The first fae — the tall one, the one who had stepped through the door alone, the one who had spoken to Arvella in patterns and recognized her as the crossroads — knelt.
Not the way Theodore had knelt — not the grudging, painful, ego-dismantling surrender of a proud man learning humility. Not the way Kael had bowed — not the courtly, performative, historically weighted gesture of a diplomatic prince. The fae knelt the way a tree's branches dip toward the earth in rain — naturally, without effort, because the weight of what they carried made the gesture inevitable.
I am Aelindra, the markings said. Voice of the Veil. Speaker for the Between. I have held the door from our side for four hundred years, waiting for the convergence to call us home.
"Four hundred years," Arvella repeated. The
