Ray did not walk far. Like lovers quarreling in a studio apartment, he and Trivia tacitly partitioned the circle of stones. They stole glances at each other, but avoided eye contact, and neither drew closer or ceded additional ground. Roosevelt and Ray stood in one figurative corner, Trivia and Audubon had split up, and Wilson stood beneath the white fringetree counting out loud.

Ray rapped his knuckles on Roosevelt's shoulder. "Can I borrow you for a second?"

Roosevelt shrugged and kept checking himself out in Audubon's compact mirror.

"Thanks." Ray clonked his forehead repeatedly against Roosevelt's back.

Wilson stopped counting. "Done! Audubon, you made a compelling argument, but we had to go with our dorsal aortas. No hard feelings?"

Audubon accepted Wilson's handshake. "I am a model of tenderness. What are you apologizing for?"

"For defeating your proposal," Wilson explained. "Nays outnumbered yeas by one hundred seventeen thousand or thereabouts—we had some deaths during polling. Regardless, a clear majority opposes crowning Ray."

Ray stopped clonking. Wilson had acted so friendly before, but he didn't think much of Ray after all.

Audubon glanced at Trivia, who said, "You only get one vote."

"But that's not fair," Wilson said.

"Welcome to life," Audubon said. "Most of you are only a few weeks old, but you had to learn eventually."

"You see us as an individual, but we contain multitudes." Wilson said to Trivia, placing his hand on his chest. "Here, millions of impulses, desires, and fears wage endless, cacophonous war. Even selecting a moral framework that all of us can live with is a tremendous task—perhaps an impossible one. But you would have us reduce that framework to a single decision without knowing the consequences? How are we to know which impulse is right?"

"I don't think you can," Trivia said. "But you have to decide."

Wilson removed his trilby. Pulsating waveforms danced across his scalp; his sometimes-childish, sometimes-philosophical brain was churning. Ray bent his knees, in case Wilson's head exploded again and he had to leap clear. He could sort out how the hive-mind worked later.

"We must object," Wilson sputtered. "All of our impulses deserve expression. To give voice to only one silences the others. If we chose incorrectly, no one would ever know what we intended."

Trivia glanced at Ray, then back to Wilson. "You can't keep your intentions, just your choices. If you choose wrong, you keep your regrets."

Wilson deflated. He put his trilby back on. "We do not wish to regret our decision."

"You don't have to," Ray said, only incidentally to Wilson; he kept his eyes on Trivia, but she refused eye contact. "Just do what you think is best. That's all anyone can do."

"Then we vote nay," Wilson said. "But not without reservations."

"Your reservations have been noted and disregarded," Audubon said. "Move on."

Trivia nodded. "Audubon and Roosevelt vote aye, Wilson and I vote nay. The final decision is mine."

Audubon mock-saluted. "Then I defer to your leadership. Only name your enemies; they will hurl toddlers from their battlements forthwith, to save them from crueler fates."

"That is terrible," Ray said.

"It's terrible that I missed Troy," Audubon said. "At least I'll always have Béziers."

"Wait, why don't I get a vote?" Ray said. "It's my life."

"Then value it," Trivia said. "I do, and I've made my decision."

"That isn't fair," Ray said.

"Wilson, remind him what I said before," Audubon said.

Wilson clapped Ray on the shoulder. "You are only a few weeks old."

Ray looked at Trivia. "Yeah, it feels that way."

Audubon stretched and yawned. "So, orders?"

"You will offer criticism while doing nothing of use," Trivia said. "Wilson and Roosevelt will keep Ray safe. I will kill Jim Frazer tomorrow."

Wilson and Roosevelt nodded.

"You'd really rather kill a man than make me King," Ray said.

"I told you what I am," Trivia said.

"You said you fought monsters," Ray said.

"Frazer is a monster," Trivia said.

"I know he's caused incredible harm—" Ray said.

"No," Trivia said. "You haven't felt what he's done to the Green seeping into your skin and contaminating every cell. If you could hear the screaming, you would beg me to kill him."

"Tallahassee will just crown another," Audubon said.

"I'll kill him as well," Trivia said. "And the one after that, until they run out of men or ink for their rituals."

"You think that's the only way protect the Green," Ray said. "I can't accept that. If you start killing people, how are you going to know when to stop? It would change you."

