The Queen's Quiet Offer
“A breath,” hums the cold wind, and all four winds spin once around you, delighted — you feel your hair try every hairstyle at once. “Given away all day, held by no one. The riddle is passed.”
That night, before the third trial, a page summons you — alone — to a small room where Queen Cirra sits without her crown. She looks less like the top of the sky and more like somebody's tired mother.
“The third trial is dangerous,” she says plainly. “Champions have been hurt. So I offer you this instead, child, because you are brave and small and far from home: withdraw. Say the word, and I will send you safely back to your world tonight, with gifts. The guardian stays, of course — her fate is Court business — but you would be home in your own bed by morning. Your aunt need never worry again.” She folds her hands. “No shame would attach to it. You are, after all, only a visitor here.”
Home. Your own bed. Aunt Bee's kitchen at breakfast. It pulls at you like gravity.
But Sera would be alone in the cold sky, and her fate would be Court business.