In which, yet again, tension and carriage rides go hand in hand.

(contains mentions of underage frolicking)

It's only after a few minutes, spent espying Roland as he mutters to himself―Bit of an unmannered fellow, that Corax, isn't he? Easily offended―that Cedric gathers his courage enough to come out from behind the column. Mimicking his hesitation, the small army of enchanted barrels hops shyly behind him.

"Good morrow, Your Majesty," he announces, cringing at how timid and high his voice sounds. Roland still jumps, and it bolsters him a bit. He clears his throat importantly. "As requested, I shall at once go to the village and take care of the Community Garden. If you believe I can handle it without fainting, of course."

Roland's eyebrows shoot up, and it takes Cedric a moment to realize what just spewed from his mouth. Scrabbling to own his own boldness, he crosses his arms and does his best to hold Roland's gaze.

"Oh, I wasn't..." the King starts, having the decency to be the first to look away in embarrassment.

As he steps forward, to avoid folding in too soon, Cedric pictures the day he will slam a cell door in his face. Now you have been replaced! he could leer at him. Good one, yes, I should write it down. Sustained by the mental image, he holds his chin up and his shoulders back, even though it makes him feel like he's taking in just a third of the air he needs to live.

"Well, I see you have everything ready, yes," Roland says, clearing his throat a couple of times, leaning needlessly to the side to check the canisters that align behind the sorcerer's legs. "Excellent, let's grab the coach then, and we're off to the village."

Cedric feels his feet grow cold as ice in his shoes. "I-I can go myself," he stutters in near-panic, waving his hands. "It is no trouble."

"Nonsense! A King's duty is to his people," Roland says with forced cheerfulness, throwing a light punch in the air. "Also, I have a plan."

And of course, as usual, Cedric has to yield. If he had to imagine something comparable to going someplace alone with Roland, he would say it's a tie between spending spring break with Father and his fifth year Alchemy final. Oh, the memories.

Last spring too, when the Community Garden was in need of a magical nudge, Roland tagged along as if he were really going to help. He comes just to improvise speeches and get all the credit, Cedric thinks sullenly, as he levitates the kegs into the coach and climbs in the seat across from the King. Once again, takeoff seems to take forever.

"Blimey!" Roland exclaims once they're finally up in the air, startling Cedric from his brooding. He's gesturing at him to come look out the window on his side, pointing down. "I know the Autumn Equinox is tonight, but our island sure hasn't wasted a moment, has it?"

Wondering what in the world is the man talking about, Cedric leans forward to look. The gardens' usual shades of bright green are now a patchwork of brown and yellow, almost blindingly bright through the mist under the steely, overcast sky. He hopes Roland isn't about to ask him to find a fix for the whole of it; he would have to stay cooped up in the tower, brewing sleepless, for a week straight.

"It's not just the island," he points out, diverting the King's attention to the great radius of the early fall unwinding under their gaze.

The thick woods that surround the village, too, seem to have skipped one or two months on the calendar: most trees are completely bare. Even the firs. Fairly unnatural, and even more for harvest season. This can't all be the bad weather, he reasons, scrutinizing the grounds for unusual signs. If he squints, he can see a shock of green through the dense fog in that forsaken area, beyond the maze... but it might be a trick of the light. It has to be, he tells himself, a bad feeling crawling up his back.

"There is something really odd about all this," Roland mutters, two inches from his ear. Cedric scrambles back in his seat, as discreetly as possible. He had forgotten where he was for a moment. "I don't like it."

Roland gives him a glance, taking a breath like he wants to tell him something else. When he looks outside again, his gaze falls straight to the spot of green beyond the maze.

The previous Queen's resting place isn't the only thing hidden away in that part of the gardens, and they both know it. Does the King remember, the tragic misfire of his wishes? Never stir up the past is one of the unspoken rules between them, and Cedric knows that if he breaks it, he'd be disrupting their precarious balance at his own risk.

"That old Well, Your Majesty," he probes, the looming feeling of uncertainty more intolerable than the King's wrath. "It is still asleep, isn't it?"

As soon as the words leave his mouth, Roland looks like someone dropped an ice cube into his collar.

They were only boys when they discovered the Wishing Well. Prince Roland was chasing him, angry at something, all throughout the gardens... but when the Well spoke to them, he grabbed Cedric's arm so tight it had gone numb by the end of the Well's spiel. In a matter of seconds, the Prince had gone from scared to entranced. He pulled a coin from his pocket, ready to try out the discovery they had made.

