Croi clears her throat and waves a hand. “Please continue.”

“Uaine, the oldest of them, was the protector of Talamh.” Croi get chills when she realizes that she has met this Uaine. The dryad’s great age and her greater power make more sense now. “She meted out justice to Talamh royalty when they crossed lines forbidden to them. Blanaid, the middle sister, was the negotiator. She soothed ill feeling among the royals and ensured that the hot blood of the fae did not redden the grounds of the Caisleán. Enya, the youngest dryad sister, presides over the magicks of the Otherworld. She is the one who leads the Saol ceremony.”

“How can you speak the names of these powerful kin without dying?” Croi can still feel the thorny edges of Uaine’s name in her chest.

“The dryads are—or were, I suppose—our elders. No other kin, royal or otherwise, are more powerful than them, so no one can impose their will on them by using their names. Because we don’t have the intent to control them through their names, we can take their names without coming to harm. My mother told me that the dryads used to present their names dipped in magick as gifts to those they chose to protect.”

Oh.

“Can I continue with the story now?” Tinder demands.

“I’m not stopping you.”

“Enya was the keeper of the HeartStone of Talamh. She still is, I think. It’s not a position you can give up or hand over to anyone else. However, no one has seen her since what happened seventeen years ago, but then again, she usually only appears during the Saol ceremony.”

Wouldn’t the Guardian dryads have tried to protect the Forever King? Ask the pixie.

“Wait. If I interrupt her now, she’s going to yell at us.”

“The stories say that for millennia the dryads guarded Talamh from ill intentions and danger; they defended the magick and the Caisleán from those who would exploit them for their own gain. They would give magicked keys to visitors from other kingdoms, keys that read the intent of the visitors and acted accordingly. Those with malevolent intentions would find themselves turning the key to enter rooms outside the Caisleán, or in dungeons to await the rulers of the Caisleán. They carried out their duties fairly because above all, the dryads were created to be impartial in their dealings with royalty. They were bound to be objective, to place the well-being of Talamh above the well-being of any of the fae ruling it.”

Croi senses a twist coming, but she doesn’t say a word. Tinder’s pinches are painful.

“There are many truths to the story, and some of these truths say that Blanaid fell in love with a young prince, an ancestor of the Forever King’s. They say she helped him survive a plot to take his life and by doing so broke her vow of objectivity.”

“Is objectivity an important thing to the Guardians?” Croi asks.

“Yes, according to my mother, the Guardians defend the Caisleán and the kingdoms but rarely, if ever, come to the defense of individual kin.”