In which, to make an understatement, tension escalates.

The raven opens his eyes.

Or rather, his eyes open. The action, if it weren't anything more than an involuntary reflex, would be incongruous in nature: dead birds don't open their eyes.

It still leaves space for regret. The light is low, but blinds him anyway, forcing him to blink away the hazy vision that persists at the edges of his field of view. The foxfire glistening on the bare rocks, the pinprick light of Winifred's pipe. Tears glistening above him, like falling stars, like the afterimage of a dream.

Something went wrong, says a feeling at the pit of his stomach, and a cold heavy cloak of disappointment falls over him. He was never spiritual, as a bird or as a man: after death, he expected nothing but oblivion and peace.

Instead, it's noise and movement and a dull throbbing behind his browbone―and a disembodied voice, high and shrill like a seagull in the spring. He lets out a pained groan as the voice repeats its chirping call, and the chirp is a word―it's his name. Dead birds don't open their eyes, but his are open, facing the cloudy slate of the evening sky, dark streaks of fluttering leaves overhead, a blurry human shape. He blinks, blind and lost as though he were freshly hatched.

"Oh, Wormwood, finally!" The voice follows, sounding wet with relief as he attempts to focus. It's like moving in mud. "It… it is you, right?"

It sounds like…

"S-sofia…?" he croaks.

"Who else?! What happened?"

What is Sofia doing in his afterlife? What does she mean, who else should it…? He tries to speak, ask her to give him a moment, dammit, but he doesn't know how to work his throat all over again. Am I… alive? he wonders, because he has asked himself if he were dreaming too many a time lately. But it can't be… if I'm alive it would mean…. He tries to recollect what happened in the place they visited, the Threshold―he remembers choosing to give up something that he thought most precious, for something that he valued even more―

Two huge hands wrap around the whole of him, lifting him towards the vague expanse of a face. He flinches in pain, biting blindly at the touch. The girl lets out a yelp, and lets him fall a short distance until he lands into some cloth below.

"Ow―why did you do that?" Sofia cries out, between tearful and worried.

At last, his dried eyes start working again and he can put her into focus. Sofia is huge, towering. Possibly, even more than what she used to be compared to his raven form… he wonders if they switched sizes while he was down. And what does she have to be crying about?

"Wormwood, please!" Sofia implores. Her hands come near again, and he can see the small―too small―cut of his beak on her finger, and a few loose feathers come off when he flutters clumsily away from her. "Talk to me!"

Feathers.

"I… I'm a…" he croaks slowly, the world halting at the realisation. He's a bird again… but not a raven. "What… happened…?"

Words feel alien in his little beak, in the small pointed tongue it didn't take long to grow unused to. He puts a wing to his face, trying to rub his eyes like humans do, and only succeeds in ruffling his feathers even more.

"You tell me, Wormwood!" Sofia says, starting to sound a bit frayed on top of everything else. "You transformed so suddenly―I thought you had just disappeared!"

She lifts a fold of black cloth in her hand: his cloak. Looking at it… it seems impossible that he has worn it on his body. He looks down at the unfamiliar shape of his little wings.

"I'm a… a dwarf jay, or something…" he murmurs, finally focusing enough to recognise the pointy outline and subtle markings of his feathers. He barely cares if his voice is shaking. "A black dwarf jay. It's not even―what… what in the world happened to me…?"

Sofia splays her hands, brows furrowed in concern. In one hand, she still clutches her white handkerchief.

"I don't know, I only saw this bright green glow, and then the grass grew in a magic circle, see? And Mr. Cedric is still―" Sofia halts, glancing down, "still asleep."

"Wait, what?" Wormwood balks, finally shaken from his confusion. "It… it didn't work? After all this, it didn't even work?!"

The Princess gives him a distressed shrug. He follows her gaze, and realizes the cloth he landed on is the sorcerer's stomach. He had forgotten how huge Cedric used to be compared to himself, all the time… and even more now. Now he could fit whole in the palm of Cedric's hand.

If only he were awake to do it. Now he's nothing but tatters of robe, bruise-coloured eyelids, pale clammy skin. There is Wormwood's abandoned black cloak cushioning his head, probably courtesy of the Princess, who had been kneeling next to him.

Wormwood cannot move for a moment, can barely breathe, too afraid to check for a pulse. To think they might have been tricked, to think his last resort didn't work, and he gave up… everything, to gain nothing at all.

