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Derek finds Stiles in the walled Queen’s Garden that was once his mother’s. Stiles is barefoot, and his pale skin is dappled in coins of sunlight as he stands under the spreading boughs of a tree and peers up into the branches. He’s wearing an unlaced tunic that slips off his shoulder, and a pair of leggings. He looks more like a stable boy than a lord. He’s smiling, his cheeks dimpled, though his brows are tugged together a little in confusion. His expression reminds Derek of the early days of their marriage, when Stiles barely spoke a word of Triskelion.
There’s a frantic nursemaid beside him, shifting her weight from foot to foot. She carries a toddler on her hip, dark curls spilling out from underneath a little hood.
“But, my lord!” the nursemaid exclaims. “My lord!”
Derek sighs and strides forward. “Meredith, what is happening?”
She turns her stricken face towards him. “Your highness!”
Derek looks up into the tree.
A grinning little face looks back at him, from at least twelve feet off the ground.
“It’s fine,” Derek says. Meredith is only new to the keep, and she doesn’t understand that Faolán is not her usual charge. Derek has no doubt she was told, but hearing about something and seeing it in practice are two very different things. Faolán is Derek’s son, but he is also Stiles’s son, and Stiles is a wildling, a Beaconite, a child of Laindéir; his people have fae magic in their blood.
“The tree will hold him,” Stiles says, still smiling.
Meredith looks anxious. “My lord, you cannot know that.”
Stiles looks more confused. “The tree will hold him. He asked it to, and it says it will.”
Meredith takes a step back, her arms tightening around the small child in her arms.
The small child squawks in outrage.
“It’s fine,” Derek says again. “I’ll take Ellora. Go inside. It’s fine.”
Meredith bundles Derek’s niece into his arms, and scurries away.
Ellora points up into the tree, her eyes wide. “Faylin!”
Ellora is two and a half. One day she will be the queen of Triskelion, but for now she can’t yet pronounce her cousin’s name.
“Faolán,” Derek calls, and the leaves rustle in the branches as Faolán peeps down again. Derek’s stomach swoops despite knowing that Stiles is right and their son is perfectly fine—if the tree has promised to hold Faolán, it will, but that doesn’t mean that Derek can entirely shut down the strong paternal instinct yelling at him that no four-year-old child should be dangling in a tree twelve feet off the ground. “Come down from there. It’s almost time for dinner.”
Derek also hasn’t lived with Stiles long enough not to be amazed when the tree shudders and shifts, interlaced branches bending slowly towards the ground at some silent command from Faolán. Although, a command? Derek isn’t sure that’s the right word for the way that Stiles and Faolán and their people interact with the natural world around them. He thinks it’s more like an understanding, or an accord. There is no doubt in Derek’s mind that both Faolán and Stiles think of the tree as a friend, and that somehow the tree thinks the same of them.
Faolán steps out of his cradle of branches, and then skips around the tree, delighted, stopping to hug the trunk several times.
Stiles presses his palm to the bark and murmurs something in his strange shifting language.
Derek has no doubt it’s thanks.
Derek steps forward and presses his own hand to the tree, and Stiles beams at him, and then they shepherd Faolán inside for dinner.
*****
There was a time when Stiles thought that he would never be happy in Triskelion, because the walls were stone and cold, and so was his husband the prince. He still doesn’t love being trapped inside the stone walls away from the trees and the wind, but he knows now that Derek is not stone at all. Derek is warm and alive and so full of love that Stiles’s whole heart could be encased in walls of stone and it would still beat strongly. Still, Derek wants him to be happy. The servants think Prince Derek is mad and that Stiles has somehow bewitched him, because they do not sleep in Derek’s rooms anymore. Instead, they sleep on the battlement in the north tower, on a bed with a gauzy canopy that lets them see the stars, and Stiles sings the rain away if it threatens them. Stiles loves to be where he can listen to the wind, and taste it too, and it carries the scent of earth and trees and water to him every day. Stiles loves the sunlight in the summer, and the bite of snow in the winter. Derek burrows under layers of furs and grumbles when it’s cold, and Stiles repays him by burrowing under there with him and making love in their warm little pocket of air.
