Cassius watches me for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then nods once. “You’ve survived things you never should have had to.”
The words press against something raw inside me.
Oberon looks back at me, something fierce and unsettled in his eyes. “That doesn’t change what you are,” he says. “You’re human. Your body breaks easier. You bleed more. You don’t recover in hours.” His voice drops, rougher now. “We’d be fools to forget that.”
Cassius shifts slightly, wincing despite himself, but his gaze never leaves me. “We brought you into this, despite thegoddesses hand in this,” he says quietly. “To return our power.” A pause. “For our people, but also for ourselves.”
The words land like stones.
Ashton runs a hand through his blood-stained long blond hair. “We didn’t think it through,” he mutters. “Or we did, and just didn’t care enough about the cost.”
“We told ourselves you were the key,” Sylvian says. “That we needed you to survive this. We didn’t consider that you were a person who we were hurting by dragging into this. That was wrong.”
“If you had been on that stone…” Oberon’s voice cuts off, jaw clenching hard. “None of this would matter. Not the labyrinth. Not our powers. None of it.”
Cassius holds my gaze. “You matter more.”
Something in me clenches hard, sudden and overwhelming.
“From now on,” Oberon says, voice firm, “we do this differently.”
Sylvian nods. “We move with you in mind. Every step. Getting our powers is no longer the focus.”
“You don’t get put in front of anything dangerous if we can help it,” Ashton adds, his voice quieter now, the usual edge softened. “No more risks we don’t absolutely have to take.”
Cassius’s gaze stays on mine. “We keep you alive first. Everything else comes after.”
Their voices carry absolute conviction. And it makes no sense.
Unease curls through me as I stare at them, trying to piece together what they mean. These are fae kings. Their power was everything to them. The entire reason I’m here. The reason any of this started.
And now they’re saying it doesn’t matter.
Not compared tome?
“What’s on your mind?” Sylvian’s voice pulls me from my thoughts, his green eyes watching me curiously, soft and searching.
I hesitate, the words catching somewhere between my chest and my throat. I don’t know how to explain this. I don’t even understand it myself.
“I just…” I swallow, glancing between them, still trying to make sense of the shift. “You were willing to risk everything for your powers. For your people. That’s why I’m here. And now…” I shake my head slightly. “Now you’re saying I matter more than that?”
The question feels too exposed, but none of them look away.
Cassius answers first, his voice quiet but certain. “Something’s changed.”
I look away, my thoughts spiraling, trying to catch up to whatever changed without me noticing. Or maybe I did notice, at least how my feelings were shifting. Because they aren’t the only ones feeling this way, something in me has changed too.
“I just…” I try again, my voice quieter now, more uncertain. “I don’t miss my cabin as much as I thought I would.”
The admission feels strange the moment it leaves my mouth, like I’ve said something I wasn’t ready to admit out loud.
Ashton raises an eyebrow, surprise flashing across his features. “Really?” His tone is light, but he’s watching me closely, like this matters more than he’s letting on.
I shrug, my gaze dropping to my hands as I twist the ragged cloth between my fingers. “It’s not that I know what I want at all, it’s just that I don’t think my cabin really feels like a home anymore. I don’t think it has since my father died.”
The words come easier now, even if they still carry a painful weight deep inside me.
“It’s…” I hesitate, searching for the right way to say it. “I’m just trying to make it something it’s not. I think Ineededit to be something it wasn’t.”