"Don't worry… he should be okay, just still asleep," Sofia says.

"Don't worry? How would I not worry? How do you know he's alright?" Wormwood snaps, way harsher than intended. He looks about for something to direct his frustration at, eyes focusing on the grass around them. "You―you stepped into the circle, didn't you?!"

She wasn't there, how could she know? But he needn't move or question further: under the tiny claws of his feet, as soon as he calms down, he can feel the weak rise and fall of Cedric's breathing. It isn't strong, it isn't full of life. But it's steady. Steady.

"I had to… you were both gone, Mr. Cedric started… muttering, and flailing and…" Sofia keens, gesturing impotently, arms open. "I tried to help him… and I saw his wounds disappear. My handkerchief dried, like magic."

The bloodstains have disappeared from the white silk, and from Sofia's scratched arms. Only the bloody prints of Wormwood's human hands―so huge―remain on her dress.

Wormwood hops higher on the sorcerer's chest, and laboriously tugs down the ripped neck of his shirt.

"Even this one is gone," he confirms, though Sofia can see for herself. Her brow doesn't smoothen, and her voice remains tinged with anguish.

She asks, "Did you do this, then? Is that why you aren't a human anymore?"

"Yes, but…" He doesn't know how to explain. This isn't what he wanted. He didn't want to deal with even more consequences. He thought he would make his final act, and be on his way, be free of his mistakes, be at peace. He swallows emptily, powerless against the dread that washes over him.

Winifred's Imago said he is something else now, a Familiar. He looks around, as though the destroyed clearing could bring him answers. No trace of the Well, crushed under the fallen chestnut. Has his human form vanished along with the Well's magic? Has any of what they've been through yielded any results? Cedric isn't even awake! Maybe Winifred made a mistake in her planning. Maybe Cedric stopped him before the spell could be completed. Maybe Sofia stepping on the grass made it go wrong.

From the depleted source of his emotions, something comes roaring up. It is a faceless, blurred anger that he doesn't know where to place. On Cedric? On their mothers? On himself? Whose fault is this?! He starts breathing hard, and the sound of steps in the grass makes him skitter on his light feet.

"Someone is coming," he says, alarmed. He recoils when he recognises the cadence of their steps. It's two people, approaching at a brisk, military pace. "It's the guards!"

"Yes, I… I know," Sofia says, taking a deep breath, wringing her hands a little. "I was worried so… I went and called the guards on patrol on the bridge. It's best if they don't see you, I think… and you can't be much help like this, anyway."

"Why, you little―" He doesn't even know what comes spewing out his mouth, but the Princess leans away and averts her eyes in discomfort. And annoyance.

"Wormwood, I had to," she says, exhaling breath out her white nostrils. "Will you calm down a momen―"

"Don't tell me to calm down!"

"Listen, you wouldn't wake up, and Mr. Cedric sounded like he was in pain… I'm not big enough to carry either of you." Sofia gestures upwards, to the sky churning and rumbling in preparation for another storm, and around to the creepy ruined clearing where the wind whispers in the destroyed Well's high voice. "And I… don't like it here, and wanted all of us to leave. And if they saw you they'd―"

"Are you out of your mind?" Wormwood interjects, gesturing violently at her dress with both wings, feeling the shapeless anger finally focus in on something, on someone. "You look like someone made mincemeat out of you! My human clothes are still here! Are you trying to frame Cedric?"

"Wha―?" Sofia balks, taken aback, eyes widening with horror. "Wormwood, what are you saying? They would never think ill of Mr. Cedric like that!"

The raven wants to scream. Has she forgotten how ruthless and devoted the guards are? Wasn't she right there, the time with the little griffin? He fumes, puffing up with wordless fractiousness for a moment.

"Wormwood, I'm sorry," Sofia says. "I was afraid it was my fault for suggesting you to… I just wanted to help my friends, I didn't know what else―"

"Friends? You think we are friends, child?" he sneers. "For all we know, this is all your fault! You come here, you ruin everything stepping into the magic circle, and then call the guards on us? First the Cove, now this, and you call yourself our friend?"

"What!" The shocked offence on Sofia's face resembles Roland in the most hateful way. She flushes red, snapping, "You bodily threw me into a bramble! I―wait a minute."

