The hollow hadn't breathed since Riven's last words. Firelight guttered and steadied, throwing everyone into moving masks—shock, suspicion, the kind of bone-tired that made tempers short. The priest's whisper of names had dwindled to silence. Even the stream sounded as if it were listening.
Riven broke the stillness without raising his voice. "Elara."
Her name cracked through the hush like flint. She looked up. His gold gaze found her and held.
"Gather them," he said.
"Me?" It slipped out too quickly. Dozens of faces turned with the word, as if she'd stepped onto a ledge she hadn't seen.
"Yes," Riven said. He didn't blink. "Three humans. Three fae. Your friends. Three of mine—Garrett, Amber, Luke." He lifted his chin slightly. "And the elders. Fae and shifter."
Elara felt the old, familiar urge to look over her shoulder for someone else—a grown-up, a leader, anyone who might be better fitted to this than a girl who had learned to keep her head down and her hands busy. But that girl had been left behind with the stones of Ravenholt. The hollow watched. The wolves were already still.
"You see what they cannot," Riven finished, softer. "Use it."
Caleb was beside her before she stood, as if his body had known she would stand before her mind caught up. "I'm with you," he murmured, not loud enough for the ring to hear, but enough to set her spine straight.
Elara pushed herself up, legs heavy, and turned to the firelit faces. The silver was already creeping at the edge of her sight; she let it in rather than fight it. The world swam and then cleared. Auras slung themselves round shoulders and throats and wrists—green in a dozen shades, blue in slivers and smudges, the clean bare lack of it here and there like gaps in a hedge. She drew a breath that snagged and began to walk.
"Humans first," she said quietly to Caleb. "Stay with me if they… if they don't like it."
He made a noncommittal sound that meant I'll do more than that, and together they stepped into the murmur.
The first man she stopped in front of was Heath, the cobbler—the same Heath who had flushed angry and frightened when Riven used the word minority. Up close his face looked older than it had yesterday. There was no glow at all around him. Bare, unmistakable human.
"Heath," she said, keeping her voice low, level. "Would you sit the circle?"
He swallowed. "Why me?"
"Because you speak plain," Elara said. "And because you'll say what others are thinking." She didn't add because I can see you're human; she didn't need to. He glanced past her at Riven, then at the tight knot of other humans who had drawn together like sheep. Pride and fear warred across his mouth. At length he nodded once, curt.
"I'm not promising to like any of this," he muttered.
"You don't have to," Caleb said mildly. "You just have to sit."
Heath threw Caleb a look that said he'd remember the tone, then moved stiffly towards the clearing Riven's presence had opened.
Elara's sight drifted, searching for another bare face. She found Darren's wife—Marla, fingers white around her sister's ribbon. The green of grief flared in her like a bruise. She wasn't human. Elara's stomach dipped. Next to Marla, a teenage girl with hair hacked shorter with a knife to get the blood out—Isla, she thought—flickered faint green too. Not human. A little further along, by the shadowed side of a willow, a man in a torn watchman's coat sat on his heels, elbows on knees, eyes like pits. Bare. No glow at all.
She crouched so she wasn't looking down at him. "Owen," she said. She remembered he had let children play with his whistle once, when he came off the wall. "Will you come and sit?"
Owen stared past her, jaw working. "Because I'm useless?" he said, and his voice came out hollow. "Because I've got nothing in me?"
"Because you're brave," Elara said, before she could decide not to. "And because I trust you not to throw a knife just because you're angry." She held his gaze until he looked away first. His shoulders sagged. He stood without grace.
"That's two," Caleb murmured at her shoulder.
"Three," Elara said quietly, already stepping towards a woman sitting with her arms wrapped round her middle, rocking so slowly you'd miss it if you weren't tired. Elise had worked in the kitchens and laughed too loudly. There was no light around her. Only the fire reflecting in wet eyes.
"Elise," Elara said, soft, and held her hand out. "Will you sit with us?"
"I don't want to be chosen," Elise whispered.
"I know," Elara said. "It doesn't mean you're less. It means you're honest, and we need honest in the circle." She waited. The rocking slowed, stopped. Elise took her hand like someone accepting a sentence and let herself be pulled up.
