Corvis Eralith
The Alabaster Ring rose before me like the spine of some ancient beast, its white walls curving through the Queen's Grove with a grace that belied their purpose.
Grandpa had renovated them during his reign, improved them, transformed them from a simple defensive barrier into something that could actually protect the heart of Elenoir.
The Second War had taught him lessons no king should have to learn, and he had poured those lessons into stone, making certain that what happened once would never happen again.
Behind me, Berna padded quietly, her massive paws finding the softest patches of snow, her breath fogging in the cold air.
She looked around with the wide-eyed curiosity of someone seeing the world for the first time. And perhaps she was.
How long had she been corrupted? How long had the taint of the Vritra poisoned her thoughts, her instincts, her very self? Every settlement she had approached must have driven her mad, the frenzy rising, the control slipping, the creature she had been losing ground to the monster they had made.
But now she was here. Walking beside me. Choosing to be here.
The eastern gate—Patriarch Door, it was called—loomed ahead.
One of the four gates connecting the Queen's Grove to the outer Groves, and the one I had known since I was old enough to walk these streets alone.
The Alabaster Ring was the tallest structure in Zestier that wasn't built into a Watchful Willow or another tree for support, it was a hundred percent elven ingenuity given form.
And it existed as it did only because of Grandpa. Before him, the Alabaster Ring had been barely worthy of the name—a wall in name only, more symbol than shield.
Now it stood magnificent, monolithic, its white stone gleaming in the winter sun, its highest sections reaching twenty meters into the grey sky.
I thought of him as I walked, of the stories I had heard in fragments over the years. Virion Eralith had not been the greatest king in every aspect—there were whispers of decisions he regretted, compromises he had made, battles that still haunted him in the hours of the night.
But he had been, by far, the greatest defender Elenoir had ever known. The Alabaster Ring was proof of that. The lives it had saved, the message it sent to anyone who might look at our kingdom and see easy prey.
The guards at the gate wore the standard armor of the Leafguard—light plates of shining white steel over green uniforms that matched the forest they protected.
They were not the Royal Police, who patrolled the city's streets and guarded the Royal Palace's halls.
They were the official garrison of Sprout City, the first line of defense, the ones who would stand between Zestier and any army that thought to breach these walls.
And leading them at Patriarch Door was Lenna Aemaris.
I recognized her immediately. The long ashen blonde hair tied in a ponytail with braids, the sharp eyes that missed nothing, the way she stood like a woman who had seen battle and learned that stillness was sometimes stronger than motion.
I knew her from the novel, of course—Captain Aemaris, who had led troops in the Dicathian Army during the war, who had commanded the guard at the Sanctuary after everything fell apart.
But I knew her from this life too.
I turned to look at Berna. She was trying to make herself smaller. It was impossible, of course—a three-meter Guardian Bear cannot become small, cannot disappear, cannot be anything other than what she was.
But she tried. Her shoulders hunched, her head lowered, her paws placed with the exaggerated care of someone trying not to break something precious.
The sight of it made my chest ache.
"Captain Aemaris." I pitched my voice to carry, polite but firm. "It's good to see you again."
"Prince Corvis." She bowed deeply, the kind of bow reserved for royalty, for the family that had ruled these lands for longer than anyone could remember. "A pleasure to have you back."
Her eyes slid past me and found Berna. I watched her take in the massive frame, the hazelnut fur, the way Berna's attention had fixed on a cart being pulled by three Elenoi Highcolts, their harnesses jingling, their breath steaming in the cold.
The cart was loaded with fruits and vegetables, the colors bright against the grey winter, probably bound for the Grand Nectary.
"She is my bond." I said it simply, letting the words settle.
The guards exchanged glances. Lenna Aemaris's hand went to her mouth, her military composure cracking for just a moment.
"I have never seen such a large bear." Then her eyes sparkled with something I recognized too late. "What, may she be... the Beary Bear?"
Her voice was the strangest mixture of military professionalism and childlike wonder, as if a beloved story had stepped out of a book and into her life.
"No." The word came out sharper than I intended. "She is not the Beary Bear."
I had avoided Vaelmora entirely on our way back. I had taken the long route, the quiet route, the path that kept us far from Master Kamiel's ears and his endless questions and his certainty that his bear, his legend, his Beary Bear was real.
I would not give him the satisfaction. I would not let him turn Berna into a character in one of his songs, a fable for children, a tale to be told around fires on winter nights.
She was a Guardian Bear. Forged by Titans, bound to me by a contract that tied soul to soul. She was not a children's story.
I looked at her. She was sniffing the air, her nose twitching, her tail—ridiculously—wagging. She had found something interesting in the cart's direction, something that smelled like food, and all her attempts to look fierce had abandoned her entirely.