A pause. Her eyes narrow. Wormwood rethinks of what he said, and prays all there is that he hasn't said what he remembers saying.

Slowly, defensively, Sofia inquires, "What has the Cove to do with anything…?"

In his mind's eye, Wormwood sees the two roads splitting at a fork before him. One is new, barely explored, a thin, thankless path within thorns and bushes, that he can hardly see through the fog of his anger. And the other is a well-trodden road, plain and open, and he has walked it all his life, and every event seems to push him to take it. The choice is made without a second thought.

"It has to do with everything," he whispers in a rush, aware that the approaching guards can't hear him in this form. He pictures himself in his human form― strong and imposing and frightening―instead of this miserable miniature corvid nonsense. "Have you already forgotten, you dim child, how you escaped within an inch of your life from that Sea Monster?"

"The… the Sea Monster." Sofia echoes, a little hollowly.

Of course she remembers. That very night, she had come running up the tower of the Floating Palace to spin the whole tale to them, assuming they had just stayed there the entire day.

Cedric had listened to her grand adventure sitting on his stool like a log―as that water-blast had bruised his ribs a bit even through his Protection Charm. Cedric's face was frozen in a very awkward, guilty smile, his robe still stiff with dried saltwater and the wooden workshop steamy with the potion he used to get rid of that horrid tail. Upon her inquiry, he dismissed the greenish shade of his face as residual seasickness. She brought him mint tea from the galley, for his nausea. He got teary-eyed.

"But… it can't be," Sofia says, and even against her will the wheels in her mind are turning, recollecting, putting two and two together. A purple monster with magic abilities. A black, green-eyed squid.

Wormwood smiles, as much as his beak allows him to. He has done it, and now he must run with it. He gives her his hunter's smile, the one that used to terrify prey in his days of youth.

"Oh yes, it can," he says softly. "The two of us were supposed to be there on the Floating Palace with you, but did anyone see us? Not for meals, not for a swim, not even when everyone was in danger. Where do you think we were, Princess?"

Sofia doesn't answer, staring down at nothing. He hops closer to her, and she rises to her feet and takes a step back, shaking her head no the same way Cedric does. She is a child made of the habits of adults, done and undone by the will of her Amulet, a miserable thing that deserves no pity.

"Oh, I'll tell you," he hisses. "You were so focused on your silly little key, that you saw nothing. You blind snakeling, you didn't recognise the wand, nor the books, not even the voice!"

"No―" Sofia mutters, the cruel shadow of understanding darkening her wide eyes.

She can only gasp for air for a moment, like a pink-mouthed trout out of water, glancing from him to Cedric. Then, she steels herself, her voice low to hide from the guards now very near.

"You're lying. The Sea Monster wanted Oona's Enchanted Comb. Why would Mr. Cedric want a comb?"

"For its power, you dimwit. All sorcerers are on a lifelong quest for power, and he is no different."

"Not at the expense of someone else!" Sofia says, in a whisper that would have been a shout had they been alone. Her hand hovers on Cedric's supine form as if to protect him from the slander. "Mr. Cedric is a good person, and he's my friend! He would never―"

"Princess Sofia!" two voices call in unison, interrupting her.

The guards can't see the three of them yet, concealed by the darkness and the grass as they are. Sofia squirms like she wants to answer them, but Wormwood inches closer to her, looming over her as though he could see his shadow spreading over her. She has chills on her bare, scratched arms.

Almost in her ear, he coos, "Don't presume to know what he would or wouldn't do. You don't know anything at all. In the quest for power, it's all means to an end. The path is ruthless; victory or death, and nothing else. Remember that."

To prove it, he lunges and makes to take the Family Wand from the grass next to her. Her hand moves away instinctively, remembering the nip of his little beak. He cannot carry the wand in this cursed form… but it should be enough to prove his point. The child's round face hardens slightly, her mouth thinning to reproach until its rosy colour pales to white.

"Clover was right," she says, her voice brittle and her mouth quivering. "I should have ditched you both."

"Isn't he always right?" Wormwood echoes sarcastically. Good, he thinks. She should regret helping him, helping them. He hopes she regrets every step she took for their sake. If she regrets it, she won't make that mistake again. It will be all a good life lesson.

Sofia shakes her head. "Maybe you don't know anything, Wormwood."

