“Auress,” she said, and my gaze went up the trunk to the tiny child sitting on the longest branch—one leg dangling down, her finger twirling a lock of hair into a curl.

“What are you doing up there?” I stepped closer.

She smiled and reached up to pluck something from between two branches, holding it out in her open palm after.

“Come down, Eve?” I offered my hand. “Please?”

She smiled, but shook her head.

“Why? Why won’t you come down?”

The smile grew, her eyes darting from my face to something behind me.

And a hand came down on my shoulder. I spun around and shielded my eyes, blinded suddenly by the high sun, seeing only a silhouette of a man there.

“Jeeze, Ara, I’m sorry,” Jason said, helping me stand from the folded position I took. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t,” I said, feeling silly. “It’s just the light. It blinded me for a sec.”

He laughed. “What were . . . what were you doing?”

I looked back at the oak tree. Eve was gone. “I was. . .”

“You have no idea, do you?” he asked, taking a step back from me.

I stood with my mouth open for a second. “I . . . no. Not really.”

He laughed again. “You were talking to someone.”

“Was I?”

“Yes.”

“What was I saying?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t in English.”

I felt my face pale. “It wasn’t?”

“No.”

My jaw angled slightly away from him then, my gaze drifting inconspicuously to the field. The apple trees were gone—the fog and the cool and the scent of the orchard fading with it. I rubbed my head. “I must have been sleepwalking.”

Jase nodded, thoughtful.

“What are you doing out here, anyway?” I asked. “It’s very early.”

“Early?” He looked up at the sky, then into the distance where the manor sat, its cream fascia rising up over the Enchanted Forest like a castle. “It’s after midday, Ara.”

“Oh. Um. Really?” I rubbed my head.

“Yes.” He drew both hands from his jeans pockets and walked over to sit under the old oak’s leafy bows. “Are you okay, Ara?”

“Yeah,” I said wistfully, my toes parting the long grass with each step, the temperature of the soil beneath it cool and moist as if the morning were new. I tucked my dress under my bottom and sat down beside Jase. “I guess I’ve just got a lot going on.”

He nodded casually, reaching between us to pluck a blade of grass from its roots. “Wanna talk about it?”

“Yes,” I said, but didn’t talk.

“You know—” He leaned forward, resting his arm over a bended knee, wrapping the grass around his fingertip like a green ring. “I was thinking about you before I ran into you.”

“You were?”

“Yeah.”

“All good thoughts, I hope.”

He lay back, crossing his hands under his head, his feet flat on the ground just by my leg. “I was just thinking how amazing it is that we’re both still here, you and I—that we can be friends—sit side by side this way after everything you’ve been through.”

“You mean after everything evil you did to me,” I joked, gently slapping his bony knee.

He lifted his head a bit and offered a sweet smile, that soft, Jason smile that radiated the kindness in his soul. “Yes, and that takes an unbelievable amount of strength, Ara, which is as scary as it is incredible.”

“Scary? How?”

“Because I can't even begin to imagine what it must have taken for you to survive what I did to you—both times. And yet you came out of that. Your scars healed, your heart healed and, somehow, you found the strength to not only move on, but forgive me,” his voice broke.

“Wow, you’re really cut up about all this,” I said, still making light of things.

“Do you know why?”

“Why?” I sat back against the barky trunk.

“It’s because you are capable of more than you possibly realise, Ara. Yet you don’t know that, and it breaks my heart.”

“Aw.” I tilted my head bashfully to one side.

“No, I mean it. You . . . you're like those fake columns in the Throne Room.”

I pictured the stone pillars marking the aisles of the Throne Room, sitting proudly as beams of support, despite baring no actual weight at all. “How do you know they're fake?”

“I hear you think of them a lot.” He shrugged against the grass. “And I think that’s because you know you’re just the same.”

“How so?”

“You might not feel like the pillar of strength, Ara, but if that roof ever does cave in, you’ll be the one left standing, still holding everything together.”

I scoffed, crossing my legs under me. “I doubt that.”

“I don’t. I mean, if you think about it, you always have been.”

“Me? No way. You’re thinking of David.”

“No. He’s the hammer that nails the coffin, so to speak. No one would ever mess with him. But you’re the one they look to for strength, Ara. Because you exude it in every breath you take, and everyone I speak to says the same thing: they have no idea how you’ve come to survive what you’ve suffered.”

I lay down in the grass too, my toes against his shoes, bodies facing opposite directions. “Well, with you saying nice things like that to me, maybe I’ll start to believe it all one day.”

