The end of a chapter (entry 86)

Dear diary,
 
A New Month, a New Start?
 
After a much-needed night’s rest, we returned to the keep — what remained of it — to see what could be recovered. I knew in my heart that Keralon was lost to us, but still, some foolish part of me hoped we might salvage something from the ruins.
The sight that met us in Wolf’s Rest was enough to crush that hope. The smell of smoke still lingered in the air, heavy and bitter. Burnt homes stood like blackened ribs against the morning sky, and when we reached the keep, the sight of its charred walls struck me like a physical blow. That was our home — our sanctuary — reduced to rubble and ash.
 
I could feel the sense of betrayal in my chest like a blade.
 
Some of the others still carried themselves as though this were just another raid, another setback to be endured. That illusion wouldn’t last.
 
While we took stock of the damage, Alistan went to check the portal in the cave beneath the ruins of the windmill — little more than a scorched shell now. There were tracks there, fey footprints leading away from the cave, but far too few to account for the host that had attacked us.
 
We were still discussing it when I saw movement over the treetops — Fiachna, my ever-faithful raven, returning from Keralon in a panic, pursued by a flight of owls. I had sent her to scout the city, but clearly she had been spotted. My heart clenched, though I knew she could handle herself. As soon as she was within reach of my will, I summoned her back to safety. She vanished in a flicker of shadow and reappeared on my arm, trembling but alive.
 
The owls circled above in confusion, then turned back toward the city.
 
Through Fiachna’s eyes I saw what she had seen: the gates of Keralon open, but heavily guarded. The city still stood — but it no longer felt like ours.
 
At Alistan’s urging, Ileas sent a sending to the inner circle of the Long Table. No answer came. The silence was heavy.
 
So we pressed on, trudging toward the ruins of our keep. What we found there tore the last threads of hope from my heart.
 
Our fallen were piled carelessly together — guards, servants, friends — discarded like refuse. The smell of burnt flesh and iron filled the air. My blood boiled.
 
I wanted to scream, to lash out at the gods themselves, but when I looked around, all I saw in my companions’ faces was grief — grief and exhaustion, and in Luke’s eyes alone, a reflection of my own rage.
But we had no time to mourn.
 
As we stepped into the courtyard, the ground itself began to shift. Bones rattled, roots creaked, and from the rubble rose a creature of death and madness — a cadaver collector, its body made from the remains of the fallen.
A second construct rose from the wreckage, its body a grotesque fusion of bone and metal. Specters trailed behind it — the restless souls of our own fallen guards, bound to serve their murderers. Their hollow eyes turned toward us with silent anguish, and something inside me broke.
 
Fury and grief became one. We fought with the rage of the betrayed, every strike a promise of vengeance. The air filled with fire, steel, and the screams of the dying — until, at last, both constructs fell, collapsing into heaps of twisted metal and splintered bone.
 
As the last of their arcane light faded, the specters vanished as well — freed at last from their torment.
 
Luke bent down to study one of the shattered plates. When he turned it over, the sigils carved into the metal caught the light — the crest of the Royal House of Keralon.
He swore under his breath. I didn’t need to say anything. None of us did. The truth was carved into that plate more clearly than any words could express.
 
The king — our king — had sent these things.
Did we need any more proof of his betrayal?
 
While Liliana began the grim task of burying our dead, the rest of us sifted through the ruins, searching for anything that could be saved. I tried to focus on the work, but my mind kept circling back to that crest, to the weight of what it meant.
Gael was the first to notice the owls — seven of them, perched among the blackened timbers, watching us in perfect silence. When we tried to speak to them, they didn’t answer. My magic confirmed what I already suspected: they were just animals, eyes and ears for someone else.
 
The Briar Ring was watching.
 
Our suspicion became certainty when, a few hours later, Sir Sileos himself rode out from Keralon. Alone.
 
Luke and I exchanged a glance. The same thought burned behind both our eyes — vengeance. It would have been so easy to strike him down there and then, to give his corpse to the ashes he had made of our home. But rage is a weapon best used with precision, and neither of us are fools.
 
So we stood in silence as he approached.
 
He looked down at us from his saddle, face carved from cold stone, and declared that the king was furious over our “failed insurrection.” Our lands and titles were to be revoked. The Long Table had been disbanded.
 