He can find nothing better in himself than a derisive huff. Sofia shakes her head, and climbs to her feet to catch the guards' attention.

"Over here!" she calls, sounding louder and angrier than she probably intended.

The guards spot her, and rush to her, their eyes going wide. "Princess! What happened here? Are you alright?"

Wormwood hates to follow her advice, abandon Cedric there, but she's right. If he's stuck again in bird form… this is now between the humans. He watches the redheaded guard kneel by Cedric, a shock of bitterness coursing through him. Hidden in the shadow, he spreads his wings for the first time in what feels like a decade, and kicks off the ground to take flight. He barely has time to grab onto the lowest branch before his wings give out, aching and too weak to fly.

"Hi Frederick… it was just some magic… uh―incident," Sofia stutters, lie not quite ready this time. Getting sloppy there, Snakelet, Wormwood thinks nastily.

"Princess Sofia, where are your shoes―is that blood?" the taller guard asks, staring at her and her stained dress in open disbelief. Then, Wormwood clearly sees his posture change, stiffening as he glances to the sorcerer laid out on the grass, hand tightening on his spear. "Have… have you been attacked?"

There we go, Wormwood thinks angrily. She is always in the damn way.

And then Sofia does something he didn't expect: she hesitates to deny it. She even glances up towards Wormwood for a few seconds, taking too long to answer. Wormwood feels the seconds trickle away like sand in an hourglass.

What is she doing? He wonders, an imaginary tingle of sweat on his back.

"No, I haven't," she finally says, so late, so unconvincing. She adds unhelpfully, gesturing to the stains on her dress, "This is not mine."

Wormwood realises his mistake, and the crawling feeling goes to full-body shiver. Is she trying to get him executed? Cursing through his clenched jaw, Wormwood abandons the scene, heading over to the tower. It is a slow and stuttering flight, and it makes him want to scream, his left wing stinging.

As much as it pains him, his strength is depleted, and this is now between the humans.

He has been asleep for days, weeks, years. Centuries, maybe. He barely remembers ever being awake. That's the impression, from how painstakingly slow coming awake is.

Each of his senses is taking its sweet time. He can hear voices, but they are distant, like faded memories. He is parched, and his head throbs like he has spent three days reading by candlelight. His whole mouth tastes of metal.

"Can you manage, Carl?" a doubtful, faraway voice asks.

"Yeah, no problem," a mildly closer voice answers. "Man weights like a wet kitten."

When his sense of touch awakens, he becomes aware of the cold air, of drafts all over his body. Of arms keeping him suspended, like a vase hanging off the ground, the sway of measured steps. He's being carried.

It didn't work, he thinks, a wave of relief surging in him. Wormwood is still here.

And yet… something is different. He continues the slow process of coming awake. He isn't afraid. If Wormwood is carrying him, he's safe. Then, he feels the arms are thinner, their hold is unsure. Wrong. His entire body stiffens.

"Fred, he's… he's not okay," the closer voice speaks again, clearer this time. "I think he has a fever, or something… has been off the whole week, you've seen it, at the riverside! We shouldn't be so quick to jud―"

"I'm going to tell the King what I saw, nothing more," the more distant voice says. A bit darker, it adds, "And nothing less."

And there is a gap, a space, words above him that want to come out but remain unsaid. They press unresolved above Cedric's ear, like untold whispers. He's finally able to open his eyes, and his sight slowly puts into focus a boy's face peeking from under a guard's uniform hat. He lets out a sharp inhale, bringing the young man to a halt.

"Uh, can you walk?" the guard asks immediately, with a tone that tries but fails to be cold and impersonal.

He finds it in himself to nod, immensely disoriented, and the boy drops him like a hot potato, to his feet that are still half asleep. He struggles for balance for a moment, dizzy.

He tries to straighten out what's left of his clothes―barely enough not to make an indecent display out of him… but unsightly nevertheless. He is covered in grass stains from head to toe, to the point that one wouldn't be able to tell the original colour of his clothing. What had happened in the clearing? He looks around, wondering where―

"Sofia?!" he gasps, doing a double-take. Tripping all over his words, he asks, "Princess, w-w-what are you doing out here?"

Sofia doesn't answer. She is walking ahead like she hasn't heard anything, oddly silent, her gaze distant and serious. They're almost at the castle yard, he realises. The other guard has run ahead, to the front steps.

