A great question. It took me a while to think of the right place to get this off my chest, but somewhere around dawn, I landed on it. “The grotto.”

“During High Summer? You’re feeling bold.” She laughs, but she takes her lioness form anyway and starts for the entrance we discovered years ago. “Weird. I was just thinking about that place.”

We fly over to the secret entrance. The spot is concealed off by the shadows of the palace on one side and mossy boulders on the other. I lift the blanket we use as a door and as camouflage. I let her go first, then take a deep inhale as I follow behind.

Already, the air is cooler. Rushing water sounds in the distance. Skies. Will the water be too loud for us to talk? I should have picked somewhere quieter. But it just felt right to do this in a place that was already ours.

Rowan slows as we get closer to the spring, sensing the same hushed reverence we felt when we first found it. I stand beside her as we look into the restless, glowing waters. Above us, the cave arches sharply into a high, domed ceiling. Dust clings to the green-glass lanterns affixed above the four tunnels where each of the rivers—Sun, Moon, Crescent, and Wind—flow outward. Magic pulses through the air like blood through veins.

Rowan’s mother, Talla, told us this is where the first king and queen of the Leonodai used their magic to break the Heliana from the coast of Vyrinterra when Garradin was destroyed and the threat of the humans became real. Doing so took every bit of their magic and ended up killing them. For their service to the magical races, the then-divided families of Leonodai banded together into one kingdom.

The current king, Kharo, is a direct descendent of that first king. I wonder how that feels, to have to live up to such expectations. With a general for a father, I only have a drop of that pressure, while the king had a rain.

I glance over at Ro, watching the glowing reflection of the spring dance in her eyes a moment before she catches me staring.

“What?” she asks.

“Nothing.” I look back to the spring. “Just been a while since I was here.”

“It’s the same as it’s always been,” she says, and I pick up on the hint of annoyance in her tone. Is it annoyance or impatience? Does she want to get back to the festival? To Ox?

It’s now or never. Skies keep me, I have to do this. “Ro, I wanted to talk to you.”

She leans back against the wall of the grotto. “You already are.”

“Hilarious,” I reply. Inhale, exhale. “I just … I wanted to tell you something.”