But Cedric could sense some strange magic energy radiating from the thing, making his nose and the back of his neck itch. Let me ask Father about this, he said, in a bout of prudence that surprised both, and stood his ground as Roland tried his clumsy hand at persuasion, pressing him into the Well's stone edge as he twisted his numb arm back.

It led to Father putting an enchanted padlock on the Well's slab, to Roland the First scolding them both, and to the Prince leaving Cedric trapped in the castle escalator for the whole night in retaliation.

"Actually," Roland says gingerly, after a while, "Amber happened to wake it, some time ago."

Cedric's heart skips a beat. "Is it granting wishes again, then?" he rushes to ask, swallowing a suspicion strong enough to wring his guts like damp rags. But it doesn't work, he thinks forcefully, the magic has run out, it doesn't work anymore.

Roland's lips tighten, thinning over his teeth. "Not anymore. I was able to use my... second wish to fix Amber's, so that it would turn Sofia back to her human self, without drawbacks. Then I forbade the Well from granting anymore wishes."

"But... that Well isn't made to work without drawbacks," Cedric argues. Or to obey Kings.

Roland lays a hard stare on him, one he cannot make himself hold. "I would know, wouldn't I?" he hisses through his teeth.

It was only years after his and Cedric's accidental discovery that Roland visited the Well again.

When the health of King Roland the First started declining, he chose to abdicate. The throne befell Prince Roland and not Princess Matilda, and the Prince and his Queen-to-be grew worried enough about their childless marriage―barren, Mother called it, a word that tasted dry and hopeless―to resort to the Wishing Well.

Cedric, the last person Roland would go to for his personal matters, only knows the story in bits and pieces, from the whispers he's heard and his own deductions. He knows not which of them made the wish, or if it was joint, or what was paid for it. All he knows is that the new Queen cut her golden braid, and that the wishes came true: not even a month after the Crown was passed on, her pregnancy was announced. The kingdom rejoiced.

The drawbacks, however, were tragic.

The wish gave the Queen a twin birth she could not survive. And that very same night, the moment the grieving young King put his newborns' to his ailing father's withered lips, so that he may kiss them into their new life, Roland the First breathed his last on their foreheads instead. Two lives, for two lives.

"So it is granting wishes," Cedric mutters, shuddering in his seat. "Like I just said."

This is how Sofia was transformed, that time she came to the lair in a cat form... oh, he thinks, overcome by the daunting realization. Oh no. Wormwood. He has to fight the need to put his head in his hands and give in to panic. But it cannot be... he couldn't... he would never be that stupid...

"We're here," Roland says, in a tone of finality. Conversation over, if it can be called a conversation.

Cedric takes a breath, and forces himself to focus. "Are we landing?"

"Not quite," Roland says, a strained smile and his index raised. "Last time it took all day, right? So this time I figured it will be much quicker if we just fly over. You'll direct the stream with magic―just like Corax did, you know―and I will make sure you don't fall off. We'll be done in a matter of minutes!"

Very casually, the King opens his door to wave at the people below. An enthusiastic cheer rises up to greet him. Cedric's mind, whirred to a halt at Roland's words, restarts slowly. What does he mean―how exactly does he plan to prevent him from falling...?

The answer comes sooner than he'd like. The King gathers the seatbelt on his side, gestures for him to rise from his seat and come closer, and hands him the belt to fasten around his waist.

"This is why I wanted to accompany you, see? Perfectly safe," he says, tightening the knot himself. Then, to Cedric's distress, he slips a hand between the makeshift security line and his back, and gathers the loose end in his free hand, like a length of rope. "A trick from my rock-climbing days!"

It must be a miracle you've survived those, Cedric answers him, even if only in his head. If anyone were ever to doubt James being Roland's son, this moment could be brought up as counterargument. Roland seems absolutely certain that, in case he falls, he'll be able to reel in Cedric's entire weight with the strength of a single arm. The thought makes him lightheaded for a moment, and forget to be offended.

"I have got to ask, Cedric: you are sure you won't faint today, right?" the King asks in a serious tone. The grip on the belt tightens. Cedric, hyperaware of the four knuckles pressing into his spine, just nods absently. "Alright then! Ready?"

