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Lark squawks as the female centaur hauls me off the ground—then drops me again. With a grunt, I hit the grass. Batting the layers of green hair from my face, I gawk as an invisible force knocks the centaur off her limbs and hurls her into a trunk. It’s as if a cyclone had catapulted the female off the ground.

Overhead, a shadow passes. A masculine figure dives from the sky, mantles of midnight blue plumage splaying on either side of him. He plunges headfirst, then swoops at the last moment and snatches a javelin from the soil—the weapon I’d seen earlier, flying out of nowhere and impaling the earth. It must belong to this…this…who is he?

The male slingshots, circling above the quagmire in a flurry of billowing clothes and windswept blue-black hair that matches the dark pigment of his lips. He catches sight of Lark, and his eyes suffuse with protectiveness.

Oh. That’s who he is.

Cerulean. Ruler of the sky.

He lands beside Lark and joins the fray. Like Puck, he throws down anyone who blocks her path to me.

Lark and Cerulean’s lips move, exchanging words I can’t hear. Based on their expressions, it’s something snarky from her, something elegant from him.

So much happens at once. Too much happens.

Another smaller Fae flutters into the scene, topaz eyes flashing in her spunky face. Her diminutive, papery wings fan and whirl, slapping Faeries out of the way while her runty fists do the rest.

Lark’s nightingale companion bares its talons against several leprechauns, shredding their burly forms. Meanwhile, another raptor appears from the heavens, a great owl with tufted horns and a single aquamarine eye. With a cavernous hoot, it plucks Foxglove off the ground. The airborne nymph, who’d gained her feet and been homing in on me, shrieks as the owl zooms into the wild, conveying her to who-knows-where.

Another centaur skulks into the thicket. He cranes his moss-green arm and targets a figure with scalding red hair.

No! I skid in place, my heart vaulting into my throat. I open my mouth to yell Puck’s name—and out comes a volcanic roar. But it doesn’t erupt from me.

An outline gallops into the clearing, leaving fir trees shuddering in his wake. The incoming figure charges, his face a mask of fury.

Cypress. A sash of bandages speckled in blood encases his torso, and his dark skin has lost its richness, but he’s alive. He’s alive and here.

He nocks his bow, the arrow’s plume glowing like a beacon. With a twang, the projectile rends through the branches and lodges in the other centaur’s hindquarters. The Fae buckles and crashes to the ground.

Puck pivots and registers what just happened. His gaze leaps toward Cypress, who merely stares back with a raw, uncensored look I can’t place.

Puck sees it as well. His features twitch, then a grin races across the satyr’s face. “It’s about fucking time,” he drawls while combating a dryad, then flings a comment across the divide toward Cerulean. “That goes for you, too.”

The ruler of the sky tsks. “Call me fashionably late, brother. It has a loftier ring to it.”

The scrimmage thins out. The last of the Faeries evacuate, collecting their injured company on the way out.

At length, silence descends. With my route unhampered, the vision of white hair lights a match beneath my feet. Lark runs like the wind, and I match her pace like a brush fire. The distance narrows, narrows, narrows.

Under the vicious stars, we drop our weapons and smash into one another. With cries, or bellows, or both, my sister and I collide, roping our arms around each other. I inhale the fragrances of rain and crisp morning air as we cling to one another, on the verge of crumbling to the floor. One of us whimpers, but I’m not sure who.

“Juniper,” Lark gasps.

“Lark,” I say.

Lark leans back to plant kisses all over my face, as she always does to annoy me. I’m not the mushy or precious type, not like a certain older sister who isn’t here. But right now, nothing in this world compares to the sight of Lark puckering her lips to smother me.

We clasp one another’s cheeks. We’re grimy and threadbare, with lacerations marring our skin. And we smile and sniffle through it all.

Movement behind me seizes Lark’s attention. Recognition and rage blasts across her face like a tempest. She sidesteps me and bolts toward Puck, who’s a vision of torn leather buckles, a cracked antler, and an inappropriate smirk.

Belatedly, I catch my sister, strapping my arms around her midriff while she flails. “You son of a bitch!” Lark squawks. “Stay away from her, or so help me, I will end you!”

“Lark.” I stagger in front, gripping her shoulders. “Lark, stop.”

“Try it.” She points over my shoulder. “Just try it, and I’ll have your nuts strapped in my whip.”

“Lark!” I grab her face. “It’s all right. He’s on our side.”