For the Wood was full of things that kill: some that meant to, some that didn’t, though the latter were no less deadly.
Daylily, her underdress torn, her hair in disarray, her eyes wild in an otherwise calm face, slid the last few feet down the gorge trail and stood upon the edge of the Wilderlands. She knew what she did, or believed she knew. After all, had she not shut her mouth when Lionheart asked if anyone would defend Rose Red? Had she not shut her mouth and thereby pronounced the poor girl’s sentence as clearly as though she’d spoken it aloud?
And Rose Red had been banished to the Wilderlands. She had disappeared into its shadows even as Daylily, her skirts clutched in both fists, disappeared now, stepping out of the world she knew into a world of half-light remembered from poison-filled dreams.
The ground was soft beneath her feet. Leaves rustled against the hem of her gown. Silence closed in around her, reaching out to touch her face even as the tree limbs stretched down and caught gnarled fingers in her hair. She passed into the Wood Between, ready for any fate to greet her.
Any fate, that is, except the one that did.
Had Crown Prince Foxbrush been asked how his day might conceivably be made worse than it already was, he would not have been able to give an answer. How could it possibly be worse?
But this was only because he wouldn’t have considered the possibility of Lionheart returning.
The match he’d struck burned his fingertips, and he dropped it with a cry, plunging the room back into darkness. For the space it took him to light another and apply it to the nearest lamp, he could pretend that it was all an illusion brought on by fatigue, worry, and hunger. Surely, surely Lionheart could not—
Oh yes, he could.
Foxbrush, holding up the newly lit lamp, leapt to his feet, jostling his desk with violence enough to knock the basket of figs over the edge. Figs landed with thuds and scattered across the tiles like so many rodents escaping a trap.
“You . . . you’re real,” Foxbrush gasped.
“Last I checked,” Lionheart agreed with a grin that looked more wicked than usual in the lamplight.
Foxbrush felt the blood draining from his face. He kept blinking, then squinting, as though to somehow drive away that image before him. But no, there stood Lionheart, large as life, ragged as a beggar in his groundsman’s clothes, his eyebrow raised in just that expression of incredulity Foxbrush had found unbearable from the time they were small boys and forced to “play nicely” together.
But something was different about his face as well. Something . . . Foxbrush couldn’t quite put his finger on it. A sense of depth and height struck him as he looked at this man he despised.
He didn’t like it at all.
“I thought you ran away for good the moment the barons declared their decision.”
“Try to contain your joy at my fortuitous return, cousin of mine,” said Lionheart, bending to retrieve a squashy black fig that had made it as far as his boot. “You know,” he said, resting the fig in his palm as though gauging its weight, “these really are only good for goat food. Perhaps your tastes have developed since I’ve been away?”
A thousand and one thoughts crammed into Prince Foxbrush’s tired brain at once, none of them charitable; it was enough to make him burst, yet too much to make him articulate. So he watched his cousin pick up two more figs and begin to juggle all three.
“I mean,” Lionheart continued, “goats are amazing animals, reputedly able to digest anything. Even black figs, which is pretty impressive when all’s said and done. But you’re looking a little peaked around the edges tonight. Perhaps an invigorating diet is just what you need? A goat I used to know once said—”
“Lumé, Leo!” Foxbrush set the lamp down with such force that the oil in its base swirled in a miniature maelstrom. He reached across the desk to snatch back the figs as though retrieving rare gems from a thief. Not knowing what to do with them once he’d got them, he squeezed them into pulp and seeds, which stuck to his fingers. This in itself was testimony to Foxbrush’s interesting mental state; the prince’s hands were typically clean, each nail well filed and buffed to a high polish.
Lionheart always did have a way of bringing out the worst in him.
“Easy now, Foxy,” said Lionheart, watching the fate of those three figs. “No need to get violent.”
“Violent? I’m not violent. I’m never violent.” Pulling a handkerchief from Tortoiseshell’s jacket, Foxbrush began to wipe at the fig juice, snarling as he did so, “I’m working on a solution to our agricultural crisis. One without violence. Ideally, without squabbling among the barons.”
And there went that wretched eyebrow of Lionheart’s, sliding up his forehead again. “With goat food?” he asked. “What have the barons to say to that?”