Faintly, he tries, "Your Majesty..."

"Don't worry, though, it would be fine even if you were to fall: there is hay over there, see? Just like when we used to play derby and―" he halts, and trails off.

Cedric, suddenly washed over with distant memories of flying lessons, of a much younger Roland telling him the exact same thing, opens the door on his side a bit too forcefully. Plunging down into the freshly ploughed soil below would certainly be less painful than recalling those times, he thinks. But it's too late.

It was a different time, years ago, when they still were all in potential, when nothing felt like it was set in stone.

In their youth, Roland couldn't seem to decide if he wanted a little brother to play with, a personal servant at his beck and call, or a punch bag to dump his frustration on.

All throughout their teen years, the third would often prevail; then, all of a sudden, it came a strange, rainy summer, with the smell of change and wet hay that swept over their heads like a peal. It brought a tentative closeness, that never quite grew into trust; it brought Roland's voice, that stopped cracking so much sooner than his own did, and Roland's hands that had grown before the rest of him, big and clumsy and unaware of all their touch could ruin.

It takes only a moment to see the fault in Roland's plan. As the King shouts instructions to the coachman, Cedric has to shoot his arm out to hold the door open against the wind, and crouch low on the carriage floor to direct the spray down in a wave pattern that can cover most of the Community Garden in one go. Fortunately, he has never been scared of heights and, aided by survival instinct and the fact that he cannot see Roland watching him, at least his spell works just fine.

After a while, even if he's doing it while half-dangling from a flying coach, the task allows for a sort of transfixion to descend on him. Focused on casting, he just distantly feels the King's grip adjust a couple of times. First, it's a two-handed hold on the makeshift lifeline; then it's an arm directly encompassing his middle. He doesn't quite notice, until Roland speaks.

"I might not have thought this all the way through," he admits, his exhale chilling Cedric's ear. Cedric's hand slips and the coach door almost slams back in his face. Roland hauls him back in, the tug of his arm like a punch in the diaphragm. "Can you still manage?"

"O-of course," Cedric wheezes. He just collapsed the previous day, and he isn't in exactly top shape, but he knows the lightheadedness he feels now has nothing to do with lack of oxygen.

You're alive! a much younger Roland yells from a memory, Damn, I said the hay was there if you were to fall, but I didn't think you'd really―are you alright?

The forbidden swearword that graced his heated exclamation made Cedric snort out the hay in his mouth. I'm your Royal Sorcerer, he said importantly, puffing his chest out. Nothing can kill me.

Right. As soon as he made sure Cedric hadn't broken his neck in the fall, the Prince snickered. You sure are sturdier than you look!

Half a jab, half a compliment. It still was enough to make Cedric's cheeks heat up. The young Prince's voice had some undefined awe in it, and his eyes took in the whole of him, as sunlight bathing a blade of grass. He said I'm strong, Cedric thought, coherency blinking in and out of function.

In that moment, anything Roland may have asked, he would have delivered.

His superhuman luck and resilience was all he had that was truly his―so he thought at the time―and he would take an almost morbid delight in testing them. He would have taken any dare if it held the promise of praise and respect, like a trophy to be won once the pain was gone and hidden, and he'd do it with a recklessness that bordered on self-destruction. Maybe this is what Father calls a sorcerer's loyalty, he used to theorize.

Prince Roland, who could be as courteous as they come when the mood struck, reached one of those big hands to him, and Cedric took it with just a smidge of hesitation. Always the jester, instead of helping him up, Roland let himself fall over him, as if the tug of Cedric's hand had been enough to pull him off balance.

Ow, Roland said, laughing and only half-wrestling him in the spiky hay, on his spiky adolescent bones. Ceddy, you're like a bed of nails.

Consider getting off me then, my Prince? he replied dryly, shoving. And ew, don't call me that.

You've got hay in your hair, Roland said then, too quietly for a simple observation. He had laughed at nothing, a moment after, his handsome princely laugh ruined by that snort at the end, that his father the King often chided him for.

But there was no snort that time, the laugh was subdued, tinged with nervousness. He started plucking the straws from Cedric's hair, one by one, while the huffing and flapping of their winged horses nearby fell away from Cedric's mind, as though the Prince were plucking away the noises and thoughts as well, slipping them from his head one by one. They fell into an unknown, fluttering stillness, and Cedric found himself holding his breath.

