And without further ado (but with much thanks to J. Ace for beta-ing): Act III.

ACT THREE

Locating Silence

Nine years ago …

Aeron's wings were ugly things.

There was no real way around it: They were weak and shrivelled, all sagging skin and protruding talons that stabbed the backs of his thighs when he curled up at night. Even though the wound had healed with time, there was a jagged scar left in the center of his left wing, tracing down all the way to where Aeron had torn himself free of the monster's blade.

It was ugly, and Aeron wished with all of his might that he had learned how to tuck his wings away like Amarantha had insisted his father could. Rhysand, who Amarantha told him laboured under the delusion that no one knew he even had wings, so well he could conceal them with his High Fae magic.

He supposed his father had never cared to come down and teach him how to hide his wings, too.

A rap at his bedroom door had Aeron sitting bolt upright and to attention. It was early morning, a time he often spent lying in bed and reflecting on the state of his wing in the light of the new dawn filtering in through his open window.

Getting to his feet, Aeron padded over to the door. He'd long since moved from the infirmary into his own room on the residential wing, though Caroline had allocated a bathroom in her own suite for him to use when he needed it, just so he could use the bigger shower and not come into contact with anyone he didn't want to.

As always, Aeron had shut and locked the door before bed the previous night, lodging a chair under the knob to keep it from being opened. A stack of coins and various stones he'd found around the place rested atop the tilted chair in a crockery bowl, ready to fall if anyone disturbed the balance. No one could enter the room at night without Aeron noticing.

The knocking sounded again, and Aeron sighed, scooping the bowl up and kicking the chair away. He unlocked the door but didn't bother opening it—it sprung open almost on top of him, revealing a slip of a girl with bright blue eyes and dark hair tucked into a neat pony tail. She was dressed head to toe in what Aeron had come to know as exercise gear, complete with garishly-coloured sneakers and a headband.

"Hey, Aer," she greeted, breezing in. Aeron had only been there for a month, barely enough to make the room feel like it could ever belong to him, and yet Josie went wherever she pleased, as though it already belonged to her. Tossing herself onto his bed, she threw her legs into the air, stretching them high. "Wanna come running with me?" she asked, voice strained with the effort of the stretch.

Aeron resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He'd never had to fight that particular inclination before, but after spending time with Josie, he'd learned both how to be annoyed and how to act annoyed. "No, thank you," he said. The same answer he'd given every day. "And you don't have to keep asking me."

"But it's adorable when you try not to roll your eyes," Josie said, standing up only to drop into another sort of stretch.

"And you don't have to do your warm-ups in my bedroom."

"You don't have to sleep in my warm-up room," she shot back, looking at him through her legs as she was doubled over. "I was here first, you know."

As Caroline's daughter, she'd been here before any of the other children, even those older than her who had come after. "Well, I'll leave you to it, then," Aeron threatened.

Straightening, Josie rolled her eyes. "You don't go downstairs to breakfast until the first classes start and all the kids are busy. I know Mom makes you eggs on dry toast then, you weirdo."

"Your mother says you shouldn't call me that."

"My mother isn't here in my warm-up room, is she?"

"Are you nearly done?" Aeron asked, trying to sound impatient. Really, he had nothing better to do with his time than curl up and read the same battered copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone again, one inscribed with Property of Hope Mikaelson on the inside. He always read the inscription first, no matter where he was in the story.

"Almost," said Josie, stretching her arms up over her head. "You're sure you don't want to come running with me?"

Aeron couldn't see the appeal. He loved the outdoors—couldn't sleep with the window closed, no matter how much it made Caroline fuss on colder nights—but he couldn't stand running. If nothing was chasing you, why bother?

"No, thank you," he said simply, for the thousandth time since that first morning after he'd moved up to this room, his wing recently stitch-free. Josie had marched right up to his door and invited him out running like it was a normal custom. Aeron discovered later that it was not, but that it was normal for Josie.

Josie nodded, accepting his rejection, as always. "You'll say yes to me one day," she said, sounding very confident. Aeron wasn't certain she was wrong, but he knew he wasn't ready for her to be right, either.

"Not today."

"Nope." Josie made to walk past him, giving him a wide berth. For all her lack of boundaries, she'd never once touched him. Which was an achievement, seeing as how he'd watched her literally tackle her father to the ground after he ate the last smores poptart. Alaric had been limping for the rest of the day, and she'd apologised with a bouquet of poptarts on sticks that Alaric ended up fobbing off on Aeron, admitting sheepishly that he didn't really like poptarts, after all.

