Page 73

Resting against the tree, I adjust the spectacles atop my nose and open the book. The first pages spread with a thrilling crackle, the parchment dotted with age and creased in the corners, used to its fullest capacity. This isn’t a perfect copy purchased in a bookshop but one featuring scratched-out words and notes in the margins, some legible, others smeared. It’s a treasure trove, an artifact.

This book could be a lifeline in the game. It could bring me and my sisters one step closer to home.

Awe floods my senses, fizzing at my fingertips. The scribes of old had held this book, scripted these chapters. They traveled The Dark Fables with it, from the rural plains here in Middle Country, to the frostbitten castles in the Northern Frosts, to the sunset coasts in the Southern Seas.

An occasion such as this requires ceremony. I flip through without reading yet, examining the book as a whole. I introduce myself, saying, “Hello, my name is Juniper. I’m honored and will take good care of you.”

Then I let the tome introduce itself to me. I tuck in my legs and read every annotation, every inked line. I study the illustrations of fauna and flora, of Faeries, elves, and dragons. I plunge into the Fables about butterflies, wolves, crocodiles, and leopards.

Where they deviate from what I’ve studied, I pay the utmost attention. Where they fill in gaps, I consume the information.

I scavenge for clues about an animal that can’t be hunted—what it might be, where it might stray. The restless stars migrate. They skip industriously across the firmament, tossing beams of white, gold, and teal across my legs.

I shift from reading against the tree to reclining sideways on the grass with my head propped in my palm, then on my stomach with my legs crossed at the ankles. Eventually, I return to my original position, aligning myself with the trunk. My legs steeple, my knees pitching close to my chest as I balance the book on my thighs and flip to the next Fable.

A shadow drizzles over my shoulder, wrapping itself around me. A mischievous tenor slips into my ear, warm breath shimmying from my scalp to my tailbone. “Spoiler: Everyone dies.”

I twist, my hair whipping across my chest. Puck crouches on all fours behind me. He must have crawled a distance across the grass like a sprite about to pounce. To prove it, a sneaky gleam alights his visage, as though I’ve been caught.

The satyr has also changed clothes since our parting, a new vest and breeches woven of chestnut suede clinging to his physique.

He takes a second look at the page. “Oops, that’s the wrong tale. In this one, the prey escapes. How, you wonder?”

“I don’t wonder,” I say. “She gets away because she’s smarter than the predator.”

“A brilliant last-minute twist, but still. Where’s the action? The drama? The fucking?” he laments. “When I read a book, I expect to laugh, to cry, to smolder.”

“It’s a one-page story,” I point out.

“Nitty-gritty detail. Methinks if you’d been the author, you would have written a better ending.” Puck’s index finger extends toward my face, pushing the spectacles up the bridge of my nose. “That’s quite a hearty scowl. Miss me, luv?”

Absolutely, certainly, definitely not. Though it would be impolite to say so, I have a feeling that answer would only make him laugh. And I don’t want to hear that earthen sound. I don’t want to feel its sultry effects.

What’s he doing here? How did he know where to find me? What took him so long?

I evict the last question from my mind. Yet I fail to extinguish other stimuli from my body—an accelerated pulse and a blast of heat charging up my limbs.

It should not—it shouldnot—please me to see him. I could kick myself. I will do so, when next I’m alone.

As for my spectacles, they must have slid down when I’d whirled to face him. His amused expression says as much, accompanied by an odd slant to his features, something subdued and harder to decipher.

I stare at him, deadpan. Puck wiggles his fingers as if he doesn’t need an answer. “Yes, yes. You’ve been pining in my absence. I know, and I’m used to it. My kin say I’m the life of a party, and we throw plenty of those.”

Should I wait out his speech? Stay quiet until he gets cross? The more I withhold, the more he says, the likelier he’ll fumble, the crankier he’ll get. The thought tickles my lips into the shape of a grin.

Fortunately, Puck doesn’t notice the smile. “So here you are, in the land of the solitary Solitaries.” He plops onto the grass right beside me. “Have you met everyone yet? Tell me Cypress has introduced you to his fellow equines. Or do I have to spank him? No? Excellent. I didn’t think so anyway. We woodlanders are generous hosts, on many generous occasions, during a plethora of generous events.”

Never mind. I snap the book shut. “Why are you here?”

“Because I can be,” Puck says. “Being a ruler has its perks. I’m allowed to cause trouble wherever I want. Though even if that weren’t true, the centaurs still wouldn’t mind the disruption. They may be wanderers and soldiers and guides and keepers all rolled into one—custodians of the forest—but don’t underestimate them. Cypress is as vicious as the rest of us, except he’s dignified about it. Very unwoodland-like, but there you have it, and that’s what I fancy about him. Consistency is ever so boring.”

“So Cypress told you where I was.”

The conclusion sours my tone, even though the centaur had made no vows about secrecy. He’s still a member of the hunt, so perhaps it was his duty to report my whereabouts.

Velvet unfurls from Puck’s mouth. “Now who said anything about Cypress playing the informant? He might be my best friend and first-in-command, but maybe I found you on my own, because maybe I know where to look, because maybe I’ve been hunting you.”

“This is neutral territory.”