My mouth dances upward into a smile, and I bite my bottom lip, accidentally getting pieces of dirt in my front teeth. “Yes,” I say, and the worry of where to go and what to do is lifted from me. “Yes!” I throw my arms around his neck and squeeze, and he hugs me so hard that my feet leave the ground. I stay in his embrace for a drawn-out moment, until he sets me down and steps away.
Once more, Golmarr starts whacking the bushes with his sword, and I stare at his shoulder, how it tightens and flexes with every slash. I want to press my fingers to his skin and feel the way it moves, feel the strength beneath it. I want any excuse to touch him.
The deeper into the forest we travel, the gloomier it becomes, until the air is so murky and dank, I almost feel as if I am beneath Zhun’s lake again. The smell turns from damp to the cloying scent of wet clothes left in a heap too long. Mist rises from the ground, curls around the brown tree trunks, weaves between the ferns and flowers, and attaches itself to my bare legs.
A flash of the forest flickers in my mind, of trees coated with layer upon layer of mist that has frozen, until all the green is encased in ice, like glass. “So that’s why they call it the Glass Forest,” I muse, trailing my fingers over the damp, feathery leaves of a fern as tall as I am.
“Why?” Golmarr asks, peering at me over his shoulder.
“Because in the winter the mist freezes on the plants and they look like glass.”
Golmarr shakes his head. “No, Jayah. The forest will freeze any time of year, even in the heat of summer.”
I frown at Golmarr. “But how can that be? When it is warm…” I remember the creature I saw flying above the forest the day before, and think of The History of Dragons, a book too heavy to lift, which I was forced to read in the royal library when I was ten. “A dragon lives here,” I whisper. “And it has breath of ice. The glass dragon.”
“So say the legends, but no one knows that for sure. No one has seen a dragon in this forest and lived to tell about it for years, and no rumors of freezing glass have reached the grasslands since I was thirteen.”
I shake my head. “No, the legend is right—the history books are right—and—” Golmarr presses a finger to his mouth for silence and waits for me to catch up to him.
“We are being watched by several Satari men, Jayah,” he whispers. “Play along with whatever I say.”
“Whatever you say, Ornald,” I reply, gripping my staff a little more tightly. I whisper, “Will they try to kill us?”
“Not if we are lucky. The Satari are incredibly hospitable to anyone they do not consider threatening. If we’d been discovered by Trevonan renegades, we would have had to fight to survive.” We keep walking, but Golmarr doesn’t take the lead, opting instead to stay beside me. I scan the forest, looking for whoever is watching us, and see a tree trunk up ahead shift and move as brown-clad man steps away from it and then ducks into the thick green undergrowth.
“Ornald,” I whisper. Golmarr nods his head so I know he also saw the man, and then he sheathes his sword and stops walking.
“Come here,” he whispers. I walk to his side. He puts his arm around my shoulders and presses his lips to my ear. “Stop holding that confounded walking stick like it is a weapon,” he whispers. And then he looks into my eyes, and his eyes are narrowed, but he smiles so brightly that I can’t help but smile back. “When your father finds out that we aren’t married, he’s going to kill me.” Golmarr taps my nose with his finger and I blink at him. “At least we have a good excuse. Those bandits who stole everything—”
The hiss of steel being unsheathed fills the forest, and it comes from all directions. Golmarr’s arm tenses on my shoulders, but he doesn’t make a move for his sword. “Hello?” he calls, feigning surprise. Six brown-clad men step out from behind trees, and all of them have drawn swords.
“Satari,” Golmarr whispers.
I force myself to keep only one hand on my staff and try my best to look like a helpless, weaponless girl who is lost in the forest.
“What have we found wandering our forest?” one of the men asks. Three gold loops hang from each of his ears, framed by thick, dark sideburns. He scratches his black-and-gray goatee with the hand not pointing a sword at Golmarr and studies us. We make quite a pair, Golmarr and me, with our torn and filthy clothes. The longer the man studies us, the more perplexed he looks, until finally he asks, “Who are you, and what has happened to you?”
“I am Ornald, from Carttown,” Golmarr says, dipping his head in a quick bow, “and this is my true love, Jayah.” He tries to press me forward as he introduces me, but I shove back against his hand. Golmarr chuckles, and the men surrounding us let their sword arms relax, though they do not lower their weapons. “Jayah and I were on our way to be married several days ago.” He turns to me. “How many days do you think have passed since we should have been wed?”