The wild court had no king, and Silas meant to take the throne. He was the last warden crowned in dead branches, and the old law said only such a warden could rule. But no one had told him where the throne stood. He had walked the forest for forty years and never once found it. Silas lived inside a hollow oak so old its roots split the ground like fingers. He pressed his palm to the bark and felt it warm. Flowers burst from the trunk under his touch, out of season, white and shivering. Every plant he held bloomed. It was his gift and his curse. It had never once shown him a path. The crown of black branches sat heavy on his frost-white hair. He gathered its dead twigs each spring and wove them tight. The branches never sprouted. Nothing he grew could grow on the dead. He knew one story might help. The fae gathered in a temple deep in the woods, and there they spoke of hidden things. He had gone there twice. Both times the doors stayed shut to him. A warden was not welcome among them. So Silas tried another way. The old tales named a bird that knew the throne's place. A crow with feathers like night sky, stars caught in her wings. She flew where no map reached. Tame her, the tales said, and she would lead you there. He waited three nights beneath the oak. On the third, she came. The crow landed on a low root and folded her starred wings. Her eyes were pale and steady. She did not fear him. Silas held out his open hand. He did not grab. He grew. A single rose swelled from his palm, gold and warm as morning, its light spilling over his fingers. The crow tilted her head. Wild things loved what he could make. She hopped closer. Her beak brushed the petals. Silas stayed still. His arm ached. He did not move it. The rose glowed between them like a small sun. The crow stepped onto his wrist. Her claws gripped hard. She was heavier than she looked, and cold ran off her feathers. Silas breathed out slow. He had done it. He had tamed the bird that knew the way. Then she took flight. She did not fly free. She circled the oak once and shrieked, sharp and short, and looked back at him. She wanted him to follow. Silas ran. Branches tore at his coat. The crow flew ahead, a streak of dark and stars, and he kept her in sight. She led him past ground he had walked a hundred times, then past ground he had never seen. She landed on a stone arch swallowed by moss. Beyond it, a clearing opened. In its center rose a throne of living wood, empty and waiting. Silas stopped at the arch. He had found it at last. But he was not alone. Eyes watched from the trees, and none of them looked glad to see him.

Silas stepped through the arch. The eyes in the trees did not blink. Twig-thin figures dropped from the branches and ringed him. One held a spear of black thorn. "You wear a dead crown," it hissed. "But dead branches are common as dirt. Any thief can weave a hat." Silas opened his mouth to name himself, and found he had no proof at all. Then a small voice cut through the ring. "Move aside." A woman shoved past the thorn-spears. Her hair stood wild, gray and threaded with black crow feathers. Marks like claw-scratches ran across her face. She looked Silas up and down, hard, the way a buyer studies a horse. "I called crows before your grandfather was born," she said to the court. "I saw the last warden crowned. I know his face." She turned to Silas. "You have his eyes. But eyes won't convince them. They need the throne to answer." "How?" Silas asked. Morrigan pointed past the clearing. A wall of thorned hedges rose there, tall as houses, twisted into a maze. "The trial ground," she said. "Walk in. Reach the center. If the throne is yours, it will send its own to greet you. If not, the thorns keep you." Her mouth twitched. "They keep most." Silas walked to the hedge mouth. The court crowded behind, hungry to watch him fail. He stepped inside. The walls closed at his back. Thorns leaned in and raked his coat. Each turn looked the same. He pressed his palm to a hedge to steady himself. Flowers burst under his hand, white and out of season. The thorns pulled back an inch. He understood then. The maze answered his gift. He pushed deeper, palm to the walls, blooms opening a path where none had been. Buds cracked wide. Vines curled away from him. At last the hedge parted and he stood in a small green heart, walled in flowers he had made. But the ground stayed empty. No throne-creature came. The silence pressed. Silas felt his stomach drop. Maybe blooms were not enough. Maybe he was only a trespasser after all. He knelt and pushed both hands into the dirt. He gave everything. From the soil rose a single orchid, its petals flame-orange, their edges rimmed with frost. Heat and cold lived in one bloom. No common warden could grow such a thing. Something stirred in the frost-edged petals. A moth unfolded there, wings broad as flower petals, pink and gold. It lifted from the orchid and landed on Silas's shoulder. Its legs gripped him gently, the way the crow had gripped his wrist. Morrigan's voice reached him from beyond the hedge. "That is the throne's own," she called. "It knows its warden." The court fell silent. The thorn-spears lowered. Silas walked out with the moth on his shoulder, no longer a trespasser. But the wild court did not bow. They watched, and he saw the next question in their faces. Proof was not the same as a crown.

