The Elf Prince Is My Baby Daddy novel · Chapter 15 of 32

Chapter 15: The Dead Star-Tree

I took the scroll.

"I'll bring you an orange," I said. "You look like you could use something sweet."

Aurelia smiled and left.

The ladies waited until her footsteps were gone.

Then the one in gray took the rattle back out of the leaning cradle and handed it to me.

"For throwing," she said.

For six days I tried to make light.

I tried on the north tower roof with Ilvar's orb.

I tried in the glasshouse with Seren reading aloud from every book in the library.

I tried in bed at night with my hands cupped in the dark.

The orange trees bloomed every time I touched them.

The orb never so much as flickered.

On the sixth night I threw it across the bedroom. It bounced off the rug and rolled under the leaning cradle.

Ilvar fetched it back without a word.

"Don't," I said.

"Don't what?"

"Don't tell me it's all right. You've got star blood in every vein. You lit your first orb at, what, three?"

"Four," he said. "I set my nurse's sleeve on fire. She was very understanding."

I put my face in my hands.

He sat down beside me on the bed and didn't touch me until I leaned on him.

"If I fail," I said into his shirt, "they take them on the day they're born. I don't even get to hold them."

"Then I'll be standing in the doorway with a sword."

"That's not a plan. That's a tantrum."

"It's both," he admitted.

Seren burst in the next morning without knocking, which was how Seren entered every room now.

"The trial's in the Star Court," she said. "The palace courtyard. The one with the dead tree in the middle."

"So?"

She opened her green book on my knees and stabbed a page with an inky finger.

"Star-trees aren't ours. They never were. The first one was a gift from the wood elf queen to Starhold, three hundred years ago, for peace. It glowed every night until..." She stopped.

"Until?"

"Until the year the Heartwood burned," said Seren. "Then it just died. Every gardener in Starhold has tried to save it. That's why they keep it there. It's sad and famous."

The new moon came up black over the lake.

The Star Court was a square of white stone, open to the sky, ringed with galleries.

Every gallery was full.

Every lord and lady of Starhold.

Every student from the Academy.

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