first.

Another.

A starving district sealed behind gates to keep disease from reaching the palace.

Another.

Caelion, older now, sitting alone in a mirrored chamber, surrounded by portraits of ancestors, all of them painted to look noble and none of them available to help. Outside the chamber, bells tolled. Not celebration bells. Not wedding bells.

Death bells.

Then the final image rose from the water.

Caelion stood on the shore of Glassmere beneath a black moon. The lake was frozen. The crystals were dull. The Moon Pavilion had collapsed into the shallows. In his hands, he held a white moth wing, torn and lifeless.

The vision-Caelion looked directly up through the water, directly at himself.

“I was born for the crown,” the reflection whispered.

Then his face cracked like porcelain.

The lake went dark.

Prince Caelion stumbled backward so violently that he fell into the water with a splash that would have embarrassed a duck.

The Oracle fluttered higher to avoid the spray.

“Graceful,” she said.

Caelion shoved wet hair from his face. “What was that?”

“A vision.”

“That was not a vision. That was character assassination with lighting effects.”

“Glassmere does enjoy production value.”

He stood, dripping, furious and shaken. “It showed lies.”

“It showed possibilities.”

“It showed me destroying everything.”

“Yes.”

His face hardened. “Then it is wrong.”

The lake rippled.

The Oracle’s antennae twitched.

“Careful.”

“No,” Caelion snapped. “I came for guidance, not humiliation. I came because my kingdom needs me.”

“Does it?”

“Yes.”

“Or do you need it to need you?”

He went very still.

The Oracle knew at once she had struck bone.

Good. Bones held the structure. Bruise enough vanity away, and sometimes the useful thing beneath it appeared.

But Caelion was not ready for useful.

He was wet, embarrassed, grieving, and nineteen. A terrible age. The world gave nineteen-year-olds cheekbones and catastrophe, then acted surprised when they used both irresponsibly.

“You know nothing of me,” he said.

“I know you asked whether you would be king before asking how to save anyone.”

“Because being king is how I save them.”

“That is what every tyrant says before redecorating the prison.”

“I am not a tyrant.”

“Not yet.”

The words landed like a slap.

For the first time, Caelion looked less angry than afraid.

The lake responded. A tremor moved across its surface. Not a ripple. Not a reflection. A warning.

From the far shore, beyond the crystal reeds, one of the distant towers blinked out.

The Oracle turned sharply.

Another tower light vanished.

Then another.

Caelion noticed. “What is happening?”

The moon above Glassmere dimmed.

The crystals along the shore flickered, their opal glow pulsing unevenly. The pale trees creaked though there was no wind. In the pavilion behind them, the old marble groaned.

The Oracle flew higher, wings flaring.

“Oh, that is rude.”

“What is rude?” Caelion demanded.

“Someone is listening.”

“To us?”

“To the vision.”

The water at Caelion’s feet darkened, spreading outward in ink-like veins. The image returned—not the whole vision, but pieces. The broken scepter. The burning map. The black moon. The torn wing.

Then those images began to twist.

The reflection of Caelion’s uncle appeared, smiling wider than any decent face should. Behind him stood a figure veiled in dark glass, tall and thin, with hands like hooked branches.

The Oracle hissed.

It was a tiny sound.

It still made the lake shiver.

“Who is that?” Caelion asked.

“Someone who should have stayed mythological.”

The veiled figure lifted one dark hand in the reflection and pressed its fingers against the underside of the water, as though the lake were merely a window.

The surface bulged upward.

Caelion backed away. “Oracle.”

“Yes, Prince Decorative Buttons, I see it.”

The black veins raced toward him.

The Oracle dove.

She struck the water with all six legs, and moonlight burst from beneath her like shattered glass. The dark veins recoiled. The reflection screamed without sound. Across the lake, every crystal flared brilliant white.

For one instant, Glassmere became a bowl of pure silver fire.

Then the force threw Caelion backward onto the shore.

He hit the stones hard, rolled once, and lay gasping beneath the ruined pavilion steps. His entourage shouted from the distance, but none could cross the invisible boundary holding them back.

The Oracle rose from the lake slowly.

One edge of her lower wing smoked.

Caelion pushed himself upright. “You’re hurt.”

“Astute. Perhaps we can get you a little badge.”

“What was that thing?”

The Oracle turned toward the far towers, where only a few lights still burned. “A debt.”

“That is not an answer.”

“It is the answer I currently dislike least.”

He stood, unsteady. His soaked coat clung to him. His perfect hair had collapsed into a tragic blond mop. Without his boots and royal posture, he looked younger. More human. Annoyingly, more interesting.

“Did my uncle send it?” he asked.

“Your uncle may have opened a door. That does not mean he understands what walked through.”

Caelion looked toward his carriage, where his guards still struggled uselessly against the lake’s boundary. “I have to return.”

“No.”

“My father is dying. My uncle is making deals with whatever that was. My kingdom—”

“Your kingdom is in danger partly because you are exactly predictable enough to sprint home wet and furious, accuse the wrong people in the wrong order, and get yourself stabbed before breakfast.”

Caelion bristled. “I am not an idiot.”

“You are a prince. The distinction is sometimes paperwork.”

“I will not hide here while my throne is stolen.”

“That sentence contained three separate problems, and somehow your tone added a fourth.”

He took a step toward her. “Then tell me what I am supposed to do.”

The Oracle hovered in silence.

Glassmere settled around them, but it did not calm. The moon’s reflection remained warped, bruised by the intrusion. The crystals along the shore whispered in tiny mineral voices. Far off, in the city of towers beyond the lake, bells began ringing one by one.

The Oracle had heard those bells only twice before.

Once when the first king of Glassmere had broken his oath.

Once when the lake swallowed an army.

Neither evening had improved anyone’s mood.

She looked at Caelion Vey: arrogant, frightened, drenched, furious, still standing.

The vision had shown him failing because he could not bend. Because pride had been poured into him like molten gold and left to harden. Because he believed the crown would make him worthy instead of demanding that he become worthy before touching it.

But visions were not verdicts.

That was the great annoyance of prophecy. People wanted it to be a locked door or a paved road. In truth, it was more like a rude map drawn by a drunk cartographer who knew where the cliffs were but refused to label the goats.

“There is one way to change what you saw,” said the Oracle.

Caelion’s face shifted. Hope, guarded and hungry, appeared before he could hide it.

“Name it.”

“You must leave behind the crown.”

“Absolutely not.”

“And there he is,” said the Oracle. “The little disaster prince in full bloom.”

“I cannot abandon my claim.”

“I did not say abandon it. I said leave it behind. Temporarily. Spiritually. Also perhaps physically, if you packed one, which would be excessive but not surprising.”

“Speak plainly.”

“Plainly? Fine.” The Oracle flew closer until her black eyes reflected his damp, scowling face. “You are not ready to rule. If you take the throne as you are, you will break your kingdom while insisting you are saving it. If you run home now, your uncle and the thing behind him will use your fear like a leash. If you want a different future, you must first become someone the future does not immediately try to slap.”

Caelion said nothing.

That, too, was promising.

“Beyond the western shore,” the Oracle continued, “there is a road beneath the lake. It opens only when Glassmere is threatened from within and without. It leads to three places you will hate.”

“Wonderful.”

“The first will strip you of certainty. The second will strip you of pride. The third, if we are lucky, will strip you of whatever perfume is still surviving this ordeal.”

Despite himself, his mouth twitched.

The Oracle pretended not to see.

“At the road’s end is the Mirror Thorn, an old root of moon magic. It can show us who has bound your uncle’s ambition to the dark thing in the water. It may also reveal how to sever that bond before the black moon in your vision rises.”

“And if I refuse?”

“Then you will go home, perform confidence until it curdles into stupidity, and eventually stand on this shore holding pieces of my wing. I will be dead, Glassmere will be frozen, your kingdom will be ash, and somewhere in the ruins a historian will write that Prince Caelion Vey had excellent boots and the strategic instincts of a spoon.”

He looked toward the spot where his boots waited beside the pavilion steps.

They did look excellent.

Damn them.

“How long would this journey take?” he asked.

“Long enough to matter. Short enough to hurt.”

“My father may not have that long.”

For once, the Oracle did not answer with a blade.

“No,” she said softly. “He may not.”

Caelion closed his eyes.

The moonlight made him look carved from pale stone, but grief moved through him like water beneath ice. The Oracle watched the battle happen inside him. The prince who wanted to be seen returning in glory. The son who wanted his father alive long enough to approve of him. The child who had been told destiny was inheritance. The man who had just watched destiny bare its teeth.

When he opened his eyes, some of the polish was gone.

Not enough.

But some.

“If I go with you,” he said, “I choose the road. Not because you command it.”

“Naturally. Your fragile little authority must be tucked in at night.”

“And we return in time to stop my uncle.”

“We attempt to.”

“Not good enough.”

“It is prophecy, not catering.”

He exhaled sharply through his nose. “You are impossible.”

“And yet, currently your best option. Humbling, is it not?”

Caelion walked to the pavilion steps and picked up his boots. For one absurd moment, the Oracle thought he meant to put them back on and march away.

Instead, he handed them to his captain across the invisible boundary.

“Take these back to Veyrhold,” he said.

The captain stared. “Your Highness?”

“Tell the court I remain at Glassmere for rites of succession.”

“But that is not true.”

“It is true enough to confuse my uncle.”

The Oracle tilted her head.

Caelion continued, voice lower. “Tell Lady Merrow to secure the eastern barracks quietly. Tell Chancellor Iven I know about the duplicate treasury seal, and if he enjoys breathing, he will delay all emergency council votes until I return.”

The captain’s expression changed from alarm to recognition.

There he is, thought the Oracle again.

Not wise yet. Not humble. But not useless.

“And my father?” the captain asked.

Caelion swallowed. “Tell him…”

For once, no clever command came.

The prince looked down at the wet stones beneath his bare feet.

“Tell him I am trying to become less of a disappointment.”

The captain bowed his head. “Yes, Your Highness.”

“Do not say it like that. You sound as if I have died.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

“That was the same tone.”

“A little, Your Highness.”

The Oracle made a pleased clicking sound.

Caelion turned. “Do not encourage him.”

“I encourage competence wherever it accidentally blooms.”

The boundary released just enough for the captain to take the boots. Then the lake pushed him back with a gentle shove that still managed to feel judgmental.

Caelion faced the western shore.

The water there began to part.

Slowly, silently, a path rose from beneath Glassmere: a narrow road of black glass, slick with moonlight, edged in crystal reeds. It stretched across the lake toward a curtain of silver mist. Beneath the transparent surface, strange shapes moved in the depths. Fish, perhaps. Memories, more likely. Glassmere had never been strict about categories.

The Oracle settled onto Caelion’s shoulder without asking.

He flinched. “What are you doing?”

“Traveling.”

“On me?”

“You are tall, warm, and currently available.”

“I am a prince.”

“Yes, but we are hoping it clears up.”

He looked at her, appalled.

She adjusted her wings, sending a dusting of moon-spark over his ruined coat.

“Walk, Caelion Vey.”

He stared down the moonlit road.

“And if the vision is fixed?” he asked. “If I do everything right?”

The Oracle’s voice lowered, losing some of its bite but none of its truth.

“Then perhaps one day, when the crown comes for you, it will find a head worth sitting on.”

Caelion said nothing.

Then, barefoot, soaked, crownless, and furious at how much sense a moth was making, the heir of House Vey stepped onto the road beneath the lake.

Behind him, the Moon Pavilion glowed pale and broken.

Before him, the mist opened like a mouth.

And somewhere deep beneath Glassmere, something dark smiled against the glass.

The Oracle felt it.

So did the prince.

Neither mentioned it.