The moth stayed on Silas's shoulder for three days. It would not eat. Its petal wings drooped, pink fading to gray. The court watched from the trees. The living throne sat behind the stone arch, its wood shut tight as a fist. Morrigan found him beside it at dawn. "The throne waits for an offering," she said. "Not a rose. Not a trick of blooms. Something the moth can drink that costs you." She left him with the puzzle. Silas remembered a tower far past the grove. Vines climbed its walls. Midnight blossoms crowned its peak, blooms no season could copy. He walked two days to reach it. At its foot he found a small man digging in the dirt. Twigs sprouted from his gray hair. Green leaves clung to his ragged clothes. Silas knew him from old grove talk—the keeper the court had cast out years ago. "You want the high blossoms," Elrik said, not looking up. "Everyone does. They kill the ones who climb." He jerked his chin at the thorny vines. "Court threw me here to guard nothing. Funny, that." His eyes went to the moth. They sharpened. "You carry the throne's own creature. So you're the new fool chasing the crown." "I need one bloom," Silas said. "For the moth. It's dying." Elrik snorted. "The blossoms won't feed it. The moth wants what you'd hate to give." He pointed at Silas's hand. A ring sat there, gold worn thin, old oath-marks carved deep in the band. "That. The warden's vow. You'd trade your keepsake for a crown?" Silas's thumb closed over the ring. His father had worn it. Forty years he had kept it while he searched. "It's all I have of the last warden," he said. "Then it's the only thing that costs you," Elrik said. "Blooms are cheap. You grow them free." He watched Silas with old, bitter eyes. "The court took everything from me and I gave it freely. Look where I stand." Silas climbed the tower anyway. Thorns tore his coat. He pressed his palm to the vines, and flowers opened, softening the climb. At the top he cut one midnight blossom. He held it to the moth. The moth turned away. Elrik was right. Silas came down and slid the ring from his finger. He set it in his palm beside the blossom. "Take what costs me," he told the moth. The moth crawled to the ring. It touched the worn oath-marks. Its wings flushed back to pink and gold. Then it flew, straight and sure, toward the distant throne. When Silas returned, the living throne stood open. Its wood had unfolded like a bud. The court knelt at last. But the ring lay gone inside the wood, swallowed. And on the arch above, watching, stood a woman in a crown of pale bone, vines and small flowers threaded through her black hair. She smiled at the open throne as if it were already hers.

The throne stood open, but no one moved to seat Silas. The court knelt only to the wood, not to him. He had given the moth his father's ring. Now his hand was bare, and he had nothing left to prove he belonged. The crowned woman still watched from the arch, smiling as if the throne were hers to take. Then the ground shook. A screaming came through the trees. The court sprang up, thorn-spears raised. From the far dark rose a great beast of gray scales, ash-colored, many heads swaying on long necks. Moss clung to its ridges. Each head hissed and struck at once. A thorn-spear snapped like straw. The court fell back toward the throne, and the crowned woman laughed. Silas did not run. He remembered his one true gift. He pressed both palms to the cold earth. Where he touched, the frost cracked. A bare branch shot up, then another, twisting fast. Pink flowers burst open along them, blooming though winter gripped the ground. The cherry boughs rose between Silas and the beast, wider and higher, until they walled the clearing in living wood and petals. The hydra tore into the branches. Silas fed them faster than the heads could rip. Flowers opened inside the beast's jaws. Roots gripped its legs. He drove the boughs down its throats, and the wood swelled and choked each head in turn. The beast thrashed, then sagged. Its necks drooped. It went still under a mound of blossom and thorn. Silas stood in the quiet. Petals drifted from his shoulders. The court stared, spears lowered now. Even the crowned woman had stopped smiling. Something slipped from the fallen branches. A fox stepped out, brown and cream, its coat marked with soft pink shapes like petals pressed into fur. It moved with a calm that stilled the clearing. The court drew back for it. The fox crossed the trampled ground straight to Silas. It looked up at him with steady gold eyes. Then it sat at his feet and bowed its head. A murmur ran through the court. The oldest among them knelt again, but this time they faced Silas, not the wood. "The sacred one has named him," one said. "The warden is true." Silas sat upon the living throne. The wood shifted warm beneath him. The fox curled at his side. The court bowed their heads and laid their spears down. But the crowned woman on the arch did not bow. She touched the pale bone of her own crown. "You slew my beast and won a chair of sticks," she said. "The wild court is a small thing. I hold the frozen cathedral, and older roots than these." She turned and walked into the trees. "Come claim what you think is yours, warden. I will be waiting." The court had accepted him at last. But Silas now knew his throne meant nothing while she held the greater seat beyond.