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“Puck,” I snap. “Please, stop. Puck!”

He swings around, exasperated, peeved. “What?”

“I have to target her!”

The words fire out of me, shooting into the cloister of trees. Fir needles shake, as though my outburst has shocked them. Perhaps I’ve shocked myself, too. Somehow, speaking the truth makes it more final. I can’t take it back.

Puck goes rigid. He peers at me, stumped. His confused expression reminds me of when we were children, when I tended to his injury and later, when we stood on opposite sides of a field, separated by the carnage of Faeries and fauna. During those last hellish moments, he’d looked at me with such raw disorientation. He looks at me that way now.

Then it sinks in. He staggers upright, his hooves tilting off balance. I’ve left him speechless several times, but not like this.

“The first task. I solved it,” I say, rushing to get it over with. “You can’t hunt an animal that’s—”

“No.” He shakes his head. “No.”

“You can’t hunt one that’s—”

“No, Juniper.”

“That’s right in front of you.” The answer ends on a dry sob. “We rode out to view The Wild Peak. I stumbled into her footprint, and then I looked up, and…and I knew.” My voice cracks. “And there she was.”

I could have sought out another animal in the vicinity, but there had been none. My gaze had floundered. It had landed upon Sylvan at the moment of realization, and I hadn’t been able to turn away.

The color drains from Puck’s face, a sickly pale green splotching his complexion. The bulb in his throat bobs, however nothing comes out. Nothing but a guttural noise.

The satyr collapses, his knees hitting the carpet of pine needles. He hunches over and clamps on to his thighs, his fingers clenching, his knuckles bleeding from the fight we’d left behind. I dart over to him and drop by his side, threading his digits with mine.

He’s in danger of losing his world. He might lose Cypress, if he hasn’t already. He will lose Sylvan, if I’m to win.

Any human would say it serves him right, that it’s the least of what he deserves. This Fae has done horrifying things to my people. He and his brothers had separated me and my sisters, then dumped me into this hunt.

Yet I’ve forgiven him. Not long ago, I would have cited Papa Thorne’s mercy and Cove’s compassion as having an influence on me.

Now it’s more. Puck’s more. We’re more.

I want to say I won’t do it. Instead, I bend my forehead and rest it against his. Oxygen grates from his mouth, beating onto my lips.

My palms grow clammy. The rules are indisputable: I have to take action on the animal’s life. I think about aiming my crossbow once I’ve recovered it. I think about taking that shot. The forest knows what I fear. It knowsI can’t.

It also knows I have to. For my sisters, I have to.

“Breathe,” I instruct. “Breathe.”

I repeat this mantra, pacing it until both of our heartbeats slow down. Puck’s fingers crawl over to mine. He welds us together, sealing our hands into fists.

“We’ll figure it out,” he says.

It’s not enough to convince me. We haven’t deciphered how to win on equal sides. All the same, I force myself to nod and echo, “We will.”

There has to be a way out of this, to win this game without either of us losing, to unravel the scribe’s message, to find that second way of fortifying this land. It’s the first and foremost step to a peaceful future between our worlds.

We’re a fierce couple. More than that, we’re a smart one.

All the same, his eyes tremble, and my mouth trembles. Because part of him knows, and part of me knows, there’s a greater chance we’ll fail.

“Don’t call her yet,” I say.

Fear stalks across Puck’s countenance. His reaction says enough. I’d blurted out the truth too late.