He racks his brain for answers. What is the last thing he recalls? Going with Wormwood to confront the Well and get back his Family Wand… and Wormwood being more afraid than he's ever seen him―then a terrible revelation, and being hit, the vines swallowing him. All that blood…

He brings a hand to his chest, stopping in his tracks. The guard bumps into him and urges him forward, but he barely hears him. On his chest, there is nothing. No hole in his flesh, no vest and shirt stained a red so deep it seemed black. Only… his skin, new and raw like a drained blister. The whole of his upper body, from chest to his left forearm, stings with pain, like he shouldered nettles out of the way with his bare arm. He can't have been run through―it must have been some sort of illusion.

The pain sure felt real, he thinks with a shudder. And then there was that silly vision, with his mother and Wormwood and the blood and Familiar Magic… What nonsense, he thinks. And yet, Sofia is really there, just like Wormwood told him in the vision. What has she seen? Has she really seen―

"Sofia!" he calls again, his voice brusquer than he'd meant. He remembers a pact, the strange ritual that tasted of ancient and mystery and witchcraft―Wormwood deciding he'll save him even if it cost him his life. And the raven, he realizes, is nowhere to be seen. "Sofia―tell me what happened!"

Sofia halts with a small stomp, just at the edge of the yard. She whips around to face him, and her jaw is clenched and her lips are thinned to a white line. She is shaking from head to toe in her stained dress. Oh dear, he thinks, feeling the cold spread from his middle to the tip of his numbed toes. Her dress… why is she the one covered in―

He cannot help but start to put together the pieces of a terrible picture, a picture he hoped to never have to put together in his life. He, Cedric, has somehow survived the battle. The Princess looks like she has been through some terrible ordeals. Wormwood isn't there.

Oh no, he thinks, feeling chills of panic turn all his nerves to ice, stiffening his steps to a tremble, oh no. He waits, breath bated, for the Princess to speak. Was the vision real? All of it? Is Wormwood―

To his surprise, Sofia doesn't say a word to him. The look in her eyes, instead, tells him she isn't shocked, or even afraid. She is angry. She turns back around with a small grunt, as though she couldn't stand to look at him a moment longer, and crosses the yard at an odd, limping run.

Even more confused, he quickens his pace after her, holding his ripped breeches up, the slow response from his feet making him stumble a couple of times. The young guard that was carrying him, walking close behind, has to catch him by the arm before he falls over. Both times, Cedric rips away from him in mixed pain and indignation.

As they all reach the front stairs of the castle, and the fat raindrops start to wet the marble in dark splotches, he sees that Sofia halted there at the top of the staircase. Her shoulders are quivering.

The King himself is standing at the door, ear tilted to the taller guard who is talking to him in a hurried hush. Roland's expression is… grave, to say the least. Cedric becomes acutely aware of the clothes near-falling off his body.

"Dad?" Sofia says hesitantly, her voice tight with pain, rubbing her leg as Cedric and the other guard climb the stairs behind her.

"It is very late, Sofia," Roland says, a sharp glint in his eye. "We didn't know where you were at all in the past hour, and we were very worried. Can you give me an explanation?"

Sofia sinks visibly. "I… not really. I'm sorry," she murmurs, crestfallen. She takes a step forward and winces.

"Are you limping?" The King kneels in front of her, immediately worried, and lifts one of her scratched arms. "Sofia, where do these come from?"

"It's nothing, I-I fell into a bush in the Gardens," she tries, but she can't hold back anymore, and with her voice comes out a hiccup. The King takes her by the shoulders, gently and firmly.

"Don't cry, sweetie," he says. Then he sets his face, throwing Cedric a glare over her head that freezes him in place, like he's supposed to have anything to do with her distress. "Listen, go inside now. I'll come help you with those in just a moment, and then it's almost time to get ready for the guests. Can you do that for me, Sofia?"

"Y-yes, of course, but," Sofia stammers, her voice clipped to hold back the tears. They roll down her round cheeks all the same. "I didn't mean to be late, I was―"

"It's alright. Please, go now." The Princess shuts up instantly, taken aback by the hard note in her father's voice, the kingly authority he isn't fond of using within his family.

Cedric looks away. There is something intolerable to seeing an adult shut her up like that. Sofia, so headstrong and resolute, addressed with that kiddie-talk. How dare you, he wants to snap, she's upset, not an idiot. Has he ever seen her this upset before? His wandering gaze lands on the other guard.