Roland's boyish face sobered up. Father has given me a portrait of my betrothed, he said, almost casually.

Will you keep it in a locket? Cedric asked. Is she very beautiful? he didn't ask. He could already picture her: a refined beauty, perfect in every way, with golden mermaid-hair and a sweet smile that would melt the Prince's heart. It hurts, almost, having guessed with such accuracy.

I don't know. I don't even know her, Roland said. He looked away. I don't want to marry someone I don't even know.

Almost rhetorically, Cedric rebutted, Tell your father.

Roland laughed at the inside joke. As if he'd listen. And Cedric just hummed in sympathy, relaxing a fraction under the heavy warm expanse of the Prince's body.

I wish I could marry someone I've known for a while. Roland's stout fingers found his gloveless hand, the skin of his knuckles bitten thick, and held it like it meant something. He leaned down, rubbing a squeak out of their muddy leather boots. Someone I like.

But... I'm your Royal Sorcerer, Cedric protested, the only certainty in his emptied mind. And you don't even like me, he didn't say.

Roland just laughed again, his laugh even more small and nervous. When the straws were over, as though it were inevitable, Roland's weight pressed him down into the hay, and their mouths fell together.

My very own Royal Sorcerer, the Prince whispered into his lips, like he were breathing life into him. Cedric still recalls the current that shot through his whole body at the contact, the weight of their hands as they hung from their wrists, both unsure of what to do with them. The deep ache it set inside him, to feel needed for the first time. My one and only.

There were other times, of course. A summer of midnight secrets and hushed fumbling, where the Prince's mouth hadn't been the only taste he got acquainted with. He knew it was hopeless, from the very start. But sweet dreams cost nothing, and he fell into it as readily as he fell to his knees. So there is one thing you're good for, after all, Roland told him, half a jab and half a compliment, fingers shaping to his head, pulling in, mussing the parting line of his hair.

When, as summers always do, it had to end, his heart didn't break: it just dried up, growing hard and brittle as a withered sapling, the Prince's taste forever bitter in his mouth.

Blinking a couple of times, Cedric shakes the empty canisters, and leans out to check if the whole crop is covered. On the far edge, where they started, the soil is already crawling with fast-growing sprouts. The moment of recollection fades as it came, as a rain puddle on a hot day.

"Look, it's working," Roland points out, the people waving at him and cheering. He waves back, and nudges him in the side with the crook of his elbow. "Say hi, Cedric."

"Apologies, my hands are full," he evades, spelling the empty kegs in a line on the carriage floor, a white-knuckled grip on his wand. It isn't him they're cheering for, anyway.

Roland shrugs and, loud in his ear, reminds the villagers that the Autumn Equinox shall not be stopped by any force of nature, and that a feast will definitely take place at the castle, a feast to which they're all invited. The people cheer even louder.

As King and sorcerer resume proper distance, Roland finally closes the coach door. He is still smiling from ear to ear.

"See? We were done in a moment! Good job, Cedric!" He pats his shoulder, making him choke on the yawn he couldn't hold in anymore.

"My apologies," Cedric says, the second time in the span of a minute.

"No need," Roland says, waving his hand. "It was a long night of work, I've been told? I'm relieved everything worked. Pleasantly surprised, in fact."

Cedric sighs. His potions have a much higher success rate than his spells, but he knows better than to argue: he would be upsetting the balance even more, overstepping some other unspoken rule. And it is so much worse, when Roland expresses some semblance of care and recognition of his work, the earnest note in his tone as pure as lead glass. It is nothing but propriety, and the promise of dashed hopes.

"It was no trouble," he murmurs, busying himself with the safety belt still tied around his waist. Maybe Wormwood was right, saying he always downplays what he does. And slouches like he's trying to disappear. But with the phantom of Roland's touch printed in old and new memories like a brand, he feels like every part of his body is attached wrong, and he cannot coordinate his hands even to untie a simple knot. He glances outside in discomfort.

They're flying over the river, where his dam, at least, seems to be holding up fine. The King leans out the window to encourage the workers, who are still finicking around it, and Cedric can't help but shrink in his seat, and pray he's not seen. The belt won't come loose, so he crosses his arms over it, sullen.

"Blimey, the current is still so fast," Roland says, still looking down. "Look at it go! Good thing you didn't fall in yesterday. At this rate, we would have fished you out three kingdoms over."