Which was, the Oracle thought, probably the first wise thing he had done all night.

Still, she leaned close to his ear and whispered, “Try not to die dramatically. I find theatrical corpses exhausting.”

Caelion kept walking.

“No promises,” he said.

The Oracle sighed.

“Tragic. He learns sarcasm before humility.”

And together they vanished into the silver mist, with the moon watching overhead like it knew the ending and found it personally inconvenient.

The Road Beneath the Moon

The road beneath Glassmere did not behave like a road.

Roads, in Caelion’s limited but confident experience, were meant to stay underfoot, point in a direction, and avoid making personal comments through the soles of one’s feet. This one was apparently under no such obligation. It curved when it should have gone straight, straightened when he began to trust the curve, and occasionally gave a sharp little tremor whenever he thought something too proud too loudly.

“The road is judging me,” Caelion said.

The Moonmoth Oracle, still perched on his shoulder like a jeweled threat with wings, did not even look up. “Then try giving it less material.”

“I am walking barefoot across glass under a cursed lake.”

“Moon-glass.”

“That distinction comforts me not at all.”

“Good. Comfort makes princes chatty.”

Below the transparent black surface, Glassmere’s depths stretched farther than any lake had a right to stretch. There were not fish beneath them, exactly. There were silver shapes that moved with the half-familiar grace of things seen in dreams and misremembered upon waking. A crown drifted by, upside down and blooming with white roots. A child’s wooden horse galloped through the dark without a rider. A banquet table sank slowly into the deep, every chair occupied by shadows wearing little paper masks.

Caelion tried not to stare.

He failed.

“What are those?” he asked.

“Things the lake kept.”

“That is deeply unhelpful.”

“It is also accurate. Treasure accuracy. You get so little of it in palaces.”

A pale hand rose from the darkness beneath the road, pressed against the moon-glass, and faded.

Caelion stopped.

The Oracle sighed. “Do not be dramatic. It was a memory.”

“Of what?”

“Someone who needed rescuing.”

“Was she rescued?”

Auralys was silent for a moment too long.

Caelion began walking again.

The mist ahead thickened until the shore, the pavilion, and the burning lamps of his distant carriage disappeared behind them. There was only the road, the lake beneath it, the enormous moon above it, and the unsettling knowledge that he had just handed away boots worth a small province in order to take moral advice from a moth.

His tutors had prepared him for diplomacy, swordwork, inheritance law, cavalry command, court history, and the proper way to insult a duke without technically starting a war. Not one of them had covered this.

A failure in the curriculum, frankly.

“If this road leads to the Mirror Thorn,” Caelion said, “why does no one use it?”

“Most people prefer easier routes to self-improvement. Denial, for instance. Very popular. Comes in several flattering colors.”

“I mean, why is it hidden?”

“Because power hidden from fools lasts longer.”

“And yet here I am.”

“Yes,” said Auralys. “We are all being terribly brave about it.”

The road gave a small approving pulse beneath Caelion’s feet.

He scowled down at it. “Do not encourage her.”

The pulse came again.

“Traitorous paving.”

Auralys made a sound that might have been laughter, though on her it came out like a crystal bell being rude.

For a while they walked without speaking.

Caelion had expected silence to feel peaceful. Instead it gave his thoughts room to sharpen. His father in a darkened chamber, skin gray beneath the royal sheets. His uncle smiling too easily at council dinners. The vision of himself frozen while the kingdom burned. The broken scepter. The starving district behind sealed gates. The wing in his hands.

He glanced at Auralys.

Her damaged lower wing had stopped smoking, but its edge remained darkened where the black magic had touched it. Moonlight gathered around the wound and failed to fully enter.

“Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Yes.”

Caelion waited for a cutting remark.

None came.

That was worse.

“Will it heal?”

“If Glassmere does.”

He looked ahead into the mist. “And if it doesn’t?”

“Then no one will need to worry about my wing. We will all have larger problems. Frozen souls, dead moon, kingdom eaten by ambition, et cetera. A whole platter of miserable nonsense.”

“You always make doom sound like bad table service.”

“Doom usually is bad table service. It arrives late, stains everything, and somehow expects applause.”

Caelion almost smiled.

Then the mist opened.

The road ended at a doorway standing alone in the middle of nothing.

It was tall, narrow, and carved from white stone veined with silver. No wall held it. No building waited behind it. Its arch was engraved with moths, crowns, eyes, and little crescent moons, all watching Caelion with the quiet disappointment of elderly relatives at a public ceremony.

Above the arch, words shimmered in pale blue fire:

Enter wearing only what is true.

Caelion looked down at himself.

His fine coat was soaked. His shirt clung unpleasantly. His hair had abandoned statesmanship entirely. He had no boots, no sword, no jewels except the signet ring still on his right hand. Compared to his usual appearance, he already looked like someone had dragged nobility through a pond and asked it to apologize.

“I am nearly naked of dignity as it is,” he said.

“Dignity is not truth,” said Auralys. “It is often upholstery.”

“Do I have to remove more clothing?”

“Sadly for everyone, no.”

“Your relief wounds me.”

“Good. Stand there and be wounded quietly.”

Caelion stepped before the doorway.

The arch flickered.

His coat vanished.

He gasped and looked down. His outer coat had not fallen off or burned away. It had simply ceased to exist, leaving him in a damp linen shirt and trousers. The signet ring flashed and disappeared from his hand.

“My ring.”

“Symbol of inheritance,” said Auralys. “Borrowed truth at best.”

“It belonged to my grandfather.”

“So did several terrible ideas.”

Caelion flexed his now-bare fingers, hating the lightness of them. “What else?”

The doorway glowed brighter.

His posture changed.

Not by choice. His shoulders loosened. His chin lowered. Some invisible brace inside him slipped free, and he felt suddenly, horribly, like a person rather than a portrait of one.

“Oh, that is invasive,” he muttered.

“It removed your practiced royal bearing,” said Auralys. “Do try not to panic. The rest of us have survived without one.”

“Barely, from what I’ve seen.”

The road beneath him pulsed again.

Auralys clicked approvingly. “That was almost a real joke.”

“I hate that I want your approval.”

“Growth is disgusting.”

The doorway opened into a hall of mirrors.

Caelion had known mirrors all his life. Palace mirrors, ceremonial mirrors, flattering mirrors polished by servants who valued their employment. These were different. They did not reflect his face so much as interrogate it.

The hall stretched far beyond the doorway, lined with tall panes of silvered glass set into black roots. Moonlight flowed through cracks in the ceiling like water. Every mirror held a different Caelion.

In one, he wore the crown and smiled gently while children scattered flowers at his feet.

In another, he wore the crown and stood over a battlefield, expression blank, armor soaked red.

In another, he was not crowned at all. He sat beside his father’s bed, holding the king’s hand, weeping openly like a boy.

In another, he knelt before his uncle with a blade at his throat.

In another, he laughed at a feast while the windows behind him burned.

In another, he was old, tired, and alone, his hair silver, his eyes hollow, his crown set on a table as if he could not bear its weight another moment.

Caelion turned slowly.

“This is the first place.”

“Yes,” said Auralys. “The Hall of Certain Men.”

“Why is it called that?”

“Because it is where certainty comes to embarrass itself.”

His reflection in the nearest mirror looked directly at him and said, “You will save them.”

Another reflection answered, “You will ruin them.”

A third smiled. “You will be loved.”

A fourth whispered, “You will be obeyed. It will feel similar enough at first.”

Caelion stepped back.

The mirrors brightened.

All down the hall, his reflections began speaking.

“You are the rightful heir.”

“You are a child with expensive shoulders.”

“The kingdom needs strength.”

“The kingdom needs mercy.”

“Mercy looks weak.”

“So does fear wearing armor.”

“Your uncle will kill you.”

“Your uncle will use you.”

“Your father loved you.”

“Your father trained you.”

“Those are not the same.”

Caelion clapped his hands over his ears.

The voices continued inside his skull.

He spun toward Auralys. “Make them stop.”

“I cannot.”

“You brought me here.”

“I brought you to the door. Your certainty brought you to the shouting.”

He glared at her. “Very poetic. Useless as a velvet chamber pot.”

“Not useless. Decorative, absorbent, and occasionally inherited.”

“Oracle.”

“Fine.” She lifted her antennae, and her voice sharpened. “Choose one.”

“One what?”

“One truth.”

He looked around at the hundreds of versions of himself. “Which one is true?”

“That is the trap.”

“Of course it is.”

“Each mirror shows a possible truth. A prince wants the one that flatters him and calls it fate. A tyrant wants the one that frightens him and calls it necessity. A fool picks the loudest one. A coward breaks the mirror and learns nothing.”

One of the reflections grinned and lifted a jeweled hammer.

Caelion looked away from it quickly.

“And what does a king pick?” he asked.

Auralys was silent.

He turned to her.

She watched him with unreadable black eyes.

“What does a king pick?” he repeated.

“A king worth the name,” she said, “learns that certainty is not the same as truth.”

The mirrors trembled.

Caelion swallowed.

He walked forward.

The reflections leaned close in their frames, whispering, shouting, pleading. They offered glory. They offered vengeance. They offered sacrifice dressed as virtue. They offered every convenient explanation a frightened heir could want.

He stopped before a mirror near the center of the hall.

This one did not show him crowned.

It showed the throne room from his childhood. He was six years old, hiding behind a curtain while his father and uncle argued. King Odran stood tall and furious, still strong then, his dark hair untouched by illness. His younger brother lounged near the fire, handsome, amused, and poisonous around the edges.

“You coddle the boy,” his uncle said in the mirror.

“I teach him restraint,” Odran replied.

“You teach him hesitation. A crown sits best on a head untroubled by doubt.”

King Odran’s face hardened. “That is why you shall never wear one.”

The memory shifted.

Little Caelion behind the curtain, holding his breath.

His uncle’s eyes flicking toward the fabric.

His uncle knowing he was there.

His uncle smiling.

“One day,” his uncle said softly, “he will need someone willing to tell him he deserves everything.”

Caelion stared at the mirror.

He remembered this. Not fully. Not clearly. For years it had been only a warm blur: his uncle’s praise, his father’s sternness, the feeling that one man adored him while the other measured him and always found him short.

The mirror sharpened what memory had softened.

“He was training me against my father,” Caelion said.

“Yes,” said Auralys.

“Since I was a child.”

“People who want thrones rarely begin sharpening knives after dinner. They do it while everyone else is admiring the soup.”

Caelion’s hands curled.

In the mirror, his uncle turned fully toward the hidden child and winked.

A cold feeling moved through Caelion that had nothing to do with the lake.

“His name is Malrec,” Caelion said. “Duke Malrec Vey. My father’s beloved brother. The court calls him the Honeyblade because he smiles while cutting people open.”

“Subtle family.”

“I thought he understood me.”

“He understood your hungers.”

The mirror changed again.

Teenage Caelion stood in a training yard after losing a sparring match. His father told him to study why he failed. His uncle brought wine, laughed, and said the instructor had cheated because people feared Caelion’s greatness.

Another memory.

Caelion mishandled a negotiation with a border lord. His father made him sit through three hours of grain ledgers to understand the dispute. His uncle later told him kings did not need ledgers when they had soldiers.

Another.

Caelion, at sixteen, furious because his father had refused to let him command a cavalry exercise. His uncle said, “He fears being surpassed.”

The mirror went dark.

Caelion felt like something inside him had been opened with a hook.

“I believed him,” he said.

“You wanted to.”

He flinched.

Auralys did not apologize.

“He told you your pride was wisdom,” she said. “Your impatience was strength. Your ignorance was instinct. He fed you candied poison and called it love.”

Caelion stared at his own dim reflection.

“And my father?”

“Loved you badly in the opposite direction.”

