Hunger soon clawed the insides of my belly. Blisters formed and erupted inside my boots, causing me to gnaw on my lip in agony every few steps. I grew too hot for the mittens and scarf, but I couldn’t bear to toss them aside. I carried them for a time, until Hunter dropped back and took them from me without a word. But even without them, sweat clung to me in my plain, rough dress. I did the math—four days without a bath or a change of clothes. The stink would quickly become eye-watering. With the fae sensitivity to smell, I wondered how they could bear to be so close. Although in Kesha’s case, I welcomed causing her discomfort.
Things continued to deteriorate, moving in snail-time. When the light softened to an afternoon glow, cramps disabled me to the point where I was leaning on Isabel, hopping along the path. But my discomfort was nothing compared to Brandon’s and Billy’s. As the sun waned, starvation and exhaustion made Brandon miserable enough to complain to Hunter. Not Kesha though: never her.
Not long after that, Billy made two escape attempts. I hadn’t seen the fae move like that in daylight, and it quickly become clear why they didn’t bind our hands or shackle us. Their wings meant that he only had to run as far as the trees before he was caught. On Billy’s second attempt, Kesha lost her temper.
“ENOUGH!” She caught him by the arm and flew back to the path to drop him at our feet. Addressing all of us, she snarled, “Clearly, we’ve let you believe you might escape. But you are human.” She stabbed her finger down at Billy. Making a fist, she brought it to her chest and beat it once. “We are fae. If you test us again, you’ll find out why we’re the apex predators in this group.”
She bared her teeth. Brandon squeaked in terror but Billy didn’t flinch, not even when her canines grew and sharpened.
“Kesha,” Hunter called from farther up the path.
There, a warning. But he didn’t stop her when she pulled Billy up and bit down on his shoulder. He cried out in agony and my blood boiled.
Isabel and I moved at the same time. “He’s just a boy!” she cried out.
Kesha growled in her throat. “Quiet.”
We stopped. And didn’t so much as breathe when she glared down at Billy. “Try running again and I’ll break your arm.”
After that, there was no more complaining. All Isabel and I could do was help the boys when they stumbled, uttering words of encouragement. I felt empty, saying the same platitudes over and over again.
“Don’t worry.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“This’ll be over soon.”
Lies. I’d no idea how long it would take. I couldn’t imagine surviving a week at this pace, or gods forbid, more. But we had to keep moving, so I went on lying.
We came to a stop as the sun dipped low in the sky, casting a lilac and rose-colored tint over the woods.
“We need to hunt before we can make more stew. Until then, get some rest. Do whatever you need to do,” Hunter told us, winking in my direction.
Kesha scowled at him as if his cheerful manner was offensive.
I needed to pee desperately, but the thought of spending more time with Kesha made me swallow my embarrassment and ask Hunter to accompany me instead. “It’s okay. You can go alone if you like. Just stay within easy reach. These woods aren’t as safe as they look.”
My jaw slackened. He was that confident? My question got answered, not by him, but Kesha. “Remember, our hearing is acute and we can take to the skies before you can blink. Don’t be stupid.”
I’d guessed right about their heightened senses then. Too uncomfortable to care, I sprinted for a clump of bushes that looked dense enough to hide me. It wasn’t until I hitched my skirts that I noticed Isabel had followed me. Sensing an opportunity to communicate without the fae seeing us, I squatted down and wrote in the dirt.
Use magic?
It had to be short, to the point, and a message easily rubbed out if Kesha or Hunter checked on us. I just hoped she’d understand.
Maybe she’d had the same idea about talking because she didn’t wait for me to finish before crouching down next to me.
She read my message. One breath and then a shake of the head. No.
My heart sank, and she made an apologetic face. But Isabel wasn’t done. She pointed toward the fae, clasped her hands in the prayer position, and rested her head against them.
Sleeping, I mouthed.
She nodded and then wrote in the loose earth, Steal weapons?
My mouth tugged to one side. Mere seconds to choose and everything to lose if I got it wrong. Weighing the odds, I balanced the probability of success against the much more likely possibility they’d wake and Kesha would break all our bones, one by one. I didn’t need the stranger’s voice to tsk in my head to know it’d never work.
I looked to Isabel and mouthed, no. She gave me a grim smile in response, as if she’d known it’d been a bad plan and only needed a second opinion.
Once we’d relieved ourselves, we walked back to camp, and I went to sit next to Brandon, while Isabel settled near Billy. Without discussing it, we’d somehow agreed that we’d guard them. We couldn’t stop Kesha from hurting them, but the instinct remained.
Currently, Kesha was sitting cross-legged, eating a foreign kind of pastry roll. It became difficult not to stare outright and drool. Eventually Hunter handed out snacks to us, sparing me from the horror of begging. He gave me three pieces of shortcake and two slices of gingerbread. I’d noticed they’d both already eaten several pieces for themselves.
“Do fae like sweet things?”
His eyes lit up, and his mouth parted.
“Hunter!” Kesha snapped from her position on the ground. “Don’t tell her anything about us. She can learn what she needs, once she’s delivered to her new owners.”
My temper flared. “I’m a person. I can’t be owned.”
Isabel shot me a wild look. I didn’t care: Kesha had touched a nerve. Too many people in my life had tried to own me.
For the first time, a ghost of a smile touched Kesha’s lips. “Live for a couple more decades, and you’ll see that is incredibly na?ve. Now, shut up and eat.” She wiped crumbs of pastry from her mouth and added darkly, “We’ve got miles to cover, and not much time to do it in.”
Emboldened by my outburst, Isabel murmured, “How long until we get there?” Her eyes flitted between the boys.
Kesha continued to eat her pastry and ignore the question.
I swore I heard Hunter sigh in exasperation. “It takes about a week to travel to the market,” he said. “Once we’ve sold the boys, Kesha and I will split up and take you and Serena your separate ways. We’ll be carrying you, so that journey won’t take as long.”
“Carrying us,” Isabel wondered aloud. “You mean you’re flying us there?”
My mouth swung open and stayed like that.
“Of course. It’ll be quicker and more comfortable for everyone.”
“Can’t you fly on ahead with one boy and then come back for the other? That would be just as quick.” She didn’t need to add, and better for them. Her real reason was obvious from the way she peered over at Billy’s and Brandon’s ashen faces.
He wore a bemused expression. “We need to stay together. It’s too dangerous to separate.”
As if that should be obvious. The fae couldn’t be all powerful, then. Their strength must have limits. Interesting.
“There are outlaws and outcasts hiding in these woods. Some among them wouldn’t be able to resist capturing you.”
That made me ask, “Why? What do they want with us?”
Kesha growled low in her throat. Having finished her pastry, she shifted and pulled out a whetstone from an inner pocket. Then she unsheathed one of the knives at her hip and started to sharpen.
Everyone went silent, eyes glued to the dagger.
Hunter broke the hush. “It depends. They might want recruits, or if it’s just money they’re after, they’d sell you on the black market.”
I smothered the urge to scan the woods for invisible threats and instead, shifted nearer Brandon.
“Lazy, dishonest, faithless,” Kesha muttered while her dagger sparked against the whetstone.
“The Wild Hunt’s the only pack that can travel between the realms,” Hunter continued mildly, the cool head to Kesha’s raging temper. “No one else has permission, so some fae choose to hang around the border and attack those returning from the Gauntlet to make a quick profit.”
The odd words and turns of phrases tumbled around in my mind. Pack. Permission, granted by who?