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“Come now. You know better than to call me good,” Puck remarks dryly.

I shake my head, imploring him not to. But he crosses the distance and steps into the ring with me.

***

It’s midnight, an hour since they dragged Cypress away. Puck and I huddle on the grass, my back aligned with his chest, his limbs bracketing mine. My feet lean against his hooves, and my head rests on his shoulder.

All of the Faeries have disbanded, barring a handful of guards. The fauns, dryads, and leprechauns who had restrained Puck presently stalk the perimeter, keeping watch beyond the tube trees. Tinder has volunteered as well. Every once in a while, he glances our way, his brow corrugating.

I stare at that crimson trail raking through the woods and sense Puck doing the same. “Foxglove missed a vital organ,” I whisper.

Of course, she had. Cypress had been a pawn. But in spite of the redundancy, I’d needed to say it for comfort.

The satyr nods. “If they’ve staunched the blood quickly enough, he’ll survive.”

“Then what will they do to him?”

Puck gives me the worst answer I could possibly hear, my least favorite answer of all time. “I don’t know.”

I clench my eyes shut. Cypress will be all right. We have to believe that.

My attention diverts to the mushrooms and tube trees. Puck folds his arms across my collarbones and interprets the silence. “Time is passing quicker for them, although it doesn’t look that way. As to where we are, this is The Roots that Take.”

“What do they take?”

“Depends on the visitor. Sometimes the earth takes away a Fae’s anger or pain, on the condition the Fae never feels that emotion again. It’s a hefty price. Sometimes Faeries come here to take something from one another, either in a bargain, a scrimmage, or a colossal hissy fit. I say, it’s a pretty fitting location to plant a ring. Anything else you want to know?”

“Give me five minutes, and I’ll have more for you.”

But in truth, I’m unsure whether I can handle more information. Every minute we spend in this trap, time zips past us. What does that mean for my sisters? What does that mean for this game? Try as we might, neither of us has contrived a solution, a means to get out of this ring.

“By the way?” Puck says. “You forgot to take this with you.”

He clamps a delicate object around my forearm. I gasp at the gold-plated bracelet adorned with leaves, the surface tarnished from age.

After that bath in The Wicked Pines, the nymphs had picked apart the band, divvying up the pieces. Yet the bracelet is intact, as if that had never happened. My shaky thumb sketches the bauble. “How?”

“I’d planned on giving it back while we were in bed, once we’d slept off the delights of fuckery,” Puck says. “Early on, I caught the nymphs wearing snippets of your bracelet. Seems you bargained with them at some point, yeah? I thought so. Basically, I waited until they got tired of your offering, then made a deal—the bracelet pieces for several of my leather buckles. I told them I wanted the bits for a new pair of earrings. What can I say? I’m a sentimental sap.”

I brush my mouth against Puck’s knuckles to thank him.

“P.S.,” he mumbles, shivering from my touch. “I met your feisty sister.”

Lark! The name unfurls in my chest like a pair of wings. I twist, my pulse jackhammering. “You met her?” Then I shove him. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I’m telling you now. I couldn’t for the last hour, with our audience too close and both of us recovering from the brawl.”

The floodgates open. I whirl from Puck’s arms and face him. “Where is she? Where did you see her? Is she all right? If you saw her alive, does that mean she won? Or is she still playing her game? Why aren’t you answering me?”

He frames my face. “Prepare yourself. Are you sitting?”

Does he ever stop making jokes? I glower but wait.

Puck gets serious. He assures me Lark’s perfectly hale and hearty, then recounts her sojourn in The Solitary Mountain. Puck hadn’t known the details before, but Lark’s game had ended while he was searching for me. As such, the news had reached the forest valley.

Lark had been tasked to solve a mountain labyrinth. And she had won!

My relief morphs into confusion at the next part of this tale. “It appears your sister and my brother found time to fall in love while she traipsed through the labyrinth,” Puck says. “But wait for it: They’re also mates.”