His head turned. “Badly?”

“Sternness without tenderness becomes a locked door. Praise without truth becomes a trap. You were raised between both and somehow emerged with nice cheekbones and the emotional stability of wet parchment.”

Caelion let out a broken, startled laugh.

It sounded too close to pain.

The mirrors quieted.

“What truth do you choose?” Auralys asked.

He looked around the hall. The triumphant king. The ruined king. The frightened son. The manipulated child. The possible tyrant. The possible coward. The possible something else.

He wanted to choose greatness.

He wanted to choose innocence.

He wanted to choose anything that did not require him to admit he had been both harmed and foolish, which was a deeply unfair combination. Being harmed should have exempted him from foolishness. Apparently reality had missed the memo.

Finally, Caelion lifted his chin. Not the royal lift. Something smaller. Harder.

“I do not know what I will become,” he said.

The mirrors dimmed.

He took a breath.

“And anyone who tells me otherwise is selling me something.”

The hall fell silent.

Auralys’s antennae tilted forward.

The mirror before Caelion cracked—not violently, but cleanly, one silver line running down its center. Behind it, a door appeared.

The Oracle gave a satisfied hum. “Well. That was almost mature. Distressing, but useful.”

Caelion wiped his face with one hand. “Never tell anyone.”

“I am an oracle, not a gossiping aunt.”

“You literally collect visions.”

“For sacred purposes.”

“And judgment.”

“Sacred judgment.”

The door opened.

Beyond it waited a field of white grass beneath a violet sky.

Caelion stepped through, and the Hall of Certain Men disappeared behind him like a thought he could no longer comfortably enjoy.

The second place smelled of rain, smoke, and bread.

This offended him more than the mirrors.

Bread meant kitchens. Kitchens meant servants. Servants meant people who saw princes before the jewels went on and after the wine came up. Palaces were full of them, yet court training had taught him to look through them unless they carried either danger or dessert.

Here, however, the bread smell was everywhere.

The white grass swayed around a narrow path leading toward a village that should not have existed under a lake. Its houses leaned together like old women sharing secrets. Their roofs were patched with tin, bark, and what appeared to be flattened shields. Smoke rose from chimneys. Goats wandered freely with the brazen entitlement of creatures who knew no king had ever successfully taxed a goat.

Auralys lifted from Caelion’s shoulder and flew ahead.

“Welcome,” she said, “to Latchmere.”

“Is it real?”

“Define real.”

“I am beginning to hate that answer.”

“Then your education continues beautifully.”

As they approached the village, people emerged from doorways and lanes. A blacksmith with arms like tree roots. A girl carrying a basket of onions. An elderly man with one eye and three opinions visible before he even opened his mouth. A woman in a patched green shawl holding a baby on one hip and a ladle in the other hand like she had chosen her weapon and accepted her fate.

They all stared at Caelion.

Caelion straightened automatically.

The road beneath his bare feet vanished.

He dropped six inches into mud.

Not symbolic mud.

Actual mud.

Cold. Brown. Enthusiastic.

It swallowed both feet to the ankle with a sound like a stew pot losing an argument.

The villagers continued staring.

A goat sneezed.

Auralys hovered beside his ear. “That was the land rejecting your posture.”

“The land can kiss my—”

“Careful. This is a sacred trial.”

“Sacred mud?”

“Humility often has texture.”

The woman with the ladle stepped forward. “You the prince?”

Caelion hesitated.

In Veyrhold, the answer would have been accompanied by titles, heraldry, and at least one trumpet suffering from overconfidence.

Here, covered in lake water and mud, he said, “Yes.”

The woman looked him up and down. “Huh.”

That was all.

Caelion waited.

She did not bow.

No one bowed.

The baby stared at him, unimpressed by monarchy in the bold and honest manner of babies everywhere.

“Is there a reason,” Caelion said carefully, “that no one is observing protocol?”

The elderly one-eyed man snorted. “Protocol died in the north ditch last winter. Froze stiff with a cabbage in its hand.”

“That was your cousin,” said the blacksmith.

“He loved protocol.”

“He loved stealing cabbages.”

“Same thing under noble law.”

The villagers muttered agreement.

Caelion turned slowly to Auralys. “What is this place?”

“The Village of Consequences.”

“I liked the mirror hall better.”

“Most people do. Mirrors rarely ask you to fix their roofs.”

The woman with the ladle thrust the baby toward him.

Caelion recoiled. “What are you doing?”

“Hold him.”

“Why?”

“Because I need both hands to show you what your family broke.”

The baby came closer.

Caelion looked at Auralys.

“No,” said the Oracle.

“I did not speak.”

“Your eyes begged.”

“I have not been trained for infants.”

“Then do not drop it. That is the advanced course.”

Caelion accepted the baby with the rigid terror of a man receiving a lit explosive wrapped in linen. The baby immediately grabbed a fistful of his damp hair.

“Ow.”

The villagers smiled slightly.

The woman pointed with her ladle toward the edge of the village, where a stone bridge lay collapsed over a narrow ravine. Its broken middle sagged into a stream below. Ropes and boards had been stretched across the gap in a makeshift crossing that looked less like engineering and more like a dare.

Caelion’s stomach tightened.

He had seen that bridge.

In the vision.

“Latchmere Bridge,” the woman said. “Three petitions sent. Two inspections promised. One royal clerk came, looked at it, said the matter was noted, and rode away before supper because the inn had fleas.”

“When was this?” Caelion asked.

“First petition? Four years ago. Second, two. Third, after the spring flood took half the west arch.”

The blacksmith crossed his arms. “Last month, a wagon went through. Grain, mule, driver. Driver lived. Mule didn’t. Grain fed the fish.”

“I don’t oversee provincial repair petitions,” Caelion said.

The words came out too quickly.

Auralys made a soft clicking noise.

Oh no, he thought. That click meant she was about to be correct in an unpleasant way.

The woman’s expression did not change. “No? Who does?”

“The Office of Roads and Commons.”

“Who appoints the minister?”

“The crown.”

“Who approves emergency reallocations?”

“The council.”

“Who sits on council?”

He hated her. Not truly, but with the sudden defensive irritation of a man watching a trap close politely around his ankle.

“My father. Several ministers. My uncle. Advisors.”

“And you?”

Caelion said nothing.

The baby yanked his hair harder.

Fair, possibly.

“I was given an honorary seat last winter,” he said.

“Honorary ears work?” asked the one-eyed man.

The villagers murmured.

Caelion’s face burned.

He remembered council meetings. Long tables. Wax seals. Reports stacked like funeral bricks. He remembered looking out the window during a discussion about rural infrastructure because Lady Serrin had been walking in the garden below in a red dress and he had been nineteen, breathing, and therefore strategically useless.

He remembered Malrec leaning over afterward and saying, “Never drown yourself in petty details, boy. Kings think in banners, not bridge planks.”

Bridge planks.

A wagon. A mule. A driver lucky to be alive.

“How much would repairs cost?” Caelion asked.

The blacksmith gave a bitter laugh. “Less than the fireworks at your last birthday.”

Something in Caelion’s chest went tight and sour.

He had loved those fireworks.

There had been dragons made of green flame, silver bursts shaped like stags, a cascade of sparks over the palace lake. Malrec had arranged them. His father had watched from a balcony, tired and silent. Caelion had thought the king disapproved of joy.

Maybe he had been counting bridges.

The baby stopped pulling his hair and began chewing on his collar.

“Please do not eat me,” Caelion muttered.

“He’s teething,” said the woman.

“On a prince?”

“He has taste.”

Auralys drifted close enough for only Caelion to hear. “You may defend yourself. You may explain that you did not know. You may point out that systems are complicated and you are only one person.”

“Is that what I should do?”

“It is what you want to do.”

He looked at the bridge.

Then at the villagers.

Then at the baby, who had discovered one of his shirt ties and was attempting to murder it with gums.

“I did not know,” Caelion said.

The woman’s eyes hardened.

He forced himself to continue.

“But I should have.”

The village went quiet.

The mud around his feet loosened slightly.

“That does not fix the bridge,” said the blacksmith.

“No,” Caelion said. “It does not.”

“Doesn’t raise the mule either,” said the old man.

“No.”

“Good mule,” the old man added. “Judgmental, but fair.”

Caelion looked toward the collapsed stones. “Can it be repaired with the materials here?”

The villagers exchanged looks.

The blacksmith frowned. “Maybe. Needs bracing. Fresh pins. More hands.”

The woman with the ladle narrowed her eyes. “Are you offering royal funds or royal hands?”

Caelion looked down at his own hands.

Soft hands, compared to theirs. Sword-trained, yes. Ink-trained, moderately. Blister-trained, almost not at all.

He handed the baby back to her.

“Hands, apparently.”

Auralys landed on a fence post and gave him a look of grave satisfaction.

“Do not look so pleased,” he said.

“I am witnessing a prince discover labor. It is like seeing a peacock realize weather exists.”

“I have worked.”

“You have practiced skills. Work is what happens when the task does not care whether you feel impressive.”

For the next several hours—or days, or minutes, for time in Latchmere had the sloppy manners of enchanted places—Caelion worked on the bridge.

At first, he was terrible.

This came as a personal insult.

He lifted wrong. He tied knots that made the villagers stare in theological concern. He placed planks where no plank wished to be placed. The blacksmith, whose name was Ossa, took one look at Caelion’s attempt to brace a support beam and said, “That’ll kill someone with confidence.”

“It is angled for load distribution,” Caelion said.

Ossa kicked the beam. It fell into the stream.

“Distributed.”

Auralys nearly fell off her fence post laughing.

Caelion pointed at her. “I saw that.”

“I did not hide it.”

But slowly, humiliation became instruction.

Ossa showed him how to judge tension by sound. The woman with the ladle, whose name was Mara, taught him how to twist rope properly and slapped his hand with a spoon when he tried to rush. The old one-eyed man, Pell, supervised from a stump and offered advice so contradictory it became clear his main contribution was morale damage.

“Too loose,” Pell called.

Caelion tightened the rope.

“Too tight.”

He loosened it.

“Now it lacks conviction.”

Caelion inhaled slowly. “Does he serve a purpose?”

Mara shrugged. “Village ambiance.”

By the time the first new span held under Ossa’s weight, Caelion’s palms had blistered. His shoulders ached. Mud had climbed almost to his knees with clear territorial ambitions. His hair had dried into a shape that suggested an owl had nested in a prince and left disappointed.

And yet, when he crossed the repaired section carrying a bundle of pins, no one cheered.

No one bowed.

No one announced that he was noble, brave, or destined.

Mara simply nodded once and said, “Better.”

Caelion found, to his own surprise, that the word mattered.

It mattered more than most applause he had received in court.

That annoyed him.

He was beginning to suspect growth was not merely disgusting, as Auralys had claimed, but also poorly organized.

When the bridge stood whole again, the village gathered at its edge. Ossa crossed first with a cart of stones. Then Mara crossed carrying her baby. Then Pell crossed, declared it “adequate for people with low standards,” and cried a little when he thought no one was looking.

Caelion watched from the bank.

Auralys landed beside him on a white grass stem that should not have supported her weight but did, because magical plants enjoyed showing off.

“This was not real,” Caelion said.

“Wasn’t it?”

He looked at his blistered palms. They hurt in a very specific, persuasive way.

“Will the real bridge be repaired?”

“That depends on whether the prince who leaves this place remembers the mud.”

He flexed his fingers. “I will.”

“Many say that.”

“I am not many.”

The mud beneath his feet tightened again.

He grimaced. “Fine. I might be many. But I am trying not to be.”

The mud released him completely.

Auralys looked insufferably smug.

“Do not,” he warned.

“I said nothing.”

“Your entire body said something.”

“My body is eloquent.”