Faolán sometimes sleeps with them, and sometimes he sleeps with Ellora in her nursery, and sometimes he sleeps with Uncle Peter, and sometimes he sleeps in the gardens, and sometimes he sleeps in the stables with the horses and crawls out the next morning with hay sticking to his hair. Faolán is a wildling like his father. He has a room that befits a prince of the realm, but Stiles is sure he barely remembers where it is.
It is something of a scandal that a prince of Triskelion is such a wildling, because the people of the keep do not understand the ways of Laindéir. They do not understand that Faolán has inherited Stiles’s will-o’-the-wisp heart, and must follow the whispers of the wind and wherever the grass bends. He is an airling, like his father and, like Stiles, he has many names.
Faolán.
Moonflower.
Conmac.
Chaffinch.
Ember.
The Gift of the Trees.
In Laindéir his names would change with the seasons, with his heart, with his growing spirit, but the customs in Triskelion are different. Here, he is Faolán. Some use his changing names—Queen Laura and her husband, Uncle Peter, Cora, Kira, and some of Derek’s soldiers—but it is difficult even for those who try to keep up. Sometimes Faolán changes his name three times in a day. Sometimes he calls himself Chaffinch for a month or more. The people of Triskelion like to put labels on things, but that makes no sense to Stiles because things are always changing. Why don’t their names shift with their meaning?
Sometimes it seems like such a small thing, and sometimes it seems to encapsulate the vast differences between their peoples. It shifts too, of course. Everything shifts.
Stiles is learning how to fit in Triskelion, and Triskelion, he suspects, is slowly learning how to fit around a Stiles.
Stiles.
Mischief.
Will-o’-the-wisp.
Spark.
Sparrow.
Airling.
Light in the Woods.
Nemeton.
His spirit flows like a brook in spring, babbling and laughing as it dances over rocks and pebbles.
He is happy in Triskelion, because Derek loves him, and because they have a son, and because he sleeps where the wind can whisper to him and bring to him all the things that the trees say. And, lying there with Derek’s arms around him, he can listen to them.
*****
Peter Hale, former regent of Triskelion, cuts a majestic figure as he strides across the training field, his crimson cloak billowing behind him. He looks like a king, although he never was one. He was Queen Laura’s regent for a time, but never king. There’s no doubting his royal blood though, and Derek sees how some of the newer recruits stand up taller in response. Peter has always borne himself proudly, even when much of his body was covered in burns and it pained him to move. He never let anyone see that. He barely let his family see it. There’s an ease in his movements these days though, because his scars were healed by the same strange and unknowable magic that gave Derek and Stiles their son.
“Uncle Peter!” Faolán calls, racing towards him across the tussocky ground. He dives into Peter’s arms, and Peter lifts him and swings him high into the air. Peter releases him—Faolán squeals with delight as he sails into the air—and catches him again when he falls.
Derek watches, a single eyebrow raised. He sheaths his sword as Peter approaches, Faolán now tucked tightly on his hip as they get closer.
“Nephew,” Peter says with a smirk, because he always knows exactly what Derek is thinking.
“I know that you and Stiles believe my son is made of air,” Derek says, “but I’m not as convinced he would simply bounce if he hit the ground. You’ve had your share of scraped knees, haven't you, my little ember?”
Faolán grins. “Cerulaith!”
It’s a new word of Faolán’s that he’s been using lately. Even Stiles isn’t certain what he means by it. He only hummed the first time Faolán said it, and told Derek that the meaning hadn’t settled yet.
“You can’t just make up words, Stiles!” Derek had exclaimed, frustrated with the inability to understand what his son was telling him.
And Stiles had laughed, delighted. “Of course you can! Where else do you think they come from? Do plants burst through the earth with labels on them? Are babies born with their names written on the soles of their feet?”
There is no winning with Stiles, or with his people. There is only sighing, shrugging, and moving on. Fortunately Stiles is well worth the price. So, of course, is Faolán.
Derek kisses his son on the top of the head. “Cerulaith,” he agrees.
Faolán beams.