"It wouldn't change a thing," Trivia said.

"You don't know—." Ray said. But there was no doubt in her voice, only in his. "You killed Frazer's predecessor."

Audubon covered her mouth, feigning shock.

Trivia nodded.

"I thought he crashed into a telephone pole," Ray said.

"Tree." Roosevelt seemed more imposing than before. More massive.

"Was he a monster?" Ray said.

Trivia shook her head. "He had a problem with his heart, and he was never going to get better. When the King of the Woods is sick, the land is sick."

"So you murdered him," Ray said. "You murder people to protect the Green."

"I try to find a successor," Trivia said. "But men have forgotten their connection to the Green."

Wilson gripped Ray's arm. "It sounds cruel, but what Trivia does saves countless lives—folk and men. Sometimes sacrifices have to be made."

"Did you sacrifice Carol?" Ray said.

"That's complicated—" Wilson said.

"Yes," Trivia said without defiance or shame. She silenced Wilson with a gesture.

"The jackhammer guy?" Ray said.

"I chastised him," Trivia's voice cooled the more his heated.

"You put him in a coma," Ray said. "Do you even care?"

"Did he care about the folk he hurt?" Trivia said.

"How many people have you killed?" Ray demanded.

"Knowing the number wouldn't make you feel any better." Trivia's icy visage cracked. Her voice faltered.

Audubon counted on her talons. "Carry the one..."

Her first sign of weakness emboldened him. "Do you know, or are there too many to count?"

"You said you understood." Trivia had already recovered. Ray's moral outrage meant nothing to her; something else had pierced her shell.

"I think I finally do," Ray said. "What would happen if I threatened the Green?"

Trivia winced. "You know what would happen."

"I want you to say it." Ray's cruelty sickened him, but he could not stop.

"It would be like falling asleep. You wouldn't feel anything." Trivia said. "I promise."

Her confusion, more than her sadness, made Ray despise himself. It had bothered him when she insisted that he was innocent. He was not innocent: He was bullying a child who didn't understand what she'd done wrong, if she had done anything wrong.

He turned from her. She had made a fool of him, and he would not allow her to see his tears.

"It doesn't mean that I don't love you," Trivia said.

"I wish I could say the same," he said.

Her silence gave him long seconds to take back his words. He squandered them.

"You will not see me again." Trivia had grown as cold as a caryatid, as distant as the stars. She turned from him and walked towards the tree line.

Ray moved to follow, but Roosevelt placed a firm hand on his chest. Wind whipped the white fringetree's branches, tearing some flowers free. Ray caught one in his hand; its petals were withered and dark. "Move," he said, failing to push Roosevelt's arm aside.

Trivia seemed impossibly far away now. The grove had expanded to put more space between them.

"Wilson," Ray said. "Tell him to let me go."

Wilson sighed. "We tried to warn you. Perhaps it's for the best; you're very different people."

The wind howled, and the fringetree's branches strained to resist it.

"Trivia! Wait!" The howls drowned Ray's words. Had she hesitated, or had he imagined it? It was the latter. Trivia walked farther away, and Roosevelt held him in place.

A thunderous crack resounded from the white fringetree. Ray shielded his head for fear that the wind would launch one of its branches like a javelin, but none of the branches were damaged.

"You cad. You've broken her heart," Audubon said.

Trivia fell to one knee, clutching her chest. Her keening silenced the wind and filled Ray with remorse. He called to her. She stumbled into the woods.

Ray tried to juke around Roosevelt's arm and was hoisted into the air by the scruff of his neck. "Audubon, please tell him to put me down. Trivia's hurting."

"Because you hurt her, idiot!" Audubon said. "Besides, she's a mass murderer. Aren't you scared?"

"I'm terrified," Ray said, "but only because I thought I was a good person."

Audubon raised an eyebrow.

"Trivia told me who she was, over and over again." Ray said. "She wanted me to understand. I told myself something was lost in translation."

"Mm," Audubon said. She played it cool, but her eyes betrayed her interest.

"I should be horrified at the things she's done," Ray said. "But I just want to be with her. That scares the shit out of me."

"I dislike you very much," Audubon said.

"I got that," Ray said.

"But I am French, and I have a reputation to uphold." Audubon snapped her fingers. "Let the lovebird fly, Roosevelt."

Ray started running before his feet hit the ground.