The village began to fade.

Not dramatically. No screams. No collapsing houses. It simply thinned, like mist in sunlight. Ossa lifted a hand. Mara nodded again. Pell shouted, “Tell your council the western culvert is shite too!”

Then Latchmere was gone.

Caelion stood once more on the moon-glass road, though now his feet were clean, his hands remained blistered, and the smell of bread still clung faintly to his shirt.

A doorway waited ahead, darker than the first two.

Above it, new words shimmered:

Enter without the story that protects you.

Caelion stared at the inscription.

“I dislike that one most.”

“Naturally,” said Auralys. “That one has knives.”

“Actual knives?”

“Worse. Emotional ones.”

“I miss actual knives.”

The doorway opened before he touched it.

Beyond was a ballroom.

Caelion froze.

The palace ballroom of Veyrhold stretched before him, vast and golden, lit by hundreds of candles in crystal chandeliers. Music drifted through the air: a waltz he knew, one played at every midsummer court since before his birth. Nobles moved across the polished floor in silks, jewels, and masks shaped like birds and beasts. Perfume hung thick as fog.

There was his world.

His language.

His battlefield.

And somehow, after mud and mirrors, it frightened him more than the dark thing in the lake.

“This is the third place?” he asked.

“The Masquerade of Useful Lies,” said Auralys.

“Charming.”

“Court usually thinks so.”

Caelion stepped inside.

His damp shirt and muddy trousers vanished. In their place appeared court dress finer than anything he owned: a black velvet coat embroidered with silver thorns, a pale waistcoat, jeweled cuffs, polished boots, and a crown—not the true crown, but a ceremonial circlet of moonstone and white gold.

His hair restored itself into perfect waves.

His blistered palms disappeared beneath gloves.

He looked magnificent.

He hated how good it felt.

“Ah,” Auralys said, circling him. “There is the scented disaster.”

“The doorway put this on me.”

“And yet your ego stood up and applauded.”

He said nothing, because his ego had in fact applauded and was now asking whether there might be a mirror nearby.

The dancers parted.

Duke Malrec Vey stood at the center of the ballroom.

Caelion’s breath stopped.

His uncle wore white and gold, his dark hair silvering at the temples, his smile warm enough to make knives jealous. His mask was shaped like a fox, though he held it in one hand rather than wearing it. He looked exactly as he did in court: handsome, graceful, effortless, the sort of man who could poison a room and be thanked for improving the atmosphere.

“Caelion,” Malrec said.

The prince’s hands tightened.

Auralys settled invisibly against the back of his collar, her voice a whisper near his ear. “Remember. This place wears the stories that protect you.”

Malrec opened his arms. “My boy.”

Caelion did not move.

“Not a boy,” he said.

Malrec smiled sadly. “No. I suppose not. Not after tonight.”

“You know about tonight?”

“I know you went to Glassmere. I know the Oracle frightened you. I know your father’s lessons have made you doubt yourself at precisely the moment strength is required.”

The words struck old bruises with expert aim.

Auralys’s wings tightened against Caelion’s collar.

“He is good,” she whispered.

“I know,” Caelion murmured.

Malrec tilted his head. “Talking to insects now?”

The dancers laughed softly behind their masks.

Heat rose in Caelion’s face.

“Better than listening to snakes,” he said.

The laughter stopped.

Malrec’s smile did not change, but something colder moved beneath it.

“There he is. The fire. I always knew you had it.”

“You cultivated it.”

“I protected it. Your father wanted to smother you in caution.”

“My father wanted me to understand consequences.”

“Your father wanted you small enough to manage.” Malrec stepped closer. His voice softened. “Caelion, look at yourself. You were born luminous. Everyone saw it. The court saw it. I saw it. Only Odran looked at you and saw a threat to be disciplined into obedience.”

Caelion’s throat tightened.

Old longing rose in him, ugly and embarrassing. The desire to believe Malrec. To step into that warmth. To be told again that every flaw was brilliance misunderstood.

The ballroom shifted.

For a moment Caelion was twelve, standing in a corridor after his father had rebuked him for mocking a nervous page. Malrec had found him there, angry and ashamed, and said, “Kings cannot waste pity on every trembling little creature.”

Caelion had felt better.

The page had avoided him for months.

The ballroom returned.

Malrec held out a hand. “Come home. Your father is fading. The council is afraid. The kingdom needs a prince who can act, not one tangled in moon riddles and moral theatrics.”

“And the thing in the lake?” Caelion asked.

For the first time, Malrec’s eyes flickered.

Only once.

But Caelion saw it.

Good, he thought. I can see it now.

“Old magic,” Malrec said lightly. “A tool.”

Auralys hissed near Caelion’s ear. “Tools do not reach through sacred water wearing dead glass.”

Caelion repeated, louder, “Tools do not reach through sacred water wearing dead glass.”

Malrec’s gaze shifted to his shoulder. “Oracle, you always had a flair for turning necessary acts into tragedies.”

Auralys lifted into visibility, moon-white and furious. The dancers recoiled.

“And you always had a flair for calling cowardice strategy,” she said.

Malrec bowed. “Blessed Wing.”

“Do not blessed-wing me, you perfumed parasite.”

Several dancers gasped.

Caelion’s eyebrows rose despite everything.

“That was almost vulgar,” he murmured.

“I am pacing myself,” said Auralys.

Malrec’s smile thinned. “You cannot keep him from his throne forever.”

“No,” said Auralys. “But I can keep him from being shoved onto it like a roast pig at a banquet.”

“Caelion is not a child.”

“Then stop feeding him lies cut into child-sized pieces.”

The ballroom darkened at the edges.

Malrec’s mask twisted in his hand. The fox face became longer, sharper. Dark glass spread over its surface like frozen oil.

Caelion noticed the dancers had stopped moving.

Every masked face had turned toward him.

“What did you promise it?” he asked.

Malrec’s expression sharpened. “What any sensible man promises power. A door.”

“A door to what?”

“A future.”

“For whom?”

Malrec laughed softly. “Do not become tedious. That is your father’s illness speaking.”

The words hit harder than Caelion wanted them to.

His father’s illness.

Not fever. Not wasting. Not poison.

Caution, Malrec had always implied, was Odran’s true disease.

Caelion saw the trap again, but seeing a trap did not make stepping around it easy. Some traps had been built inside him.

“You poisoned him,” Caelion said.

The ballroom went utterly still.

Malrec looked almost offended.

“I hastened nothing that time had not already begun.”

Caelion lunged.

He did not think. He simply moved.

Auralys shouted, but too late.

Caelion crossed the ballroom in three strides and swung at Malrec’s face. His fist passed through his uncle like smoke. The ballroom exploded into laughter.

The dancers clapped.

Malrec reappeared behind him.

“Temper,” he murmured. “There is my king.”

Caelion spun, breathing hard.

Auralys flew between them, wings spread. “He is not here. This is an echo.”

“It felt satisfying for half a second.”

“Yes, that is why fools enjoy violence. Very efficient little dessert for the underdeveloped soul.”

“Not the time.”

“It is precisely the time. He is baiting the boy he trained. Stop being convenient.”

The words stung.

Caelion looked at Malrec.

His uncle smiled again, soft and patient and poisonous.

“She will make you weak.”

“No,” Caelion said, though his voice shook. “She is making me annoyed. Apparently that is different.”

Auralys clicked. “Marginally.”

Malrec’s smile faded.

The masks of the dancers began to crack. Beneath them were not faces, but mirrors—small, oval mirrors reflecting Caelion back at himself. Crowned. Furious. Beautiful. Righteous. Wronged.

Each one whispered.

“You deserve the throne.”

“You deserve revenge.”

“You deserve obedience.”

“You deserve to be loved.”

“You deserve to be feared.”

“You deserve.”

“You deserve.”

“You deserve.”

The ballroom became a hive of his own hunger.

Caelion pressed his hands to his ears, but gloves covered his blisters. The court clothes protected him from remembering the bridge. The circlet pressed cool and flattering against his brow. His restored hair fell perfectly around his face. Every polished surface told him he was magnificent.

This was the story that protected him.

That he had suffered because he was special.

That criticism was envy.

That restraint was fear.

That love should always feel like applause.

That destiny owed him a crown for surviving childhood with cheekbones.

“Take it off,” Auralys said.

Caelion could barely hear her through the whispers.

“Take what off?”

“The story.”

He laughed once, harsh and panicked. “It does not have buttons.”

“Then tear where it hurts.”

Malrec extended his hand again. “Come home, Caelion. Let the moth keep her riddles. Let your father keep his regrets. I will give you what he never could.”

Caelion looked at him.

There it was.

The oldest wound.

Not the throne. Not power. Not even pride.

The desire to be chosen without correction.

To be loved without being asked to grow.

To be admired so loudly he never had to hear the quiet work of becoming better.

His eyes burned.

“You did give me that,” Caelion said.

Malrec smiled.

“And it made me weaker.”

The smile faltered.

Caelion removed the circlet from his head.

The dancers hissed.

He dropped it.

It struck the ballroom floor and shattered into moth dust.

His perfect coat frayed. The jeweled cuffs cracked. His gloves split, and his blistered palms returned, raw and real.

The whispers grew louder.

“You deserve.”

“You deserve.”

“You deserve.”

Caelion tore off the black velvet coat.

Underneath was his damp linen shirt again, stained with mud and smelling faintly of bread.

The ballroom ceiling groaned.

Malrec’s face changed. For the first time, the warmth dropped away completely.

What remained was not rage.

It was calculation.

“You think humility will save you?” he asked.

“No,” Caelion said. “But arrogance already tried, and it was absolute garbage at the job.”

Auralys gave a delighted gasp. “Oh, that one was good.”

“Thank you.”

“Do not get smug.”

“I was having one second.”

“And now it is over.”

Malrec lifted the dark glass fox mask.

The ballroom lights went out.

Only the mask remained visible, floating in his hand, its surface filled with a black moon.

“You should have come home,” Malrec said.

Then he placed the mask over his face.

The ballroom shattered.

Caelion fell.

Not down exactly. Direction lost meaning. He fell through gold, glass, music, and screaming reflections. Auralys caught the collar of his shirt with all six legs, wings blazing, but the force dragged them both through darkness.

They landed hard on the moon-glass road.

Caelion rolled onto his side, coughing.

Auralys tumbled across the surface, struck one crystal reed, and lay still.

“Auralys!”

He scrambled to her.

She moved, but weakly. The burn on her wing had spread. Black veins now threaded the lower edge, pulsing with a dim, ugly light.

“Do not use my name so loudly,” she muttered. “The lake will think we are friends.”

Relief hit him so hard he almost laughed.

“You are unbearable.”

“And yet alive. A theme.”

He looked around.

The road had changed.

The mist was gone. The lake was gone. They stood in a cavern beneath Glassmere, vast as a cathedral and lit by roots of silver fire. Above them, the lake’s underside formed a trembling ceiling of black water. Moonlight filtered through in pale shafts.

At the cavern’s center stood the Mirror Thorn.

It was not a thorn, not exactly. It was a tree root twisted upward from the stone, black as night and veined with silver. Its branches curved into mirror-like shards, each one reflecting not faces but secrets. Around its base grew white flowers shaped like tiny open eyes.

Caelion rose slowly.

“We reached it.”

“Yes,” Auralys said, struggling upright. “Try not to look impressed. It encourages the architecture.”

The Mirror Thorn pulsed.

Images flashed in its shards.

King Odran asleep in his bed, breath shallow.

Duke Malrec standing in a hidden chamber beneath Veyrhold, surrounded by black candles and maps of Glassmere.

The veiled figure from the lake behind him, taller now, clearer, its body made of dark glass and old water.

Auralys went still.

