I do not make it ten paces from the cave before my vision blurs.
It happens without warning.
One moment I am walking. The next, the forest tilts and my chest tightens so sharply I have to brace a hand against a tree to remain upright.
I close my eyes.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
It does not help.
He died in his sleep.
The words land now. Fully. Without distraction. Without Liora's hurt expression to deflect toward. Without Roald's steady interruption.
He died in his sleep.
No sword drawn.
No final words.
No warning cry.
Just darkness.
And then nothing.
A sound escapes me before I can stop it — something between a laugh and a choke.
I press the heel of my palm hard against my eyes as if I can force the pressure back inside.
I was not his guard.
I was not sworn to him.
I built carts.
I repaired doors.
I argued policy as if my opinion mattered.
And yet I carried myself as though my loyalty could shield him.
As though admiration were armor.
Fool.
He used to visit the workshop unannounced.
No herald.
No guards.
Just the soft interruption of light at the doorway.
"You treat wood like it listens," he once said, watching me shape a spoke.
"It does," I told him. "If you pay attention to where it wants to bend."
He smiled at that — not the public smile. The quiet one.
"Then perhaps you should teach my councilors."
He trusted easily.
That was his flaw.
I admired him for it.
That was mine.
When Nux stood before the people and claimed the ruler still breathed…
When the figure appeared in the square days later…
I believed it.
Because I wanted to.
Because I could not bear the alternative.
I told myself grief was making me suspicious.
I told myself men change under pressure.
I told myself the stiffness in his posture, the slight pause before familiar phrases, meant nothing.
I did not want to see.
And while I refused to see—
He lay somewhere cold.
Replaced.
Discarded like a damaged hinge.
My hand tightens against the bark until splinters press into my palm.
For a moment — just one — I want to shout.
To strike something.
To demand that the forest answer for it.
Instead, I breathe.
Slow.
Measured.
Because if I begin, I do not know that I will stop.
And I cannot afford to unravel here.
Not when I have already unraveled once today.
Liora's face surfaces in my mind.
The way her expression did not harden.
Did not defend.
It broke.
I accused her because she was close.
Because she was present.
Because blaming Nux means admitting I never saw him coming.
Roald's voice echoes clear and steady:
"You know it was Nux who killed him."
The boy did not tremble.
I did.
I straighten.
Enough.
If I return now empty-handed, they will see only the anger.
If I return only with apologies, Liora will forgive me too quickly.
And I do not deserve quick forgiveness.
I move deeper into the forest.
There are clusters of bramble-berries near the eastern thicket — late fruit, dark and stubborn on their canes. I gather them carefully, mindful of thorns and rot alike.
Roald will claim they stain the tongue like ink.
He will eat them anyway.
I wrap the berries in a broad dock leaf and tuck them into my coat.
Near a fallen trunk, I kneel and loosen the earth around a patch of ramsons — wild garlic, sharp and green, their scent clinging to the air. I pull the bulbs gently free, brushing soil from their skins.
Isobel insists we keep them always.
"Better a breath that offends than a fever that kills," she once said while rearranging stores I had already arranged.
As though I had done it poorly on purpose.
I take an extra bulb.
She counts them.
She always counts them.
If I return with too few, she will lift an eyebrow and inform me I have overlooked something obvious.
Infuriating woman.
Capable woman.
She sees fractures before they widen.
Which makes it all the more bitter that I did not see this one.
A faint tremor stirs the brush to my left.
Not wind.
Too irregular.
I go still.
There, between low roots and bracken — the cord.
The snare.
We had set it three nights ago where the game trail narrows between stone and hawthorn.
My measurements.
Her adjustments.
The tension arm still bore the faint scoring of a wheel brace once fixed to my cart — repurposed, without permission, by Isobel's relentless logic.
I nearly argued when she dismantled it.
Nearly.
The line is taut.
A young hare twists against the loop, hind leg caught, breath quick and shallow.
For a moment it freezes when it sees me.
So do I.
I crouch slowly, careful not to startle it into breaking its own limb.
The mechanism holds cleanly.
Balanced.
Efficient.
