He shuddered at the thought. Maybe he could understand the urge to seize all of this, but to actually do it—to fight a war that had killed thousands, to enslave generations of people to maintain control—was unforgivable. He hated that he could understand the urge. He hated that understanding made him even a little bit like those liars—those traitors—and like his father.

“I think I could watch the water for the rest of my life and never grow tired of it,” Tal said.

“I imagine sunset will be a spectacle,” Elan agreed. Even dawn, creeping up from the cliffs behind them, had been gorgeous. Watching the sun kiss the water when it dropped below the horizon…that would be a kind of magic all its own. Elan had been too exhausted to think to watch last night; he would be sure to tonight.

They’d eaten after dawn, and Jae had decided to try to find the Well’s binding again—but from the shore this time. The magic wouldn’t be as easy to locate if she wasn’t immersed in it, but at least she wouldn’t be in danger of drowning. It was Tal who’d suggested that he and Elan hike back to the top of the cliff and explore the orchard while she worked. They could gather more food and see if there was anything else worth finding. If the people Jae called the Wellspring Bloodlines had really stayed up there for so long that they’d grown a whole orchard to feed themselves, they probably hadn’t camped the whole time. Maybe there was some kind of shelter left, the remains of a building the three of them could use instead of sleeping under the stars or beneath the branches.

Exploring the orchard required turning away from the stunning sight of the Well. Elan willed himself to do it. Tal joined him, and they made their way from the cliff and into the trees.

“I’ve never seen anything like this, either,” Elan said as they walked. “Even in our finest groves, the trees have to be kept small. But these look like they’ve been growing since the Well was founded.”

Tal reached up to pluck a fruit from one of the trees as they passed, and clawed the rind off. “Well, if Jae’s right, they have been,” Tal said. “The way she described it, it sounded like they live at least as much on magic as they do on water and sunlight.”

“They’d have to. Not much light down here,” Elan pointed out. The underbrush was just as enormously overgrown as the trees were. Bushes came up to his waist, and he had to stop and push past them more often than branches from the fruit trees. Most of the trees were so huge that their branches were higher up, the lowest just within reach, and their trunks were so wide that Elan couldn’t wrap his arms around them.

“I hope Jae will have a chance to come explore up here,” Tal mused. He popped a section of the fruit into his mouth. “She’s always been good with plants. She loves the garden at home. I know it doesn’t look like much, but it would be nothing at all without her.”

Elan nodded a little. He’d grown up with Danardae’s splendid gardens, all carefully tended, bright and colorful and controlled. Aredann’s had been dismal by comparison. Not just lacking in plant life, but tiny. But after having spent time at Aredann, Elan understood just how hard Jae must have worked to keep the garden alive at all.

“It’s good she was placed as the groundskeeper, then,” Elan said.

“It was no coincidence,” Tal said. “She was good at it—even when she was young. When there was a Twill groundskeeper, she assisted him. When he left…It wasn’t long after Lord Savann died in the desert. Lady Shirrad was inconsolable, but she confided in me often enough—it’s not as if I could tell anyone her secrets. I managed to convince her that Jae would be best suited to working the grounds.”

Elan shook his head in wonder. Shirrad must have been terrified and desperate to confide in one of the Closest at all—to see them as anything more than obedient shadows. Even after his whole world had been upended, Elan still found that strange. The idea of an Avowed guardian conversing with Closest was madness. But Lady Shirrad had, and he could only admire Tal for finding a way to use it to his advantage.

“If you hadn’t been born a Closest, I wonder what you’d be,” Elan mused. “I think you’d have been very successful if you were Avowed. You know, all of this—everything—it would have gone very differently if you’d discovered that magic instead of Jae. I think I’d have had a much easier time reasoning with you.”

“Then it’s probably for the best it was Jae,” Tal said, and though he sounded lighthearted, Elan sensed there was something under that laugh.

“Why’s that?” Elan asked. Then, “Sorry, you don’t have to—”

But the compulsion had already hit Tal, who gave Elan a dark look as he answered, “It would have been easier for you if I’d had Jae’s magic. I’d have been reasonable, and I’d have convinced you to be reasonable, too. I would have made sure things were easy for me and Jae and Gali from then on, taken care of them. But I’m not like Jae. I would never have had the courage to kill Rannith—or to attack your father. And we’d never have ended up out here.”

“I thought you hated that Jae did all that,” Elan said, remembering Tal’s comments. He shoved the prickly branches of another bush out of his way. Careful not to ask it as a question, he added, “I thought you wanted her to be merciful.”

He held the branches so Tal could follow him. “I do. But you were right—there will be war. And I hope she will be merciful, because I think that will make it easier to find a way forward. But I know, I know, she will do whatever it takes to free us.”

What it might take would be violence. Destruction. Elan shivered in the shade as he edged around one of the enormous trees, only to find that another one had grown so large and so close that there was no room to squeeze between them.

“Then it’s lucky she listens to you,” Elan said. “If you ask her to have mercy, she will.”

“She’ll do what she thinks is right,” Tal said, but he sounded thoughtful.

Elan kicked his way past a smaller bush, still looking for a gap between the trees. Instead he hit yet another trunk, grown so wide that the two trees were now practically fused into one.

“Odd,” Tal said from behind him. “All the trees have been wide and close, but these are more like a wall than anything else.”