“No,” she whispered.

Caelion turned to her. “What is it?”

The mirror shard widened.

The veiled figure lifted its face.

There was no skin beneath the veil. No eyes. Only a hollow oval filled with the reflection of a dead moon.

“The Hollow Regent,” Auralys said.

Caelion felt the cavern grow colder.

“I thought you said that was mythological.”

“I said someone should have stayed mythological. Do listen with your whole decorative head.”

The Mirror Thorn showed more.

Long ago, a king of Glassmere had tried to bind the lake’s oracle power to his bloodline. He wanted visions on command. Prophecies like weapons. Destiny saddled and bridled for royal convenience, because apparently being king was not enough unless the future also sat up and begged.

The lake refused.

The king forced the rite anyway.

Something answered from the dark between reflections.

The Hollow Regent.

Not a demon. Not a ghost. Something older and more pitiful. A hunger shaped like a ruler, born from every crown that believed people were pieces and every prophecy twisted into permission.

Glassmere had sealed it beneath the lake.

The Oracle of that age had torn off half her own wings to lock the prison.

Caelion looked at Auralys’s damaged wing.

“Your predecessor.”

“My mother,” she said.

The words were quiet enough that even the cavern seemed ashamed to echo them.

For once, Caelion did not speak.

He had no cleverness for that.

The Mirror Thorn shifted again.

Malrec, younger, standing beside Caelion after a council meeting. Malrec whispering praise into one ear while in the other chamber he whispered fear into the council’s. Malrec delaying bridge funds, redirecting soldiers, cultivating resentment. Malrec visiting King Odran with cups of wine and medicine. Malrec kneeling before a basin of black water beneath the palace.

The Hollow Regent speaking through the basin.

“Give me the heir who believes the crown is owed,” it said, its voice like ice cracking under velvet. “Give me a king who cannot question himself. Through him, the old gate opens.”

Malrec smiled.

“He is almost ready.”

Caelion’s stomach turned.

The Mirror Thorn showed the catastrophic vision again.

But now he understood.

The burning kingdom had not happened simply because he became a bad king. It happened because his unexamined pride would make him the key. The Hollow Regent did not need to conquer Veyrhold with armies. It needed a ruler arrogant enough to mistake possession for destiny.

A ruler like the one Malrec had spent years making.

“How do we stop it?” Caelion asked.

The Mirror Thorn’s branches trembled.

Three shards lit at once.

In the first, King Odran slept with a black thread around his wrist, invisible to the physicians.

In the second, Malrec stood before the council wearing the fox mask, holding Caelion’s signet ring—the one the first doorway had stripped away.

In the third, the Hollow Regent pressed its hands against the underside of Glassmere’s surface, and cracks spread through the lake like lightning.

Auralys flew unsteadily closer to the shards. “He stole the ring’s shadow when the doorway took it. Clever little sewer prince.”

“My ring?”

“Inheritance symbols cast deeper shadows than ordinary things. Malrec cannot crown himself while you live and your father breathes, but with the shadow of your signet, he can impersonate your claim long enough to open the succession rite.”

“When?”

The Mirror Thorn answered.

The council chamber appeared. Nobles gathered. Candles burned black at their centers. Malrec raised the ring-shadow over a bowl of dark water.

A bell tolled.

Then another.

Then another.

Caelion looked up sharply.

From somewhere above the cavern, real bells echoed through the lake.

“That is now,” he said.

“Yes,” said Auralys. “Inconvenient little tradition, the present.”

The cavern shook.

Above them, the black-water ceiling cracked with silver lines. The Hollow Regent’s hands pressed through, fingers long and hooked. Water did not fall. Instead, darkness dripped upward.

Caelion backed toward the Mirror Thorn. “Tell me there is a fast road home.”

“There is a fast road home.”

He looked at her.

She grimaced. “You wanted me to tell you. You did not specify truth.”

“Oracle.”

“The Mirror Thorn can open a return path to Veyrhold, but only if fed a true refusal.”

“A what?”

The cavern shook harder.

A shard fell from the thorn and shattered at Caelion’s feet, showing his own face crowned in bone.

Auralys hovered before him, wounded wing trembling. “The Hollow Regent enters through hunger that calls itself destiny. To counter it, you must refuse the story it uses to reach you.”

“I already dropped the circlet.”

“Symbolic accessories are adorable, but insufficient.”

The ceiling cracked wider.

A dark glass face pressed through the lake above.

Hollow. Moonless. Patient.

Caelion’s mouth went dry.

The Mirror Thorn lit with one final image.

Caelion on a throne.

Not ruined. Not glorious.

Simply crowned.

Everyone watching him.

Waiting.

Wanting.

Afraid.

And beneath that image, words appeared in silver fire:

What are you without the crown?

Caelion stared.

All his life, the answer had been easy.

The crown’s heir.

The future king.

The son of Odran.

The nephew of Malrec.

The chosen blood of House Vey.

The boy born for rule.

Every answer wore gold.

Every answer belonged to someone else’s story.

The Hollow Regent pushed one hand fully through the ceiling.

The cavern filled with the smell of cold iron and drowned flowers.

Auralys’s voice sharpened. “Caelion. Now would be an exquisite time to become someone.”

He laughed once, breathless and terrified.

“No pressure.”

“Oh, enormous pressure. I simply believe in accurate labeling.”

He looked at the Mirror Thorn.

At the king he might become.

At the prince he had been.

At the boy behind the curtain.

At the villagers crossing their repaired bridge.

At his father’s hand lying weak on the bedsheet.

At Malrec holding the shadow of his ring.

At the Hollow Regent descending through the lake because some royal ancestor had once believed the future could be owned.

Caelion stepped closer to the thorn.

His voice shook at first.

Then steadied.

“I am not owed the crown.”

The Mirror Thorn blazed.

The Hollow Regent screamed.

Caelion continued, louder.

“I am not made worthy by wanting it.”

The branches of the thorn bent toward him.

Auralys flared with silver light.

“And if I take it,” Caelion said, “it will not be because destiny handed me a chair and told me to sit. It will be because I can serve what it weighs.”

The Mirror Thorn opened.

A door of moonfire split the cavern air.

Through it, Caelion saw Veyrhold’s council chamber.

Malrec stood at its center, fox mask on his face, black water rising around his feet. The nobles were frozen in place, eyes glassy. King Odran’s throne sat empty.

In Malrec’s hand burned the shadow of Caelion’s signet ring.

Above him, the first edge of a black moon appeared.

Auralys flew to Caelion’s shoulder, though her wounded wing dragged sparks of darkness behind it.

“Well,” she said, voice strained, “your uncle is opening an ancient prison in the middle of government proceedings. That is considered poor etiquette even by noble standards.”

Caelion stepped toward the door.

“Can we stop it?”

“Almost certainly not cleanly.”

“That was not the answer I wanted.”

“Then you should have asked a cheaper oracle.”

The Hollow Regent’s arm struck the cavern floor behind them. Stone burst. Black water sprayed upward like shattered ink.

Caelion did not look back.

He ran through the moonfire door.

Auralys clung to his shoulder.

The Mirror Thorn screamed in silver.

And in the council chamber of Veyrhold, just as Duke Malrec Vey raised the ring-shadow to crown himself in borrowed destiny, the barefoot prince came crashing out of the air like a prophecy with terrible timing and no respect for formal procedure.

The Crown That Finally Learned to Kneel

Prince Caelion Vey did not enter the council chamber gracefully.

He did not appear in a burst of triumphant light with his hair flowing, coat gleaming, and destiny arranged behind him like a tasteful curtain. He did not step through the moonfire door with the calm authority of an heir arriving to reclaim his throne. He did not even land on his feet.

He came crashing out of the air sideways, barefoot, mud-stained, damp-shirted, and yelling a word that would have gotten a stable boy slapped by his grandmother.

Then he hit the council table.

The ancient oak table of Veyrhold had survived three wars, seven monarchs, two assassination attempts, and one memorable winter feast during which a drunken countess had tried to ride it like a sled. It had not, however, been built to withstand a nineteen-year-old prince being launched through a sacred moon portal with unresolved emotional baggage and no respect for furniture.

It cracked straight down the middle.

Ink pots flew.

Wax seals bounced.

A silver platter of ceremonial figs launched itself into the lap of Lord Benwick, who had been frozen by dark magic but still somehow managed to look offended.

The Moonmoth Oracle landed on the back of a high council chair, skidded, recovered, and flared her wings with as much dignity as one could manage after using a prince as luggage.

“Subtle,” she said.

Caelion groaned into a pile of scattered parchment. “I thought portals were supposed to be majestic.”

“Only for people with better posture.”

Across the chamber, Duke Malrec Vey slowly lowered his hand.

The ring-shadow burned above his palm: a black, flickering outline of Caelion’s signet, stolen from the first doorway beneath Glassmere. It dripped darkness upward, defying decency, physics, and basic manners. Around Malrec’s feet, black water spread across the white marble floor in a widening pool, though no source fed it.

The duke wore the dark glass fox mask.

Behind that mask, his eyes glowed pale silver.

Behind him, the air had split open into a vertical wound, and through it pressed the face of the Hollow Regent.

It was not fully inside the world yet.

That was the only comforting thing about it.

Unfortunately, “not fully inside the world yet” was still significantly more inside the world than anyone with healthy survival instincts would prefer.

The Hollow Regent’s long fingers gripped the edges of the tear in reality. Its body shimmered like black glass submerged in deep water. Within its hollow face burned the reflection of a dead moon. The chamber’s candles bent toward it, their flames darkening at the center. Every noble seated around the room sat rigid and silent, eyes glazed, mouths slightly open, like expensive dolls abandoned by a deeply sinister child.

At the far end of the chamber stood the throne.

Empty.

Caelion pushed himself up on one elbow. “Where is my father?”

Malrec tilted his masked head. “Dying with excellent timing.”

The prince’s blood went cold.

Auralys lifted from the chair, her damaged wing trembling. “Careful, Caelion.”

“He poisoned him.” Caelion slid from the broken table to the floor. “He admitted it.”

“I admitted nothing of the sort,” Malrec said. “I merely helped history stop dawdling.”

Caelion took one step forward.

The black water at Malrec’s feet rippled.

Auralys darted in front of him. “No lunging.”

“He poisoned my father.”

“Yes, and if you charge him while he is wearing a cursed fox face and holding your stolen inheritance-shadow, I will be forced to haunt you out of professional irritation.”

“You are not dead.”

“Not yet, but this family is making a generous effort.”

Malrec laughed softly.

The sound slithered around the chamber, touching every frozen noble’s ear. Several of them shuddered.

“Still taking orders from insects, Caelion?”

Caelion’s fists tightened.

His palms hurt.

The blisters from Latchmere had returned, red and raw across his skin.

That pain saved him.

It pulled him back to the bridge, to Mara’s ladle, Ossa’s blunt corrections, Pell’s cranky voice shouting about the western culvert. It reminded him that consequences had weight, texture, splinters, mud. Not grand speeches. Not pretty rage. Work.

He unclenched his hands.

“No,” Caelion said. “I’m listening to her. That’s different.”

Auralys glanced over her shoulder. “Distressingly close to wisdom. Try not to sprain anything.”

Malrec’s mask darkened. “I had hoped Glassmere would break you.”

“It made an effort.”

“And yet here you are. Barefoot. Filthy. Humbled.”

Caelion looked down at himself. “Yes, well, court fashion was getting stale.”

A few of the frozen nobles twitched.

Not much.

But enough.

The Hollow Regent noticed.

Its hollow face turned slightly toward Caelion.

A voice slid out of the tear in the air, deep and layered, as though a thousand old crowns were speaking from the bottom of a well.

“Heir of Vey.”

The chamber shook.

