The summons came at dusk, when the first lamps in their glass jars were beginning to glow along the ropes that fenced the terraces. A runner found Elara in the healer's lodge with Corin and spoke softly in the doorway.
"Council," he said, eyes slipping to Elara and away again as if the sight of her stung. "Now. In the old hall."
Elara squeezed Corin's hand. "I'll be back."
"Bring me gossip," Corin murmured, half-smile stubborn beneath the grey. "If I'm going to be bored and bedridden, at least let me be nosy."
"I'll do my best." Elara tucked the blanket higher. "Sleep."
Outside, the mountain air had the clean bite of riverwater. Wolves were shadows on the higher paths. Down in the main square a circle of people were beginning to drift towards the oldest building—a low, broad lodge tucked into the shoulder of rock, its lintel carved with old knotwork and newer sigils scorched into the beam. Smoke curled thin from a hole above the central hearth.
Garrett met Elara at the door, one hand on the frame, the other resting on the butt of a battered rifle. "You gathered the ones we spoke about?"
Elara nodded. "Kara, Clint, Elise. Torvee and Jonah. Three wolves—Amber asked for two of her patrol and Luke. The healer is already inside, and the other fae elder." She hesitated, then added, "Caleb is coming too. He's… he should hear this."
Garrett's mouth made a line of agreement. "Aye. In you go."
Inside, the hall was cool and old. The floor had been swept. A shallow fire burned in a stone ring, sending up a slender column of smoke that found the hole in the roof with the certainty of old habit. Lanterns hung from hooks in the pillars, their light steady and amber. Around the fire lay a ring of low stools and benches, a few cushions thrown for bones that hated wood.
Riven stood behind the circle, not seated, a dark edge in the dim. Garrett took his place to one side of the fire. Amber and Luke sat opposite one another, easy in their skins, watchful. The fae healer stood near the light with another elder at her shoulder, a thin woman with hair the colour of steel. And already there, on a simple stool with a wrapped bundle by his feet, the shifter elder waited with his hands resting lightly on his knees, as if he was listening to something only he could hear.
Elara shepherded their little knot into the ring—Kara with her arms folded like she intended to argue with anyone who needed arguing with, Clint trying to make himself comfortable on a stool half a size too small for him, Elise sitting quietly with her fingers laced, Jonah glued to Torvee's side like ivy. Caleb took a place just behind Elara, not quite in the circle, not quite out of it. The hall filled with the sound of people settling. When the last murmur faded, the shifter elder lifted his head.
"Thank you for coming," he said. His voice wasn't loud, but it carried. "I asked for this council because secrets have a way of killing more cleanly than truth. And we have had enough of clean killing."
No one moved. He turned his face to the survivors, not to the wolves. "Some of you think shifters are born as wolves are born. It isn't so. None of us were born as we are. We were joined to our spirit in infancy—six months old, the old ways said—by ritual and draught. That is the truth of my people."
Clint blinked as if a splinter had worked loose in his brain. "You mean—everyone drank? Even you?"
The elder's mouth creased. "Even me. Even those older than I. Spirit is not a birthright. It is a binding."
Kara leaned forward, elbows on knees. "So… it can be done again. For those of us who aren't born to it."
"It can," the elder said simply. "With cost. With pain. The spirit will answer, but it does not answer to pride. You do not become what you fancy. You become what you are."
Clint opened his mouth—Kara's look closed it again. Elise's gaze had gone very still. "And if the spirit says no?" she asked.
The elder shook his head. "It doesn't say no. It says this. It shows you a truth you might never have chosen for yourself."
Jonah's small fingers tightened in Torvee's sleeve. He had been listening with grave attention, the way only children do. Now he whispered, "Torvee, I want to be like you."
Torvee looked down as if the words had tugged a line through her ribs. "Jonah—"
"I want to help," he said, blurting before anyone could soften the edges. "I don't want to be the one people carry. I want teeth. I want… I want to be brave like you."
The hall breathed in together. Torvee's jaw worked; a heartbeat later she had her voice back. "You already are," she said, and it shook more than she meant it to. "Brave isn't fangs. It's what you did in the corridor when you didn't scream and you kept hold of my hand."
Jonah lifted his chin, lips pressed thin, stubborn even in fear. He looked past Torvee to the elder. "Can I? Can I try?"
"Stop," Torvee said, too quickly. "You're a child."
"I'm alive," he said with the blunt logic of the small. "And there are monsters."
Before the elder could answer, the fae healer stepped forward. "He asked to know the shape of the road," she said, calm as a scalpel. "Let him hear it all."