"Hey," said Josie, pausing in the doorway. "You found your silver lining yet?"

Aeron cleared his throat. "Still looking."

Josie said nothing, just gave a small smile and departed, closing the door behind her. It was how their mornings always ended; with a question, and Aeron's answer in the negative. It all went back to the first time he'd met Josie, while he was still in the infirmary sleeping on the massage table at night. Josie had sat beneath the hole for his head, stuffed a lollipop in his mouth, and proceeded to give him the gossip on every single member of her family and friends. And then, at last, she told him about the Silver Linings Game.

"No matter how thickly the clouds cover the stars," she'd said, her lips blue from her own candy, "there's always a silver lining. It's okay if you take a while to find it, though. It's looking for it that matters in the first place."

And now, every morning since, she'd asked him that same question. One day, he'd have a better answer.

—

Now …

"Incendia," Hope said, watching the fire roar to life. She'd spent hours painstakingly building the perfect structure for the fire, and it went up perfectly, the kindling lighting up and brushing against the stacked logs. Kol had taught her how to make the perfect bonfire long ago—he was a big fan of fire and an amateur pyromaniac, if Rebekah was to be believed—and so, every bonfire season, it was their job to build the fire from wood Elijah chopped for them.

Apparently there were more than recreational uses for such a thing.

What Hope didn't know how to do was set up a spit over the fire, though she was searching for branches straight enough to try. For now, she caught her kills with a combination of werewolf tracking and magic, and cut the meat off into strips to be wound onto smaller sticks like kebabs that she roasted over the flames by hand. It wasn't glamorous, and she was no chef, but between the meat and what edible berries she been able to locate (yay, mandatory botany class at the Armory), she wasn't going to starve any time soon.

It had been three weeks since Hope slaughtered her captors. Three weeks of hunting for her own food, of relying on her instincts and her magic and what weapons she'd been able to scavenge off the fae she'd slain and left to rot in the clearing. She'd travelled reasonably far, three days' walk while masking her scent, and set up camp here for a while to get her bearings. Each day she ventured further away from the makeshift camp she'd made herself in a cave by a stream, animal bones strung up with strips of dried bark to alert her if anyone passed through the entrance.

She knew what she was doing. Kind of.

To be honest, her wilderness training mostly consisted of her father's rants about how easy she and her sisters had it these days, with smartphones and Google and roll-on deodorant. He'd greatly exaggerated many a tale about trekking through miles of snow in search of berries—Hope had never heard of any berries that could survive in that sort of climate, and she had taken the mandatory botany class—so she had a pretty good idea of what not to do.

Of course, if she'd asked her father, his answer would have been Don't get kidnapped in the bloody first place.

Hope finished winding a strip of rabbit meat onto the makeshift skewer and dangled it over the fire, watching the flames lick up the meat until it started sizzling. Sure, magic was useful, but if she couldn't conjure herself a buffet, then what use was it really?

A question she and Josie had asked many a time.

Hope winced, trying not to think of home. It was hard—every thought, every experience, every piece of knowledge could be traced back there. Every part of her was rooted in her family, and not thinking of them was like closing her eyes, cutting herself off from an entire sense.

Watching as the meat cooked, Hope weighed her options going forward. She had a good set-up here, and it would be a shame to ruin it on the full moon when she turned into a rabid beast. She was trying desperately not to think of her looming transformation, of the agony that awaited her in just two weeks' time—the moon was officially waxing, growing stronger each night. There was a time when she looked forward to full moons, to strolling out underneath them with either of her parents and gazing up at her, feeling connected to the earth in a way that went deeper than even her magic did.

Where Hope had once felt adoration, she now felt nothing but terror.

Pushing it down, Hope tried her best to accept the coming pain. She'd always assumed that, if she did trigger her curse, Aunt Freya would just cook her up a moonlight ring and that would be that. It had been an unspoken understanding among them that she would never have to experience the pain, the loneliness, the horror. She had never fully considered that she wouldn't have her family there to save her from what she was.

No one was coming to save her, Hope knew. She just knew there was no way back here, not even with Aeron's magic. If she couldn't feel him, he couldn't feel her. He had no way of knowing she was even here.

No—no one was coming to save her. She was going to have to save herself.

—

Then …

Aeron made his way to the kitchens, the halls eerily silent. He kept his wings tucked in close—he'd been practicing—and tried not to let them drag on the floor. The tips often caught on the stairs when he descended them, but it wasn't too bad. There'd been some improvement, at least.