Eyes followed them now, voices rising and falling as the camp tried to work out what choosing meant. Elara could feel the shape of fear in the air like weather changing. She caught a child's gaze and smiled automatically; the child didn't smile back.
"Fae," Caleb said under his breath, too low for anyone else. "You can see them?"
Elara nodded, throat tight. "They don't all know."
"Then be kind," he said, and managed to make it both a request and an instruction.
Elara let the silver sweep. The green was brightest round Marla, as if grief had pulled her blood to the surface. Elara hesitated, then shook her head minutely. Not yet. She needed someone who would argue, and someone who wouldn't.
A young man stood leaning against a cart shaft, arms folded across his chest, an attempt at swagger that didn't make it as far as his mouth. Reid, she thought. He had played knives and fingers with Luke earlier and nearly lost a fingertip. His aura was green, alive with irritation.
"Reid," Elara said. "Would you sit for the fae?"
His laugh was rough. "I'm no fae."
"You might be," Elara said. "Would you sit anyway?"
"And be your token?" he snapped. "So everyone can point and whisper?"
Caleb stepped forward half a pace, not to threaten but to be large enough to make the space feel safer. "Or," he said, "you could sit so everyone can point and whisper at you instead of at the ones who can't bear it yet."
Reid's nostrils flared. He looked at Elara, away, back. "If anyone says pixie," he muttered, "I'll break their nose."
"Fair," Elara said. "Thank you."
She turned towards a woman she didn't know well—Brenna?—who had soot in the lines beside her mouth and a calmness Elara envied. Her aura was the soft green of moss. "Would you sit?" Elara asked, and Brenna nodded without asking why. "If it keeps the others from tearing each other limb from limb," Brenna said, practical as a bucket, "I will sit all night."
"For the third…" Elara's sight drifted over faces and flinched at what she saw in herself—silver laid along her veins like moonlight caught in cracks. She looked away. Near the edge of the group, a lad barely sixteen hunched round his bandaged hand, trying to look invisible. Sam. The bandage was clean. He glowed green so faintly she might have missed it if she hadn't known to look.
"Sam," Elara said, crouching again so she didn't tower. "Would you sit with us?"
He shook his head, quick and bird-like. "I'm just me."
"You'll still be just you," Elara said. "Sitting won't change that."
He bit his lip hard enough to make blood bead. "If they stare at me," he whispered, "I'll be sick."
"I'll sit between you and anyone who stares," Caleb said, kneeling so they were eye to eye. "You can stare at the back of my head instead."
Sam gave a watery laugh and nodded once, hesitant as a foal. He stood, and Elara felt something unclench between her ribs.
By the time she led the six she had chosen back to the firebreak, the murmur had grown teeth. Some of the fifteen humans had caught on to what she was looking for and were shrinking back, as if the lack of glow could be made smaller by desire. The fae—those who had guessed, those who didn't want to—were tidying their faces like people do when the truth is coming anyway. Jonah clung to Torvee's side so hard his knuckles had gone white. Torvee stroked his hair absentmindedly, fingers steady, eyes sharp.
Riven lifted his hand and Garrett, Amber, Luke stepped forward together without needing names called. There was a clean economy to it, as if they had rehearsed the shape of obedience and it had entered their bones. Amber glanced at Corin, then at Elara. "Friends," she reminded softly.
"Caleb," Elara said, not because she needed to call him but because some things should be said aloud. He took his place at her shoulder. "Corin—if you can?"
Corin eased herself up with a hiss as the stitches pulled. Luke was already there, hand out. She took it and didn't make a fuss of it, which Elara loved her for. Torvee didn't move at first and then Jonah's grip decided for her. She rose with him attached, the small boy wrapped round her leg like ivy round a post.
Riven turned, eyes on the far edge of the gathering. "Elders," he said.
