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I’d rip myself away and make sure it’s really her, check that I’m not hallucinating from the iron. But the second Juniper sighs, and I hear the voice that always sounds like kindling, I don’t need to check.

I know every sound she makes. And Fables, I know every way she tastes.

I’m not going mad. She’s here. This is real.

With a groan, I snatch her cheeks and grind my mouth into hers. My tongue lunges between the crease and strikes inside to lap up that voice, to swallow that taste.

Juniper’s fingers sweep into my hair and grasp the roots, the sensation climbing up my antlers and capsizing the fucking world.

As our mouths clutch, a sob leaks from her throat. The noise shoves me from the delirium, the sound unlike my resilient huntress. And then I remember everything that happened before this moment.

I wrench my mouth from Juniper’s but stay close. We pant for air as I hold her face and scan those pert features, then let my gaze drop down Juniper’s frame. She’s in one flesh-and-blood piece. She’s breathing. I watch her stomach inflate and deflate, then launch my eyes back to those steady ones. They’re as bright as they were before that hellish episode by the ancient oak.

“Puck,” she chokes out, clasping my jaw and riveting her gaze on me.

“Juniper.” I race my thumbs over her chin, then reality hits me, and I bark, “What the fuck are you thinking, coming after me? The kid—”

“Will be all right.”

“You can’t risk this.”

“No, I can’t. You’ve met me, haven’t you? Do you honestly think I’d disregard precautions?”

“Then tell me what I need to hear,” I growl.

“I’m okay,” Juniper promises. “The Evermore Blossom worked. It took a day to penetrate, but it worked. Elixir extracted from it and heard the protective coating grow around the embryo, and I started feeling better.” She clutches my face. “You’re alive.”

My panic deflates. “That’s supposed to be my line, luv.”

“What happened? Everyone else came back, but none of them would tell me anything other than my people took you and Cerulean.”

“They just wanted to protect you.”

“Then they should know it’s worse to keep me in the dark.” Her eyes tremble as she takes in the cuts and blood stains across my chest. “How badly did they hurt you?”

Because she hasn’t seen my back yet, I shake my head. “We’re not going there. It doesn’t matter.” I glance at the broken padlock hanging like a shocked mouth from the cage door. “How did you manage that nifty trick?”

Her lips tilt. “I have experience saving wild things.”

My own mouth twists. “Smart woman.”

“I thought I’d never hear you say that again.”

“It’s pretty hard to shut me up, much less for good.”

“Truth be told, it wasn’t just me.” Juniper holds up an apparatus with a handle and two wands, one of them shaped into a curlicue, the whole thing constructed and polished from hardwood stems. “I have a certain sister who used to be a pickpocket and a thief. She can make keys out of anything.”

Juniper looks like she wants to say more, but her lips clamp together. That systematic mind takes over, features rearranging themselves. “We have to move,” she whispers. “I scouted the area, and the townsfolk are operating in shifts to monitor you. They still haven’t decided whether to let you starve or take further advantage.”

“Anger versus strategy.”

She nods. “But instead of standing post near the cage, they’re expecting another Fae ambush, so the trade poachers rigged snares around the area.”

Huh. Nothing my woman can’t get around. Lark must have gotten Juniper up to speed about the fuckwits from their recent past.

Juniper glances at Cerulean, concern warping her eyebrows. “How is he?”

“Ask me yourself,” my brother suggests with his lids still closed. An instant later, two blue eyes find us through the darkness, then leap across the cage in confusion. “Where’s Lark?”