"So what exactly does the burning of my home have to do with nobles taking blue horn wives?" Firion asked, his voice deliberately calm. "Did it happen before the fire, or after?"
Derek Moonspeaker pushed his monocles back up the bridge of his nose. For a moment he did not answer. When he did, his voice had lost its earlier flourish.
"First, let me apologize on behalf of the other dukes. I never took part in it myself. But they used the tragedy that befell the province of Auriel as leverage. Our spies in Eurelca had already uncovered the truth about deva women. The fire gave the dukes the excuse they needed to strike a bargain with Mycean."
Firion's eyes blazed. "So they took advantage of a tragedy to benefit themselves?!"
The colored flames hissed and snapped between them as the duke laid it all out.
The nobles of Aldenburg had used the destruction of the Jade Forest to test what the spies had found. Duke Alfore Winterheart was the first. He had always been an elf obsessed with conquest, in war and in everything else, and he wanted to see for himself whether the rumors were true. He took a blue horn woman named Rhea as his bride. The very next winter, his house was blessed with triplets, and the mana bloom test confirmed everything the dukes had suspected.
Firion went very still.
Alfore's wife, who never appeared at any gathering. The soldiers always whispered that she suffered from heat spells. And all those children with silver hair and blue eyes…
After that, the highborn demanded compensation for the burning of Auriel: more deva women from the Mycean council. Mycean agreed. But it did not send its precious daughters. It sent only the girls who had no future there. The spares.
Spares were deva girls born out of wedlock. In Mycean, they were treated their whole lives as burdens, children of lust rather than love. Yet once they reached the elven monasteries, they were raised with the utmost care and given a modest education. In truth, none of them were forced to marry. But when a deva woman came of age, she had to either take a mate or keep herself apart from men entirely. Her heat cycle bound her to a single partner, and if her needs went unmet for too long, the cycle itself could kill her.
The duke went on to explain many other things. And then he did something that left Firion utterly bewildered.
Derek Moonspeaker bowed his head.
"Firion… I am sorry. From the bottom of my heart. For the way your people were treated. For the highborn turning your clan's tragedy into their own profit." He stayed bowed as he spoke. "That is why I took the liberty of coming here. You are the one who truly deserves compensation. So I have withdrawn your military stipend, and I have secured the papers you need to emigrate to Eurelca with your wife, without arousing suspicion."
The distrust in Firion's eyes faltered, then gave way to something closer to shame. Through her horns, Kaida recognized the feeling at once. It was the same realization she had felt from him that first night in her home, when he understood that the "demon" he had attacked had only been trying to save him.
Derek reached into his sleeve, and something jingled softly. He drew out a long string of coins threaded on a cord like a necklace, along with a thick bundle of papers.
"When you leave Junai, you will need the currency of the land you are heading to," he said, setting the coins before Firion. "This paper is a voucher for passage on a ship to Izunai, the province where you will make landfall. They are the only ones crossing right now who will take refugees aboard, so long as you carry the right papers. Which brings me to these." He fanned them out. "A marriage license. Your service records. And the rest are forgeries for the girl, should anyone ask questions about her."
One envelope made Firion stop. It was made of olive paper, the kind used only by his people.
He opened it with careful fingers. Inside were his Druidism records, the old registry of his clan, and written there in faded ink were the names of his mother, his father, and his older sister. Names he had not seen written anywhere in centuries.
The other papers were forged records for Kaida, so she could travel without anyone questioning where she had come from.
Firion let out a long, slow breath. The tension that had gripped him since Derek appeared was gone. He was not angry anymore. His eyes had softened, but no words came. Kaida's horns gently untangled what he could not say: joy, disbelief, and a quiet, aching remorse.
Derek turned to Kaida and inclined his head politely.
"My lady, would you care to learn more about your own history? I even have information about your father. But if you fear such knowledge may be too much to bear, you are free to decline."
Kaida hesitated. She turned to her husband.
"You have every right to know, Kaida," Firion said firmly. "Whatever it is, I will always stand with you."
He gave her hand a gentle squeeze. She drew a breath, squeezed back, and turned to face the duke.
"What do you know about me? You called me Min-ari before. What does that mean? And what did you mean about royal blood? And my father, what about him? Where did he—"
The questions poured out of her in a torrent.
Derek actually leaned back, taken aback by the sheer force of the girl's curiosity. For a man used to making nobles squirm, he looked rather intimidated.
He raised both hands. "Please, calm yourself, young lady! Allow me to explain from the beginning. First, the name. Min-ari. It means 'royal blood.' The Min-ari were an ancient fae family, descended directly from the 'first children.' And they were known for one thing above all else: bright red hair."
Throughout all the drama, Nkiri had sat quietly by the fire, so still she seemed almost to be ignoring it. Now, at last, she spoke.
