Almost instantly his returning glamour filled in his cheeks, tamed his hair, and brought color to his ashen face, but the frightful image had been seared into my memory forever.
“How dare you use iron against me,” he rasped, agony strangling each syllable. “You know as well as I that it’s outlawed in Whimsy. I should kill you where you stand.”
I struggled to keep my voice steady while my heart flung itself against my ribs. “I know your kind is bound by your word. You value fairness highly. If you were to slay me for carrying iron, would it not be fair and necessary to carry out the same punishment toward anyone else guilty of an identical offense?”
He hesitated. Staring at me, he nodded.
“Then if I’m to be killed, so must everyone in Whimsy down to the last child. We all secretly carry iron from the day we’re born until the day we die.”
“You dreadful—” Under other circumstances his consternation would have been comical. “First you betray me, and now—now you tell me—” He groped for words. Clearly he wasn’t accustomed to being beaten at his own game. Because of course the fair folk couldn’t go about killing everyone in Whimsy; they coveted Craft too much to even consider it.
I drew a fortifying breath. “I know I can’t escape you. Charming me to walk makes no difference, aside from using energy you could spend on something else.” This, I admit, was a complete gamble, but the way Rook pressed his lips together told me I’d struck close to the mark. “So let me walk freely, let me keep my iron, and I’ll go with you willingly—in body if not in spirit.”
He stepped back from me once, twice, three times through the wheat, then pivoted and stalked off toward the trees. I stumbled after him, the charm’s evaporation his only answer.
My mind clamored for escape. But I knew I’d harm my chances, perhaps destroy them for good if I tried running now. I had no choice but to follow him through the field, through the weeds, and into the forest waiting beyond, where only a handful of humans had set foot before—and not one among them returned.
Every muscle in my body clenched with the expectation of more fairy devilry, but my initial obstacles proved surprisingly, unpleasantly mundane. My breath blew harshly in my ears and my skirts clung to the sweat on my legs as I trudged through the undergrowth. Burs burrowed their way into my stockings, and I tripped over roots and stones every other step. Meanwhile Rook might as well have not existed, he slipped through the vegetation so smoothly. Every once in a while a branch did catch on his shoulder, only to pull back, release, and smack me in the face, but I think he was doing that on purpose.
“Rook.”
He said nothing.
“It’s getting too dark—the moonlight’s gone. I can’t see.”
A fairy light bloomed above his upraised hand. It was purple, the same color as his eyes, and about the size of a fist, vaporous and shimmering. It floated down to skim along the ground, edging the leaves with a spectral glow. My mother telling me to never follow such lights numbered among my earliest memories.
On and on we trudged.
“Um.” I’d gone for as long as I could without bringing this up. “I, um, need to relieve myself.” When he didn’t show any indication of hearing I added, “Right now.”
His head turned a fraction, his profile lined with fairy light. “Do it quickly.”
I certainly wasn’t going to linger with my underthings down in a dark forest next to a fairy prince. He seemed to expect me to squat down and pee where I stood, which I suppose made little difference; we weren’t on any sort of path. But I still wanted to maintain some semblance of dignity, so I crashed a few steps through a stand of honeysuckles and settled down on the other side. The light bobbed obediently at my heels.
I almost screamed when I glanced over my shoulder to find Rook looming behind me.
“Turn around!” I exclaimed.
Again that mystified look he’d first given me in the kitchen, but it vanished so swiftly I couldn’t be sure I’d truly glimpsed it. “Why must I?” he asked, in a cold and princely tone.
“Because this is private! You’ve spent the entire walk with your back turned, surely you can manage it again for a few seconds. And I won’t be able to do anything with you watching.”
That, at least, got through to him. But as I wallowed there in the underbrush like a nesting hen with my skirts piled up around me, Rook’s fine coat fabric brushing my hair whenever he shifted, my bladder simply wouldn’t cooperate. Even more so when I glanced around the woods for a distraction and saw a mushroom circle nearby. Each toadstool cap was as wide as a dinner plate, the moss between them peppered with tiny white flowers. Legend had it that fair folk used portals like these to travel the fairy paths. The thought of a second fair one appearing suddenly out of thin air made my insides clench tighter.
A horn sounded. All the hair stood up on my body at the high, quavering melody, and I’m not proud to say I ended up watering the honeysuckles right then and there.
Rook seized my arm, pulling me to my feet as I wrestled my clothes to rights.
“The Wild Hunt,” he said. He drew his sword in front of me and dragged me back through the bushes with the other arm across my chest as though he were holding me at ransom. “It shouldn’t have found us here, especially not so quickly. Something’s wrong.”
Complaining wasn’t in order at a moment like this, so I kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help clawing at his arm in protest. He was wearing his raven pin again, and it was at just the right height to stab me in the back of the head.
“Stop that. As soon as the hounds lay eyes on us they’ll go straight for you. Slaying them alone is child’s play, but protecting a mortal at the same time . . . you must do whatever I tell you, without hesitation.”
Throat dry, I nodded.
A spectral shape bounded toward us through the undergrowth, emitting a faint light of its own. This was no living hound, but a fairy beast. It took the guise of a white hunting dog with long legs and flowing fur, but I knew to look beyond the surface, and soon enough its glamour flickered, so quickly I was left with only the impression of something old beneath the illusion, something dead, dark and clotted with vines and dead leaves. Silently it launched itself over the honeysuckle, its soft liquid eyes fixed upon me. I caught a stench of dry rot before Rook’s sword darted out and reduced it to a clattering rain of twigs entangled with human bones. A quiet, musical sound rose from it when it died, almost like a woman’s sigh.
A chorus of howls swelled through the forest. I shuddered in Rook’s arms. The wintry lament was so lonely, so hauntingly sad I found it difficult to believe those voices belonged to beasts that wanted to kill me.
Listening to this, Rook made a contemptuous noise; I felt the vibration of it in his chest. He sheathed his sword and turned me around.
“There are over a dozen of the creatures, and they’ll all be upon us at once. We cannot fight. We have to run.” It was obvious the idea of fleeing rankled him.
“I can’t—”