Cedric glances back at him. "I... didn't fall in?"

"Oh, no, Corax ran there before you could touch the water, and he―what's it called? You two just―puff!―disappeared. He was remarkably fast, like he had wings!"

Cedric feels his back break out in cold sweat. Wormwood pulled off a successful two-person Transport charm, purely out of instinct. He did it with my energy, he thinks, stunned. No wonder it took a toll.

"And the guards told me they've seen him reappear at the gate," Roland continues, gesturing. "They said he looked like a ghost was on his heels or something, really worried. And that you weren't looking too well either."

Too low for Roland to hear, Cedric mutters, "Now, here's an understatement."

Back in the workshop, the circumstances called for Wormwood to have a wand. Putting the very one he has stolen back in his hand meant putting there his new, still raw trust as well. But Wormwood is doing well, not abusing the power at all: Cedric could feel him use the spell he taught him, nothing more. If Wormwood was as distressed as they say, he ponders, maybe he really wasn't aware of what he was doing... could the raven be just as trapped as he is in this link system Father mentioned?

"I never knew you had such a reliable and talented friend. I always thought you were kind of a loner, at school," the King is saying, blunt. The man still has so much of the young Prince Cedric used to know in him, and maybe that's the problem. "You should have brought him to court sooner!"

Steering towards the castle, the carriage briefly falters in the current.

"He... wasn't ready," Cedric evades. "It was quite the surprise when he showed up, actually. He can be a bit... brash, and difficult. One could say... he's not used to being around huma―I mean, people."

"Hm, must be a sorcerer thing," Roland mutters. "What I meant earlier, when you overheard me... it doesn't matter if the fellow is a bit odd: he has talent, charm, and is well liked at court. Unless he has a previous engagement I haven't been told about, there's really no reason for you to oppose him staying here and helping you."

Cedric's mouth dries up. They've known him for two days, and they find him charming, and admire his borrowed talent. How quaint.

"With all due respect, Your Majesty," he starts, trying to keep the tremble out of his voice, "it didn't quite sound like you were getting me help."

The King tenses, his back going as stiff as a wooden board. "Cedric, come on, we all know that you're not—" he halts, and shutters of propriety close behind his eyes. "I mean, you've always been... inconstant."

For a moment, Cedric had let himself slip into memories of a different time, a different life. An era where his mistakes hadn't yet piled up in this daunting tower, this decade of service that got everyone convinced he is barely worth his allowance. If they could be rid of him, they'd rejoice―he can already hear the countless voices say, Yes, yes of course the lad isn't cut for this, I knew all along. And he, too, should have known, but it's not like he ever had a choice, did he?

"It has been a rough couple of days, I cannot deny," Cedric admits. Then, his voice a raw, exposed whisper, he dares, "But... all that changed in the past year... does it count for naught?"

"We all thought things were getting better, yes," Roland says dryly. "But we never know if we can rely on you or not... and frankly, it was clear from the start that this role was going to be too much for you."

Cedric's hands clench over his arms, fingers sinking in the sleeves of his robe. He wants to list his accomplishments and throw them back in the King's face, make him admit he's wrong about him, and always has been. If Sofia were here, she'd tell him, she wouldn't let her father sit there and tell him he's been nothing but a dragging weight for all these years. But he can't do it himself: his mind is an empty, barren land, and he can remember none of his own merits.

"Does my track record bring shame to the great house of Winslow?" he bristles, when the sting grows too painful to bear, for a moment unafraid of the consequences. It's a risky and desperate reach, combing Roland's flawless reputation for cracks. "You'd have me think you're doing this for my sake, and not for your own prestige?"

On the King's face, every trace of good mood has disappeared. As he inhales, he splays his fingers tensely, in controlled exasperation.

"Why do you always think everyone is against you?" Roland asks him, his voice filled with a strange frustration. "Ever since we were children―"

"Because everyone is," Cedric strains, quietly and a bit too forcefully for what would be proper. After all the boundaries they blurred in their youth, it became so unnatural, to interact without anyone as buffer between them. Cedric thought he could compensate, bowing over-zealously and dressing his words in oil, as if it could wash the Prince's taste from his mouth. And now he has interrupted the King―"No one thinks I'm fit for my job, don't pretend you don't see―everyone, everyone expects―"

"We expect competence!" Roland says, harsh and forceful. A chill runs down Cedric's spine at his tone, and the belt still around him seems to tighten by a tenfold, smothering. "And the respect we owe to Goodwyn's lineage cannot account for neglecting the safety of this kingdom. There is no shame in admitting your shortcomings, and you should be aware you are not in the position to reject help when it is offered to you."

