Hazel lurches toward her, his movement so fast it’s a blur, his eyes wild as he snaps suddenly elongated teeth at Oaklyyn and Sylvan thrusts his powerful frame between the two of them. Sylvan glares at Oaklyyn. “You overstep,” he says, voice shot through with warning.

I’m stunned by the exchange and the obvious fracture in their group.

Division. Yet again.

Hazel swings his penetrating black eyes back toward me, ferocity in them. “My mother was a primordial Fae. And primordials live a very long time. She witnessed the casting out of the Mages. She was at the forest’s edge when the Mages massed there and begged the Dryads—begged them—for protection when the Kelts were slaughtering them and enslaving them.”

I look to half-Kelt Yvan and we share a brief look of surprise.

Hazel’s damning gaze sweeps back to Oaklyyn, and I sense this is a long-standing source of resentment between them. “But instead of helping the Mages, the Dryads used their combined magic to leech away the Mages’ connection to the Forest.” He levels his stare back at me, his words loaded with import when they come. “The Dryadin cut your people off from the trees just when you needed them the most.”

“What would you have had us do?” Oaklyyn rages, her green face tight with fury. “We were being decimated by the Kelts!” She sweeps her arm toward me in a wide, angry arc. “If we had accepted all of the Kelts’ bastard offspring, our magic would have been destroyed within a few generations. Our branch magic watered down to the point where we’d need to layer dead wood in Mage wands—”

“And where has the quest for magical purity gotten you?” Hazel snaps, the air vibrating with a sudden darkness that further dims the light. “Where? Where has it gotten anyone?”

“You’d have us die!” Oaklyyn shoots back.

The fog of darkness intensifies, a pained look slashing through Hazel’s eyes. “No, Oaklyyn. I’d have you live!”

“Oh.” Oaklyyn coughs out a scornful laugh. “The primordial Death Fae is going to help the Dryads to live?”

I look to Hazel in surprise. “You’re a Death Fae?” I remember Trystan telling me of his friendship with some of these mysterious Fae—Fae who had the highest of bounties placed on their heads during the first Realm War.

Hazel turns slowly toward me, another mirthless smile forming on his lips. “I’ve forbidden ancestry like you, Mageling.” His words seem to drip acid. He looks to Yvan. “And you as well, Icaral. My mother was a Death Fae. My father, Dryadin.” He grows quiet, loses his cold grin, and looks at the ground. Pulling in a deep breath, he pushes his shoulders back, as if drawing on the earth at his feet. Snakes suddenly slither out of the ground and coil around his legs, then up around his body, his neck and shoulders.