I was happy unseen,

  brave behind my veil,

  wise only when carefree.

  How selfish can I be?

  —Berdorf, E. Poems of a Wingless Princess. Unpublished manuscript, Summer.

  Melted rock lay under a skin of moss. Broken statues watched at nothing with faces half-erased, turned toward what used to be the first Green Mother’s temple.

  The place lifted the fine hairs along Eura’s arms.

  She recalled Jaer’s words. She was born here. Her birth was more than challenging. Her biological mother was described to her as a woman who hadn’t survived long enough to be remembered properly.

  No name given, because none had been needed to tell the tale. If this mother had lived, Eura’s story would still be the same. She would have been adopted by the Winterqueen and Elven King before memory could form.

  They would never have met, never loved each other, and if there had never been a choice, what was there to ask for now?

  “So what are we doing here?” Eura asked.

  Hex scraped his boot across the stone, clearing away dry weeds and packed dirt. He didn’t look up.

  “We summon Koimar. You know how.”

  “From the lake, yes,” she said. “That’s where he is. Never saw him appear from any other place.”

  Hex slipped his hand into the vest as he drew out a small flask.

  “Koimar likes water that doesn’t move. Any puddle is enough.”

  He uncorked the flask. Water darkened the ground, spreading into a shallow puddle between the stones. It looked like nothing.

  Hex straightened and turned to her, wearing that smile. The one that made impossible things feel possible, brighter than the sun.

  “So what now?” Eura asked.

  Hex squatted near the flat water. His fingertips touched the wet stone as if to check whether it had started to breathe.

  “Now we use the magic words.”

  He leaned forward and spoke. “Vem Auf. Vem Auf.”

  The words sounded wrong. They didn’t rock or soothe. They cut, punched, and slammed like they would drag up from below.

  Eura felt it in her teeth first, a faint cold ache, then down to her backbone. She took a step back without meaning to.

  The water shuddered.

  It snapped upward in a sudden jet and loud hiss as it climbed. Steam bloomed around it, and inside it, something took shape.

  “Well, well, well,” a voice smooth and dripping like honey, folding itself through the mist. “How special it is to be summoned on the Elven Princess’s birthday.”

  The steam thinned.

  Eura saw his face at last. Relaxed. Almost pleased. Happy.

  “Koimar…” The name barely made it past her lips.

  He cut her off with a sweeping, exaggerated bow, arms wide, mocking in its grace.“Happy birthday, Sun who burns over land, sea, and sky.”

  “In sixteen Summers,” she said, “you never once wished me a happy birthday. I begged. Again and again… not even once.”

  The spirit cut in again before she could finish.

  “Oh, darling,” he said. “Today is a very special day.” Mist curled tighter around him as he spoke, “Today, everyone gets what they want. I will. You will. Everyone around.” His smile stretched a little bit to knowing. “Or at least… wiser.” The Spirit almost chuckled.

  “So,” Eura said, pushing the words out evenly, “what do you want? One hundred and two… of what?”

  “Where are your wings, Princess?”

  Eura frowned. “What do my wings have to do with what you want?”

  She looked at Hex.

  He stood where he was, eyes focused on the Spirit. Not puzzled. Not startled. Just watching. Whatever he was thinking, it didn’t reach his face, and that disturbed her more than Koimar’s smile.

  “Aren’t you curious, Your Highness?” Koimar insisted.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “They told me they were broken. I think. Then thrown away.”

  Koimar’s smile grew, pleased by the uncertainty. “What if I show you?”

  “My wings?”

  “Do you want to see them?”

  Eura folded her arms tight against her chest. “You have my wings?”

  “Oh, dear, I do. I do.”

  The spirit tipped his head back and opened his mouth far wider than it should have gone. From the darkness inside, his hand reached in and drew something out very slowly.

  He drew out a glowing veil and spread it open with both hands. Translucent wings bloomed in the air, shimmering like diamonds, flawless in their symmetry. Beautiful.

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  Until the edges came into view, roots clung to them, torn and dangling, slick and raw, as if ripped oncre from the bones.