She was an overgrown golden retriever with hazelnut fur and the soul of a puppy.
I shook my head. I was not going to think about that.
"Can I pass?" I asked.
Lenna Aemaris straightened immediately, her professionalism snapping back into place.
"Apologies, Your Highness. Please, go on."
I walked through Patriarch Door, and Berna followed, and the walls of Zestier stretched behind us like a door shutting. The streets were familiar, the buildings rising around us, the people beginning to notice, to stare, to whisper.
I heard the word "bear" pass from mouth to mouth, saw the way children pointed and mothers pulled them closer, saw the way some faces lit up with wonder.
But Berna walked beside me, calm and steady, her shoulder brushing against my hand, and I knew that whatever they thought, whatever they said, whatever stories they told themselves to make sense of what they saw—it didn't matter.
We were home. And home, for all its complications, for all its walls and gates and careful guards, was where we needed to be.
I walked, and she walked with me, and the city that had been my home for nine years opened its arms to receive us both.
—
"Your Highness! You're back!"
The voice cut through the bustle of Elf Court like a blade, and I turned to see Alwyn Triscan sprinting toward me, his white hair streaming behind him, his peanut-brown eyes fixed on my face with the desperate relief of someone who had been waiting for this moment for far too long.
He was a mirror of his sister in so many ways—the same length of hair, the same unconscious elegance in motion—but where Alea moved like water, Alwyn moved like fire, all energy and enthusiasm and barely contained joy.
He reached me before I could even set foot on the Royal Palace steps, and his arms were around me before I could speak, hugging me with a fierceness that spoke of days spent worrying, hours spent watching the gate, moments spent wondering if his prince would ever come home.
Visitors milled around us, making space, their curious eyes taking in the scene, but I barely noticed them. I was too busy noticing Alwyn.
The sweat on his brow, the flush on his cheeks, the way his breath came in short, sharp gasps even though the winter air should have cooled him.
"Yeah, Alwyn. I'm back." I patted his shoulder, felt the heat radiating off him. "You're sweating like crazy, even in winter. What have you been doing?"
He pulled back, and his face split into that bright, guileless smile that had somehow survived every hardship, every disappointment, every time the world had tried to teach him that commoners did not dream of becoming heroes. "I was training!"
Training. Of course he was training. Alwyn had started years ago, against Alea's wishes, against every practical consideration, against the quiet, persistent voice that told him his place was somewhere else, somewhere safer, somewhere less.
His dream was the Royal Police, perhaps even the Commodore's position someday, and Alea had eventually stopped trying to dissuade him.
Not because she agreed—she had never agreed about most of Alwyn's initiatives—I thought, but because she had looked at her brother's face and seen something she couldn't bring herself to extinguish.
"You should take it easy." The words came out more tired than I intended.
Alwyn's eyes widened. "You're the one to talk, my Prince!" His voice carried a note of scandalized disbelief, as if I had suggested the sky was green. "I won't stop until I'm accepted into the Royal Police. I won't."
I sighed. This was a familiar argument, one we had danced around for years.
Alwyn had grown so much—braver, stronger, more sure of himself—but some things never changed. He still looked at me like I was something beyond him, something to be revered, something far above the concerns of ordinary boys.
And just as I had never been able to make him call me by my name, I had never been able to make him see himself as my equal.
"What were you doing, then?" I asked, already knowing the answer.
"Sparring with Lord Chaffer and Lord Auddyr." He said the names with the same reverence he reserved for temples and holy days. "They are truly worthy of their titles."
Albold and Ashton. Two scions of two rival Sister Houses: Elenoir's greatest martial Houses, training together, pushing each other, becoming exactly what their families expected them to be.
And Alwyn, the commoner boy who had awakened faster than anyone in living memory, trying to learn from both of them at once.
"You're trying to learn the Courtblade and the Branchberd at the same time?" I kept my voice level, but something in my chest tightened.
"And not only that, Your Highness!" He was beaming now, the exhaustion forgotten. "I'm training with the Mirrshield and the Thorncurve too. And various types of wand-weapons—like you with your wand-cane, or Her Highness with her wand-sword."
The elven sword. The elven halberd. The elven shield. The elven longbow. And wand-weapons besides. I closed my eyes for a moment, feeling the weight of it.
"Good job, Alwyn." The words felt inadequate, but they were all I had.
He was a good augmenter—at nine, he had already reached the light stage of the red core, a whole level below me and at a stage below Tessia, but that didn't matter.
What mattered was the fire in him, the way he threw himself at every weapon, every technique, every possibility with the same boundless, unquenchable determination.