He crawled over and landed on his side next to me, smiling at the corner of my mouth. “Sweet girl, you already do.”

I smiled, too, reaching down to scratch the itchy rash on my hip. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe I believe that, but I don't think I’ve found any backbone yet to support my own opinions.”

He knocked my hand gently away from my skin. “I don't know about that. I saw you make your own ruling in your very first session of Court.”

“Yeah.” I thought back to that day. “Guess I kinda did. But I got in trouble after.”

“So what? As long as you thought it was the right thing to do.” He turned my face until I looked into his eyes. “Be the spoilt queen if you have to. Make your own decisions and know that we will back you one hundred per cent.”

“Some of you will,” I said flatly, thinking about David.

“No,” he said sternly. “All of us will.”

I looked up at the blue through the dancing leaves above us, trying hard to believe that. “But what if I put my foot down about something, and I'm wrong?”

“Then we back you on that, too.” He lay back again. “But, you won't be wrong. You’re a smart girl. You just have to trust yourself.”

I pushed up on my elbow and looked down at his face; his eyes met mine, all green and lovely, sparkling in the morning light, but the shadows made dark circles under them, showing how tired he was, how tired his soul was. I wiped my thumb softly over the sunken skin and leaned in to kiss his cheek in an innocent, friendly gesture. “Thanks, Jase.”

He slowly cupped the small wet spot my lips left, a smile growing across his face. “You don't need to thank me for saying things you should already know.”

“Yes, I do. Because you're the only one who ever does.”

He shook his head, still smiling, casting his gaze to the leaves. “You know David will see that kiss in your thoughts, right?”

“Oops.” I cringed a little.

Jason laughed. “It’s okay. It was worth it.”

“Worth a week in the dungeon?”

He sat quiet for a second, then nodded once. “Definitely.”

***

I still had no clue if this scroll was a prophecy or a contract. Everyone had very compelling theories either way, but no one seemed to know any truths. Which is what brought me down here to the Scroll Room in the dead of night.

I laid the yellowing document on the table in front of me, not bothering with tweezers to preserve the delicate, ancient paper. Quite frankly, if it got destroyed, maybe all this nonsense would die with it: no more mystery surrounding its interpretation, no more possibility that either my daughter or me have been sworn over to Drake, and no more plans for one of us to be killed on the Stone of Truth with the Dagger of Yahanna so the bad guy could steal our powers. And maybe, just maybe, it would put this nonsense of David dying to rest.

But, I knew that removing the needle wouldn’t undo the sting.

“Argh!” I huffed, scraping a layer of ash away from the corner of the page. Whoever damaged these scrolls had done a darn good job of it. There were barely any words left to read, and that was if you could even read the Language of the Ancients. Which, I couldn’t. But I did still have Jason’s sheet of interpretations. Only, even his words didn’t make sense if this scroll was a contract. It just seemed too melodramatic: A time will come for the Pure One to rise. In Her Reign Of Light And Hope, she will free the land from the Fated Curse, and bear a child with great power.

I slid the other page of Jason’s English translations over and held the candle up to them so I could see better in this dim, midnight light. The next line said, A child, possible only if conceived of pure? —the question mark circled in red, because he wasn’t sure if the translation for that word was noble blood, blood of Knight, or cleansed, since they could all mean the same thing. Then there were the next words: Born as and Son. He’d told me the symbol for those words had no translation—that it was similar to a word meaning firstborn, but also to one meaning disguised.

I exhaled with a grunt and sat back in the hard wooden chair, propping my feet up on the oak stabiliser under the table. How was I ever going to come up with an answer to this mystery if I couldn’t decide what I believed to be true? Or maybe that was it. Maybe I had to pick a story and go with it.

I pawed over the pages again, comparing the symbols to the English notes.

“Need some help?”

“Gah!” I dropped the scroll, blowing out the hard breath that almost became a really loud scream when I saw the familiar face. “Blade? You scared the living hell out of me.”

“Oh, good.” He pulled up a chair and sat beside me. “If there’s no hell in you, maybe I won’t find you so hot anymore.”

“Huh?” I issued him a dumbfounded stare.

“You know,” he explained, rolling his hand around as if I might get the joke. “Because Hell is hot.”

“Oh. Right.” I looked back at the pages. “Well, sorry to burst your bubble, Blade, but you’re bound by the Curse of the Original Lilith. You’ll love me until you die.”

“Or until I fall head over heels for someone else.”