Caelion’s stomach dropped into a region of his body that had not previously been assigned stomach duty.

Auralys hovered lower. “Do not answer names given by things with no face.”

“That feels like advice I should have received earlier in life.”

“Your tutors were clearly overpriced.”

The Hollow Regent’s fingers dug deeper into reality. Cracks spread across the marble floor from the black pool, branching toward the council seats.

“The throne is empty,” the Regent said. “The bloodline trembles. The court waits. Claim what is yours.”

Malrec extended his hand, and the ring-shadow flared.

“That is all you ever had to do, my boy,” the duke said. “Claim it. No more doubt. No more tests. No more crawling through mud for peasants who will forget your name the moment their bellies are full.”

“They remembered their bridge,” Caelion said.

“A bridge.” Malrec’s voice sharpened with contempt. “A few planks and stones in a village that contributes less to the crown than your birthday fireworks cost.”

Caelion flinched.

Only slightly.

But Malrec saw it and smiled behind the mask.

“There. You understand. You were born to move nations, not haul lumber for goat farmers.”

“The goat was fair-minded.”

“Caelion.”

“And the bridge mattered.”

Malrec’s shoulders stiffened.

Caelion looked around the chamber. The high council of Veyrhold sat trapped in their own seats, draped in velvet, jewels, and useful cowardice. He knew these people. He had grown up watching them bow, flatter, maneuver, smile. He had once thought court politics was the kingdom.

But the kingdom was not here.

Not really.

The kingdom was roads washed out in spring floods. Mothers holding babies while pointing at broken stone. Soldiers guarding borders with boots older than some ministers’ marriages. Bakers rising before dawn. Farmers counting rain. Clerks with ink-stained fingers trying to make sense of laws written by men who never queued for bread. The kingdom was everyone who had to live underneath decisions made in rooms like this.

Rooms where figs apparently became airborne at the first sign of accountability.

Caelion straightened.

Not the old way. Not chin high, shoulders back, crown invisible but already imagined.

This time he stood like a man balancing weight he had finally agreed was heavy.

“The bridge mattered,” he repeated.

The black water recoiled a finger’s width.

Auralys’s antennae lifted.

Malrec noticed too.

“Sentiment,” he hissed. “How disappointing.”

“No,” said Caelion. “Accounting.”

That made Auralys blink.

“Well,” she murmured, “that was arousing in a civic infrastructure sort of way.”

Caelion ignored her, heroically.

“You delayed repairs,” he said to Malrec. “Redirected funds. Let petitions rot. Let districts suffer so resentment would grow. Then you fed that resentment back to the council as proof my father was weak.”

The council members stirred again.

Lord Benwick’s eyes flickered toward Caelion.

Lady Serrin’s fingers twitched on the arm of her chair.

Malrec raised the ring-shadow higher. “They cannot hear you.”

“They can.”

“They cannot move.”

“That’s different.”

Auralys clicked approvingly. “Listening while immobilized. A traditional council improvement.”

The Hollow Regent pressed farther through the tear. The edges of the chamber dimmed, as if night itself were being poured into the walls.

“Claim the crown,” it commanded.

The words struck Caelion like a bell.

For one instant, the room shifted.

He saw himself crowned.

The council free and cheering. Malrec defeated. His father proud. Auralys healed. The kingdom safe because he had finally taken what was his and become the shining center of every story.

The vision was beautiful.

Suspiciously beautiful.

Like cake from a stranger.

Caelion almost reached for it.

Then his blistered palm throbbed.

He remembered the Mirror Thorn’s question.

What are you without the crown?

He still did not have a clean answer.

But he knew the wrong one now.

That was progress. Ugly little progress, but progress all the same.

“No,” Caelion said.

The Hollow Regent stilled.

Malrec’s head tilted. “No?”

“I will not claim the crown tonight.”

The ring-shadow sputtered.

A shock moved through the chamber.

Auralys flared bright, though the light cost her. “Caelion—”

“Not because I refuse the throne forever,” he said quickly. “Do not look at me like I just threw the kingdom into a well.”

“I have several looks,” said Auralys. “That one was concern with decorative panic.”

He kept his eyes on Malrec. “I refuse your rite. I refuse your terms. I refuse a crown taken through fear, stolen shadows, poisoned blood, and whatever damp nightmare is currently clawing through the wall.”

The Hollow Regent’s fingers tightened.

The marble cracked.

Malrec snarled. “You think refusal makes you noble?”

“No. I think it makes your ritual inconvenient.”

Auralys gave a delighted gasp. “Oh, he is learning spite with structure.”

Malrec thrust the ring-shadow toward the black pool. “Then I claim in your name.”

The ring-shadow expanded into a dark circle above the water. Inside it, Caelion’s family crest appeared: the crowned stag leaping through fire. But the stag was wrong. Its eyes were hollow. Its antlers dripped black.

Malrec began to speak in a language Caelion did not know.

Auralys knew it.

Her whole body went rigid.

“Old succession speech,” she said. “The version kings stopped using after they realized it made the walls bleed.”

“How do we stop it?”

“We need the true ring.”

“The doorway took it.”

“It took the symbol. Symbols can be returned if the truth beneath them changes.”

“That sounds inconveniently personal.”

“Yes, growth remains disgusting. Keep up.”

The black water surged toward the throne.

The empty throne.

Caelion suddenly understood.

“He doesn’t need me crowned,” he said. “He needs the throne occupied by my claim.”

“Yes.”

“And if I refuse to claim it, he uses the shadow.”

“Yes.”

“So I need the true ring back.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

Auralys hovered in front of him, wings trembling. “By making the ring mean something else.”

“It means inheritance.”

“Then change what you inherit.”

The council chamber groaned.

Above Malrec, the black moon widened.

The Hollow Regent’s shoulders pushed through the tear. Its glass body scraped against the edges of the world, and the sound made several council members begin silently crying through their enchantment.

Caelion turned toward the empty throne.

All his life, he had imagined walking toward it.

Sometimes in glory. Sometimes in dread. Sometimes in anger. Often in clothes that were, admittedly, excellent.

He had imagined standing before it while the court bowed. Imagined his father placing the crown upon his head. Imagined Malrec smiling from the shadows, proud of him. Imagined himself proving everyone wrong by becoming exactly as magnificent as he secretly feared he was not.

He had not once imagined kneeling in front of it.

So that was what he did.

Caelion crossed the cracked marble floor, stepped over a ribbon of black water, and knelt before the throne of Veyrhold.

The chamber went silent except for Malrec’s chanting.

Even the Hollow Regent paused.

Caelion bowed his head.

“I inherit my father’s failures,” he said.

His voice carried through the chamber.

The frozen nobles’ eyes sharpened.

“I inherit every petition ignored by this court. Every road left broken because we called it minor. Every border grievance left to rot because it was easier to host another banquet. Every law written above the people it landed on. Every silence we called dignity because apology felt too much like kneeling.”

Malrec’s chant faltered.

The ring-shadow flickered.

Caelion kept going.

“I inherit my father’s caution, and I will not mistake it for cowardice again. I inherit his distance, and I will not repeat it as virtue. I inherit his throne only if I can bear its debts.”

Auralys hovered behind him, glowing brighter now, her wounded wing catching threads of moonlight.

Caelion lifted his blistered hands.

“I inherit the bridge at Latchmere.”

Somewhere in the chamber, Lady Serrin gasped.

“I inherit the western culvert too, apparently,” he added, because Pell’s cranky little ghost of civic complaint had earned its moment.

Auralys whispered, “Beautiful. Petty and municipal.”

Caelion almost smiled.

Then he pressed both palms to the marble floor.

“I inherit the people before I inherit the crown.”

Light burst beneath his hands.

Not gold.

Silver.

Moonlight ran through the cracks in the marble, branching outward in bright veins. It reached the black water and hissed. It reached the frozen council members, climbing their chairs, wrapping their wrists, touching their eyes.

Lord Benwick jerked awake and shouted, “The figs attacked me!”

“Later,” snapped Lady Serrin, also waking.

One by one, the council broke free.

Malrec roared.

The ring-shadow in his hand convulsed.

From the silver light before Caelion, something small and bright rose into the air.

His signet ring.

Not as it had been.

The stag crest remained, but the crown above its antlers had changed. It no longer sat like a prize. It curved downward, shaped almost like a bridge.

Caelion stared.

“That is new.”

Auralys landed lightly on his shoulder. “Try not to ruin it with vanity.”

“I am kneeling barefoot in front of the court.”

“Vanity is resourceful.”

He took the ring.

The moment it touched his finger, the ring-shadow in Malrec’s hand shattered.

Dark fragments flew outward.

The Hollow Regent screamed.

This time the sound did not remain distant and grand. It became physical, slamming through the chamber, bursting windows, tearing banners from the walls. Council members ducked. Servants outside the doors cried out. Every candle flame turned black, then silver, then went out.

Malrec staggered backward.

The fox mask cracked down the center.

Caelion rose.

The true ring burned on his hand.

“It’s over,” he said.

Auralys sighed. “Oh, never say that before the corpse.”

She was right, which was becoming an exhausting pattern.

The Hollow Regent slammed both hands fully into the chamber and pulled.

The tear ripped wide.

The council chamber flooded with black moonlight.

Not darkness.

Black light.

It revealed every hidden hunger in the room.

Lord Benwick’s fear of losing his estates. Lady Serrin’s ambition folded carefully beneath loyalty. Chancellor Iven’s secret treasury seal, which Caelion was pleased to see glowing with guilty little sparks near his breast pocket. The captain of the guard outside the door wishing he had chosen a calmer profession, like beekeeping or volcano maintenance.

And Malrec.

Malrec’s hunger burned brightest of all.

It was not only for the throne.

It was for the moment before his brother had been chosen over him. For every dinner where he sat one chair too far from power. For every smile he had sharpened because rage would have been too honest. For every time he told himself he deserved more until the words hollowed him out enough for something ancient to move in.

The Hollow Regent wrapped one long hand around Malrec’s shoulders like a patron embracing a favorite artist.

“Faithful claimant,” it said.

Malrec stiffened.

For the first time, fear broke through his composure.

“No,” he whispered. “We had terms.”

Auralys clicked her tongue. “Men making bargains with ancient hollow crown-monsters. Always shocked by the customer service.”

The Regent’s fingers sank into Malrec’s chest.

Dark glass spread through the duke’s white coat.

“You promised me a ruler empty enough to enter,” the Regent said. “You will do.”

Malrec screamed.

Caelion moved before he thought better of it.

He ran toward his uncle.

Auralys shot after him. “What are you doing?”

“Stopping it.”

“Why?”

“Because apparently I am against possession now.”

“Excellent moral development, terrible timing.”

Caelion grabbed Malrec’s wrist.

Cold ripped up his arm. The Hollow Regent’s power slammed into him: visions of crowns, obedience, cheering crowds, enemies kneeling, critics silenced, grief erased beneath command. A thousand flattering futures tried to crawl into his skull and make a throne there.

Caelion nearly let go.

Then Malrec looked at him through the cracked mask.

Not as a schemer. Not as the Honeyblade. Not as the uncle who had fed him candied poison for years.

As a terrified man who had mistaken hunger for destiny until destiny opened its mouth and bit back.

“Caelion,” Malrec gasped.

It would have been easier to hate him cleanly.

Infuriatingly, people were rarely considerate enough to remain simple monsters when consequences arrived.

“You do not get my crown,” Caelion said through clenched teeth.

The Hollow Regent leaned closer.

“Then take his.”

Caelion’s ring flared.

He understood what the Regent meant.

There was a path here. A tempting one. Let the Regent consume Malrec. Let the court see the duke revealed and destroyed. Let Caelion emerge as savior, wronged heir, righteous avenger. Let the story become clean, dramatic, and wildly useful.

