“I see.” Jade exchanged a worried look with Moon. It had been a big unspoken fear that all Ardan’s meddling with the seed might have damaged it somehow. Moon had been hoping that fear would be banished by the time they arrived. It wasn’t good to hear that they would still have to wait and see.
Heart turned to Chime, and they looked at each other a long moment. They had been Flower’s last students, and Chime couldn’t act on her teaching anymore. Heart stepped forward and Chime caught her in his arms, burying his face against her shoulder.
Stone wandered up out of the crowd, stopped and eyed Moon for a moment, then nudged his shoulder. “You all right?”
“Yes.” Suddenly that was all Moon could trust himself to say. He felt like he had never really come home before, not to a permanent home, not to a place where everyone knew the real him. He couldn’t even trust himself to shift to his groundling form, even though it was technically rude to stay like this while Stone was a groundling. What he really wanted to do was run away and hide in a corner, and enjoy this intense, unaccustomed feeling privately.
Then Pearl dropped down from the levels above. Arbora and warriors scattered to make way for her. River impulsively started toward her, and remembered just in time to stop and wait with the others, while she greeted Jade. Moon was so emotional at the moment he even felt a spark of pity. River might sleep in Pearl’s bower, but he would never be her consort, anymore than Chime could ever be an Arbora again.
“You’re late,” Pearl said, and frowned at Jade. “Stone was ready to go out looking for you.” Then her gaze hardened. She had obviously spotted the recent scratches on Jade’s scales, though they had faded over the past few days. Knowing Pearl, she might even be able to tell they had been made by another queen. Her spines started to lift in agitation. “What happened?”
Jade set her jaw and braced herself. “Halcyon, a sister queen from Emerald Twilight, tried to steal Moon.”
Moon had half-expected Pearl to express disappointment that Halcyon hadn’t succeeded. But Pearl’s eyes went black with fury. Her spines stiffened, until they flared out around her head.
Stone lifted his brows and gave Moon an incredulous look. Moon shrugged helplessly. Pearl ignored them. Her voice flat, she said to Jade, “Did you kill her?”
Jade’s spines lifted in response, but she kept her temper. She said, “No.” Her voice heavy with irony, she said, “I was persuaded not to.”
Moon belatedly shifted to groundling. The last thing he wanted at the moment was Pearl’s attention. But Pearl stayed focused on Jade. She tilted her head, her gaze hardened to ice. “Why not?” The words dropped into a near perfect silence. No one in the hall breathed. Moon could hear the breeze rustling leaves outside.
Jade flicked her spines. “I didn’t want to start a war. We took her back to Emerald Twilight with one of her warriors, and made the warrior speak before a mentor.” She paused, and added deliberately, “They owe us a great debt now.”
Pearl was silent for so long there were probably warriors in the hall starting to suffer from lack of air. Then she said, “I’m surprised you thought of that, in the heat of the moment.”
Moon tried not to react in any way. He wondered if he had made things worse by talking Jade out of immediate vengeance. But Jade was calm and didn’t take Pearl’s bait. She said, “It seemed the best course.”
Pearl held her gaze a moment more, then said, “We’ll see.”
She turned away, and the whole hall took a collective breath of relief. Out of the corner of his eye, Moon saw Chime’s knees buckle, and Heart and Balm reach hastily to steady him.
As the crowd parted for Pearl, she lifted one hand in a signal to River. He hurried after her. Moon regretted the sympathetic impulse. Keeping his voice low, he said, “He’ll tell her everything that happened.”
“So he will.” Jade wasn’t worried. The long flight here from Emerald Twilight had evidently given her a much more sanguine perspective on the situation. “She’ll see the advantages.”
“Somebody needs to tell me everything that happened,” Stone pointed out. “But you need to do it on the way to the nurseries, because Frost accused me of leaving you somewhere for dead, and she’s managed to convince the rest of the clutches that she’s right.”
Moon winced. When he had left, he had been afraid of something like that happening, but there hadn’t been any real choice.
Jade took his wrist and pulled him with her as she followed Stone. She said, wryly, “We’ll both go. I think I need to spend more time with Frost.”
Moon thought that was probably the best thing they could do.
They held the farewell for Flower later that evening, after Jade and Moon and the warriors had had a chance to sleep and rest. The Arbora had found a niche in one of the walls up in the unused Aeriat levels, which Stone said was one of the old grave niches for royal urns. Heart and the other mentors didn’t know how to make the wood grow to seal the niche yet, but it would still make a good resting place.
The whole court sang for Flower. Moon didn’t contribute, but he made himself sit still for the whole uncomfortable performance. It wasn’t as eerie this time, though it still felt alien to him.
Afterward, Moon ended up sitting outside with Chime on a ledge above the waterfall. They watched the tiny flying lizards chase lightbugs in the spray, while the sun set somewhere past the mountain-trees and the green twilight deepened toward darkness. The whole court felt tense and uneasy. From what Moon understood, either the seed would show that it was ready to be reattached to the tree within the next day or so, or it wouldn’t. There was nothing to do now but wait.
Chime said suddenly, “They’re choosing a new chief mentor tonight.”
That was an uncomfortable thought. The balance of power in the court was already delicate. Moon asked, “Who is it going to be?”
“Probably Heart.”
That was an uncomfortable thought for a different reason. After the fight to escape the Dwei hive, Heart hadn’t been able to put Moon into a healing trance. “But she’s so young.”
“That’s not actually a problem,” Chime said, though he still sounded depressed. “You want someone young, to grow into it. And she still has all the other mentors to help her. Heart is reasonable, and good at settling differences, and Pearl and Jade both trust her. She was Flower’s second… first choice as a successor.”
“The first choice after you,” Moon said, then realized a moment later that he should have withheld that thought.
“But I’m not a choice anymore,” Chime said, sounding less depressed but more exasperated.
“Sorry.”
Chime shook his head. “It’s all right. It’s just… I wish I could help with the seed.”
Moon wished Chime could help, too. He tried to imagine packing the two flying boats again and heading off for some new destination, and it felt like a little stab in the heart. He wanted to stay here.
Stone had been right from the beginning. The court belonged here. And Moon meant to belong here, too.
Late that night, when Moon and Jade were asleep in their bower on the teachers’ level, someone banged loudly on the hanging bed. Moon, closest to the bottom, started awake and Jade rolled off him with a growl. They both leaned over the edge to see Blossom looking up at them expectantly. She said, “It’s the seed! It’s ready!”