For the first time since we started sharing a bed, I woke before Rocher.

  He usually woke first, gently kissing my eyelids like he was checking that the dream had not swallowed me again.

  It was entirely his fault that I slept in every morning. I had expected his appetite to taper off once Ferric started working him into the ground, but if anything, training only made him worse. He always came back in the evenings restless, insatiable, as if burning power all day only sharpened the edge of it.

  Today, however, my nerves beat dawn to the punch. It was the day I had called upon the witches to convene. The day I would present the nature of our predicament, and my solution.

  I snuggled deeper into his arms, as if it could somehow hold the day back just a little longer. His chest was warm against my spine; his breath ruffled the hair at my nape. For one fragile moment, I pretended the world outside our hut didn't exist.

  Then I felt a hand slide up my ribs.

  Rocher's fingers cupped my breast with perfect, practiced confidence. His thumb found my nipple with frightening accuracy and gave it a zy, affectionate tweak.

  My breath caught.

  Then I scowled.

  "Stop pretending to be asleep," I hissed.

  He made a noise like a pleased hum.

  That was enough.

  I grabbed the pillow under my head and stuffed it squarely into his smug, fake-sleeping face.

  "Mmph—!" he sputtered, filing slightly, the mattress shaking.

  "Idiot," I muttered, and rolled out of the bnkets before he could tch onto me again.

  "Wha—hey—" He sat up, rubbing his face, looking perfectly unrepentant. "Good morning to you too."

  I refused to acknowledge the ugh bubbling under his voice and focused on dressing.

  If today went well, it would be uneventful. If it didn't... well. Best not to think too hard about that part.

  Ferric greeted me in a small clearing I hadn't noticed before. The canopy overhead thickened until the light turned green and watery, and the air smelled faintly of sap and damp earth. Someone had fashioned a table out of a low stump, and on it arranged stones into a rough ring.

  Ferric flicked his fingers.

  A handful of carved runestones skittered across the stump as if obeying a private gravity. They clicked into a loose circle.

  A map, enchanted to mirror the movements of Forest itself.

  He looked at the pattern, then at me, and finally jerked his chin toward the shadows.

  "Come on out," he called, sounding bored.

  A rustle answered.

  Nyxara stepped into the clearing as if she had been standing there the entire time and we had only now earned the privilege of seeing her. She looked the same way she always did: small, pale, ageless in that wrong way that made my skin tighten over my ribs. Her eyes were bright with quiet amusement.

  Behind her, the foliage shifted again.

  Ysel emerged more slowly, as though the forest itself was reluctant to give her up. Her hair was half pinned, half wild. Her expression was calm, but the calm had cracks in it, fine as spider silk.

  I gave each of them a slight bow in turn. "Thank you all for making the time."

  Nyxara tilted her head. "Will your companions not be joining us?"

  I shook mine in response. "I'm afraid they're both busy with training. I'll brief them when I see them next."

  With Velka deep into her well-earned hibernation, this was everyone present and accounted for.

  "Well?" Ferric reached over and tapped the table with a knuckle. "Come on then. We've not got all day. Your man breaks something every time I'm not looking."

  I nodded and pnted my palms on the stump. The bark bit into my skin, grounding me.

  With a deep breath, I forced my mind into the shape of war.

  "The crusaders are not coming to fight a battle," I said. "Not at first. They are coming to build a cage."

  "A cage?" Ysel asked.

  "A cordon." I traced a rough circle with one finger. "Nodes set in a sanctifying ring around the Great Tree, powered by holy pylons. Once the ring closes, it will nullify spellcasting inside its boundary. That is their objective."

  Nyxara furrowed her brow. "Not the most cost-effective pn."

  "It is not," I agreed, forcing my voice to stay even, "but on the face of it, it is incredibly safe."

  I looked to Ysel.

  "By the end, we'll have to contend with roughly one thousand men," I said. "United under the banner of the White Warden. His infrastructure. His authority. All funded by the Crown Prince, and manned courtesy of those warhawks in the Church."

  "One thousand..." Ysel repeated, dragging a hand across her face.

  "It's the only reason they can even attempt something of this scale. That firebrand Bishop Halbrecht will have rallied priests and padins from the farthest reaches of the kingdom, and the Tower will have supplemented their ranks with mages."

  A muscle in my face twitched. This was another consequence of starting Seraphine's quest out of turn. If we had finished Lumiere's first, the crusader force would have been a quarter the size, and not so nearly well-equipped.

  Nyxara rolled her eyes. "Men who talk. Men who pray. Men who burn things when the talking fails."

  "I am not telling you this because I care about their politics," I said. "I am telling you because their politics is why they will keep coming even when it stops making sense."

  Ysel's fingers flexed slightly at her side, as if she could feel the idea of sanctification biting into the roots.

  Her mouth tightened. "And the Forest?"

