“According to my pixie friend, we were on a Shadow Road. I was almost dinner, you know?” Croi complains. “I came this close!” She pinches her fingers together to show him.

“How did you escape?” Irial asks.

“I killed them,” Croi says in a very small voice. “Don’t ask me how.”

“Are you all right?” he asks instead. “Did they hurt you?”

“Just some bruises and scratches. But”—she swallows, remembering being enclosed in ice—“they scared me.”

He gives her a long look, and Croi ducks her head, not wanting to see the disgust her form evokes. To her surprise, he simply gives her a hug.

“Am I not disgusting?” Croi asks.

“You’re not really a Redcap,” he replies with a crooked smile. He has red flowers in his hair again today.

“Thank you.” Croi’s eyes are hot, and she feels her nose sting. “The catkin betrayed me. He pushed me out so I’d attract the Redcap’s attention instead of his brother. I understand why he did that. I understand that to him, his brother is more precious than me, but—”

“It still hurts. I get it. He’s unimportant. Don’t care about him,” Irial says, holding her Redcap hand. Croi looks at her red-tipped nails and shudders, pulling her hand away from him.

“I can’t stand this shape,” she grumbles.

Irial nods, taking no offense. He looks around the dreamscape. “Where are you now? Did the pixie find you?”

Croi straightens up, her resolve strengthening. “I met the Fire Princess. She was with the rebel soldiers. Do you know about them? Does your mother?”

“Yes.” The word is uttered softly, entirely without inflection. Croi tries to peer at Irial’s face to see his expression, but he turns away, not letting her.

“Then do you know what their goal is?” she demands.

“Probably to overthrow, possibly kill, my mother and me.” Still the same flat tone. As if what he’s saying has no relation to him.

“How can you be so calm about this?” Croi hops up, forgetting that she’s a Redcap. She points a red-tipped finger at him. “They’re conspiring to kill you without any clear knowledge of what led to your mother becoming the Robber Queen!”

“Of course they have the knowledge,” Irial counters. “My grandfather and his allies killed the Forever King and everyone related to him.”

“But why did your grandfather kill the Forever King? What drove your grandpa to take such drastic actions?” Croi asks. “What did the Forever King do that incurred such hatred?”

Irial looks surprised at her questions. “Everyone says my grandfather desired the throne.”

“Am I everyone?” Croi sneers. “Where is your father?”

“Dead,” Irial says without any emotion.

“Who killed him?”

“He sacrificed himself to save my mother and me when the Forever King’s soldiers attacked us,” Irial replies. There is a crack in his expression. A secret pain.

Croi sits down with a thud and swallows her words. A moment heavy with unsaid words passes. “Who else did the Forever King kill?” she asks in a whisper.