Shelby's question hung in the air, almost a challenge. Why would she care about the length of a year?

The Law of Fae triggered. This was not a benign conversation but there was significant weight to it. This was a strange burning question for her. Not an idle curiosity.

Kenton didn't know how to answer that question well. He had never been academic. "Each season lasts around 90 days. Four seasons in a year, except that year they were fighting and Summer was skipped as Spring and Autumn clashed. The Seasons used to be more important than they are now. How old are you?"

She ignored his question like she didn't even hear it. "And a day is 24 hours? Like the clock outside?"

"Yes."

"90 days * 4 seasons = 360. Almost a full year, except you said around 90 days. So are there times when it's less than 90?"

"No, sometimes spring or fall will be longer. About 365 days a year, but who cares about a couple of days?"

She didn't comment on his free wisdom. "So you worked here for your whole life? 137 years?" She looked more distressed than him.

"Nah, nah, that would be too sad. I came from a very rural court. My Court has mostly fallen now, and any advancement is almost impossible. I had worked hard for several decades at home until at last my Lord allowed me to venture here. It took me a long time to prove my worth. I was almost 63 or 67 (I don't really remember, what's a couple of years?), when I was given this opportunity." Kenton smiled sadly as he remembered his beloved's face. Sarah Beth, his love. She who would be his wife. Maybe he would take that vacation and see her again soon.

Shelby sat down in the chair she had been dragging. "Are you older than 200 years old?"

Kenton nodded.

Her face looked completely surprised. Several thoughts darted around plainly across her expressive face.

"You must have a lot of wisdom." She said, at last, looking like a little child. She had a good head for math, Kenton realized. She had calculated a year quickly, and then his age without a moment of hesitation. "You don't look very old. Like maybe fifty?"

Kenton chuckled at the unexpected compliment, however incorrect it was. "I am getting old, youn'un. I feel it." He almost didn't say the next part. "My Court is dying." It wouldn't be the end if his Court died. Many Courts washed away, lost to time. He had long made peace with it. His becoming a Middling would be a small holdover, but he had long realized that his efforts wouldn't stop it. "Wee fae can live in the wild, but Seelie needs a home. Don't spend all your life in the Citadel. Treasure your Court."

Especially when it was getting eroded and washed away. Kenton's memories of his beloved Court became painful when he saw it last time, 20 years ago. So much had just fallen into ruin. The few stores that had remained open bore no luxury, and not even enough necessity.

"I'm Wylde." she said. "I've never had a Court."

"How old are you?" he asked again.

"22." she said, looking very uncertain now.

She was almost too young to be out by herself. He wanted to scold her, but he did recall that Wylde fae were different.

There were new, almost fatherly feelings to her. In his mind, she went from some crazed powerful Fae, full of secrets and scheming...to a child. He couldn't look at her without feeling the desire to protect her, and keep her safe. Remove her from harm.

"And you are just roaming around, all by yourself?"

"It's complicated." She squirmed under his gaze. "Someone very powerful hates me. And yet my friends need me. So I keep moving forward, trying to get this resolved."

Kenton was struck with the feeling of powerlessness. He had no power but wished to protect. She was not some spoiled Lordling. Just a child, cast into the wild wilderness of the world.

"I need to make it to Middling." He told her. "I don't get involved in politics, and politics don't get involved with me. But after working here for so long, I do have some allies. If I can help, let me know."

"I don't know if anyone can help me." She said and showed her youth by jumping upward and scrambling behind the chair again, the screeching sound resuming. Her physical distance represented the distance she wanted with the topic.

He could understand that. There were things he didn't wish to discuss.

Kenton looked back to the door they had come from. His sharply tuned Mapper's sense spoke of the danger lurking beyond. Leaving was not an option.

So he went and helped Shelby move the chair. Together, they were able to pick it up and move it against one of the cold pillars that Shelby seemingly chose at random. "If the O'Tells fire you, I can get you employed here. Good positions. You already have a golden key, so you'd be a shoe-in for Mapper."

"Mapper. What's a mapper?" She said, jumping onto the expensive chair. Kenton had expected the cushioned seat to puff of ancient dust.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

But there was no dust.

"Mappers map the Stable. There are some creatures here that don't need much care, and when it's their time to be fed again, or changed, or exercised, sometimes no one remembers the way. Also, as everything moves, certain routes change over time."

"I could do that." She mused. "That would be fun." She was standing with one foot on the armrest of the chair, and the other on the backboard, reaching as high as she could and feeling an upper portion of the pillar, poking it with her gloveless hand.

Kenton was left watching her trapeze on the chair.

Questions stirred in his mind. Why was there no dust? Most of the abandoned rooms in the Stable had a layer of dust. This room was sometimes used by stable hands, and sometimes Lordlings. But would a servant have come in and wiped all the dust, even the dust from an unused chair? Even the back side, which had been against the wall and therefore difficult to reach.

"Okay, let's go to that pillar." She said, bouncing off and starting to pull the chair again. She was very young indeed.

How had she seemed so mature, for someone who should still be a child?

They went about several pillars, and Shelby would jump on the chair and touch different places. She frowned several times. She made "hmmmm" sounds.