  “What is that?”

  “This?” Koimar pinched the ripped sack between his fingers. “A saatgut.” He smiled. “Where your little magic butterfly would be, flutter its wings.” He glanced at her, head tilting. “Seems it’s gone.”

  “I… I don’t have a saat?”

  Koimar laughed softly. “Darling, don’t be foolish. If you didn’t, you wouldn’t have a single drop of magic.” His smile grew. “It’s probably still in there, inside you, somewhere. Maybe you’re just a very large, very lovely saatgut yourself.”

  Eura shook her head, looking focused on the wings. “I don’t understand. They look perfect. Why would they…”

  “Oh, they are.” His tone softened, almost fond. “You were a perfect babe. So beautiful.” He leaned closer. “So Menschen.”

  Eura swallowed. “Why…”

  Hex finally turned to her. “Your father. The King. He’s an elf. You were never meant to look like a Blue-One.”

  The words took a moment to settle.

  “He removed my wings for aesthetics?” Eura tried to control herself so she wouldn't shout or show anger. “He fucked up my saat so I would look like an elf?”

  Hex gave a small nod.

  “I think that’s why your powers never settle and are so wild,” he said. “Your saat has no nest. It keeps moving, head to toe.” His eyes didn’t leave her. “You were born perfect. He turned you into an untamed storm that not even you can control.”

  Her heartbeat thudded loudly inside her ears. Heat rolled through her in waves, each pulse stronger than the last. Rage.

  “He broke me...” The words came out thin. “I was mutilated!” Her hands clenched, then opened again. “He did all this just to make me look like him… I was mutilated… as a baby?!”

  She took a step to the left. Stopped. Took one to the right. The ground felt wrong underneath her feet.

  She couldn’t find a place to stand. Something was ready to burst.

  “I thought you deserved to know the truth,” Hex said. “I thought this would be the best gift a true friend could give.”

  Eura lifted her head and held Hex’s stare. She didn’t blink.

  “Thank you,” she said. “I won’t forget it. You have my word.”

  Hex’s eyes lingered a moment longer than necessary.

  Eura didn’t notice the subtle glow stirring underneath her skin. Lines of gold traced slow, widening ripples along her arms and throat, radiating with each breath, as if a force within her had finally begun to wake. Again.

  Jaer closed the door behind them. Finnegan was still fumbling with the buttons of his trousers beneath his tunic. A flush lingered high on his cheeks.

  “We need to hurry,” the Elven King said, already moving. “Everyone’s in the garden, waiting for me.”

  Jaer followed. “You mean Eura.”

  “They come to Pollux.” Finnegan waved the thought away. “She’s only the excuse.”

  “It’s her birthday, Finn.”

  Finnegan’s steps were rushed. He swept his silver hair back over his shoulders, smoothing it as he walked. “I would like this one to happen without incident. Last Summer was… unnecessary.” He paused just long enough to breathe. “This time she’ll be dressed properly. The blue gown. The one I chose. It suits the lake. It keeps her in line.”

  “She isn’t wearing that.”

  Finnegan stopped and turned slowly. “What do you mean, she isn’t wearing it?”

  “She looked stunning,” Jaer said. “As a Menschen should.”

  Finnegan’s jaw set. “She is not a Menschen. She is the Elven Princess.”

  “And one day,” Jaer replied, already walking again, “your Dame.”

  “In black? Dressed like a... roadborn!”

  “Lamar handled it. She is dressed as a Dame should be.” Jaer said, visibly pleased. “He understands what was the occasion needed and delivered magnificently.”

  They reached the end of the corridor. The space opened suddenly into the training grounds. They could start to hear, from the gardens beyond, the distant, rising voices of an impatient crowd.

  “That title is not hers yet.” His eyes stayed focused on the silhouettes surging against the green of the garden. “My wife, the Winterqueen, shall I remind you, still stands. Very much so.”

  Jaer’s feet reached the bright grass of the Garden, finally, without answering at first. Then, quietly, “For now.”