The kitchens were located on the lowest level, just through the dining hall. As Aeron passed through the hall he nodded tightly to one of the workers clearing plates; the students had gone to class, but there was still clean up to be done after their meal.

The door to the kitchen was unlocked, and the smell of frying eggs permeated the air. Caroline and Keelin had determined that eggs and meat were good for building him back to health, and he had the slight meat on his bones to show for it. He couldn't take scrambled eggs, though. Caroline had told him it was likely something to do with the butter and milk in them; either way, he avoided that and settled for fried eggs and dry toast.

Caroline was hunched over the stove, dressed in her usual work clothes but with a net over her hair. She didn't turn to acknowledge him, just waved him over to the corner of the kitchen where a desk had been set up. She'd dragged it down from a classroom herself, setting it up there for Aeron to eat at until he felt better about eating with all the other children.

Other children. However much he tried to avoid them, Aeron now lived with other children. To be truthful, the concept was still a foreign one.

Aeron sat at the desk, running a hand over the messages carved into its surface, silly faces and professions of love. He had no idea why someone would choose to be so destructive when they could be paying attention to their lessons, but from what he'd seen so far there was no corporal punishment doled out to those who misbehaved. How else would they deter children from doing something like this?

People ducked in and out of the kitchen, giving Caroline a wide berth. Aeron got the impression that she didn't cook a lot—he'd overheard her husband, Klaus, explaining the process of frying eggs to her with a very tired tone—but she insisted on this every morning, on cooking for Aeron and talking to him. He didn't like new people very much, and Caroline must have sensed that and informed others, because none of the workers tried to make contact with him. Other than Josie, but she had no boundaries, and Aeron had come to accept that.

"There we go," said Caroline, setting a plate in front of him. "Two eggs, sunny side up, and some dry toast. I'll get you some water."

Aeron nodded tightly, picking up the bread in his hands. Caroline always set cutlery out for him, but he'd never used it before. She didn't comment when he used his hands for meals, though. Just nodded and ushered him to the nearest sink to wash his hands afterward.

"So," said Caroline leadingly, returning with a glass of water in hand. She herself had a half-drunk smoothie resting on the counter. She always made them before he got down there, knowing that the noise of the machine had frightened him the first time he'd heard it. "I was wondering if you might like to take a walk with me this morning."

Usually, Aeron spent most of the day in his room, sitting in the chair by his window. He had appointments with Keelin to check on his wing, and the whirlwind that was Josie every morning before her jog, but beyond that he led a fairly quiet life.

Except for the nightmares and the times when he was trapped in memories so horrible he nearly clawed his own skin off, but he healed quickly from that and never talked about it. Ever.

"You're not busy?" Aeron asked, taking a sip of water to help wash down the dry egg and toast. He had no idea if Caroline was supposed to be a good cook or not. All he knew was that this was the only thing he could eat without vomiting.

"I cleared some space for you," said Caroline. "I realised you haven't been outside much since you got here, and I wanted to give you a bit of a tour out there."

Aeron thought on it for a moment. "Do I have to wear shoes?"

Caroline smiled softly. "No, you don't have to wear shoes."

Aeron nodded, still chewing. "Then I guess that's all right then."

—

Now …

Hope clambered over the rocks, taking care not to slip on the wet stone.

She was the furthest she'd been from her new "home" since setting up camp there, but she was desperate. The full moon was in a week—she could feel it nearing in her bones, singing in her blood, soon, soon, soon—and she needed somewhere to transform. Her first time would be long and brutal, bones shattering and resetting, muscle tearing and reforming. She'd need somewhere removed, somewhere safe. Somewhere she could destroy.

Surveying the cave, Hope wondered if maybe she'd found it.

It was hard to get into. She'd had to duck through a waterfall and scale wet, slippery rocks in the dark just to find it. It wasn't as secure as she would've liked; there was a place at the back of it where the light filtered through, made verdant green by a covering of leaves. It was a small space, not enough to get through, but still. It bothered her.

She could make it work, she supposed, kicking at the mossy floor. It was damp and she felt like she was getting a cough just breathing in the air, but it would have to be enough.

Things weren't really going to get better, after all.

—

Then …

The day was nice enough, as far as days went. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and, on the whole, it was a scene Aeron had never thought he'd get to see.

Caroline must have noted Aeron's wonder as they walked through the field, giving the area he'd first arrived at a wide berth. "Can I ask a question?"

