Briar Thornweave promised a home to every fae the courts threw away, and tonight she had nowhere to put them. The proof huddled behind her. A one-winged moth-sprite. A newt with a cracked shell. A sour white mushroom with a red cap, stomping his little stalk and grumbling at the cold. Briar was small enough to ride a wren, with dark hair to her waist and wasp-thin wings. She wanted a court where outcasts like these could sleep safe. She had the outcasts. She had no walls. "Peace, good friends," she said. "I shall find us shelter ere dawn." The mushroom, Grumblecap, glared and said nothing kind. Her mossy treehouse could not hold them. Its stairs were too narrow, its rooms too few. Rain came sideways now. The moth-sprite shivered against the newt. A broad orange toad in a yellow top hat crawled from the reeds. He tipped his brim. "Cold night for wanderers," he croaked. "You seek stone, little queen? I know a hollow. Old fae built it and forgot it. It waits below the fallen oak." Briar had heard tales of such a place. She had never dared believe them. "Show me," she said. The toad led them under roots and down a tunnel of wet earth. Grumblecap complained the whole way. Then the tunnel opened, and Briar stopped breathing. A court of pale stone rose from the hollow. Vines wrapped its round towers. An arch framed a dark doorway. Old fae hands had carved every curve, then left it to the moss. It was empty. It was hers, if she claimed it. "Inside," Briar told the others. "Quickly, out of the rain." The moth-sprite gasped at the ceiling. The newt found a dry corner and curled up. Grumblecap climbed a cold step and, for once, said nothing at all. Briar walked deeper. At the heart of the court stood a throne. Silver filigree twisted up its back like living branches. Leaves and small flowers grew from the metal. Three steps rose to the seat. Dust lay thick on the cushion. She brushed the dust away. "A queen needs no crown," she whispered, "only a roof to give." The toad watched from the doorway. "Fair warning, little queen," he said. "This hollow was empty for a reason. The one who ruled here left, but she left something behind." Briar turned. "What thing?" He only tipped his hat and hopped back into the tunnel. From somewhere deep in the stone, below the throne, a slow scraping began. Grumblecap froze. The moth-sprite pressed to Briar's side. Briar had her court at last. Now something under it was waking up.