It had been her.

She had brought down that tunnel.

Not the psychotic, pigeon-toed spawn of Davina (to be fair, Abel couldn't be sure if Astrid did, indeed, have pigeon-toes, but it seemed an appropriate assumption based on her pointed nose); nor had it been the realm's socially inept saviour-to-be, Sebastian. No. It had been her.

A mere halfling, if Matthias's stories of magical Elven babies could be believed.

And she had done it nearly twice!

Abel stared down at her hands and flexed them into themselves. She could still feel the tingling sensation of the threads against her fingertips, how the dampened scent of fresh soil had overwhelmed her singing veins. How her awakened inbred nature had demanded that she get out of that confined space.

Escape.

Crush a hole through the tunnel's suffocating ceiling and straight into the open sky.

She sniffed the air now. The only whisper of Earth's threads she detected came from the three logs crackling away in Master Lambert's hearth. Either that, or she simply smelled the same wood-burning scent as everyone else.

It was hard to tell.

A spark popped. Abel jumped, blinking back into the present in time to hear Astrid say, "So, I hear you are trying to murder me, Master Lambert."

Astrid reached into her cloak, procured a book in the same gesture Abel had always seen Sebastian present his hidden novels, and slapped it onto the atrociously large desk. "I'm sorry to inform you that I have yet to die despite your kill-switch."

You could have, Abel thought, clenching her fingers, I could have smothered you with that tunnel.

Despite Astrid's less than conventional greeting, the librarian's expression hardly seemed shocked. Instead, he appraised the motley group spread out before his desk from behind his spectacles. On the contrary, he looked rather bemused. He peered at them over his fingers with a small, curious grin before frowning at the crinkled carpet Sebastian had tripped over upon their entrance.

Sebastian stretched his leg behind him to try to smooth it down.

It must have appeased Lambert who grinned once more and said, "Well, please do come in."

"Erm—sorry, but...kill-switch?" Sebastian's arm brushed against Abel's own as he stepped between her and Astrid. "What do you mean?"

Lambert ruffled some papers into a jumbled pile and slipped them into a drawer of his desk. Many others still littered his working space. He pushed his spectacles further up the bridge of his ink-spattered nose. "Yes, well, I'm afraid I cannot claim all the credit for that particular ingenuity of those dragons."

"Care to name-drop, then?" Astrid pushed. "Or I shall assume my statuesque captain is an utterly foul liar."

Lambert clapped his hands together. "Why, it was Queen Branwyn, of course."

The name rang a vague bell in Abel's memories, one of Imogene's molasses-smooth voice speaking the stories of Galandreal. Of Elves. Abel's spine straightened like an arrow on its target, but it was Matthias whose words lunged.

"Sinner!" It hissed like some ancient curse. "Deceit, greed, and death bred from a mortal heart."

Lambert met Matthias's anger with calm. "Hurl the prophecy at me all you want, Soiree. It is still the truth."

"It is a lie!"

Abel felt Matthias shake. His round shoulders vibrated, a furious heat radiating up his left arm from where he had his fist clenched into the inner pocket of his cloak. Soil. Abel's nostrils tingled. A single thread of Earth drifted outwards from whatever was in Matthias's pocket. Strange. She found her fingers swayed towards his wrist.

Without her conscious consent.

"Queen Branwyn?" Sebastian raised his head, dark eyebrows furrowed. "The Elvish Elder who bestowed voixili upon Lady Guinevere? But that was centuries ago, before the first Authors even existed. Yet, you claim she still lives. Elves aren't immortal, are they?"

"No."

It was Master Lambert, Astrid, and Matthias who all replied, though in varying degrees and shades of tones. The three of them stopped short, Lambert the only one with a thin, jovial grin. He signaled for Astrid or Matthias to explain with a lazy twirl of his hand.

Matthias growled. "The Elvish Folk are not the same breed as the Spirits of the Eyelesene Glaciers."

Abel's thumb made contact with the taut, hot muscles of Matthias's arm, the scent of dirt overwhelming once more.

Sebastian looked between them. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"Elves can die," Astrid answered. "You saw me slay one."

"Neither do they live forever regardless of a blade's intervention," Lambert added. "Elves age slower than other mortals; the Elders, especially, once they have completed the Ceremony of Trees. Why, an Elder could appear as young as the unlined youth of the majority of the Iced Guards for nearly a hundred-fifty years." His bright gaze turned to Abel. "Similar in appearance to your lady-friend, in fact, young d'Aximos."

