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“Really? You’ve read the Fables?”

“Some of them. That one tugs on me the most.” He pats his antlers. “And not just because I have these things.”

“I can recite the story by heart.”

“You have my attention. Let’s hear it, then.”

I hesitate, then close my eyes and convey the tale aloud. When I open my lids again, the distant market bell tolls, a brass call shivering through the air.

Puck watches me. He looks equally fascinated and nettled, and it’s the only instant when he remains quiet.

I catch that gaze and hold it. “Do you think animals feel pain the way we do?”

It’s the wrong thing to ask. The curiosity in his pupils fades, revealing two black wells. “What? Suddenly you care?” His gaze ticks over to the discarded iron teeth, then slices back to me. “When we met, how did you know that trick with the trap?”

I taste the sourness of his question, an acidic fruit gone overripe and on the brink of turning rancid. “It wasn’t a trick,” I defend. “I twisted and pressed down. That unhinged the trap.”

“Where did you learn to shoot?”

Poachers had taught me. “Does it matter? Humans need to eat.”

“Why are you still here?”

Each query is a blister, his interrogation searing my insides. It hurts. These questions hurt, and I don’t know if it’s because they’re risky or because they’re coming from him. A Fae. A satyr. The first male, possibly around my age, who I can actually tolerate, who I can stand to be around. I miss the truce we’ve shared over nearly a fortnight.

Gracious. Has it truly been that long?

The moon is a white onion sinking beneath the canopy, while eventide’s fog yields to twilight. I sit up straighter. “I’m here because Idocare. I’m not one of them.”

Puck’s face scrunches, from mildly suspicious to ironically suspicious. “I didn’t say you were.”

My legs unravel, and I launch to my knees. “I would never hurt an animal!”

“If I’d been standing on my hooves, would you have targeted me?”

My lips part, close, part again. My tongue flops around in my mouth, useless. After all Faeries have done to humans, would I have targeted him if he’d been uninjured, running rampant across the forest? After all the meanness and horror, would I have aimed a bolt at his heart? Despite what I think of The Trapping, despite not wanting those animals caged, and despite him intending to free them, would I have released him?

Or would I have hunted him?

The unspoken answer splits me in half, a gorge widening down the center. But in this moment, it’s the only answer that exists.

Puck might be young, but he will grow up. If he isn’t like the rest of them now, he will be someday. He’ll ruin lives, bully mortals, enslave and glamour innocent people, and maim and terrorize them.

In the future, he might prey on my family. Any of his kin might.

I tense, a cold splash of dread hitting me in the face. Isn’t that what I’ve done anyway? Ministering to him contributes to that.

He’s not a stray like I was once. He’s not a mortal nor a deer.

He’s a monster. I’ve unleashed a monster.

“You would have targeted me, too,” I push back. “If I’d been standing in your way, you certainly wouldn’t have been nice about it.”

“We. Don’t. Target. Striplings.”

“I was trying to save you!”

Puck pauses, measures his words, then leans in. He drapes his forearms over his knees and flicks the words into the air. “You’ll never save anything.”