Chapter 105: The Emerald Kingdom
The snow kept falling, but the master mages held their line, heat pressing back the worst of it before it ever reached the wheels. The three carriages pushed on regardless of what the sky wanted to do about it.
Solenne spent most of the ride with a letter half-finished across her lap, crossing out lines and starting them again, Cael and Thalon leaning in every so often to argue over a word choice or a contingency. Where they'd camp if the gates stayed shut. How long they'd hold position before sending word back to the Council. None of it said with much hope attached.
Arthur sat across from them, working through something of his own.
He perfused, small, controlled, just enough to bring a shimmer of Stima up through his forearm while sitting perfectly still. Then he let it go. Then again.
Every cycle cost him something. He could feel it now in a way he hadn't before — individual muscle fibers pulling apart under the strain, thin threads of damage stacking up faster than his body could patch them. Retrograde wasn't free just because it looked effortless from the outside.
'You're going to wear yourself down before we even get there,' Vexis said.
I need this to be second nature. Not something I have to think through mid-fight.
'Fine. But pace it.'
Solenne glanced over once, the way she did, and said nothing. Thalon did the same. Neither of them commented on it, though Arthur caught the attention both times.
Two and a half days in, the terrain changed.
The trees went pale and dense, packed close enough that the light barely made it through the canopy, and the carriage trail narrowed into something that felt less like a road and more like a route someone had cut through the forest on purpose, generations ago, and never widened since.
Arthur pushed his shadow network out ahead of them. A hundred meters, maybe more, feeling along the edges of it for anything that shouldn't be there.
Nothing.
Then Roz, who'd been quiet the entire stretch, leaned in close to Arthur's ear.
"When we enter the premises. Don't use your pathetic blood."
"Why?" Arthur whispered back.
"You'll see."
Nobody spoke after that. The air around them shifted — lighter somehow, thinner, but harder to breathe at the same time, like the pressure of the place itself was different from anywhere Arthur had been before.
Solenne set her drink down. Straightened.
"We're here."
Arthur looked out the window.
Walls rose out of the snow ahead of them, pale and impossibly tall, stretching far enough on either side that he couldn't find the edges of them no matter how far he turned his head. Above the walls, the sky wasn't sky anymore. White leaves covered it from horizon to horizon, branches from something too large to be one tree and yet clearly was, spreading over the entire kingdom like a second ceiling.
Arthur opened his mouth. Closed it again.
Nothing he'd seen since arriving in this world came close to this.
The carriage rolled to a stop. Solenne gathered her things, fastened her sword at her hip, and looked around at all of them.
"Remember. Let me do the talking."
They climbed out into the cold. Arthur could feel the tension in every one of them the second their boots hit the snow. Theodore's shoulders drawn up tight, Cael's jaw set, even Thalon's grip on his good arm a shade too firm.
Solenne walked forward alone, holding a tall pole in one hand, ten crests engraved down its length, the Elercross sigil largest among them. In her other hand, a blue relic, humming faintly even before she spoke.
"I am Solenne Von Castellane." She drove the base of the pole into the snow. "Second princess of the Elercross Empire. I stand here as a representative of that empire, requesting a meeting with your king."
Figures appeared along the towers flanking the wall. Tall. Still.
"We haven't come for conflict." Solenne's voice carried, steady, unhurried. "We've come to discuss a matter concerning our shared enemy. I believe you already know what I mean. I ask that you open your gates."
The relic hummed with every word she spoke, translating it into something Arthur couldn't parse from where he stood.
Silence answered her. Solenne didn't move, didn't shift her weight, didn't give the wall anything to read as impatience.
Then the gates opened.
Tall elves stood beyond them, green hair, eyes the color of the leaves overhead. At the center, a woman with hair long enough to brush the snow, wrapped in white, her eyes moving across the group in front of her one at a time. The slits below her cheekbones opened and closed, slow, deliberate.
She spoke. Something in a language Arthur didn't recognize at all.
The relic hummed and caught up a half-second later.
"The Majesty did not appoint a reason to meet. Kindly leave our premises."
Solenne didn't flinch. "We only want to talk. I know your people are aware of the missing children. The attacks. The trafficking of your race by members of ours. I want to propose an alliance. Neither of our nations wants war. Please — hear us out."
The relic hummed again, carrying it across.
The elves didn't respond. They looked at Solenne, then at each other, a series of small gestures passing between them that Arthur couldn't read at all.
This is bad. Arthur felt his stomach drop. This isn't the reaction we needed.
'What do we do,' Vexis said, low, urgent.
Arthur looked sideways at Roz. "Master. Can you talk to them?"
Roz's red eyes came up to meet his. "I think you already know what to do."
"What—"
"Walk up."
Arthur stood there a second, not following. Then it landed.
He stepped forward.
Theodore made a small sound behind him, his hand half-reaching before he caught himself. Cael watched, visibly surprised but silent.
Arthur stopped beside Solenne.
She turned her head. "Wha— what are you—"
He didn't answer her. He put both palms to his forehead and bowed low. A Greeting to Elves.
The elves' eyes widened. All of them, at once.
"Please." Arthur kept his head down. "All we want is to talk."
The relic hummed, carrying it across the gap between them.
For a moment, nobody moved. Solenne's mouth opened, then closed again, whatever she'd been about to say abandoned somewhere behind her teeth.
Then the elves in front of them mirrored it. Palms to foreheads. Heads bowed, one after another, down the line, until every figure standing at the gate had done the same.
The woman in white straightened first. Her slits opened wide, held, closed slow.
"Enter, humans."