Abel froze, the mysterious thread momentarily forgotten. "I—that can't be—no!" She yanked her fingers from Matthias. "I age. I'm aging still!"

"You were," Lambert corrected, "but magic has returned to Rainier. The human aging process will slow on you, though not nearly as much as it could, since I assume you are but a halfling. Even still, you could have more than seventy good years before you see your first wrinkle."

The elemental thread Abel had been pursuing slipped from her grasp; her hands flew to her transformed body instead, pressing into her abdomen. A body that, she had just learned, would struggle to grow older than sixteen?

By the Scribes!

This was a bloody nightmare.

"I don't want immortality!"

"Elves aren't immortal," Sebastian said. He placed a hand on Abel's shoulder but looked to Astrid for confirmation. "They do die, and not just from weapons, but from natural origins as well. Right?"

Though Abel knew Bash meant it to be comforting, it only made her panic worsen. Her wrists twirled like a predator bird in flight, a phoenix burning to ash with its own fire. The motion was hideously unfamiliar and graceful. 

"I didn't ask for this!"

 In any other situation, one where Abel's newly heightened ears wouldn't have allowed her to hear the skipped beat of Matthias's pulse or the way Sebastian's eyes blinked, maybe then Abel would have missed the soft whoosh of Earth's thread that called her again to Matthias's pocket. But, alas, that was not Abel's current situation, so the thread did call to her, teasing around her knuckles, and it was—all—to—much!

Her breaths refused to catch, but her fingers caught on Earth's thread and yanked it right from Matthias's arse.

"And, for Scribal sake, what the Hel is in your pocket, Soiree?"

Matthias pulled his hand back. A child caught thieving a sweet tart from a bakery. It tugged Earth's thread taut between them. Too late. For the first time since Abel had known the stoic guard, his expression appeared stuck somewhere between rouging shock and pale dread. It would have been amusing, Abel guessed, if it had not been for the smooth, emerald stone that flew from Matthias's pocket and thumped to the floor at Abel's feet.

The thread receded from Abel's grip and back into the stone.

For a short second, Abel stared from it, to Matthias, and back again. It was no larger than the pad of her thumb, but her sharpened, ridiculous eyesight could just make out the dried flecks of scarlet blood that filled the stone's crevices. Elves could use stone magic, she remembered Matthias telling her. 

She sewed a malachite crystal into my arm—

"Malachite?" she accused.

The word was barely out before Astrid lunged for the green stone. 

Thankfully, Sebastian hadn't done a very good job at straightening Lambert's upturned rug because Astrid's boot caught on the rippled edge. It gave both Matthias and Abel the advantage they needed. Abel moved first, her muscles responding quicker than her brain had fully thought it through. But the thread had deposited that bit of malachite directly at the boot of her left foot. It practically begged for her attention. So, she gave it. 

Abel lifted her boot to stomp down on it, sending up a half-prayer that she did not possess a hidden super-strength that would crush the stone to dust.

Unfortunately, Matthias had made his swift ploy, too.

Abel's foot came down on nothing but Astrid's fingers.

"Argh!"

Reacting far quicker than even Abel herself had, Matthias had kicked the malachite out of her foot's reach. It soared across the radius of Lambert's circular office and smacked into the awaiting palm of the Master Librarian.

Astrid swore rather magnificently. "Blasted Husky foot!" She shoved Abel's boot from her crushed hand, cradling it to her chest, and rounded on Matthias.

But it was Sebastian who said, "Wasn't the malachite in your arm? You said Queen Davina sewed it in there."

"Yes, well, he also once said the jewels in my mother's crown were as hideous as a donkey's arse," Astrid said, "which I now assume was false, considering he wore one in his veins this entire time." Her gaze speared into her guard with as much severity as one of Abel's sharpest arrows. "Explain, blood-of-thine-blood, before I throttle Husky for maiming the Salvera crown."

Honestly, Abel had only stepped on her fingers, probably only broken one or two of them if she had, indeed, developed super-strength.

Lambert released a heavy sigh and lowered his spectacles to the tip of his nose. "Oh, my boy." He regarded Matthias with a thin expression. "What have you done, Caged Sparrow?"

Abel looked between the two men. "Caged Sparrow?"