The shifter elder inclined his head to her. He looked around the circle and let his gaze settle for a heartbeat on each person in turn. "There is a thing you must understand before we take another step," he said. "The draught—the calling—belongs to humans. It does not belong to fae. It does not belong to wolves. If a fae drinks it, they will die. If a wolf drinks it, they will die. This is not a warning for colour. It is a warning we learned with blood."
Silence sat down, heavy. Elise drew a slow breath. Kara went very still, as if her bones were listening. Clint looked from the elder to the healer, to Amber, to Luke, as if anyone might grin and say it was a dark joke. No one did.
"Why?" Caleb asked, not hostile, only trying to put a frame around what he was hearing. "If it makes you… more… why kill fae?"
"Because it isn't more," the elder said. "It's other. It remakes the pattern in a human to hold another truth. Fae are already bound. So are wolves. Pouring a second binding into the first tears the vessel."
The steel-haired fae elder spoke for the first time, voice as thin and bright as frost. "We have our own paths. Not kinder. Not safer. But ours. The boy can walk a shifter's road. I cannot. Nor can any of mine."
Jonah's hand was tight enough on Torvee's sleeve to hurt. He didn't look away from the elder. "But I can?"
"You can," the elder said. "If you choose. If those who hold you choose. And if I judge that your bones are ready for the pain."
Torvee's head snapped up. "So you would do it? You'd break a boy because he asked politely?"
The elder didn't flinch. "I would refuse him even if he screamed for it, if I thought it would break him. I would carry his hate and sleep anyway. And if I judged he could bear it, I would help him take on what he chose to carry."
Torvee stared at him, chest rising and falling too fast. She looked as if someone had reached in and moved her heart a finger's width left. Elara put a hand to Torvee's shoulder; Torvee was all wire and heat under her palm.
Garrett cleared his throat, stone grinding. "This isn't a decision to make in a warm room with tea in your hands," he said. "We'll not be rushing it."
Riven's voice came from the shadow, the first sound he'd made. "Agreed."
The shifter elder nodded. "No ritual tonight. Not tomorrow. But soon. The moon waxes. In three nights she'll be full. That is when we do such things—when water runs high in blood and bone. Between now and then, you will learn what the draught is, and what it is not. You will decide with your eyes open."
Kara's mouth twitched. "You keep saying pain. What kind of pain are we talking about? Stub-your-toe or lose-your-legs?"
"Closer to the second," Amber said dryly, before the elder could clothe it in softer words.
Clint exhaled a noise that wanted to be a laugh and failed. "Fine," he said after a moment, surprising no one more than himself. "I've had worse than pain."
"Have you?" Elise asked, gentle and lethal at once. "Or have you only had bruises and a big mouth?"
His eyes flashed. "I got you out of that corridor with a wolf at your back—"
"And a child in Torvee's arms did the same," Elise said. "So did Elara with a gun she barely had time to load. We all did brave things. Shut up about your shoulders for five minutes and think with your head."
To his credit, Clint bit whatever he was about to say and stared into the fire like it had called him a fool on behalf of the whole mountain.
The elder let the snarl of tempers subside on its own. When the quiet settled again, he picked up the wrapped bundle at his feet and set it on his knees. "There are two parts to the ritual," he said, untying the cloth. "First, the draught. Bitter. It opens what you keep shut. Makes room. This—" He lifted a shallow stone bowl. Dark residue ringed its lip like varnish. "—is old. My father's father used it. I have cleaned it and mended it and fed it offerings until it will do its work when asked. The draught goes in here."
He set the bowl down and untied another piece of cloth. Inside lay a small horn knife, handle wrapped in plaited leather. "Second, the cut. A line on the palm. Not to spill, only to open. Blood calls. Blood seals."
Kara wrinkled her nose. "On purpose?"
"On purpose," he said. "Messy things done carefully are how people go on living."
Jonah edged closer, fascinated in the way children are by the exact things adults wish to keep behind a curtain. "Does it hurt a lot?" he asked.
"Yes," the elder said. "It hurts a lot."
Jonah nodded, absorbing that like weather. Torvee swallowed. "I don't like this," she said. "I don't like any of this."
Amber's voice came gentler than Elara had ever heard it. "Neither do I," she said. "Like has very little to do with what keeps us breathing."
The fae healer stepped forward into the edge of the light. "One more thing," she said, looking deliberately at the three humans and then at Elara and Torvee. "We will test for fae before anyone drinks. Quietly. Before pride kills someone. Some of you don't know what you are yet."
Kara's eyes darted, then steadied. "Test us now."
"Not in front of a crowd," the healer said. "You come to me tonight. The others in the morning."
"Why not now?" Clint demanded.
"Because ritual doesn't like being jeered at by a room full of nerves," the healer said calmly. "And because some news is best given in a room with only a door to face or run through."