A woman with hair like frost and hands inked with old symbols stepped out of the crowd—the healer fae. Her green was muted, deep, threaded with something older than grief and steadier than fear. Beside her came another fae elder Elara had only noticed at the sweep—a man with a narrow, elegant face and the exact posture of someone who had spent his life deciding who to trust and finding the answer no. He inclined his head with the faintest pouch of disdain and took up a place just far enough from Garrett that the space between them had a temperature.
The shifter elder came last. He didn't look like anything much until you looked twice—the way some trees don't look old until you realise how many storms they've kept standing through. His hair was iron-grey, his eyes the flat brown of wet bark. He carried no weapon Elara could see. He didn't seem to need one.
They came to rest in a rough ring before the central fire—thirteen if you counted Jonah clinging, fourteen if you counted the baby sleeping fitfully on Brenna's lap because her arms knew how to hold without having to think about it. The rest of the camp hung back a little, a circle outside the circle, watching with that hungry, wary attention crowds lend to spectacles they secretly hope will end in someone else's blood.
Riven stepped into the open space, and the air shifted the way it does when a storm realises the land is ready for it. "This is the circle," he said. "If we cannot sit here without tearing each other apart, we will fail apart. If this circle holds, the rest may follow." He looked round the ring, not skimming, seeing. "No ranks in the talking. Speak when you have something worth breath."
Heath folded his arms. "And if what I have is anger?"
"Then say it," Riven said. "Better out than knifed into someone's back in the dark."
The fae elder with the too-elegant face lifted his chin. "Better still would have been to keep these divisions quiet until people had regained their senses."
"Secrets killed more than claws did," Amber said, not moving her eyes from the fire. "I counted bodies."
"You counted wolves," the elder returned.
Amber's mouth twitched. "I count everything."
"Enough," the healer fae said, quiet and firm as a cook setting down a hot pan. "My people are raw. Your people are raw. The humans are raw. We will not salt the wound with insult."
The shifter elder hadn't spoken. His gaze had rested on Jonah. Elara clocked that and didn't know what to do with it, so she put the observation away like a stone for later use.
"Why me?" Reid demanded suddenly, turning his irritation into a flame to warm his hands over. "Why pick me to sit for fae? Because I've got—what—green round me like some glow-worm? I don't feel different."
"You don't have to feel it to be it," Brenna said. "You don't have to like it either."
"And us?" Elise asked, voice tight, words dragging. "What are we meant to be in this little arrangement? Snacks?"
Caleb shifted, as if to step in, but Garrett beat him to it. "You are exactly what everyone else is," he said mildly. "Alive for the moment."
Elise flinched, then barked an unexpected laugh that sounded like it had been ageing in the cask too long. "Fair."
Torvee didn't speak. She hadn't stopped stroking Jonah's hair, the movement as much for her as for him. The boy's eyes were huge, trying to drink the room and drown in it at the same time.
Elara looked from face to face and felt the silver tug at her again. She could see the camp's mood the way you see weather roll across hills—anger pooling here, fear stacking there, a thin current of stubbornness winding through the humans like wire, a different stubbornness—the old kind that belongs to trees and rivers—settling in the fae. The wolves' gold sat like anchors round the edge of the circle. She had the sudden, dizzy thought that if she reached out she could press a finger to the mood and tilt it. The thought came like a wave and ran back. She kept her hands flat on her knees.
"What happens now?" Heath asked, practical through his fear. "Are we voting on who gets fed first? Who watches, who sleeps? Where we go? Or is this for show so the rest think we've got a plan?"
"We decide what we can tonight," Elara said before Riven could. Riven let her. "The rest in the morning." She heard her own voice steady and wondered briefly when she had learned to borrow calm like a cloak. "First—we speak the rules: no blades in the circle. No shouting for the sake of it. We don't spit into old stories to make ourselves feel taller."
Reid snorted but didn't contradict her. The elegant fae raised a brow as if to say we'll see. The healer gave the tiniest nod. Luke's mouth curved, brief as a fox.
"Second," Elara went on, "we accept that we're not the only kind of person here any more. We can keep pretending, or we can use it. I don't know what use looks like yet. I know pretending already killed people."
