Starfire stood at the edge of the fae court's outer ring and practiced the greeting for the fourth time. The words came out wrong again. A thorn vine along the arch twitched, curled tight, and hissed like a kettle. That was the court's answer: try that tongue on the judges tomorrow and they would call it insult, throw out her petition, and the truce between the human villages and the hidden courts would die before it was ever spoken aloud. She was half-human, half-fae, five foot two, red hair pushed back with a dandelion crown she had woven that morning for luck. She had spent a year walking between farms and hollows, promising both sides that one voice could carry both. Tomorrow was the day she had to prove it. She did not have the words. She went to the gothic library on the hill, the one with fairy lights strung along its spires and shelves for both human and fae books. She pulled every fae grammar book she could find. By dusk her table looked like a nest. The old fae tongue bent its vowels around breath she did not have. Every time she tried a formal line, the ink on the page dimmed, as if the book itself was embarrassed for her. A small satyr with bright orange fur hopped onto the table and sat on her notes. "You sound like a goat with a cold," he said. "Go get the elf. The one with the earrings." She found Robin at the barn-tavern by the water, the one painted with fish and waves. He was at the back table teaching two farmers a drinking song in three languages at once. Brown beard, tattoos up both forearms, a smile that had gotten him into and out of a lot of rooms. He was the future Elven king, and the only person in the parish who spoke the old court tongue like he had been born to it. She had been avoiding asking him for weeks. Kings-to-be collected debts. She sat down across from him. "I need the old tongue by sunrise. I'll owe you." Robin set his cup down. "You'll owe me a favor I get to name later. Any time. Any thing." "Yes." He pulled her notebook over and crossed out half of it. "Your problem is you're speaking it like a human being polite. It's not polite. It's a bloodline claim. Breathe from lower. Listen." They worked through the night at a corner table. He drilled her on the seven opening lines a petitioner had to survive. He fixed her vowels with his hand flat under her jaw. By the gray hour before dawn, she said the full greeting clean, and the candle between them bent toward her mouth in recognition. Robin smiled, tired. "You'll pass the address. Now. About that favor."