I could only laugh — a bitter sound that scraped my throat raw. Failed insurrection? No. It was his betrayal that had doomed the city. The king was no longer a ruler — merely a puppet wearing a crown.
 
Sir Sileos didn’t rise to my scorn. He only tightened his grip on the reins and said, “Hand over the mask. Leave Keralon. Do this, and Galienne will be returned to you.”
 
For a heartbeat, the world went quiet. Then the fury came back like a storm tide.
 
They had taken our home. Our friends. And now they would dare to bargain with an innocent life — to use Galienne as a pawn for their cursed mask.
 
Whatever honour the Briar Ring once claimed to have died that day, buried beneath the ruins of Wolf’s Rest.
 
I couldn’t listen to another word. My hands were trembling again, this time not from rage but from a cold, hollow certainty. Gael would accept the deal — I knew it before he even opened his mouth. And he was right to. Galienne’s life was worth more than any cursed mask, any ancient legacy. We could always reclaim what was stolen, but not who was lost.
 
So I turned away from the arguing and went to help Liliana, forcing my voice to be calm as the decision was made. The exchange was simple. Galienne for the mask. No tricks, no ceremony — just quiet resignation and the faint sound of the wind brushing over the graves of the dead.
 
Sir Sileos left without another word, and for a long moment none of us spoke. The silence pressed in, thick and suffocating, until at last the question came: What now?
The answer was bitter but clear. Keralon was lost to us. We no longer had a home here — only ghosts, ashes, and betrayal.
 
We would go to Hillfield, the ancestral home of the Delaroost twins, far across the Lorewood. It was distant, perhaps even forgotten, but it would give us time — time to gather strength, to mourn, and to plan.
 
When Sileos returned, he brought with him a cart — and upon it lay Galienne’s still, pale form. My breath caught in my throat as I climbed up beside her, checking for any sign of change. There was none. Whatever spell bound her was still in place, her body untouched by time but utterly lifeless.
 
Gael’s jaw was tight as he handed over the mask. No words passed between them. There was nothing left to say.
 
We left the ruins behind and returned to camp, where the villagers waited with wary hope. When we told them of our plan to head for Hillfield, they agreed without hesitation. Somehow, despite everything, they still trusted us — or perhaps they simply had nowhere else to go.
 
We would need supplies for the journey, and Rachnar volunteered immediately, promising to head into the city and return by dawn. For the first time in days, I allowed myself a flicker of relief. We had a direction, a purpose, and for a fleeting moment, it almost felt like stability.
 
Then came the next betrayal.
 
Elsa. Sweet, bright, ever-helpful Elsa — one of the few among the refugees who had managed to keep a sense of calm amidst all this ruin. As we spoke with her, Liliana’s tone shifted — sharp, probing. Something in Elsa’s eyes betrayed her before her words did. She hesitated at all the wrong moments, glanced toward the horizon as if waiting for some unseen signal.
 
And then she said it.
 
“Perhaps you should leave Keralon. Go back home.”
 
Those words. I felt them like a knife of ice between my ribs. The exact same words Deer had spoken to us in Nimmerhold.
 
My blood turned to frost.
 
It wasn’t coincidence — it couldn’t be. She had been one of them all along, another puppet dancing to the king’s song, corrupted by his gilded lies.
 
I stepped forward before Liliana could speak, my voice shaking only from the effort of holding myself back.
 
“If that’s truly what you believe,” I said, “then it would be best if you returned to the city immediately.”
 
Elsa’s eyes darted away, guilt and something darker flickering there. She didn’t argue. She just nodded once and left, walking into the dusk without looking back.
 
I watched her go until she vanished among the trees.
 
I told myself that I didn’t care — that one more betrayal was nothing compared to what we’d already lost.
 
But the truth was simpler, and crueler: every betrayal still hurt.
 
Her retreating form had barely vanished among the trees before Liliana poured oil on the fire already burning in my chest. Instead of flinging the blame where it belonged — at the king, at the court that sold our city — she folded inward, swallowing the weight of what had been done and turning it into self-pity. Her sorrow was quiet and raw, but it felt like a betrayal all the same: the wrong to be done away from those who'd earned it. My hands trembled and no words came.
 