  “So that’s it?” Finnegan asked. “You think she’s already measuring the crown?”

  Jaer’s smile came and went. “History has bad habits.” He adjusted his sleeve. “Mothers don’t tend to survive their heirs. Veilla is a good example. And so was her mother. And so was her grandmother. And so on.”

  “That’s the future you’re entertaining?” Finnegan asked. “For Fiona? You Dame, still.”

  “I’ve been wrong before.” Jaer shrugged. “Optimism is a choice. But you know me, I know how to read the court. Don’t I?”

  “I watch you,” the Elven King said. “Ever since her first cry, your eyes have stalked her like a... hawk.” He turned at last. “What’s left for me are the breadcrumbels... like I am a lowlife second option.”

  “You’re arguing with the wind,” Jaer said. “She’s a child. But she will be the next Dame and you should—”

  “Father!”

  The shout split the garden open.

  Eura came through the crowd in a straight line, each step giving her more command of the surroundings. The black train of her vest streamed behind her, her long hair catching all the colours around. Light crawled beneath her skin. Threads of gold surfaced along her throat, her cheeks, her hands, bright enough to make onlookers avert their eyes without knowing why.

  Finnegan stopped as though struck. His eyes widen. What stood before him refused the shape of the Elven Princess, refused even the comfort of recognition. He stared, unblinking, as if the next moment might explain itself.

  Jaer halted a step behind him, and finally he saw directly what Lolth had described to him. Eura was about to burst, or rather, the Sun.

  

  Another subject consistently underserved by rigorous scholarship is that of Spirits. This is not for lack of material. There exists no shortage of books, essays, hymns, and devotional texts recounting their myths, allegories, and, more problematically, the religious fa?ades that have accumulated around them. What remains elusive is not narrative, but substance.

  What, precisely, constitutes a Spirit? What distinguishes one from residual magic, from altered beings, or from entities produced through deliberate intervention? These questions are rarely addressed directly, and when they are, the answers tend toward circularity rather than clarity.

  It would be expected that, suggested by you, dear reader, such inquiries might be resolved by consulting the Dreamer, my Little Mouse. I have done so. While she has freely provided information, her recollections are fragmented, frequently contradictory, and seldom align with the established historical record. This is not necessarily a fault of memory, but of circumstance. By her own account, she was a human child in the service of a mage whose existence appears to have been carefully concealed. If her testimony is to be taken at face value, her early life must have unfolded somewhere within the Grand Continent.

  She recalls persistent coughing and frequent fainting. From these symptoms alone, one might infer untreated asthma or perhaps a congenital defect of the lungs or airway. This immediately raises difficulties. It seems unlikely that a scholar capable of advanced spellcraft would neglect so elementary a condition. I therefore find myself reluctant to accept this aspect of her account without reservation.

  Matters become no clearer when she describes the spell that, according to her, granted her the form by which she is presently known. The motivation offered is disarmingly trivial. She claims it was done because she enjoyed cheese. I confess that I do not know how to reconcile this explanation with any formal magical framework currently accepted.

  It is for these reasons that I place limited confidence in origin narratives delivered solely through personal testimony, however earnest.

  In this regard, the account provided by my Little Mouse concerning Koimar proves unexpectedly coherent. According to her, Koimar was not always a Spirit, but a Mere once attached to the Elven army during the Moonsoon era. During a critical engagement, they are said to have hidden in a lake rather than participate. As punishment, one of the Magi transformed them into a dual-headed fish, severed from command, bond, and purpose, and bound permanently to still water. A Spirit forever Masterless.

  If accurate, this would account for several anomalies. Their confinement to stagnant bodies of water. Their preoccupation with bargains rather than allegiance. And their notably poor reputation, even among Spirits themselves.

  In short, Koimar does not appear to be a Spirit by nature, but by consequence. The question that remains is not whether this account is another myth, but whether we have yet to identify the spellwork capable of producing a Spirit from a common creature in a manner still unexplained by current scholarship. —The Hexe – Book Three by Professor Edgar O. Duvencrune, First Edition, 555th Summer.