Good.
I steady the animal with one hand.
Swift.
Practiced.
There is a brief, sharp motion.
Then stillness.
I hold it a heartbeat longer.
Then I untangle the cord and reset the loop, adjusting the tension a fraction tighter than before.
It will hold better now.
Isobel will notice.
Further ahead, a scatter of small blue cornflowers trembles at the forest's edge, their petals pale toward the heart and darker at the tips. Hardy little things. They grow where the soil has been disturbed.
I nearly pass them.
Roald would mock me.
Isobel would say they serve no purpose.
"Unless you've discovered a cure for treachery hidden in the petals," she would remark.
I huff quietly.
Still.
I crouch.
Liora lingers near cornflowers at first light.
She claims they ease the eyes when steeped in water.
I have never confirmed this.
I cut one cleanly at the stem.
If Isobel were here, she would remind me we have weightier concerns.
She would not be wrong.
She would notice it, though.
She notices everything.
The thought lingers longer than it should.
I slide the cornflower into the inner fold of my coat so it will not be crushed.
I rise, adjusting the weight of what I carry.
Bramble-berries for Roald.
Ramsons for Isobel.
A hare for the fire.
A cornflower for Liora.
Small offerings.
Insufficient.
But honest.
The trees thin.
The mouth of the cave comes into view between stone and shadow.
Smoke should be drifting from within.
There should be sound.
I slow without meaning to.
They are safe.
Isobel is with them.
And she notices everything.
I step forward.
Sir Wilkinson ducked into the cave, sunlight at his back.
The hare hung from his left hand. Blue cornflowers and crushed berries were gathered in his right, their stems damp against his palm.
His boots scraped stone.
Roald was standing.
Not leaning. Not pacing.
Standing still.
Liora sat further in, shoulders drawn inward, fingers twisted tight in the fabric at her wrists.
Wilkinson slowed by a fraction.
His gaze moved across them—
And paused.
Liora's eyes had dropped to his hand.
Not to the hare.
To the flowers.
Something flickered there.
Recognition.
Her fingers loosened.
Just slightly.
Wilkinson followed her gaze down, as if only now remembering what he held.
The blue petals were bright against the cave's gray stone.
He looked back at her.
Whatever he might have said—
Died.
Roald was still watching him.
Not smiling. Not speaking.
Just watching.
There was something wrong in that look.
Wilkinson's jaw tightened.
"What."
Roald swallowed.
Said nothing.
Instead—
He shifted.
One step to the side.
It opened the space near the entrance.
Wilkinson's gaze followed the absence.
And found it.
The satchel.
Resting on the stone.
Open.
Neat.
Untouched.
The cornflowers bent in his fist.
For a heartbeat, nothing in him reacted.
Then the hare slipped from his grasp and struck the cave floor with a dull thud.
He did not look down.
He moved.
Two strides to the entrance.
The light struck him full in the face, and only then did his breathing change.
"Where."
Not a question.
A demand of the air itself.
Roald did not answer.
Wilkinson stepped outside.
The forest stood as it had before—quiet, wind combing lazily through the treetops, birds unsettled only by his sudden emergence.
Nothing looked wrong.
Nothing moved.
He scanned once.
Twice.
Then his voice broke from him before thought could restrain it.
"Isobel!"
The name tore through the trees.
It struck bark.
Stone.
Returned to him thinner.
Smaller.
No answering call.
No sharp retort about his volume.
No irritated correction about crushing ground ivy under his boots.
Only wind.
Behind him, Roald stepped into the light but did not speak.
Wilkinson's gaze swept the tree line again, sharper now, searching for disturbance—broken brush, displaced leaves, a shadow where no shadow should rest.
His chest tightened.
He knew this feeling.
The moment after departure.
The breath before consequence.
He had walked away once before.
From a city.
From a master.
From things left unresolved.
He had returned to ruin.
His jaw set hard enough to ache.
"Isobel!"
Louder this time.
The forest swallowed it whole.
Silence pressed in around him.
And for the first time since he had stormed from the cave—
Sir Wilkinson felt something colder than anger.
Fear.