Finally noticing what the man is holding, he feels the need to grab onto something. It's a robe. A wide, black rib velvet robe, with jagged hems and bright green trimmings. Cedric's head gives a spin so powerful he almost stumbles backwards on the stairs. He barely feels the touch of the guard's hand, keeping him upright.

Wormwood's robe.

Out the corner of his eye, he sees Sofia make to rush to the castle door, taking the knowledge of what happened with her.

"W-wait!" he calls after her in a panicked squeak, unaware of how the King and both guards tense visibly at the sound of his voice. In the light of her reaction, and the robe left behind, Wormwood's absence takes a connotation so certain and frightening Cedric feels fear twist his insides. Sofia halts, but doesn't turn, so he lunges and catches her wrist. "Sofia, wait―where is he? W―"

But the Princess flinches away from him, cradling her arm as if he had hit her.

"He's gone!" she snaps, stomping her limping foot and wincing again, her eyes sharp and glaring and full of tears.

"Sofia…?" Gone. The word echoes in his head a thousand times. Gone. Gone. Gone.

"Stay away!" Sofia shouts at him as he makes to take another step towards her, a hiss in her voice like a cornered weasel.

"Cedric," Roland says, tearing his attention from the Princess' odd behaviour. When he lifts his eyes and meets the King's, his heart gives a frightened stutter. He has seen Roland so angry only once before. Between his teeth, the King hisses, "I advise you to back off."

What in the world is going on? Cedric wants to ask, but his only witness is acting like he has killed a puppy before her staring eyes or something. I just want to know where my damn raven is!

Urged once again, Sofia sets her jaw and rushes inside, without a glance back. The guards remain. In the dark atmosphere of the castle entrance, the suspicion becomes certainty. The vision was real. Wormwood has really given his life. He really is… gone.

Cedric glances from guards to liege, sensitivity slowly returning to his chilled limbs, slowly aware of the dull pains going through the whole of him, like so many arrows. His left arm hurts and itches, as if needles were piercing it to the bone. If Roland is about to ask him what happened at the Well's clearing, he'll have a blast scraping up an answer. The whole of him feels emptied out, spent.

"I'd like to know what you're up to," Roland hisses, as soon as Sofia is out of earshot, his voice harsh and direct. Cedric can see a glimpse of the fiery youth he used to be, once upon a time, in a different life. "How come Sofia comes home upset every time she goes somewhere with you? And telling strange stories? I will not stand for her getting hurt, is that clear?"

"But… it's only scratches, hardly anything to worry about," Cedric replies, shrugging a little, disoriented. Drat, he thinks when he sees Roland's face. Wrong move. A sharp pain courses through his arm and shoulder, and he has to clear his throat to keep his voice steady. "Maybe a bit of a scare, that's all."

"That's all," the King echoes, eyes narrowing. His voice is still down to a mutter, the kind of mutter that is a barely restrained shout. "I know in which part of the Gardens you were found. How dare you get Sofia into―" he halts, inhales, exhales. Cedric is half-surprised smoke doesn't come out his nostrils. "She already had a bad run with that cursed thing, not so long ago."

"Me? I haven't brought her anywhere, I didn't even know―"

"Frederick," Roland says sharply to the taller guard, in a tone fit for a murder trial, his stony gaze set on the sorcerer. "You said there were signs of a magic battle on the premises, correct?"

"Indeed, sire, from what I could tell," Frederick says, snapping to salute. "Ashes, sire, and scorch-marks in the soil―a patch of grass in the form of some magic symbol. The hedges were uprooted, and a tree had been felled. It looked pretty brutal, honestly."

Roland's frown darkens. The hardness of his eyes takes Cedric back a decade, to the horrible night that sealed the fate of their friendship. He has to make an effort not to put a hand up to protect his neck.

"Was the sorcerer's wand out?" Roland asks, like he's pronouncing a death sentence.

"Show his Majesty, Carl," Frederick urges. Cedric senses a hesitation in the boy behind him, and becomes sharply aware that he is, once again, wandless.

"I-I have it here, sire," Carl says, in a reluctant tone like he would prefer not to get involved, holding up the purple wand. "Picked it up from the ground."