He had discovered that he preferred weapons to spells, that his augmenter nature responded better to steel than to elements, and he had made that preference into a path.
He nodded, his smile softening into something quieter, more content. And then his eyes finally found her—Berna.
She was behind me, doing her best to make herself small, her massive frame pressed against my back as if a nine-year-old prince could possibly conceal a three-meter Guardian Bear.
Through our bond, I felt her emotions in a confusing tangle—shyness, yes, but also anxiety, the kind that came from years of being hunted, of being feared, of being wrong. She was meeting my best friend, and she was terrified of what he might see.
"Alwyn." I stepped to the side, forcing Berna's face into the light. "This is Berna. My bond." I reached up and took her snout in my hands, turning her toward him. "Berna, this is Alwyn. My best friend."
She tried to duck away, and I held firm. "Berna, don't be a baby. Alwyn is harmless."
"She is your bond, Your Highness?" Alwyn's voice was awed, but not afraid. "Was she the reason you've been away from the Royal Palace a week each year for the last three years?"
"She's my bond, yes." Berna's eyes were fixed on his face, her whole body trembling with the effort of not fleeing. "But no—I met her by chance."
And died. But I couldn't say that.
"Can I pet her?" He asked it like he was asking permission to touch something sacred.
"You don't have to ask me permission for everything, you know." I sighed, already knowing how this would go. "Yes, you can."
"You are my Prince, Your Highness." He said it the same way he might have commented on the grey sky or the falling snow.
He reached out, and his hand settled on Berna's snout. She sneezed—a massive, explosive sound that sent Alwyn stumbling backward, his feet scrambling for purchase on the icy stone.
He almost fell, would have fallen if we hadn't spent so many hours parkouring together, learning to find our balance on the unlikeliest surfaces.
"Berna!" I felt her guilt through the bond, sharp and immediate. "She didn't mean it." I reached for Alwyn's arm, steadying him. "Are you all right?"
He was laughing. Actually laughing, the sound bright and clear in the winter air. "She's wonderful, Your Highness." He looked at Berna with something like wonder. "She's wonderful."
I let myself smile. "I'm going to find Tessia now. And my parents." I clapped him on the shoulder. "We'll talk more later."
—
The corridors of the Royal Palace were mercifully wide. Berna walked beside me, her steps measured, her head turning to take in the high ceilings, the carved pillars, the light filtering through windows that had been old when my grandfather was young.
She was calming now, the anxiety of our meeting with Alwyn fading, replaced by something like curiosity. Or perhaps wonder.
I had expected to find Tessia with her friends, Mom and Dad in some meeting or another. So I turned toward Grandpa's study, thinking I might sit with him for a while, let him meet Berna and let him see what I had brought home from the forest.
The door was closed.
It was a small thing, a simple thing, but it stopped me. Grandpa's door was never closed when he was alone. If it was closed, it meant he had visitors. If it had visitors, it meant he was busy.
If he was busy, then everyone was busy, and I was alone with my thoughts and my plans.
"It seems everyone is busy." I heard my own voice, flat and tired. Berna pressed against my side, and I leaned into her warmth. "Back to planning, then."
I turned away from the study, from the closed door, from the family I had wanted to see. Berna followed, silent as always, and we made our way to my room.
The Beast Glades. I had been thinking about them for years, planning for them, waiting for the moment when I would be strong enough to go alone. Now I was almost a yellow core mage. Now I had Berna. Now I was old enough to have some authority, at least in the outergrove, at least among the people who had watched me grow over the last three years.
But my identity was still a problem. Corvis Eralith could not walk into the Beast Glades without causing a diplomatic incident. I was too young to be an adventurer, too visible to be ignored, too valuable to be allowed to risk myself in the wild lands beyond the Elshire Forest.
I didn't want to be an adventurer. The Adventurer's Guild was still a Sapin-only organization in this, human-centric and human-controlled, and my goals were far beyond anything they could offer.
But the Beast Glades themselves—the dungeons, the ruins, the secrets buried beneath centuries of corruption and neglect—those I needed. And to reach them, I needed to move unseen.
I sat on the edge of my bed, and Berna settled beside me, her head resting on my knee. Through the bond, I felt her presence, steady and warm, and I let it ground me.
I had done this before. I had worn a different face, a different name, a different self. Finn Warend, the dwarven boy with the elven prince's soul, who had walked into the Red Gorge and walked out again with a dead Phoenix Wyrm's core in his pocket.
Finn Warend, who had never existed, who existed only in the spaces between truth and lie, who was exactly what I needed now.
I stroked Berna's fur, feeling the warmth of her, the solidity of her, the reality of her.
"It's time for Finn to return," I murmured.