Elliot pulled off his shirt. Once he had the hair under enough control that Serene could see his face, he winked. “Don’t you?”
“Don’t think you can get around me with your newly improved physique,” said Serene, and Elliot was torn between being flattered, surprised, and wondering how much improvement it had required. Serene kissed him, so he settled on flattered, leaning into her and feeling her warm fingers tracing the lines of his abdomen. “Beauty is a delusion and a snare.”
She pushed him backward, and he fell laughing in firelight and tangled bedrolls. “Consider yourself snared,” he told her.
“It was very wrong of you to come,” Serene said later. Elliot’s head was resting on her stomach as he read. He heard the smile in her voice as she continued: “But I’m glad to have you here.”
Elliot smiled. He was still smiling as he pressed a kiss against her soft skin, then another, in a trail from her belly button and heading down.
Serene was sent up with all the best archers into the trees, where they could surprise bandits from above. Elliot’s amazing grace, or lack thereof, meant he stayed on the ground with those best suited to swordwork and lurked behind Luke.
Luke, as usual these days, was in a bad mood.
“—cannot believe you would be such a reckless idiot,” he said as they walked through the green hush of the forest. “I mean, I can, because it’s you, but—”
“Aw, someone’s cranky!” said Elliot. “Did someone not enjoy sharing a tent with the commander? I think she’s charming, personally.”
“Someone is only cranky because someone else is so full of—” Luke broke off, made one of his incomprehensible military gestures that sent cadets and the commander alike scurrying for cover, and with his free hand grabbed Elliot by the back of his tunic and bore him down into the undergrowth.
Elliot spat out leaves and dirt, lifted his head and glared reproachfully at Luke, who was lying on his front with his eyes scanning the skies.
“Quiet,” Luke whispered. “I think it’s harpies.”
Elliot propped himself up on one elbow in the dirt. “Harpies? Cool!”
Luke shoved his face back into the grass. “Not cool! Harpies are monsters, do you hear me? They are not like dwarves or even dryads: they are death with wings. They are the owls to your mice. They rip with their claws, they swoop, and they kill, and once you are dead they rend the body until it is stinking offal, because mutilation of corpses is their beast’s idea of sport. And your dumb hair is a beacon. So don’t move a muscle, and don’t you dare even think of doing something stupid.”
Elliot sulked. He would keep still since Luke was in a tizzy, but if Luke thought that he could persuade Elliot to stay put when he got a chance to see mermaids rather than harpies, Luke had another think coming.
There was a rustle in the grass. Luke’s grip on Elliot’s nape tightened, but after a moment Elliot struggled free in a burst of relief and pleasure: it was Serene, dropped lightly from a branch. She moved, crouching, toward them. There was something small and dark folded in her hand.
“I thought this might come in useful,” she whispered, and fitted a black woolen cap over Elliot’s head. Elliot smiled, not surprised by her brilliance but by her thoughtfulness, and she smiled back.
“Thanks, blossom,” he whispered, and though she looked puzzled to be called that she leaned toward him as he leaned toward her, for a brief sweet kiss in the crushed grass.
“Serene!” hissed Luke, whose eyes were determinedly fixed on the sky. “Do you see?”
Elliot squinted. He could see nothing except for fluffy non-menacing clouds. No . . . maybe something? Like a fleck on his glasses, if he wore glasses. Or like his imagination running wild.
“Two of them,” Serene whispered back. “Scouts. The scouts go in pairs. If we get them, they can’t report back. We can’t have anyone knowing that we’re coming.”
Luke and Serene rose to their feet in one smooth matching movement, bows at the ready. Their bowstrings were taut, arms held at the exact same angle. They moved like two parts of a killing machine.
“They’ll never make the shot,” Dale whispered. “Not both of them. I can’t even see . . .”
They all saw then, the meeting of the scouts in the sky, a rush of wings that blotted out the sun for a moment, and at that very instant Luke and Serene took their shots.
The harpies tumbled from the sky, two dark marks growing larger and larger against the clouds as they streaked toward the earth. Elliot only ever saw them as dim, falling shapes: he was sorry for that.
“Ha!” said Elliot to Dale. “That was my girlfriend . . . killing a sentient creature. But for good reason and showing very praiseworthy athletic skill!”
The commander rose and gestured to them all to do likewise.
“Good eyes, Cadet Sunborn,” she said. “Good shooting, both of you. We cannot risk both harpies and bandits with a force this size. We will do one more sweep of the forest and return home. Chaos-of-Battle, back in the trees. Sunborn, I want you to take four men and pack up the camp as quickly and quietly as you can.”
“Commander!” said Luke. “What about—”
“I don’t want to be protected by incompetents!” Elliot exclaimed, and looked around at the faces of the assembled troop. “Uh, no offence, everybody.”
“I do not want to see another breach of discipline from any of you!” the commander thundered. “Cadet Schafer, you will stay by my side at all times. Go!”
Luke went. Serene went. Elliot fell in unhappily with the commander.
“Don’t be scared,” said Dale from behind him, marching in step. “Harpies are awful creatures, but there won’t be any more. And we can protect you, just as well as Luke. Well, maybe not quite as well as Luke, that was an amazing shot—”
“Serene’s shot was amazing too,” Elliot said grumpily.
“Um, ah, sure,” Dale agreed. “The point is, I’m right behind you, and I have reflexes like a ferret!”
“Go to the back of the squad, Cadet Wavechaser,” Commander Woodsinger said, with infinite weariness.
“I’m going to be slightly farther behind you,” said Dale. “But not to worry!”
Elliot regarded the softly rustling wood with suspicion as they walked and walked. The swaying leaves and the spring flowers had hidden harpies. He fully expected bandits next.
When he saw something shining among the leaves, he froze, expecting it to be a weapon.
A hush fell on their group as they realized that it was something entirely different.
There in the clearing up ahead was a unicorn.
It had a shape similar to a horse’s, but it was closer to the toy horse of a seven-year-old’s most fevered imagination than it was to any real animal. Its long, graceful lines seemed chased in silver, its mane and tail rippling in bright rivers and total defiance of gravity, and its horn was pearl. It turned and observed them with one tranquil dark eye, a pool that beckoned as well as shimmered, and Elliot took a step forward.