"This is absurd," Cedric says, for what he thinks must be the tenth time in the past week, with a half-laugh of incredulity. "That's just my everyday wand, I have been carrying it for―"

"Silence," the King hisses.

"Yet the Princess denies she's been attacked―"

"Attacked?!" Cedric all but yells, wide eyes darting between the three men in growing disbelief. "What in the world is going on? You think I would ever―"

But he cannot finish, strangled by his own disingenuity. Yes, he has done it. Not this time, but he has definitely done it. I was under a spell, he tells himself, and even his inner voice sounds unconvinced.

"Silence! I am not in the mood, Cedric," the King barks. Lower, he adds, "Of course she would deny it, and cover for your―ineptitude. Sofia thinks the best of everyone, even those that don't deserve it. She must be the only person in this castle that still thinks―"

He halts, breathing in to stop himself from shouting. Yet, his unspoken words cut the air like he spat them in his face. That still thinks you deserve anything of what you have. All retorts fold onto themselves in Cedric's sinking gut, and he says nothing.

"Let's not make a scene, here. If you think there is something unresolved that we should talk about, you come to me," the King says, with the same coldness Sofia dressed her tone with, one blow after the other. "You do not take it out on my nine year old daughter. That is low, even for you."

"Oh, for goodness' sake," Cedric hisses back, stung and at the end of his patience, "I have not―"

Roland turns from him before he can finish, and addresses the guards, "Was anyone else there? Corax?"

The sorcerer gasps at the name. "Just listen to me, I―"

"We haven't seen him, sire. Only this robe."

"So we have a missing sorcerer, too. Perfect, just what we needed tonight," Roland mutters. "At least he would have had good insight into this m―"

"Your Majesty," Cedric calls in a pleading tone, desperate to get a word in. Every time I go to that Well I lose something, he thinks distantly. "Why would you trust the word of a stranger over mine?! I went to the Queensgrave to oblige my duty, the Well―"

"Shut up!" Roland finally shouts, silencing everyone, even the crickets out in the lawn. "That thing shouldn't even be on castle grounds!"

"Well, I wasn't the one to put it there, was I?" He knows he's overstepping all lines of propriety, but he cannot stop himself. When Roland doesn't shut him up again, he hesitantly continues, "Even my father was only able to put a lock on it, if Your Majesty recalls!"

"At least your father didn't bring children around it on purpose!" Roland snaps, lunging so close it makes Cedric flinch, heart beating like it wants to escape. The King's forceful shout reeks of lost restraint, of that sickroom from a decade ago, of hands at his throat ready to break. "This is the last straw. You knew that place was dangerous, yet you let Sofia around it! For Tilly and I, Goodwyn was a role model, a figure of wisdom and safety. To my children, you are a hazard."

Cedric feels like he's hanging from a very thin thread, so thin he might as well just snap it himself. His strength and patience have been worn thin, worried sick about Wormwood's fate and Sofia's odd behaviour, he's there but not really there. He's somewhere else, watching Roland impose on his space like he owns it―the way he owns the castle, the land, the power of life and death.

It's unfair. It's too much. He's had enough. Tinged with righteousness rather than fear, the anger mounting inside of him has an unfamiliar, white-hot quality, a pulse instead of a paralysis. The awed dread Roland used to inspire in him has muted to disgust, to pity, even. The stiffness in his limbs melting away, he ignores all aches and straightens up to his full height, so that he and the King are almost eye to eye, barely a few inches apart.

"Oh, he kept the two of you safe alright," Cedric hisses, lightheaded with his own boldness, his voice low and sharp. Roland's nostrils flare at the provocation, the white of his eyes terrible in his stony face. "I recall someone knowing a thing or two about forcing others to cover for them."

The guards inhale sharply. He is talking back to the King, and the latter's fury radiates on the staircase, almost palpable, darts through his narrowed eyes.

"I'm warning you," Roland grits out, his breathing audible. His arms shake, stiff at his sides, hands clenched into fists.

"And yet, somehow everything is my fault, isn't it? What incredible, superhuman power I have, that I am responsible for everything that goes wrong! Things I had no control over, things I advised against, things I didn't even know were happening!" He watches Roland's pupils contract in his light eyes, watches the haughty jut of jaw he always hated in him, ever since they were boys. "Always there to take the fall for you, like some―whip boy to run around and put the blame on! And you passed the habit to everyone in this bloody castle!"