"I―he doesn't even have a licence!" Cedric chokes out, attacking the knot again, humiliation and anger scathing his insides. "Has he told you that?!"

"He's told us he's a private student, so what? It's reproachful that you would slander your own pupil like this," Roland rebuts, raising a hand in front of him when he sucks in a breath to protest. "All I know is that when the stakes were at their highest, you have faltered. The example set by your father―"

"Oh, I see what this is all about," Cedric hisses, low so the coachman won't hear, face burning and hands chilled, clutching the belt with bone-white fists. "If only Goodwyn where here instead of me, right?"

The memories come, inescapable as grasping talons, and for both of them there's no keeping them at bay, no distraction, no way around.

A decade prior, it's the middle of another summer, the middle of another night. The twins are early, wishes racing against time to let them meet the ailing King Roland I, and the Royal Physician and his assistants dart around like white, ghostly grasshoppers in their nightshirts, shouting contrasting orders.

At the centre of the sickroom, the cauldron's cloud of smoke a furnace on his fevered face, Cedric stirs and mixes and tries to keep up with the dozens of different things they're demanding of him at once.

Desperately, he attempts to focus on what he's doing, and tune out the rest of the room―make it faster, add this, faster; this is hopeless, Your Majesty; Goodwyn would have done it! Call for him, call for him now―there is no time, Your Majesty... quick, she's in agony, for pity's sake!―the rows and rows of staring eyes, pale faces wavering like ghosts in the trembling candlelight. Even though the skin won't fissure, his gloveless hands are bright red and swollen from gripping the scorching metal ladle, from shredding nettle and ivy leaves. All is for nothing.

She has been Roland's wife for eight years, and Queen for eight months. Her hair is cut short still, a golden halo on sweat-soaked pillows, her smile is sweet and fierce, and Roland loves her. Bury me you know where, she whispers, as though her demise had been nothing but the expected outcome. It will be clear, in due time, that she has paid her life for their wish, in the pledge of the golden braid that was her pride and joy. She clutches the young King's hand, and clings to life until he has nodded, promised he will honour her will. Her gritted smile ebbs, falls, and she is no more.

It all unfolds before Cedric's eyes, and he has no power over the weight of fate. The quiet sound of her last breath will echo in the room for days, in his dreams for years.

Then―among the mutter and sob of the onlookers, and before the loud, piercing cry of two perfect newborns, seven minutes apart―it's the cauldron kicked across the room, and Roland's fist in Cedric's collar―If only... if only Goodwyn had been here instead of you!―his mouth twisted into a howl of agony, screaming, screaming.

"Don't you dare," Roland hisses through his teeth, dangerously low. He glances at the coachman, who steers peaceful and unaware. Roland, too, is still holding his end of the belt, but he lets go of it in a harsh gesture, like a whiplash, to point his finger. "Don't you dare bring those times into this. It's been ten years, I've made peace with it... accepted that you just didn't have what it would have taken to save her―if I dare think you could have, my sanity will desert me."

And for a moment he, too, looks like he spoke too much.

All that was left of their shared youth―the long years of childhood quarrels, the tension and the brief spells of sunlight, that one strange summer doomed to end in tears, and the years after it that rolled away too fast, until they were in roles they weren't entirely ready for―has been beaten into the dust by the first years of the twins' lives.

Every time one of them coughed or sneezed, it was full-blown panic, and the same nightmare all over again. Father came to threaten that, if he was summoned to the palace to concoct a cold remedy one more time, he would have Hexley Hall suspend Cedric's licence. Nevermind the difference between finding a miracle cure for the unknown under pressure, and brewing a remedy for a common seasonal ailment could fill three volumes in Mother's spindly handwriting.

"So this is about you, after all," Cedric hisses back. He pulls his wand, and finally just zaps the tight belt off himself.

Roland pretends he hasn't spoken, an unpleasant flush up his neck, his hands balled into fists balanced on his knees like rocks on a cliffside. The conversation is over, and even if Roland was the first to bring the past into it, Cedric knows he's not allowed to reply anymore. They don't look at each other for the rest of the trip.