"What he is telling you, my dear, is that your family is directly linked to the first fae settlers. The founding families from whom every clan began." The colored flames swayed as she spoke. "Nafula and I are much the same. And because we chose yumboes as our husbands, 'elves' in your tongue, our ancient deva line will vanish once we are lost to time. The same fate awaits you, my dear."
Kaida fell quiet. The oracle's honesty settled over her like a heavy cloak, and she bore it with a calm beyond what anyone expected.
"You are the last descendant of an ancient and once-renowned noble fae family," Derek continued carefully, "the very progenitors of today's blue horn tribe. The fae who came after them were called the Am-nar, the lowborn. In time, the Am-nar rose up, overthrew the ruling caste, and took Mycean for themselves. Over the last thousand years, the Min-ari lineage withered until only a handful remained."
In truth, the Min-ari had been little different from Aldenburg's ruling families. They were beings of high birth, obsessed with keeping their lineage pure. And like all such reigns, theirs had eventually crumbled when the Am-nar revolted.
"When I traveled in my youth," Nkiri added, "the red-hairs had already dwindled to a pitiful group of fewer than ten. They refused to let their ancient blood be tainted by anyone. I heard that most of them died from sickness born of marrying their own kin. By the last century, only a single male of their line remained."
Kaida and Firion looked at each other. The same thought struck them both at once.
"The one they are describing…" Firion said slowly. "Do you think it could have been your father? You told me your mother said he died before you were born."
But Derek looked thoroughly puzzled. "What do you mean, her father died? According to everything I have gathered over the last two hundred years, he was imprisoned and exiled for an illicit affair with a young woman. To be precise, he was exiled for eloping with your mother. Amara."
Kaida's eyes went wide.
She already knew her mother had kept secrets from her. But could she truly have lied about what happened to her father?
And yet she remembered the sorrow in her mother's heart whenever she spoke of him. That grief had been real. Kaida had felt it with her own horns. Was it possible her mother simply believed he was dead?
And Mother told me he was from a lower caste. That she was meant to marry someone else, someone sleazy… Was any of it true?
"My mother…" Her voice trembled. "She told me my father was killed when they ran from the people chasing them."
Derek pushed his monocles up once more. Beside him, Nafula gave him a meaningful look, and he seemed to understand exactly what she wanted him to make clear.
"Kaida, is it? Forgive us. Allow me to piece your story together," he said, more gently now. "Your mother was one of Mycean's forest priestesses. They are holy women who tend the sacred shrines of the mighty Azure Dragon your people revere. Amara caused an uproar when she took a lover outside of marriage, and then became pregnant. In Mycean, unions without approval, and the children born of them, are branded as outcasts for breaking tradition."
He went on to describe the harsh order of her mother's homeland. Approved marriages were revered. Any union outside them was despised, and that contempt fell just as heavily on the children. Derek believed Amara had kept Kaida's history from her on purpose, so that her daughter would never go searching for her father, and never return to a country that would scorn her.
Firion mentioned what they had overheard from the Aldenburg soldiers in the forest: that Amara had fled from an arranged marriage. But Derek reminded him that soldiers' gossip rarely matched the truth. Stories passed from mouth to mouth had a way of twisting.
Amara had never been promised to anyone. Because of her birthright, she had been forbidden to marry at all.
A heavy silence filled the hut.
Slowly, Kaida began to understand. Her mother had not hidden their ancestry out of shame or carelessness. She had done it to keep her daughter safe.
Tears welled in Kaida's eyes.
"Just because my father had red hair and loved my mother, that was a terrible crime? And my birth was something disgusting to them?" Her voice broke. "Did my mother only want to protect me from the evils of this world?"
Firion drew her into his arms as she trembled.
"What matters, Kaida, is that you are here now. Those who hunted your mother cannot touch you anymore." His voice hardened like iron. "And if any blue horn from Mycean ever tries to take you, I swear I will paint this world with their blood before they lay a finger on you."
As always, his words wrapped around her like a shield. She nestled into his chest, and the warmth of him slowly calmed her shaking. Across the fire, Derek, Nafula, and Nkiri shared a quiet smile.
It was then that the duke's wife finally spoke up and revealed why she had come.
"I came because I knew your mother, dearie," the majestic lioness said softly. "Only briefly, but for a while she lived with us at the monastery, where deva women are raised in the ways of elven life. She told me her beloved had sacrificed himself so that she could escape. She never said he was killed. Only that it would be better if she raised her child without ever knowing the truth."
So that was what had happened.
Amara had escaped her pursuers only because her lover stayed behind to draw them away. She fled and kept fleeing until she reached the border of Aldenburg, where she was finally caught. By then, the five dukes had already begun claiming deva women for themselves. And they took a keen interest in this "spare" priestess, and in the child growing in her womb.
Then came the day of the baby's birth.
Everyone in the monastery was stunned. The newborn was a blue horn deva, yet her tiny head was crowned with the brightest red hair any of them had ever seen, as vivid as a flame.
And it caught the eye of Archduke Cyrus Sunstriker, a man who had always been obsessed with anything the color of red…