Aeron nodded.

"Why don't you go outside by yourself?"

"I don't know," said Aeron, and it was the truth.

"It's just that you stay in your room a lot. And if that's what you need to do, that's fine, but I was wondering why you weren't coming out here before, but you're happy to when invited. Do you think you need permission?"

Aeron realised that he wasn't sure what he thought, really. Maybe he was waiting for permission. Maybe he just didn't want to feel exposed. He knew his room very well, how to set things up to alert him if anyone entered, how to stare at a certain stain on the plaster ceiling to make himself fall asleep. He didn't know the outdoors.

"I don't know," he repeated.

Caroline nodded, her hands stuffed in the pockets of her coat. "I can understand being confused," she said. "But, just so you know, you're allowed to go out here whenever you want. Even after curfew, which the other kids aren't allowed. Come on, I want to show you something."

She walked on ahead, the heels of her shoes sinking into the wet earth. It had rained the day before, Aeron remembered. He'd had to tuck his book under his legs as he sat by the window just to stop it from getting wet.

They walked to the edge of the property, right where a fence speared through the grass, crisp white contrasting with the lively green.

"It's not really something you can see with your eyes," said Caroline. "It's more something you feel. Would you like to step over the fence with me?" Even as she asked, Caroline was hauling herself over the fence, one leg over the other, until she landed on the wet grass on the other side with a squelch.

Aeron wasn't sure why she wanted him to, but he reached out with thin hands and grasped the top of the wood, trying to pull himself over. He pitched forward a little, losing balance, but Caroline put a single hand on his shoulder to steady him, and he made his way easily over.

"Do you feel that?" asked Caroline. "The difference on this side of the fence?"

There was something different, Aeron realised. Things felt wilder. He felt more exposed on this side. It was like a soft but definite weight on his shoulders had been shucked off, leaving him light and a little anxious.

Noting his distress, Caroline held out a hand. "Here, let me help you back over." Aeron took her hand, making his way back over the fence. "I'm sorry," she said, still on the other side. "I didn't realise it would bother you so much. But you felt it?"

"What is that?" asked Aeron. "Is there—is there some sort of wild magic out there?"

"Not out there, specifically," said Caroline. "But it is magic you're feeling. Inside the boundary, where you are now, we have protection spells. To someone that hasn't been allowed inside, this whole place doesn't even exist. It's spelled to turn humans and anything scary away, so that they can't even see it, let alone get access. What you felt when you crossed the fence was what the world feels like without the wards to protect you and keep you hidden, along with the rest of us."

"So," said Aeron, hands fisted on the wood in front of him. "If someone were to come looking for me …"

"They could never find you here," Caroline confirmed. "Not unless they were previously allowed in."

"What does that mean? Allowed?"

"Well," said Caroline. "I'm not completely clear on how it works, which is probably not good seeing as how I co-run the place. I know that Freya—Keelin's wife—put spells on the Armory to protect it when they moved in, mostly because Hope was living here after that and they wanted to keep her safe. Freya can invite you in or allow you in—it doesn't have to be a verbal invitation—but I think Hope can as well, because they're from the same witch bloodline. Seeing as Freya didn't allow you inside that night you arrived here, I think Hope trying to bring you in was what did that. I knew you were permitted as soon as I stepped over the boundary with you in my arms."

"Hope brought me in here?" Aeron wasn't sure he'd ever said her name out loud. He'd thought it so many times, but to have it on his lips was something different.

Caroline nodded. "I think so, yes. Magically speaking. I was the one that carried you. But you don't have to thank her unless you want to. I don't even know if she realises what she did for you. The whole night was pretty crazy."

"I don't remember much of it.'

"Is there … anything you remember about getting the injuries in the first place?"

Aeron's jaw tightening, his heart shuddering in his chest. "Not really," he lied.

"You don't have to tell me anything," said Caroline. "I mean it. This is a fresh start for you, if you want it. And if part of having a fresh start means not talking about what happened, then I understand that. But if you do want to talk about it … I'm here. Always."

He nodded, not daring to meet her gaze.

"All right," she said, reaching a hand out and drawing his attention back to her. "Are you going to help me over?"

Aeron wasn't sure what help he was, given that she was powerful enough to have leapt over something ten times this height without bother, but still. He'd never touched someone to help them before, and taking her hand to steady her as she pulled herself over the fence felt like the beginning of something different entirely.

Act IV to come.