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His lips twitch. “Cerulean is ruler of the sky, Elixir is ruler of the river, and you know who I am, of course. Did you just roll your eyes at me?”

“No,” I fib. “You were saying?”

“So I was. And you were bullshitting; I saw those eyes roll.” He shrugs. “Your sisters are playing games that don’t involve hunting or satyrs, and they have as long as those games last.”

“That’s it?” I balk. “You won’t disclose anything else?”

“Apologies, luv, but I’ve got no authority outside my domain. Solitaries are prone to wagging their tongues, so news does travel fast. All the same, no one’s allowed to prattle outside their own terrain, lest it sabotage the proceedings. My brothers and I decided to honor that amongst ourselves, too. Hence, I have no idea what your sisters are going through. I don’t even know how the games are chosen in the mountain and river. We’ve deemed it sacred to each landscape, however unanimously fated we are. It keeps us focused on our own lands, less vulnerable to diversions.”

Then I’ll have to find out for myself. In the meantime, I slump. “If you prevail over this environment, you should know the way out of here.”

“Because I frolic underground all the time? Oh, come on,” he insists when I give him a look. “You left yourself open for that one.”

My mouth quirks, on the verge of a full-fledged smile. It’s a disturbing habit of his, getting me to react this way.

Puck notices. He doesn’t say anything, but his lips tilt as if he’s accomplished something magnificent.

“I meant,” I clarify through my budding grin, “that if you govern this realm, you must know its layout.”

“Nature doesn’t work that way. Not where you’re from, nor where I’m from.”

“Elaborate.”

“I’m not a king. I’m a defender and guardian, albeit a powerful one. Ruling the forest means representing and serving it—that’s my responsibility. Consider me its highest subject. I’m the ‘hunky face’ of The Solitary Forest, nothing more. Ultimately, nature reigns supreme and makes its own rules.”

Fair enough. And true.

“It’s as much an adversary as an ally,” I reflect.

“If it wants to change those rules, it can,” Puck agrees. “If it wants to keep secrets from its residents, it will. If it wants us to work a little harder, it’ll do that, too. What’s more, I’m a busy satyr. I can’t know all the nooks and crannies of this woodland.”

“All right, so what were you doing earlier? When you were staring at the roots?”

“I was bribing them. They value gossip, so I said I’d empty the skeletons from Cypress’s closet if they gave us a tip out of this hovel.”

“The roots gossip?”

“Less than dryads and more than leprechauns.”

I’ve read several texts about the trees in my world, how they’re more alive than one thinks. How the roots burrow so deep and far that some connect with neighboring trunks. How the trees share food and water through that connection, and how they take care of each other if one of them is sick.

The same applies to Fables about Fae trees. But until stepping into this land, I hadn’t known the trees were able to correspond in other ways, too.

“They communicate with you?” I ask. “You can understand them?”

“All Fae can understand them, as we can understand the fauna,” Puck says. “But only some trees have the wherewithal to communicate.”

Envy prickles my skin. That, and exasperation. “We’ve been down here for thirty minutes.”

“Thirty-one.”

“My point is, you could have attempted to confer with them from the start.”

“Meh. I suppose I could have,” he acknowledges. “It’s all your fault for distracting me with such edifying conversation. You’re too tempting to debate with.”

“Will they help us?”

“Only if we help ourselves. P.S., you’ll be pleased to know that was a direct quote from them.”