*****
The players come in the spring, a motley band of men and women dressed in velvet and patches and bells. They are loud and colourful and merry, and the children of the keep trail after them like ducklings. Even after they have gone again—the players are as seasonal as the daisies that dot the fields around the castle—the children remember them and talk of them as though they have been touched by magic.
Faolán and Ellora wear bells around their ankles in the manner of the tumblers, and jingle when they move. It makes Stiles laugh to hear them.
*****
Laura doesn’t even flinch when Jordan, his hand shaking, sets the muddy ribbon, still threaded with bells, on the table between them. She keeps her head held high, but her jaw clenches tight and there is fire in her eyes.
Derek’s heart clenches.
Ellora and Faolán have been missing for a day and a night. Taken, of course, because there is no way they could have just wandered off without being noticed. Not two royal children. Even Stiles is frantic, because he has asked the trees and for once they have no answers for him.
Jordan’s boots are caked in mud, and splatters of it have reached as high as his thighs. He’s been riding hard all night.
So has Derek, but without even a ribbon of bells to show for it.
His rivalry with his brother-in-law is good-natured. Derek leads a contingent of household guards, and Jordan leads another. Jordan might be married to the queen, but he is her consort, not her equal. Derek is a prince, and outranks him. Such divisions have never held in private, but they have an audience of worried councilors now, and each one of them holds their composure.
“A woman in the valley says she heard horses overnight,” Jordan says now. “She thought their hooves were bagged to keep them from sounding on the road. She looked out, but there was no moon, and she saw nothing. This morning she found the bells dropped by the bridge.”
“They are heading south then,” Derek says, his stomach twisting. The Argents are to the south.
It’s Peter who narrows his eyes at the bells. “To muffle the horses’ hooves yet keep the bells where they might be dropped all that time? That seems careless.”
“A ruse,” Laura says softly. “Some have headed south and laid the bait, but it is likely the rest have taken the children in another direction.”
Derek is torn. His first instinct is that Peter is ascribing motive and intrigue to sheer carelessness and that of course the villains are heading to Argent lands—no doubt to collect their reward for the delivery of the Hale heirs—but he also recognizes that the Argents would make perfect scapegoats, simply because there isn’t a person in this room who wouldn’t think the worst of them.
Laura lifts her chin. “Jordan, have a contingent of your men continue south. We will split the rest of the guards to go in other directions. Drop coins in the hands of those who offer any information at all. We will have our children returned.”
She strides out of the throne room, councilors and courtiers bowing as she passes. Jordan and Peter and Derek follow her.
She barely makes it into the antechamber before she stumbles, sobbing, to the floor.
*****
The thin frost on the ground crunches under Stiles’s bare feet. Behind him, some distance back, Derek and Boyd and Erica wait on their horses, the animals stamping and huffing steam into the air. Stiles places his hand on the thin, pale trunk of an aspen. He can feel the roar of the sap flowing in the veins of the tree like blood. He curls his toes into the cold earth.
The trees around the keep were silent, and here, miles away, they have also seen nothing. Stiles doesn’t know if that means that whoever took the children has magic, or simply that the trees were not watching. Trees are old; the lives of men pass in seconds before their gazes, no more important to them than the buzzing of insects.
Stiles is the Nemeton. Stiles is different, even among his own people. Stiles and the trees have always spoken together. The trees are where Stiles’s magic is the strongest. Faolán has magic too, Stiles knows, but it hasn’t taken its proper form yet. Maybe it will draw him to water, or to fire. Maybe it will be the magic of the earth: quiet and deep and ancient.
The aspen doesn’t know where Faolán is, but its leaves rustle as the wind whispers its secrets, and Stiles’s heart beats faster.
He thanks the tree, and catches the wind in his hair, and turns and runs back toward Derek and the horses.
“Three men went northwest the night the children were taken,” he says. “Three men and their horses. The wind heard a child crying.”
The wind whispers to him again, tickling his skin.
“The wind says…”
Derek leans forward in the saddle, leather creaking. “What does it say?”
Stiles breath catches in his throat. “The wind says the wolf was snapping at their heels.”
He doesn’t know what that means, and the wind is a fickle thing. It slips away from him when he tries to pin it down, laughing and dancing through the trees.
They follow it.