  "The sanctification will stress it," I admitted. "It will not die immediately. It will sicken. It will resist where it can. But where the cordon closes—" I swallowed. The words tasted like ash. "Wherever it closes, it will not matter what the Forest wants. No magic inside will st for long. We will be trapped in a silence that will not yield."

  Ferric dragged a runestone a finger's width inward. The circle tightened.

  "Fine," he said. "Let them build their little fence. We will smash it."

  "We can't," I said. "Not directly. We are too few. We cannot afford to trade bodies."

  Ferric looked at me. The look he gave prey when it tried to negotiate.

  I did not flinch.

  "And the first day will not be about winning. It'll be about preventing them from setting the terms of the war."

  I tapped the stump with each word.

  "The enemy will start by establishing strongholds just outside the Forest's eastern boundary, where it borders the kingdom. These two pylons at the northeast and southeast we cannot touch. They will be far too fortified."

  I gave a wry smile. "Lucky for us, that means we won't be fighting all thousand at once."

  With runestones, I traced the northern and southern boundaries of the Forest.

  "Forward parties will be staged from both points in order to carve paths westward. Along those routes, they will mobilize their third and fourth pylons, incrementally stealing territory from us."

  Ferric leaned back on his heels. "So we do not let it close."

  "Correct," I said. "That gives us our first opening."

  Nyxara's eyes glittered. "How so?"

  "By disrupting these forward operations," I said. "The effective range of the pylons is a function of how much holy magic is being spent to sustain it. If the two-pronged strategy proves untenable, they'll be forced to consolidate their priests and push through the center instead."

  I traced a triangle over the circle, then put small marks along it, spaced like stitches.

  Ysel frowned. "You would have them combine strength?"

  I nodded, understanding her concern. "Trust me, it's better for us. No matter what, they'll be closing off the territory behind them. The bulk of our strength needs magic to function. A center-wise approach gives us more angles of attack, and that advantage increases the deeper they push."

  "Plus..." I looked up and met her eyes. "They'd be walking straight into your arms."

  I let the thought register with her for a moment.

  Ferric snorted. "So we cut them apart in both corridors. Good. That I can do."

  "No," I said. The word came out sharper than I intended.

  His head snapped toward me, grin already sharpening into something dangerous. "You just said we disrupt them."

  "We disrupt them. Not erase them."

  Nyxara's brows lifted, amused.

  Ferric folded his arms. "Expin."

  "This is the vanguard," I said. "Not the siege. Not the extermination. These men are scouts, pathfinders, surveyors. Their purpose isn't conquest. It's information."

  Ferric scoffed. "Then let's give them less to work with."

  "No," I repeated, more evenly. "We feed them specific information."

  I dragged one of the runestones back to the western edge and tapped it twice.

  "No roots through armor. No branches snapping spines. No trees closing ranks," I said. "Not for the vanguard."

  Ysel went very still.

  "We do not reveal our cards yet," I continued. "This must be mundane. Steel and magic, like they are already expecting."

  Nyxara clicked her tongue. "And my work?"

  "Your golems will conceal our approach only. Save your strength for the main push."

  Ferric's jaw tightened. "You're tying my hands here," he said ftly. "You want me to leave witnesses."

  "I want you to leave liars," I said. "Men who will swear the edges are death traps. Men who insist the center is safer. More defensible."

  I forced myself to slow down, to keep the urgency from bleeding into panic.

  "I'm handing you a scalpel instead of a hammer," I pressed. "Do what you will with it. Just refrain from killing everyone."

  Silence stretched.

  "If survivors return," I continued, "bleeding and terrified, swearing they're outmatched at the edges, the White Warden will act accordingly."

  Nyxara leaned in. "Sending more bodies down the center."

  "Yes," I said. "Into terrain that belongs to us."

  Ysel closed her eyes. "Then the Forest will wait to extract its pound of flesh," she murmured.

  Ferric exhaled through his teeth, running a hand through his hair.

  "Just tell me how many I need to keep alive," he said.

  "Enough to report," I said. "Not enough to compare stories."

  Nyxara studied the runestones again, then gave a short, humorless chuckle.

  "You're more vicious than I gave you credit for," she said. "You know that, Cire?"

  I did not smile.

  Ferric straightened, rolling his shoulders as if preparing for a familiar kind of violence—just constrained.

  "Fine," he said. "I'll leave the stragglers. The cowards. The lucky few."

  His eyes met mine, sharp and unyielding. "But if any one of them tries to be brave—"

  "They're yours to deal with as you please," I said.

  Nyxara reached out and nudged one of the stitched markers slightly off-center.

  "It's a good pn," she finally said.

  Ysel nodded simply. "Then let us begin."

  A low tremor ran through the clearing—a warning. The forest tightened, then stilled, like a muscle forced to hold under strain.

  Nyxara was already fading back into the trees. Ferric followed shortly after, firelight guttering briefly in his wake.

  I stayed behind for a moment, committing the shape of the broken circle to memory.

  The shape of the cage.

  When I turned to leave, the Forest closed in behind me, reciming the clearing now that its purpose had been served.