So I turned to something else I could control. Lady Rootskewer had not returned that night, and I sent a message to her through Ileas. The reply was not a letter but the woman herself, stepping from shadow as if she’d been carved from it. She watched the refugee camp with that slow, assessing gaze of hers, then spoke in a voice that made the air feel colder.
 
“The coven had no part in this,” she said. “Auntie Patty did.” Her tone carried no surprise; only the flatness of one who has walked through rot too often to blink. Then, like a trader offering a map, she proposed a shortcut through the Lorewood in exchange for a lock of Feyris’s hair.
 
Feyris’s face went hard as flint when I explained what was asked. He refused without hesitation. “Not for me,” he said simply. We might reach Hillfield sooner, but I would not trade his body or pride for our haste. Rootskewer nodded as if she expected it, and the moment passed.
 
Her gaze flicked to Ileas then, keen and appraising. “That satyr,” she said, “keeps the wrong sort of patrons. He should swap his master for someone less… disgusting. More useful.” I had a dozen other storms spinning in my head then and could only file the suggestion away, but the thought gnawed at me later like an itch under the skin.
 
When I reminded her of the conversation she’d promised, she smiled a thin, secretive smile and said she would come to me in my dreams — not now, not with others listening. I agreed. Let it be a dream; let it be true.
 
As she turned to go I felt a hard, honest fury rise and could not keep the words back. “I will hunt Auntie Patty down,” I told her, the promise tasting like iron. “I will kill her for what she’s done.”
 
Her smile widened, unnervingly pleased. She slipped a hand into the folds of her robe and produced a jar. Inside, a tiny frog sat, legs folded, eyes like beads of onyx.
 
“Be my guest,” she said, and left me with the jar in my palm.
 
I looked down at the frog until the moonlight shivered on its skin. It was small, ridiculous — and suddenly everything felt sharper. At least now I had something to direct my vengeance toward, however foolish that felt.
 
My quiet, simmering plans for Auntie Patty shattered the moment Lumeria barreled into camp, her shrill voice shrieking like someone had lit her heart on fire. Behind her strode Amarra — a face from a past I’d thought long buried — all animal grace and barely-contained fury. She moved like a predator closing on prey.
 
Lumeria dove behind Luke, breath ragged. Amarra’s mouth twisted into a look that was almost amusing. “Don’t tell me this fae bimbo is your latest conquest?” she sneered, and with the merest flick of a wrist, Lumeria vanished—snatched back into the Feywild as easily as one might swat a fly. For once, the world handed me a small mercy.
 
Amarra wasted no time. She demanded an account of our keep, and when Luke told her, she cut straight to the things that mattered to her: the Elemental Hearts. Luke’s voice was steady as he confirmed three were safe with us and the fourth within reach if the need arose. She nodded once, like a blade settling into its scabbard, satisfied.
 
Then she snagged Luke’s arm and pulled him away, her intent private and sharp. I watched them go, a heat of jealousy and something bleaker tugging at my gut, and took my chance to flee into the thin shelter of distance.
 
I found a quiet spot and set down paper and ink. If I couldn’t face them, I could at least unburden my chest onto parchment. I began to write letters — to each of them — words I could not say aloud without cracking. They would hate me for being blunt, perhaps even cruel, and I did not much care. Writing felt steadier than speaking.
 
Of course Liliana tracked me down. She always does. She sat without fuss, folded into the quiet like a warm shawl, and forced me to talk. The conversation was raw; I’d rather have been pried open with a crowbar than voice those truths. But she has that rare, stubborn grace. She listened until the walls I’d built around myself loosened. When she finally spoke, it was with a tenderness that didn’t pander — it steadied rather than soothed. In the end, I managed to convince her that she was not to blame for all the horrors that had descended on us.
 
I handed her the letters to deliver and watched her fold into the night. The camp settled like a held breath released. I should have slept, but the ache in my ribs was not yet tired, and there were old friends waiting.
 
I walked to Safira and Zem’s little room and fell into conversation I didn’t have to armor for — small jokes, quieter griefs — until sleep curved around me. I lay there, exhausted and raw, and waited for Lady Rootskewer to keep her promise in the one place where promises are sometimes true: my dreams.