Kenton had little to do while this process repeated.

As he was not some young and immature brat, he didn't ask questions when it was clear she didn't know the answers.

His mind wandered back to his childhood, and the early days of his life, when at least he hadn't realized his Court's impending demise. Perhaps he should have just married Sarah Beth and left the Court, but he couldn't.

Painful thoughts came, so he returned his attention to the mystery.

The different clues.

No dust, despite no one being sent to clean it.

The Stable wanted them here (probably).

And this was also a room he had come to with Elswith.

Clues. But he didn't even know how they fit together.

After Shelby jumped down, Kenton grabbed the chair. "This way. Let's go to this specific pillar."

The redhead nodded and moved to help him. The chair was truly very heavy.

"I've been in this room a time or two." He told her, speaking aloud as he tried to pull his thoughts together. "There were pillars and columns of red jade. Even the distant ceiling is dark beast blood red. They must have really liked the color. But the room is funny shaped, isn't it? Like a triangle on its side. Two doors. Always two doors. One in the middle of the base, the other across from it like a point. Like a straight line, on the pointy side of the triangle."

"Okay." said the redhead, not following his logic but still paying attention.

"One door often leads to the Owl's Room. The other leads often to the Aquatic zone."

"There are owls here?" she said.

He ignored her because the abandoned Owl Room he had come from earlier that day was still a sore spot. "But here's the thing." Kenton found the pillar in the middle of the wide section of the triangle. There was something similar about its shape that drew his eye. There was no door near it, but... "I don't know what you're looking for, but I just realized. This whole time..." he jumped on the chair, but his aching back protested when he did and he regretted the effort.

This was one of the warm pillars. Each of the large columns were shaped differently. He leaned close against red pillar, inspecting it closely. He could almost...He moved his face even closer to the stone.

"Did you just lick it?" Shelby asked, sounding not as incredulous as a sane person ought.

"No," Kenton said, pushing his face away from the pillar now that he caught the odor. "I sniffed it."

"Oh. Do you have an amazing sense of smell? Like a bloodhound?"

"No. But I've worked in the Stables for 137 years. And I know the smell."

He gestured around the room with all its opulence and grandeur and overuse of the color red.

"We are missing a door here. Because this is the pillar that stands closest to the doorway that often leads to the Aquatic area, and the workers who cut through here often rest their carts there. Their carts laden with fish."

Also, he had seen a fish fight break out between the lowlings that ended with the said cart being turned over and a markel thrown high and smacking that pillar. The lowling stable hands had done their best to clean it up, but Kenton had realized that no effort was made to clean the upper region of the pillar where the markel had hit. But he didn't need to elaborate on that.

"If there is supposed to be a door here and not the one we entered by, then where did it go?" She asked.

"I don't think that matters. Always two doors. But what if there are actually six doors?"

"Insane leap of logic." She said, unhelpfully.

"I've never seen this room so deep inside the Stable. And it's cleaner than I remember it. But it's still the same room that has the fishy smell. Everything is dusted, but the fish smell needs a specific cleaner. Also, if the different pillars had different temperatures, there would be gossip and rumors about it. So either the pillars just started being hot or cold as we were herded here by the Stable, or no one noticed enough to ever mention it even once."

"Okay..."

"Or we are...here in this room, but on a higher level. Or we are seeing it deeper." He wrung his hands together, his thoughts a jumbled mess. "But what if...I don't know. It doesn't even make sense."

"Nothing makes sense in the Fae Citadel." She said seriously. "Explain it to me like I'm a child."

That was a good idea, and she was practically a child anyway, so that wasn't hard. "What if one room exists, but the doorways themselves are what change? We have some records of that back in my old Court. Truer versions of the same room. Ascending to higher levels reveals its purpose."

"And the Stable is leading us deeper and deeper inside, bringing us to the boss room?"

Kenton honestly didn't know. That was a concept, a boss room, the leader's room.

But there was some vague logic, as the narrow door had always lead to a more important place than the wider door. What if...one kept going through the Stable, crossing the Red Eastern Room, through the first set of doors, then the second, then finally the third?

He had already crossed through the Eastern Red Room once together. Several times actually. That room had had a layer of dust. Not dirty. But it wasn't so clean as this. It made sense that he was...closer to the leader's room.

Shelby nodded. "A vague plan is better than no plan at all. So, through the narrow door we go!"

They started moving toward the door at the point of the triangle. "What were you looking for?" He asked when he realized she wasn't going to explain why she had moved the chair around.

"It's like each pillar is...part of an antenna. Broadcasting a signal. I don't know how to explain..." she said.

"Explain it to me like I'm a child." He said her words back to her.

She smiled. It felt like an honest smile. "Each of the warm pillars has a sound coming from it, but we can't hear it. My glove can sometimes pick up the pattern, but I don't know what it means. There are a lot of other patterns that are blocking the sound I want to hear. Like a louder sound is making it hard to hear the pillar's song."

They reached the sealed door.

There was a keyhole inside.

Kenton made sure the door was not silver. It wasn't.

He pulled out his key. It was a perfect fit into the locked door.

"Let's go." Shelby said, adjusting her hat.