*****
They ride hard, barely stopping. Derek is afraid they are on a fool’s mission, chasing the wind, but at the same time he knows that magic runs deep in Stiles. Stiles once called upon the trees to destroy an army—the same trees that gave them their son—so he shouldn’t doubt Stiles, shouldn’t doubt his power, and yet his fear for Faolán, and for Ellora too, runs so deep that it tears pieces off his certainty and leaves him trying to hold the shreds together.
They ride hard, Stiles clinging uncomplainingly to Derek even though he hates to ride, and Derek can’t shake the fear that this will all be in vain.
A charcoal burner—an old man with his face and hands stained with the marks of his job—meets them on the road and refuses their coin.
“It must be three or four hours ago I saw three men on horses,” he says. “They were dressed common, but no common men I know ride warhorses.”
“Did they have children with them?” Derek asks, his heart in his throat.
“One,” the charcoal burner says, and Derek’s breath catches in his throat. “Was a little girl, I think, though I didn’t get a good look, my lord.”
One.
If it was only Ellora they had, then where is Faolán? Derek’s eyes sting. He turns away, and leaves Boyd to continue to ask questions of the charcoal burner.
Stiles hums in his ear, a soft, comforting sound that Derek can hardly bear.
Nightfall finds them at the edge of a woods, with no road cutting through, so they’re forced to dismount and lead the horses on foot.
Stiles darts out ahead, as though he knows exactly where he’s going.
“Derek!” he calls back. “Derek, here!”
In the dim light of dusk, it’s carnage.
Three men, their horses long gone, lay sprawled in the trees, their throats ripped out. Blood stains the leaf litter under them. Derek rolls each of them over, hoping against hope to find a child huddled close. The men are armed. They wear the boots of soldiers, not commoners.
Erica rips the purse of one of the men’s belts and tips the coins into her hand. “Monrovian,” she says, her lip curling.
So not the Argents after all.
Derek nods, his jaw clenched tight. He will present the evidence of Monrovian treachery to Laura, but where are the children?
The night is closing in, and it’s cold, and two small children lost in the woods are easily in as much danger as children left with their kidnappers—especially with a wild animal close by who ripped the throats out of these men.
“Derek!” Stiles calls again, breaking into a run.
Derek follows him.
They crest a rise, dodging between trees and skidding a little in the damp leaf litter. Derek sees a glimpse of white amongst the trees, pale and ghostlike.
Ellora.
Derek grabs Stiles by the arm to stop him.
Ellora is curled up at the base of a tree in her white nightdress. And there is a massive wolf curled around her, its jaws dark with blood.
“The wolf was snapping at their heels!” Stiles exclaims, and laughs.
The wolf rises to its feet, its yellow eyes narrow.
Stiles pulls himself free of Derek’s grip and darts forward. “Faolán! Faolán, you have found your magic!”
The wolf takes a step forward, shakes itself, and suddenly vanishes, leaving a very small, naked boy standing in its place.
“Faolán,” Derek chokes out, dizzy with shock, although should anything surprise him about his child of Laindéir at this point?
Faolán wipes the blood from his mouth and blinks up at him, nose wrinkling. “Daddy,” he says. “Daddy, the men took Ellora, and I was a wolf.”
Derek picks him up and hugs him tightly, tears of relief stinging his eyes, while Stiles picks up Ellora.
*****
“I’m sorry,” Peter says, “did you say your son can transform into a wolf?”
Derek leans on the railing of the training yard and watches Faolán and Ellora race around with wooden swords. They’re chasing Stiles. “Yes.”
“Huh.”
Derek gives him a look. “That’s it? ‘Huh’?”
“You know, they used to say us Hales were descended from wolves,” Peter says. “I’m not sure it was ever meant to be literal though.”
Derek smiles. “No, probably not.”
“Faylin! Faylin!” Ellora yells as she changes the rules of the game and starts to pursue him instead. She trips—Stiles shoots out his hand—and instead of falling onto frost-hard dirt, she lands in a sudden soft patch of daisies that have sprung from nothing.
Peter throws back his head and laughs.
Derek smiles, and ducks between the rails of the fence so that he can drag his husband, his son and his niece inside for a bath before dinner.