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“Such viciousness,” Puck muses. “First, let’s get my visceral response out of the way. Touch my woman again, and I’ll peel the exfoliated flesh from your bones. As for my delayed response, here it is: Juniper’s essential to our future, which means harming her is futile.”

Correct. They can’t restore their fauna and their world if I’m dead—not before the deal is honored and the game officially reaches its end. Suffocating me or planting an arrow in my chest isn’t an option, and doing impermanent damage necessitates her getting inside the ring.

Therefore, she can’t threaten my life in order to make sure Puck behaves himself. Getting him to cooperate simply won’t work that way.

Foxglove blanches, her features torn as she considers her options. Whatever alternative she’s weighing, a certain destitution compromises her features, which gives way to a pang of resignation. She nods with effort, flagging as if slathered in tar. “Okay.”

Then she redirects her arrow to Cypress. And she shoots.

31

It happens in slow motion, then all at once. The arrow spears into the side of Cypress’s torso, a fountain of blood spritzing the air. A terrible sound erupts from his mouth, his front hooves buckling from the impact. It’s like watching a redwood capsize, his enormous body crashing to the forest floor.

I picture the centaur sitting across from me in a yurt, quizzing me about the various parts of a tree, inquiring which is the wisest part. I picture him handing me a book, honoring his favor. I picture him advising me shortly before I’d stepped into the Middle Moon Feast and his surveillance of Puck and me during the revels. I picture the centaur and me on the cusp of a tentative friendship.

A scream lodges in my throat. Puck makes enough noise for us both. He howls, wrestling with his captors. It takes half a dozen of them to overpower him.

The sorrow in his voice pierces the woodland, the source of which rings clear and harrowing. Not only is his best friend bleeding in the grass, but the nymph had targeted the centaur with the satyr’s weapon. She shot Cypress with Puck’s bow.

Several of the Faeries gawk, including Tinder, his orange eyes bloating from his face. Presumably, this hadn’t been part of the plan. Yet they stand there, refusing to intercept. Without extracting the arrow puncturing Cypress’s abdomen, the clan applies extra tethers to the centaur and hauls him away. A crimson brook follows in their wake, marking a path to wherever they’re taking him.

I lack my archery, much less an artificial slingshot. My hands are empty, useless. So I grab the only thing in reaching distance—a broken branch from one of the tube trees, sturdy yet wieldy. Cove excels in fighting with a spear, her choice of weapon since we were children. My skill doesn’t measure up to hers, but she did teach me a few things, such as where to aim.

I swing the bough and pummel the nymph off balance. She vaults forward and goes down faster than Cypress had, the staff clubbing her in the rump. With a shriek, Foxglove hits the grass in a pile of long limbs and yellow petals.

However, she’s up and seething in my face before I can blink. Her arms fly, but I block the strike. She rushes at me, a whirlwind of fists and elbows. It takes everything I have to stay on my feet, thrusting and parrying the branch to thwart her complex sequence of punches. She tries to sideswipe me under my feet. I leap in place, then catch her in the shoulder. Now that she’s concentrating, she barely budges, hardly flinches from the impact.

Puck unleashes a deranged string of Faeish. He thrashes, forcing an additional three Solitaries to shackle him. One of them shoves a gag into his mouth, plugging his shouts.

I switch tactics and bait Foxglove to come closer, to cross the Fae ring and get cozy with me. With their powers, any Fae should be able to overtake me in seconds. But their egos are defect—being too confident when pitted against a human must make them lazy. Moreover, Papa Thorne says an angry fighter is a sloppy fighter. I dodge Foxglove’s moves, hoping such manipulation will frustrate her.

It does, but not enough. She jerks to the left, then doubles back, a bluff that costs me. The female snatches the branch and breaks it in half over her thigh.

Well. It was worth a try.

Because she had dropped the bow when Cypress went down, someone tosses the female her dagger. She catches it, flips it between her fingers, and tips it against my ear. I stall, gasping as she etches the rounded shape, so different from her pointed ear.

She regards me with fresh eyes. “I can see why he’s smitten. You must be one hell of a quality fuck.” The nymph glances over her shoulder toward Puck’s livid gaze. One of the fauns unplugs the satyr’s mouth, allowing a single word to punch from his lips. “Why?”

He’s not asking why they would attack us. Fables eternal, their world is at stake. But why had it come to this? Why had Foxglove seen fit to target Cypress?

The nymph’s gaze strays to the blood trail, a wince twitching in her face like a broken mechanism. Regret? Sadness? Weariness? A moment ago, I wouldn’t have said the emotions would fit inside the margins of her countenance, yet they do now.

For all this violence, I don’t think she had intended to hurt anyone. At least, she’d hoped otherwise.

“If you want us to provide a remedy for his wound, you’ll get in the ring,” she demands.

So that’s why she’d done it. Yet Puck ignores the ultimatum. “That’s not the whole answer.”

Foxglove belts out a humorless, wounded laugh. “Before you met this human, what would you have done? If anyone of us had betrayed you like this.” Quietly, she enunciates, “What would you have done, Puck?”

He doesn’t answer. Everyone knows what he would have done, had another mortal stepped into this domain and beguiled another Fae.

Except I did come here, and we did reunite. Nothing is the same anymore. Not for any of us.

Foxglove nods to herself, the petals in her hair trembling. She holds the dagger to my heart, then gestures to one of the leprechauns who jabs an axe toward Puck.

“In you go,” he says. “There’s a good lad.”