It would make him beloved by morning.

It would also make Malrec a sacrifice to Caelion’s image.

A different bridge collapsing under a different wagon.

“No,” Caelion said.

The Regent hissed.

“He harmed you.”

“Yes.”

“He shaped you.”

“Yes.”

“He poisoned your father.”

Caelion’s grip tightened so hard he felt Malrec’s bones shift.

“Yes.”

“Then why save him?”

Caelion did not have a noble answer.

Not at first.

He wanted revenge. He wanted to punch Malrec in the face properly, not through ballroom smoke. He wanted his father healed, his childhood returned, his pride unbent, his pain made useful and impressive.

But wanting a thing did not make it worthy.

Damn Glassmere.

Damn mirrors.

Damn emotional knives.

Damn goats, probably, on principle.

“Because justice is not whatever makes me feel tallest,” Caelion said.

Auralys’s wings blazed.

The true ring exploded with silver light.

Malrec was torn free from the Regent’s hand and thrown across the chamber. He hit the base of the throne and collapsed, mask cracked, breath ragged, alive.

The Hollow Regent recoiled.

“You refuse too much.”

“I am beginning to enjoy it,” Caelion said.

“Careful,” Auralys muttered. “Enjoying humility is just arrogance wearing sensible shoes.”

“Noted.”

The Regent surged forward.

Its upper body was now through the tear. Black glass shoulders scraped against the ceiling. Its long arms swept across the chamber, knocking chairs aside. Council members scrambled. Lady Serrin grabbed a fallen ceremonial spear from the wall. Lord Benwick armed himself with the silver fig platter, because panic makes poets of us all.

Auralys flew high, scattering moon-dust from her wings.

“Council of Veyrhold!” she cried.

Her voice rang through the chamber, ancient and sharp enough to cut velvet.

“You have been lied to, flattered, bribed, frightened, and in several cases criminally overfed. How tragic for your digestive systems. But if you would prefer not to become decorative memories in a dead lake, stand now for the kingdom you keep claiming to serve.”

The council stared at her.

She flared brighter.

“That was not a metaphor, you upholstered turnips. Move.”

They moved.

Lady Serrin was first. She drove the ceremonial spear into the black water crawling across the floor. Silver sparks burst from the impact.

“Chancellor Iven!” Caelion shouted.

The chancellor froze halfway under his desk.

“The duplicate treasury seal.”

Iven went pale. “Your Highness, this is hardly—”

“Throw it into the water.”

“It is an important instrument of fiscal—”

Lady Serrin aimed her spear at him.

Iven threw the seal.

The little gold stamp struck the black water and dissolved in a plume of guilty green smoke.

The cracks in the floor sealed by inches.

Auralys gave a fierce laugh. “Yes. Feed it broken lies.”

Caelion understood.

The Hollow Regent had entered through false claims, hidden bargains, corrupted symbols. It could be weakened by the surrender of them.

He turned to the council. “All of it. Every false seal, stolen vote, secret pledge, bought appointment, and treasonous little pocket agreement. Into the water. Now.”

Nobody moved.

Caelion’s eyes narrowed.

“Do not make me discover competence and apply it personally.”

That did it.

The chamber erupted into frantic honesty.

Lord Benwick flung a concealed border contract into the black water while muttering that it had been drafted under duress, though nobody had asked. Lady Orren surrendered three letters proving she had been playing both succession factions and one poetry circle with alarming efficiency. A minor baron threw in a jeweled dagger, missed the water, picked it up, apologized to no one in particular, and tried again.

Each lie dissolved with a flash of moonlight.

The Hollow Regent shrank back, howling.

Malrec dragged himself upright near the throne, one hand pressed to his chest. The broken fox mask hung from his face in two jagged pieces.

Caelion turned toward him.

“The poison,” he said.

Malrec’s lips parted.

“The thread around my father’s wrist,” Caelion said. “What breaks it?”

Malrec laughed weakly. “You think I will help you?”

The Hollow Regent’s hand shot toward him again.

Malrec’s laugh died.

“Fine,” he rasped. “His crown oath. Odran swore never to abandon the throne while breath remained. I used the oath against him. Bound his life to the seat. The weaker he became, the stronger the vacancy grew.”

Auralys went still. “A throne-sickness.”

Caelion felt sick. “How do I break it?”

Malrec looked toward the empty throne.

For one moment, something like shame crossed his face.

“He must release it.”

“He is dying.”

“Then hurry.”

The Hollow Regent roared and lunged again, this time straight for the throne.

Auralys flew into its path.

“No!” Caelion shouted.

The Oracle spread her wings before the empty seat, moonlight streaming from every delicate vein. Against the vast black glass body of the Regent, she looked impossibly small.

She looked like a scrap of white silk before a storm.

She also looked absolutely furious.

“You do not touch this realm,” she said.

The Regent’s hollow face bent toward her.

“Little wing.”

Auralys’s eyes burned silver. “That is Blessed Little Wing to you, you crown-licking puddle corpse.”

Then the Regent struck.

Black glass claws slammed into Auralys’s light.

The chamber filled with a sound like a thousand mirrors breaking in a cathedral.

Caelion ran.

Not toward the throne.

Toward the side door behind it.

The private stair to the royal chambers.

Every instinct screamed that he should stay and fight. That heroes did not leave the dramatic room. That this was where glory happened: in front of witnesses, beneath shattered banners, with a monstrous thing and a great deal of lighting.

But the kingdom did not need him to look brave.

It needed him to do the correct task.

Annoying distinction.

He tore open the side door and sprinted up the narrow stair.

Behind him, Auralys screamed.

He almost turned back.

His hand caught the stone wall.

He stopped for half a breath.

Then kept climbing.

“Please still be alive,” he whispered. “Please insult me again.”

The royal bedchamber was dark.

Only one lamp burned beside the bed, its flame low and blue. King Odran lay beneath heavy blankets, his face hollow, his hair silvered by illness and moonlight. A black thread circled his wrist, so thin it might have been a vein.

Caelion crossed the room and fell to his knees beside him.

“Father.”

The king did not move.

Caelion gripped his hand.

It was cold.

Too cold.

“Father.”

Odran’s eyelids fluttered.

His eyes opened slowly.

They were dull at first. Then they focused.

“Caelion?”

The prince’s throat closed.

There were dozens of things he had meant to say to his father one day, most of them polished, many of them accusatory, several designed to wound with elegance. He had stored them for years like blades in a velvet case.

Now, kneeling beside a dying man while an ancient throne-monster tried to break into the government downstairs, none of them seemed worth the air.

“You need to release the throne,” Caelion said.

Odran’s brow tightened.

“No.”

“Father—”

“The succession is not safe.”

“I know.”

“Malrec—”

“I know.”

The king’s weak fingers tightened around his. “You are not ready.”

The words struck Caelion exactly where they always had.

But this time, they did not become rage.

They became truth.

“I know,” he said.

Odran’s eyes widened slightly.

Caelion laughed once, ragged and wet. “I hate knowing. It is very inconvenient. I blame the moth.”

“Moth?”

“Long story. Extremely judgmental.”

The chamber shook.

Dust fell from the ceiling.

Far below, the Hollow Regent roared.

Odran tried to sit up and failed. “I cannot leave the throne to chaos.”

“You are not leaving it to chaos.”

“You just said you are not ready.”

“I am not ready to be the king I thought I was born to be.” Caelion swallowed. “Good. That king was a preening idiot with a national budget problem.”

The faintest ghost of a smile touched Odran’s mouth.

“I tried to teach you.”

“You tried to correct me.”

The smile vanished.

Caelion held his father’s gaze. “You were right more often than I wanted. But you made every lesson feel like a verdict.”

Odran closed his eyes.

For a moment, Caelion thought he had lost him.

Then the king whispered, “I did not know how to make you strong without making you hard.”

Caelion’s eyes burned.

“You did both badly.”

Odran let out a weak breath that might have been a laugh and might have been pain.

“Fair.”

“But I listened eventually.”

“Eventually,” Odran murmured, “is doing charitable work in that sentence.”

Caelion laughed, and this time it broke.

He pressed his forehead to their joined hands.

“I need you to release the oath. Not to me. Not to Malrec. To the kingdom.”

Odran’s eyes opened.

The black thread around his wrist tightened.

He winced.

“If I release it, I may die.”

Caelion could not speak.

There it was.

The truth with teeth.

Odran looked at him for a long moment.

“And if I do not?”

Below them, the palace groaned like a ship splitting in ice.

Caelion forced the words out.

“Then the throne becomes a door.”

Odran looked toward the ceiling, toward the chamber below, toward the kingdom beyond stone and storm.

“I was afraid,” the king whispered.

Caelion squeezed his hand.

“So was I.”

“Are you still?”

“Absolutely.”

Another faint smile. “Good.”

Caelion blinked. “Good?”

“Fear may keep you from becoming your uncle.”

“That is a hideous blessing.”

“Most useful ones are.”

The black thread pulsed.

Odran drew a shallow breath.

Then, with the last strength of a king who had held too tightly for too long, he lifted his wrist.

“I release the throne from my fear,” he said.

The thread snapped.

King Odran gasped.

Silver light spilled from the broken thread, filling the room.

Caelion caught his father as the king sagged forward.

“Father?”

Odran’s eyes closed.

For one terrible heartbeat, there was nothing.

Then the king breathed.

Weakly.

But he breathed.

Caelion nearly collapsed from relief.

“Do not die,” he said. “I am still furious with you.”

Odran’s mouth barely moved. “Motivating.”

A roar shook the palace.

Caelion looked toward the door.

“Stay alive,” he said.

“Try not to embarrass the bloodline.”

Caelion stood.

Then paused.

“Too late for that.”

He ran back down the stair.

The council chamber had become absolute chaos, but in a surprisingly productive way.

Lady Serrin and two guards held a line before the throne with ceremonial spears and one curtain rod. Lord Benwick was still using the fig platter as a shield and, against all probability, doing a decent job. Chancellor Iven had fainted into a wastebasket, which improved the room’s average integrity by several points.

Auralys still hovered before the throne.

Barely.

Her wings were torn with black cracks. Moonlight leaked from her like silver blood. The Hollow Regent loomed over her, one arm braced inside the chamber, one still tangled in the tear between worlds.

Caelion’s chest clenched.

“Auralys!”

She turned her head. “Oh good. You’re back. I was about to become inspirational, and nobody wants that.”

“My father released the oath.”

The empty throne flashed silver.

The Hollow Regent screamed as the door it had been forcing began to collapse.

But not fast enough.

It lunged toward the throne one final time, tearing through Auralys’s light.

Her wounded wing ripped.

She fell.

Caelion caught her in both hands.

She was impossibly light.

Too light.

Her wings trembled against his palms.

“Do not,” he said.

Her black eyes blinked slowly. “Bossy little bridge prince.”

“Insult me better than that.”

“Your hair remains a diplomatic incident.”

“Good. Stay with me.”

The Hollow Regent dragged itself toward them, shrinking as the tear closed but still enormous, still hungry. Its hollow face lowered until Caelion saw himself reflected inside the dead moon.

“The crown will come,” it whispered. “You will fail differently.”

Caelion stood, holding Auralys carefully.

“Probably.”

The Regent paused.

That was not the answer it wanted.

Caelion looked straight into its hollow face.

“I will fail. I will miss things. I will trust wrong people. I will be vain when I should be listening and angry when I should be still. I will need correction, and I will hate it because correction tastes like boiled socks.”

Auralys whispered, “Poetry is limping, but continue.”

“But I will not call my failures destiny,” Caelion said. “I will not feed them a kingdom and ask people to clap.”

The true ring blazed.