Cedric trains his gaze out of the window, arms clenched over his middle, bitterness like a great swamp soling everything inside him. Stupid feasts and power plays to be damned, he should have stayed in bed, gotten himself a good rest, instead of slaving for the whims of these ingrates.

Distantly, at the blurry corner of his eye, a formation of three black shapes plays in the sky.

Wormwood sulks for the rest of the morning.

It's lunchtime when he finishes with the greenhouse, as the work there needs to be more methodical, vase by vase.

Once he's done, he opens the buckles and lets the canister topple to the ground, stretching and rolling his shoulders. If there's any consolation, the potion endeavour has been a success: the servants have been marvelling at the growing plants since they sprouted. Eerily reminiscent of the instant growth of his blackberry bramble―still hidden, drying the soil to the bone―Wormwood hasn't stayed to watch. But he cannot stay in the gardens too long either: he doesn't feel like being in the middle of the hustle and bustle once it's time to harvest the now fruitful crops.

With the last drops of potion, he grows himself some loquats to snack on and pretends they are enough, bored to death but still too riled up to go back to the castle.

Just a few minutes after he walked away from the King, he saw a carriage take flight. The King must have accompanied Cedric to the village, otherwise the small escort of guards would have had no reason to be there. The thought of the two of them in their box in the sky all morning―he presumes―nags him and nags him until his middle grows tense, and his mood dark. He can't even finish the fruit. He sighs and pockets the remaining loquats, his head aflutter with thoughts.

Human beings that can talk, maybe they too can finally set their things straight, he thinks sullenly. Would it make Cedric happy, to have more human connections, like Sofia does? It's wrong for them to only have one, he reminds himself. But he cannot help but feel wretched by the mere thought of it. Is it like the rabbit said? Do his wants go even beyond friendship and pair-bonds? He doesn't even know what is beyond that.

He looks up, because it relieves the strange pressure behind his eyes, that won't go away no matter how much he rubs the back of his hand against his eyelids. He gazes into the steely sky above and, just barely, he catches sight of a dark shape.

His breath hitches. Is it the coach, finally on the flight back?

It's not, he realises almost immediately. The weather is not exceptional for visibility, but his eyesight is still sharp. There are three black winged forms in the sky, and he doesn't want to believe what he's seeing. Was the rabbit right? he asks himself, staring up at what are, unmistakeably, other ravens. Was Clover right about everything? He feels the whole of his skin break out in goosebumps, hackles rising.

"Here he is!" caws one of the ravens, once they're near enough. "The flesh-raven, now a flesh-man!"

"How dare you come here?!" he shouts, and he doesn't care if he's not supposed to be strict about his territory for the rules of his species. He feels the intrusion like an assault to his own person, a disrespect that fires up the anger inside him―and just like he wants Roland away from Cedric, he wants these impudents away from his home.

"The red fox has told the forest about you," another says, joining the first in circling and sneering. "And we were there to listen."

"Isn't it time you leave this to someone who can handle it?" asks the first.

The third adds, "Someone who can at least fly!"

"This is still mine, and I will handle it as I please!" Wormwood yells to the sky, teeth bared. "Begone!"

No one dared violate his turf right under his nose before. Just like the King, stealing away his companion without any reason―but he cannot maul the King, so he'll set for mauling the invaders.

The ravens soar elegantly overhead, laughing, and Wormwood dashes after them on foot, crossing the deserted orchards, seeing nothing but their sneering faces, hearing nothing but their hoarse, mocking calls. When he sees the coast approaching, he doesn't see an insurmountable boundary—he only thinks, Good, a perfect takeoff.

The feeling of his toes digging into the dry grass and crumbly soil―as he pushes his foot on the edge of the cliff and leaps into the air―is something primal, something he's missed with every fibre of his being. He has barely the time to feel the rush of wind like a blissful caress over his velvet-clad body, his cape unravelling in billowing folds, the leap of gravity in his heart.

Then, he weights like a man, and not like a bird: his bones are not hollow, and he has no strong wings to hold him up. The feeling of loss pains him more than realising he'll plunge down, straight into the foamy waves crashing on the rocks below.

A distant voice, almost indistinguishable from the rush of the fall in his ears, and the merciless cackle of the departing rivals, shouts his name.

jfc Wormwood.