"A code name, obviously," Astrid snapped. "He does rather resemble an imprisoned, helpless bird. A pigeon more than a sparrow, I would say." She glanced from Lambert to Matthias. "You have been working with him."

It hadn't been phrased as a question, but Matthias nodded regardless. His fingers flexed at his sides, stiff and tight. Abel wondered if he was imagining the malachite's threads winding around his hands. He watched the small piece of stone in Lambert's grasp. The sharp line of his jaw twitched once before the brown coloring of his eyes hardened.

"I took it out." His words spouted out in one breath as if it were one he had been withholding for some time. "Before the second task. In the tunnels."

"During the Fae attack," Sebastian deduced.

"Why?" Astrid asked, though Abel imagined it felt more like a slap.

"Don't," Lambert growled. "Be smart, boy."

"I'm no longer a boy." Matthias matched the Master Librarian's gravely tone and straightened to his full height, which was rather impressive. "And she swore the oath, Hollace."

"The Monverta Oath?"

Matthias clasped his hands in front of his stomach and bowed his head.

"Then you have just proven you are still, in fact, a besotted fool of a boy," Lambert snapped. "Her blood is tainted; it cannot accept the oath. You indebted yourself to a girl who cannot, and will not, reciprocate. Foolish."

"You do not know her—!"

"You're even more foolish if you think you do."

The thread from the malachite stone sparkled in the librarian's grasp as the tension between him and Matthias intensified. Abel watched, transfixed, as that single thread of Earth branched into four billowy paths, all of which called to her. Like it knew her. Her fingers twitched, the scent of soil swirling around her senses, temples throbbing—

"Do it," Sebastian whispered into her ear. "Take it."

"Take what?" Astrid muttered.

Sebastian simply took Abel's wrist and unfurled her fingers, directing them to the growing threads.

"I should have ended this," Lambert said to Matthias, a background noise to the rising calls of the malachite's threads, "years ago, despite your agreement with Branwyn! I had my doubts of you, but your mother swayed the Court. It has doomed us all."

Abel's heightened senses cried out in alarm, Earth's threads spiraling tighter, closer, and somehow, it allowed Abel to detect what Lambert planned to do next. The malachite's threads flared outwards as Lambert extended his arm, twisting his wrist so he held the stone out towards them like a shield. 

"It's a stone emerald in color," she remembered Sebastian explaining, "and has been researched by alchemists due to its rumored properties of protection and concealment."

A short dagger suddenly appeared on Lambert's desk, his free hand reaching for it.

"No!"

The word left Abel's tongue on a shriek; her right hand flung out to catch hold of the stone's blazing threads. Her next breath stuck in her lungs. Earth's threads wrapped around her knuckles tightly, melding to her skin in a way that almost burned. Abel jerked them from the air and heaved the stone away from Lambert.

It was like a veil dropped the moment the malachite lost contact with Lambert's flesh. Matthias, who could now see the dagger, threw himself in front of Astrid and unsheathed his sword with a swift schwick. Abel jumped up to catch the flying stone just as Matthias thrust his sword into the air, knocking Lambert's knife from its path to Astrid's chest. Unharmed, Astrid ran for it. She grabbed the weapon from the ground and spun around into a fighter's stance, bent at the knees.

"The kill-switch was far more inventive," she hissed. 

Abel met Matthias's sharp gaze for a short span of their wild breaths, and then it was Sebastian who moved. In a motion that was much more graceful than his usual scrambling, Sebastian slid across the carpet to the fireplace. He threw out both his hands, practically shoving them into the flames, and when he turned back, fire licked up to his elbows.

"Bash!"

But he had already hurled the flames away from him. They reforged into two fiery balls, which collided into each other and then spun across the office like rolling firecrackers. Sebastian twisted his fingers, and the flaming balls stretched into loping ropes. His cheeks were feverishly red, lips drawn between his teeth, thin in concentration, but the invisible threads he directed held steady. The fiery chains Sebastian manipulated spun themselves around Lambert, wrapping around his torso and arms to secure the man to his desk chair.

The sudden violence of it all had taken no longer than ten seconds, and yet Abel had seen everything in slow motion. Right down to the bead of sweat that dripped from Bash's hair to the floor.

"You—" Abel stared at her friend, the stone warm in her hand—"You don't even like fire."

Bash blinked, his hands shaking as he lowered them.

"I suppose you were correct about one thing, 'Thias," Astrid said. "Lambert was trying to kill me. One honesty point for you."