The council, the throne, the broken table, the scattered petitions, the surrendered lies—all of it lit silver.

Caelion lifted his hand.

“Glassmere,” he said, “if you are listening, which you almost certainly are because you are nosy as hell, take back what crawled out of you.”

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the lake answered.

Every window in the council chamber turned to moonlit water.

Glassmere appeared beyond them, vast and silver, its towers blazing again, its crystal shores alive with opal fire. The Moon Pavilion shone across the distance, cracked but standing. From the lake rose countless white moths, small as petals, bright as stars.

They poured through the windows.

A storm of wings filled the chamber.

They circled the Hollow Regent, clinging to its glass body, each tiny moth carrying a spark of moonlight. The Regent thrashed. Black shards flew. The tear behind it collapsed inch by inch.

Auralys stirred in Caelion’s hands.

“My mother,” she whispered.

At the center of the moth storm appeared one larger light: a white wing, torn but radiant, half of an ancient sacrifice still burning after generations beneath the lake.

It swept across the Regent’s face.

The dead moon inside its hollow head cracked.

The Hollow Regent screamed one last time, not in fury now, but in fear.

Glassmere pulled.

The black water on the floor reversed course, rushing upward, dragging darkness with it. The Regent clawed at the marble, at the throne, at Malrec, at Caelion’s reflection in the ring.

Caelion did not move.

The moth storm surged.

The Regent was torn backward through the closing wound.

The tear snapped shut.

Silence crashed down.

Then the entire council chamber dumped three inches of cold lake water onto everyone.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Lord Benwick lowered the fig platter from his face.

“I resign from whatever committee caused this.”

Lady Serrin sat heavily in a chair. “That may be the first sensible thing you have ever said.”

Chancellor Iven groaned from the wastebasket.

Auralys lifted her head weakly from Caelion’s hands. “Is the horrible little finance man still alive?”

“Unfortunately,” said Caelion.

“Shame. The room had momentum.”

Malrec lay near the throne steps, soaked, mask shattered beside him. Guards surrounded him, though none seemed eager to touch him. Without the mask, without the borrowed shadow, without the Regent’s hunger standing behind him, he looked smaller.

Not harmless.

Never harmless.

But smaller.

His eyes found Caelion.

For a moment, the prince saw the uncle he had loved.

Then he saw the man who had taught him to mistake flattery for love.

Both were real.

That was inconvenient.

“You saved me,” Malrec said hoarsely.

Caelion looked at him for a long moment.

“No,” he said. “I saved the room from what was using you.”

Malrec’s face tightened.

“As for you,” Caelion continued, “you will stand trial. Publicly. No quiet exile. No polite illness. No decorative prison with wine.”

Lady Serrin stood. “The council will see it done.”

Caelion turned to her. “The council will also open every sealed infrastructure petition from the last ten years.”

Several nobles looked suddenly ill.

“And review emergency funds,” Caelion said.

Lord Benwick coughed. “Tonight?”

Caelion looked around the ruined, wet, monster-chewed chamber.

“No. Tonight we mop the government.”

Auralys made a faint approving sound.

“Tomorrow,” Caelion said, “we begin with Latchmere Bridge and the western culvert.”

“The western what?” asked Lady Serrin.

“Culvert,” said Caelion. “Apparently it is shite.”

The council stared.

Then, unexpectedly, Lady Serrin laughed.

It was small at first. Then Lord Benwick laughed too, mostly from shock. Someone near the back began crying. Someone else began wringing lake water out of a velvet sleeve with the grim focus of a person rethinking public service.

Caelion looked down at Auralys.

Her wing was badly torn, but the black veins had stopped spreading. Tiny white moths still circled her, settling along the damaged edge like stitches of living moonlight.

“Will you heal?” he asked.

“Eventually.”

“That is not evasive enough for you.”

“I am tired.”

That frightened him more than the Regent.

“What do you need?”

“Glassmere. Quiet. Moonlight. Fewer nobles.”

“A reasonable medical plan.”

“And a bowl of sugared pear nectar.”

Caelion blinked. “Do oracles eat pear nectar?”

“No, but wounded ones become petty.”

He smiled.

Then the side door opened.

King Odran stood there.

Barely.

He leaned on the captain of the guard, pale as bone, wrapped in a robe hastily thrown over his nightclothes. But he was upright. Alive. His eyes moved across the shattered chamber, the soaked council, the broken table, the captured Malrec, the swarm of fading moonmoths, and finally his son.

“I leave you alone,” the king rasped, “for one evening.”

Caelion laughed before he could stop himself.

It cracked through the room.

Then he crossed to his father, still carrying Auralys carefully.

The council began to bow.

Odran lifted one trembling hand. “Don’t. My knees will take it personally.”

He looked at Malrec.

Something ancient and wounded passed between the brothers.

Malrec looked away first.

Odran closed his eyes briefly.

Then he turned to Caelion.

“You refused the crown.”

“I refused a trap wearing one.”

“Good.”

Caelion swallowed. “I may still want it.”

“Good.”

“You keep saying that at disturbing times.”

Odran’s mouth twitched. “Wanting is not the sin. Worshipping the wanting is.”

Auralys lifted one antenna. “Look at that. The dying king gives better summaries than the entire council.”

Odran noticed her fully for the first time.

His expression shifted into solemn recognition.

“Oracle of Glassmere.”

“King of Poor Timing.”

He bowed his head. “My house owes yours a debt.”

“Your house owes many debts.”

“Yes.”

That simple answer settled over the chamber.

Caelion felt the weight of it.

Not guilt alone. Responsibility. The unglamorous kind. The kind that came with ledgers, bridges, apologies, and fewer fireworks shaped like stags.

A terrible loss, those fireworks.

He would survive.

Probably.

Three nights later, when Glassmere reappeared beyond the western valley and the moon returned to its proper reflection, Caelion walked barefoot once more to the Moon Pavilion.

This time, he did not arrive in a glittering carriage.

He arrived with one guard, two satchels of documents, a sealed order for emergency repairs across five neglected districts, and a small crystal bowl of sugared pear nectar.

Auralys rested beneath her opalescent arch, wing bound in threads of living moonlight. She looked weaker than before, but no less judgmental, which Caelion took as a hopeful sign.

“You brought paperwork,” she said.

“Yes.”

“To a sacred lake.”

“You told me to remember the mud.”

“I did not tell you to become aroused by administration.”

“I am not aroused by administration.”

“You brought two satchels.”

“The second contains maps.”

“Filth.”

He set the pear nectar before her.

She inspected it like a queen reviewing a tribute from peasants who were trying their best but could still be executed for garnish errors.

“Acceptable,” she said.

“High praise.”

“Do not get emotional. It curdles the nectar.”

Caelion sat on the pavilion steps.

Across the lake, the towers of Glassmere glowed again. The crystal reeds shimmered blue and silver. The dark stain beneath the water had faded, though not vanished entirely. Some evils did not disappear because one prince had a productive evening and discovered municipal shame. They sank. They waited. They became history, and history had a nasty habit of pretending it was finished.

“Malrec has confessed to parts of it,” Caelion said.

“Only parts?”

“Enough to begin.”

“He will try to keep pieces hidden.”

“Yes.”

“He will attempt charm.”

“Yes.”

“He will weaponize your memories.”

Caelion looked out over the lake. “I know.”

Auralys watched him carefully.

“Do you?”

He touched the signet ring on his finger.

The bridge-crown crest caught the moonlight.

“No,” he said after a moment. “Not fully. But I know enough to distrust the part of me that wants him to make it simple.”

Auralys gave a soft hum.

“Good. Ugly, but good.”

“That should be engraved over the council doors.”

“It may improve attendance.”

They sat in silence.

Eventually, Caelion said, “My father is stepping back from daily rule.”

“Alive?”

“Alive.”

“Irritating?”

“Increasingly.”

“Promising.”

“He wants a regency council during recovery. Lady Serrin, Captain Voss, two provincial representatives, and…” Caelion grimaced. “Me.”

“A prince sharing power. How will the poets survive the reduced swelling?”

“They are adapting poorly.”

“Poets often do.”

Caelion pulled a folded document from one satchel.

“Latchmere Bridge repairs are funded.”

“You already repaired it in the trial.”

“I repaired the lesson. Not the bridge.”

Auralys blinked slowly.

“That was almost elegant.”

“Thank you.”

“I said almost. Sit down emotionally.”

He smiled despite himself.

“I also sent inspectors to the western culvert.”

“And?”

“It is, in fact, shite.”

Auralys laughed.

It was small, but bright enough to ripple the lake.

Caelion looked at her damaged wing. “Will you be the Oracle again?”

“I did not stop.”

“You know what I mean.”

She looked toward the moon.

“My wing will mend. Not as it was.”

“I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For bringing this to Glassmere.”

Her eyes returned to him. “Your uncle brought it. Your ancestor invited it. Your pride almost opened it. Your refusal helped seal it. Be precise with guilt, Caelion. Too much and you drown in yourself. Too little and everyone else drowns for you.”

He absorbed that.

“That is horrible advice.”

“It is excellent advice. You dislike it because it has no flattery in it.”

“True.”

“There may be hope for you yet.”

The moon rose higher.

Its reflection in Glassmere steadied.

For the first time since his arrival, Caelion looked into the water and saw only himself.

No crown.

No burning kingdom.

No broken scepter.

No lifeless wing.

Just a young man with tired eyes, damp cuffs, healing hands, and hair that had once again failed the realm.

“Do you want to see another vision?” Auralys asked.

Caelion recoiled. “Absolutely not.”

“Good answer.”

“Was that a test?”

“Everything is a test if one is obnoxious enough.”

“You must be exhausted.”

“Constantly.”

He laughed.

Then, after a while, he said, “Will I become king?”

Auralys sipped delicately from the pear nectar.

It was absurdly charming.

She clearly knew.

“Perhaps,” she said.

Caelion groaned. “That is cruel.”

“That is prophecy.”

“Can you at least tell me whether I become terrible?”

“Everyone becomes terrible in small ways. The question is whether you build a palace around it.”

He considered that.

“I will try not to.”

“Trying is adorable. Put systems around it.”

Caelion slowly turned to her.

“Did you just recommend administrative reform?”

“Do not look so excited. It is undignified.”

“You did.”

“The lake denies everything.”

“You like my paperwork.”

“I like accountability. Paperwork is merely the least sexy carriage it arrives in.”

Caelion laughed hard enough that the guard waiting by the path glanced over in alarm.

Auralys pretended not to be pleased.

Above them, the moon shone full and white.

Glassmere held its reflection without trembling.

And deep beneath the lake, sealed once more behind mirror-thorn roots and old sacrifices, the Hollow Regent raged in its prison, whispering to dead crowns and waiting for another ruler foolish enough to believe wanting power was the same as deserving it.

It would wait a long time.

Not forever, perhaps.

Nothing foolish ever stayed gone forever. It only changed hats.

But for now, the lake was silver, the towers glowed, the Oracle healed, and a prince who had arrived demanding proof of greatness sat barefoot on cold stone, reading bridge reports to a sarcastic moonmoth.

Which, Glassmere decided, was not a perfect ending.

But it was a useful beginning.

And useful beginnings, unlike grand destinies, had the decency to bring a shovel.

 

---

 

Bring the moonlit mystery of The Moonmoth Oracle of Glassmere into your own realm with artwork that glows like prophecy wrapped in wings. This ethereal moonmoth, framed by crystalline shimmer and a haunted Glassmere shoreline, is available as a framed print, canvas print, acrylic print, and tapestry for anyone who prefers their walls with a little more oracle-powered judgment. You can also send a bit of enchanted sass with a greeting card, keep your own suspicious prophecies in a spiral notebook, or lose yourself piece by moonlit piece with the puzzle.