Chapter 6: Chapter 5: The Dreaming Garden

The dining hall was not grand, but it had its warmth. The table was carved from a single felled yew, polished smooth over centuries, its surface etched with faded rings and scratched initials left by Harrowers long since passed on.

The hearth blazed softly at one end, casting dancing shadows up the stone walls. There were no chandeliers—just iron sconces and hovering candles that burned low and gold.

Grey sat at one end, Maerlowe opposite, and Wickham sprawled diagonally across two chairs with theatrical exhaustion. She tried not to smirk—he looked like a painting of a tragic poet who’d lost his muse to better fashion sense.

Tonight’s meal was roasted parsnips, oatcakes, and a sharp cheddar that Wickham had claimed from a half-forgotten cellar. A dark root stew simmered in a clay pot between them, thick with herbs and something unnameable that Maerlowe swore wasn’t meat.

Grey tore off a piece of bread, dipped it into the stew, and tried not to think too hard about the way it pulsed. It wobbled ominously like it had opinions. Possibly teeth. Wickham would’ve dared her to eat it just to see if it blinked.

“Well,” he intoned, gesturing dramatically with a fork, “today I impersonated a harvest god, annoyed a fae envoy, and misquoted Shakespeare to an old woman in Penrith. She called me a plague on both my houses.”

“She isn’t wrong,” Maerlowe muttered, sipping his tea.

“I was in both houses at once,” Wickham said brightly. “Very efficient haunting.”

Grey stifled a laugh, chewing. Her amusement was dry, but genuine. Wickham’s chaos was often exhausting, but it had a strange comfort to it—like the tick of an old clock reminding her time still passed.

“And you?” Wickham turned to her. “What thread of fate did you nudge today, darling?”

Grey shook her head. “Just patterns. The same spiral, again and again. Maerlowe’s probably right—it’s waking up.”

Not that she was eager to admit it. But lately, everything felt like it was humming just under the skin—like standing in a field before a storm, hair already lifting in warning. The same spiral, again and again. Maerlowe’s probably right—it’s waking up.”

“That or your handwriting’s gone symmetrical,” Wickham said, eyeing her over his spoon. “Dangerous business, destiny.”

Maerlowe didn’t respond. He’d gone still, gazing at the candle as if it might whisper something.

After dinner, Grey left the others to their tea and teasing, and made her way to her room.

The dormitory hall was quiet—long and narrow, stone flags muffled by old rushes. Wards pulsed softly above each doorframe, casting faint ripples of silver across the walls. A slow-burning lamp marked each threshold with initials carved in sigil-script.

Grey’s room was the third on the left. She pressed her palm to the spiral seal. The ward opened with a whisper.

Her bedroom was small, but entirely hers. It was the kind of space that held memory like breath in cupped hands. It never judged her for pacing at midnight or falling asleep with ink on her cheek. A narrow cot sat beneath a shuttered window, the panes of which bore tiny spiral wards etched in salt. A writing desk leaned against one wall, covered in notebooks, pressed flowers, and an ink-stained quill. Shelves above held bones wrapped in ribbon, a small jar of soul-thread ash, and a woven charm left by a grateful ghost. The room smelled faintly of cedar and parchment.

A wardrobe, half-closed, concealed her worn coats and two festival robes she never touched. Above her bed hung a scrap of ancient silk, framed like an icon: soft silver with faint gold embroidery that pulsed when moonlight touched it.

Tonight, the air in the room felt unusually heavy. Not ominous—just expectant.

Grey sat at the desk and opened her journal. Her fingers moved without thinking, sketching a spiral. Then stars. Then a face she couldn’t quite finish—eyes too bright, hair vanishing into thread.

She wrote:

I think it knows I’m listening.

Or maybe I’ve always been dreaming.

Maerlowe says the Book remembers forward.

I wonder what memory feels like to a god.

There’s a persistent motif in oral narratives across British Isles folklore—the Faerie Bridegroom, the otherworldly suitor. Almost always male. Almost always beautiful in ways that don’t belong here. Almost always—crucially—doomed.