Elise inclined her head, accepting the logic. "We'll come," she said simply. "No fuss."
Caleb shifted in the half-shadow behind Elara. "What about those who choose not to drink?" he asked. "Who choose to stay as they are?"
"You stay," Garrett said, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. "You work. You're guarded and you guard. This village doesn't tally worth by shape."
Caleb's shoulders loosened a fraction. "Good," he said, and though he hadn't smiled in days, something like the idea of one touched his face and left again.
Elara had been standing quiet, letting the pieces speak to one another. Now she turned her hands palms-up to the fire. The silver under her skin answered the light with a low thrum. "Three nights," she said. "We've all earned time to breathe and think."
Riven's shadow shifted—as close to assent as he gave.
Kara rubbed her hands on her trousers. "What do we do until then? Sit and stare at walls? I'll climb them."
"Work," Amber said, unable to help herself. "We always need wood, and the range up behind the smithy could do with a proper clean. You can put your temper into the butts."
Kara grinned despite the knot in her mouth. "Finally, a useful suggestion."
Clint lifted a hand. "If the draught is bitter and painful and awful," he said, attempting humour again and almost finding it, "any chance we can practise with something that tastes worse so we're surprised by the upgrade?"
"Absolutely not," the healer said. A ripple of laughter broke the tightness in the room. Even Luke smiled, brief and genuine.
The elder wrapped the bowl and knife again and set them at his feet. "I'll speak to the spirit and to the mountain," he said. "I'll prepare. You speak to yourselves. Decide."
Elara glanced down at Jonah. He was biting his lip, jaw set. "This is not now," she said softly to him. "It's later. We've got the length of three nights to be sensible together."
He met her eyes and nodded, something fragile and fierce in him both at once. "But I want it," he whispered, as if speaking to the idea rather than to any of them.
"I know," Torvee said, and the words were a promise and a plea tangled tightly. "We'll talk. We'll do this properly, or not at all."
Garrett pushed off his post with a creak of old floorboards. "Enough for one evening," he said. "Sleep. All of you. Tomorrow there'll be work twice over so you don't sit and gnaw your thoughts to bone."
People rose, the scrape of stools loud in the hush. The ring broke into smaller knots—wolves murmuring among themselves, the fae elders conferring in low tones, Amber bending to say something that made Luke's awkward pride flicker visible and vanish. Clint stretched his back and tried not to groan like an old door. Elise stood and smoothed her skirt for no reason at all other than the need to do something with her hands. Kara looked as if she'd sprint if given half a chance and settled for cracking her knuckles.
Elara moved with Torvee and Jonah towards the door. The fae healer touched Elara's sleeve as she passed. "Bring them after the lamps are trimmed," she said. "Quietly."
Elise heard and nodded once. "We'll be there."
Outside, the mountain night lay cold and clean. The village lamps made little worlds of honeyed light along the paths. Wolves on the upper terraces watched the dark, ears pricked. The moon had fattened; in its light the rope rails shone like silver snakes.
Caleb fell into step beside Elara. "You all right?" he asked, too casually.
"Ask me again in three nights," she said.
He huffed a breath that wanted to be a laugh. "Deal."
Behind them, Kara was already needling Clint. "If the spirit gives you something small, will you still be unbearable? Or just… condensed?"
"Ha," Clint said, wounded. "We'll see who's laughing when I'm a—"
"Don't," Elise said mildly. "Tempting fate is for fools and saints."
Clint considered, then gave her a lopsided grin. "Fair."
They walked. Torvee's hand stayed on Jonah's shoulder, as if absence would make him drift. The boy kept pace, eyes on the lamps, that new stubborn line set in his mouth like a wedge. When they reached the fork in the paths—one way towards the lodges, the other to the healer's door—he stopped and looked up at Torvee.
"I want to be like you," he said again, small voice carved out of iron.
Torvee shut her eyes briefly, then opened them. "And I want you alive," she answered. "Both can be true. We'll find out which truth fits in three nights."
He nodded, accepting that as if it were an oath.
From the square behind them, the old hall let out the last of its heat. Elara turned for a heartbeat and looked back. Through the doorway she could see the shifter elder alone by the embers, his head bowed over the wrapped bowl in his lap, lips moving in a whisper meant for stone and whatever listened in it. The sight raised the hair on her arms—not fear, not reverence, just the sensation that something that had been sleeping was turning over and opening one eye.
"Come on," she said, and the word felt steadier in her mouth than she'd expected. "Bed. We've got work to do before the moon decides if it approves."
They peeled away into the lamplight, the village breathing around them. Above, the moon climbed a thumb's breadth higher. Three nights, the elder had said. Three nights, the mountain seemed to agree, its black ribs curved under a sky bright as bone.