the well. At least Ash had waited until they were finished eating.
Jade must have only spoken briefly to the warriors, because she landed just a moment after Moon. She started immediately for the archway that led out of the well. The tilt of her spines said she was furious, and he was starting to feel a burning resentment of his own. This is not my fault.
Moon followed her into a wide foyer, where several passages met. Jade stopped beside a fountain that cascaded down carved rocks into a flower-strewn pool. She faced him and said, flatly, “You offered to fight her.” The growl grew in her voice. “What were you thinking?”
He knew he should shift to groundling; it was dangerous to argue like this. But he cocked his head, deliberately provoking. “I was thinking I was offering to fight her.”
“Queens don’t fight consorts.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
Her eyes narrowed, conveying cold threat. “When I fight her, don’t interfere.”
Resentment turned into fury, and he flared his spines. “If she leaves a scratch on you, I’ll rip her apart.”
He could tell it was taking a good deal of her control not to just slap him in the head. “Moon—”
“You knew what I was when you brought me here.” He hissed in pure frustration. “I’m not like them. I never will be.”
Jade’s tail lashed, but his words seem to strike home. She regarded him steadily, and the growl had left her voice when she said, “You can pretend to be like them while we’re here.”
Stricken, Moon looked away. That was… not an unreasonable request. He just didn’t know why he couldn’t grant it. You provoked Ash, and you’ve walked into enough strange places to know better. But he had spent so many turns trying to fit in to whatever group he was with, trying to conform to expectations he barely understood. It was as if he had used up all his patience for it, and had none left for his own people. “I can’t pretend anymore.”
Jade shook her head, her tail still twitching. But she sounded resigned. “Ash is young.”
He faced her again. “So are you.”
Jade tilted her head in irony. “I’m bigger. I’m stronger. And I’ve fought in earnest. She hasn’t.”
A warrior landed on the floor of the well and shifted to groundling as she walked through the arch. It was Willow, who had welcomed them in the greeting hall. She stopped a few paces away and addressed Jade. “Tempest wanted me to speak to you.”
Jade’s mouth set in a grim line. “Go on.”
“This wasn’t planned.” Willow twitched, uncomfortable. “Ash is the youngest daughter queen in the court, and rash with it. She was goaded by her sisters and their warriors, who are just as foolish as she is.”
Jade’s spines twitched uneasily. This had to be a generous admission of fault on Tempest’s part, even if it was being made through her warrior. Apparently it required an admission in return, because Jade said, “My consort is accustomed to defending himself. He didn’t realize she meant to make a childish insult, not a real threat.”
Moon looked down, resisting the urge to dig at the floor with his claws. He had realized it; he just hadn’t cared.
Willow hesitated, then added, “I know Tempest would rather this challenge not take place.”
Jade inclined her head. “Tell her if Ash doesn’t appear, I won’t pursue her. If she does appear… I won’t kill her.”
Relief flickered in Willow’s expression. “I’ll tell Tempest. Thank you.”
They went through the colony’s greeting hall, outside to the open platform they had landed on when they had first arrived. Stone waited there in groundling form, his opaque expression somehow conveying a deep disgust with all of them, but especially Moon.
There was no one else on the platform, and only a few warriors in flight, circling near the outer barrier of thorns. Jade walked forward, crouched, and took to the air; hard flaps of her wings carried her out away from the colony’s platforms. She banked before the thorn barrier and began to circle. The patrolling warriors stayed well away from her.
Moon shifted to groundling, folded his arms, and tried not to tense his shoulders. Stone was silent in a way that seemed to speak volumes. Moon wanted to say something, like I didn’t mean for this to happen. Saying it to Stone would be useless; he should have said it to Jade. He had helped Ash do something terribly stupid. A real consort would have ignored her or deflected her attention and never let