To place kaeram in a female faery's hair was to invoke the godmothers' blessing on a bonding.
To do so in the deepest chamber, in the presence of the most ancient preserved queens, was to create a binding that the entire species would recognize as legitimate and sacred.
He continued descending, past preservation chambers that grew progressively older, the godmothers' features becoming more stylized, more abstract, as if the magic that preserved them had evolved over millennia.
Finally, after what felt like hours but was probably only thirty minutes of steady descent, he reached the deepest chamber.
The chamber was exactly as he'd sensed from above—large, maybe fifty feet across, with a ceiling that rose into darkness beyond the fungi's illumination. The oldest godmothers lined the walls, their preservation so ancient that their forms had begun to merge with the stone itself, becoming part of the cave rather than separate entities within it.