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

This figure shows up in everything from the Lowland ballads to Shetland selkie tales to the darker, stranger bits of Irish sidhe lore. He’s pale or golden or entirely shadow. His smile doesn’t reach his eyes. His promises always almost sound safe."

Her head grew heavy mid-sentence. The ink began to bleed. She had a moment to think, Wickham would say this is when the prophetic nonsense begins, and then—

Sleep took her before she could close the cover.

The dream did not feel like a dream. It felt too deliberate. Too rehearsed. The air carried that curious calm before theatre curtains rose—when someone, somewhere, was holding their breath for her cue. She stood in a garden blooming beneath a sky made of silk.

Petals unfurled like scrolls. Trees grew sideways from stone, their branches held up by light instead of gravity. Everything shimmered. Every breath was sweet with rose and clover, but none of it smelled real. It was like memory pretending to be a place.

Grey wore white, which she would never do. Not stitched, but woven around her like living thread.

She looked down. The ground was glass. Below it, stars burned in spirals.

“You came,” said a velvet voice in an accent she couldn’t quite place behind her.

Grey turned.

The Seelie King stood between two trees in bloom.

He was beautiful, but not in any human sense. He looked like what humans once thought gods should be—golden-haired, calm-eyed, gentle-lipped. His robe flowed like water. His voice held the hush of wind through wheat. He radiated no threat. No weight.

And that was the danger.

“Where am I?” Grey asked, voice hoarse. Something in her blood screamed: run.

“A remembering,” the Seelie King said. “A garden you’ve not yet seen.”

“This isn’t real.”

“Most truths aren’t.”

Grey folded her arms, already defensive despite the dreamlike warmth. This entire place felt like a trap wrapped in flower arrangements. “What do you want?”

The King blinked at her unexpected rudeness. He was used to moral women falling at his feet.

He tilted his head in positively inhuman way. She got the impression he thought she was a particularly interesting insect under a microscope.

“To help you. Of course.”

They walked side by side through the garden, though Grey never remembered taking a step voluntarily.

“The world is tiring, child,” the he said. “No one teaches grief. No one teaches rest. I offer reprieve.”

“By rewriting people?” Grey asked.

“No,” said the King gently. “By offering a better second page. No pain. No burden. A fresh start. That is mercy, is it not?”

“You take their memories.”

“I release them from sorrow.”

Grey faltered. The path beneath her flickered—momentarily revealing threads, crisscrossing in gold beneath her feet.

Wickham would’ve said something clever now. Probably rhymed 'existential dread' with 'floral bedspread.' And maybe that was why it scared her. Because none of this felt like something she could joke her way out of.

“I’m not one of you,” she said.

“Oh but you could so easily be, Greylene” the King said. “You already carry our light. You hear the patterns. You remember things no one taught you.”

He reached out. Touched Grey’s wrist.

Her skin shimmered gold for a heartbeat. She suppressed a shudder.

Then—

A silver thread fell across her palm.

The King went still.

His smile didn’t change, but his eyes sharpened.

“Ah,” he said softly. “She gave you a gift.”

Grey looked up. “You know her?”

“I remember her. But not fondly.”

The garden tilted.

The scent of flowers turned bitter.

The King stepped back.

“When you’re ready,” he said, “we’ll speak again.”

"Not bloody likely," Grey thought as the world unspooled like yarn in water.

She woke in darkness. The transition was too clean, too sudden—like someone had cut a thread mid-sentence. For a moment, she wasn’t sure her own skin fit right. Her journal was open on the desk, page smeared.

No silver thread. No bloom.

But on her pillow, where no hand had touched, lay a gold petal. Unscented.

Some would find it mysterious. Romantic, even. It skeeved her out no end.

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Except from the diary of Grey Wyrde

Date [REDACTED]

Most girls dream of faerie princes.

Some girls, anyway. The kind who don't notice the cost of every gift.

But some girls—the quieter ones, the ones who keep their hands in their coat pockets when they walk through the woods—some girls know better.

We know that if something sings your name from the tree line, it’s not a compliment.

We know not to eat the fruit.

We know that the most dangerous thing a fae can offer isn’t a blade or a kiss - it’s a story where you’re the ending.