Lambert hissed against the heat from the ropes binding him. His eyes burned when he turned his glare to Sebastian. "You don't know what you're doing, carissénas."

Sebastian paled and shook his head.

The flames did not touch the librarian's flesh, but they were close enough that, if Lambert were to struggle, his skin would surely catch alight and burn. Astrid and Matthias stood on either side of their captive, respected weapons drawn and pointed at his chest.

Matthias snarled. "We had a deal: Astrid was not meant to be harmed. Leolin and Niahm even held to it, yet you, of all of them, failed to uphold Queen Branwyn's decree."

"Deal?" Astrid's words flickered. "What deal?" 

Leolin. Niahm. The two names struck a chord with Abel. She watched the same recognition play out on Astrid's stricken expression until her icy eyes narrowed. 

"Those were the names of the two Fae warriors from the tunnels." The hold Astrid had on her dagger never wavered even as a terrible shock spread across her pale cheeks. "You anchored their passage through that portal, didn't you? It's how you knew to use it. That's why you ended up there. You weren't coming to look for me. You were there to open it back up!"

Matthias nodded, a curt, short movement that somehow snapped. "It's also why I cut out the malachite. I needed an elemental connection to activate the portal."

"And the tunnel's collapse?" Astrid interrogated. "That was you, not Abel, wasn't it? You used Earth to bring it down? Dammit! Your Elvish kin are everywhere. Like mating ants."

Abel startled as the stone jerked her arm towards Matthias. "No. That wasn't him. It was me."

Astrid didn't even look at her. "I want to hear it from him." She met her captain's stare evenly, holding out the injured palm they had sliced into only moments earlier back in the tunnels. "After all, he cannot lie to me."

Matthias reached across Lambert's chair to press his palm against hers.

"Was it you?"

Matthias swallowed. "I cannot be sure."

"But you would have the ability to do so?"

"I cannot be sure of that either."

Astrid scoffed. "Is there anything you can be sure of?"

"Your mother has lied to you."

The accusation sent Astrid rocking back onto her heels, but not far enough that her hold on Matthias's hand parted. "So you believe."

"So I know, Astrid." He wrenched his arm away from her and held his sword once again with two hands. "Please. Just listen." The tip of his blade nicked Lambert's sleeve. "Read her the true history, Hollace. Her true history."

"It would hardly change a thing," Lambert argued.

Astrid scowled. "I know who I am--!"

"Then, read it for me."

It was Sebastian, surprisingly, who had interrupted the quarrel. His cheeks were ashen. Maybe he should attach his mouth to Princess Bitch again, since it seemed to be a magical cure-all.

Abel mentally frowned and clutched onto the stone harder.

Sebastian's step was steady when he pressed closer. "I must know it, Master Lambert. I think you could agree with that, at least."

Lambert's hands twitched against his flaming cuffs. "You sided with her." His neck strained in Astrid's direction. "You can no longer be trusted whilst in her presence. You're as besotted as this fool."

Sebastian flushed. "Perhaps," he muttered, "and yet you called me carissénas. Promised One." He regarded the Master Librarian with a sincere expression. "Please."

Lambert's lips sagged. "Promise this first, d'Aximos: Do not allow her blood to taint your own, carissénas."

"She is not tainted," Sebastian argued.

Abel noted Astrid said nothing.

"Believe it, if you must." Lambert shrugged. "But it should not hinder you to swear the promise if you think it is so."

Sebastian's gaze retreated in the way it normally did when he sank inwards into his brain to search for the answer to a riddle or a puzzle. His lips moved, muttering soundless hypotheses that even Abel's new ears couldn't hear.

"Fine." He blinked and nodded; Astrid scowled at him. "Her blood will not poison mine."

Whatever that meant, Abel was tempted to add. Not that she didn't agree with the bound attempted murderer.

It was probably best if she kept that to herself.

Matthias rummaged through the scrolls piled haphazardly on the messy desk. After finding what he searched for, Matthias unfolded an aged bit of scroll and placed it in Lambert's line of vision. It crinkled, the edges curling back into itself even after they had been straightened.

Matthias stuck his sword into the parchment's edge, holding it open. "Read it."

"You'll regret this."

It was a threat that underlined every recited word.

- - -

What is Astrid's true history? All will be revealed in the next chapter! So keep reading and enjoy!