With dangerous, stormlike calm, Roland murmurs, "I'm warning you… not another word."

"But why?!" he shouts, his arms wide, his voice sharp with venom, not a crack in it for once, not a tremble. "Why should I be forbidden to speak? You made a fool's wish, and we now have a Queensgrave, and somehow it's still my damn fault! So what―"

"Why, you impudent―"

"―what are you so afraid of―?"

Roland lunges like a snapping dog, and this time the guards―younger, more respectful―don't move a step to hold him back. His hand flies up and he strikes Cedric open-handed across the face, with enough force to send him stumbling on the steps.

"How dare you," the King shouts, tall and towering and furious, just like Wormwood that first night, when he was so unlike himself.

But, unless Cedric's sole presence is enough to pull the beast out of every man, no one has altered Roland's form. This is it, says the little voice that sounds so much like his own. There was never anything other than this, and never will.

"Everyone has a breaking point," he says hollowly, slurring a little through the ringing in his ears. The sting seems to cover a good half of his head, from his left eye back to his ear, even his neck hurts from the whiplash. Dumbfounded, he runs a hand on the corner of his mouth, where the impact has split his lip against his teeth, tempted to spit blood at the King's feet, match him at the level of bestiality he's just shown. He doesn't.

"Contrary to what you seem to believe, you are replaceable." Roland straightens up, putting himself under restraint again, tugging down into place the hems of his jacket and vest, climbing back into his shackles of humanity. "And you will be replaced if I hear one more word about this matter. Guards!"

The two, despite the barely concealed shock at what they witnessed, readily step forward. Cedric attempts to coordinate his limbs to climb back to his feet, but they refuse to collaborate.

"To the dungeon." A pause, to let the words that haven't been uttered in decades breathe in the silence. Cedric distinctly feels his heart fall with a dull thud. "Until I get to the bottom of what happened here."

Reality shudders, knocked back into motion like a stuck gear. The reality where Wormwood is dead, Sofia hates him, and talking back to the King has dreadful consequences. They come so soon, with the guards' hands that clasp over his arms―he grunts in pain―and haul him up to his feet.

The younger guard―Carl―loosens his grip, glancing at his arm like it's a scalding ladle.

"M-my liege," he says shakily, clearing his throat three times in the process, "my liege, if… if I may, the man is burning up and… uh, injured, I think, and in no condition to―"

"My daughter is injured!" the King roars, and Carl presses his lips together like he's never going to open his mouth again. "And all I know is that he did it!"

King Roland turns to enter the castle, but on the threshold he whips back around, and points to the purple wand held in the crook of Carl's elbow.

"And snap that damn thing," he commands.

Cedric has nothing left in him to scrape up a protest. The crunch of breaking wood is loud in his ears, and he flinches away from the noise as though it caused him physical pain. His school wand, the one he has managed to keep whole all his life. His last working wand.

"I'm sorry… I tried," Carl murmurs, trying to figure out how to put less pressure on his left arm. Cedric lets him, defeated. "We don't even really know what happened, but we have to―"

"Don't talk to him, Carl," Frederick says. "He's a prisoner."

"But, come on, this is our sorcerer! We were still in boy shorts and he was already here, doing his thing," Carl protests, somehow apologetic. Already here, failing, Cedric rewrites in his mind. Frederick just grunts.

During the slow walk into the castle foyer, and down the long winding staircase, the two guards―mostly Carl―run a series of wild hypotheses. They talk about him like he's not dangling between them like a limp rag. The sting escalates to a deep burn in Cedric's hit eye, and he feels it start to swell shut.

"And also... have you ever seen King Roland get like this?" Carl asks after a pause, voice lower, smaller. The iron door of the dungeons comes nearer and nearer.

"No. I… have never seen anything like it," the other admits, his voice losing that stiff edge to give way to a timid, almost childlike uncertainty. Lucky lad, Cedric thinks.

"Wouldn't think him the type to…" a glance, that Cedric feels on his skin like a layer of slime, viscous. "To just snap like that, honestly."

He finally just tunes them out, concentrating on holding back the tears that prickle at the bridge of his nose. They have been there for a while now, ready to burst out of him every time he thinks of what might have been of Wormwood.

He yields to the hands that drag him away, into the guts of the earth once again.

Royal Guard Carl, the unsung hero of this story.