She expected Garrett to approve and Riven to remain unreadable. What she hadn't expected was Caleb's hand finding the ground beside hers, palm down, a quiet I'm here. It steadied more than she wanted to admit.
"We could leave," Owen said suddenly, surprising himself with the heat in it. "Take the fifteen and go. Find a place with walls and gates where we're not… this." He waved a hand that meant outnumbered and also scared and mostly tired.
"You'd die before you made the tree line," Amber said, not unkind. "That's not a threat. That's weather."
"So we stay?" Elise demanded.
"For tonight," Riven said. "At first light we prepare to move. Where, we'll decide together. But not towards stone that has already been tasted. Ferals remember."
The elegant fae's mouth tightened. "And the cities remember us."
"Then we walk like people who plan to remain remembered for the right things," the healer said, cutting across her fellow elder without apology. She turned those measured eyes to Elara. "Child—Luna—did you choose me for this because you could see me? Or because you wanted a hand that can sew skin?"
Elara blinked. The title fell into the hollow like a pebble into a pond; most people didn't notice the ripple yet. "Both," she said truthfully. "But I won't ask you to fix what we can prevent from breaking."
"Ambitious," the healer said dryly. "We'll see."
Jonah tugged at Torvee's sleeve, small and insistent. "I'm thirsty," he whispered. Torvee passed him a skin without looking, her attention pinned to the wolves, to Riven, to Elara as if the rope between them might snap and she had elected herself to stand where it would fray first.
"Are we safe?" Sam asked in a rush, the words squeezed out as if holding them had hurt. "Sitting here with wolves and… and…"
"People," Brenna said.
"And people," Sam echoed, relief and disbelief tripping over each other. "Are we safe?"
"No," Riven said simply. "But you are safer here than anywhere else you can reach tonight."
The shifter elder finally spoke. His voice was low, with the grain of old wood in it. "Safety is a word for houses," he said. "We are in the forest. The word you want is watch. And you've got it." He nodded once at Luke. "From that one, if from no one else."
Luke looked as if he would rather be invisible than praised. He lifted a shoulder and let it fall.
Heath exhaled. "We'll watch," he said, as if turning the word into an agreement. "And we'll listen."
"Good," Riven said. "Then tonight we sit. We eat what we have. We don't spit. At dawn, we plan."
He took half a step back, and the circle breathed for the first time since it had formed. People shifted. Bodies found more comfortable angles. The camp's listening loosened a notch.
Jonah had gone very still. Elara noticed because Torvee's hand paused where it was combing through the boy's hair, the way a hand pauses when it feels a change in the head beneath it. The child's eyes were on Torvee's face, fixed as if the rest of the room had emptied out. He licked his lips, swallowed, and spoke so quietly it should have been lost to the night. It wasn't.
"Torvee," he said. "I want to be like you."
The sound of it tightened every shoulder in the circle. Heads turned and then kept turning, as if the sentence had entered on a wind and needed to be watched all the way round. The wolves didn't move but something in their eyes altered, a narrowing that wasn't threat so much as attention sharpened to a point. The healer fae's breath caught. The elegant fae went very, very still. Heath's mouth opened and then shut. Sam's fingers found his bandage and worried at it.
Torvee froze, hand mid-stroke, as if she'd been turned to a figure on a church wall. For a heartbeat she looked exactly her age—young enough to be startled by the pure weight of being asked to be someone's how. Then life came back into her hand; she smoothed Jonah's hair down and made the gesture mean I heard you.
Across the fire, the shifter elder's gaze deepened, the way water darkens when a cloud passes the moon. He did not smile. He did not speak.
No one did.
The sentence settled into the hollow and took up residence as if it had always been meant to live there. The fire cracked politely to make room. Somewhere on the perimeter, a wolf's ear twitched; nothing else moved.
Torvee gathered Jonah closer, the boy's cheek pressed to her ribs. "Alright," she said at last, to him and not to the room. "Drink your water."
He did, trusting, as if that had been the answer he had asked for all along. The circle sat with the new weight, and the night, which had been holding itself rigid, let out a thin breath it had owed them since Ravenholt.
No one said it, but everyone heard it anyway: It might be possible.