Page 8

Gone is the cavalier Fae. Now I behold a ruler—a livid, vicious ruler.

This, I didn’t see coming. And this, perhaps, is his greatest deception yet.

In my periphery, an equine body heads my way. Simultaneously, Puck snarls an order, low and dangerous. “Cage her until she behaves herself.”

As Cypress drags me backward, the satyr gives me a spiteful inclination of his head. “Juniper of Reverie Hollow. Welcome to The Solitary Forest.”

Lucid realization dawns. He may like games, but he knows when to stop playing them.

The Faeries had already known my name. Yet as giant hands shackle my wrists, I have time for one final, blessed thought: Puck doesn’t recognize my face.

He doesn’t remember me.

3

It was a long time ago. One special time, years ago.

If not my green eyes, the matching shade of my hair should have alerted him. However, my voice had been different back then—naive, younger, and softer around the edges. That, plus the passage of time must have blocked out the memory. So long as it stays that way, his ignorance is my saving grace.

The centaur snatches my waist. My body flops like a ragdoll, the candlelit trees somersaulting, a thousand flaming pupils rotating. I land on my belly. Slamming onto Cypress’s back, the blow to my stomach thrusts the air from my lungs.

The Faeries cackle. Puck’s gaze incinerates my nape.

My limbs dangle, and my skull bounces as the equine trots from the grove. At least Cypress maintains a languid gait along the winding lane, rather than vaulting into a gallop.

Inadvertently, my attention skids in an unseemly, anatomical direction. But rather than encountering certain exposed organs—he’s half horse, after all—I discern nothing but an enclosed sac down there. Like a lid, the flap must conceal the equine’s reproductive bits, layering over the bulge. That’s one less impropriety I’ll have to worry about while draped like this.

As we traverse deeper into the wild, the Faeries’ muffled glee recedes. Every muscle and joint in the centaur’s excessive body—his size triples that of a stallion—rumbles beneath mine. I struggle in vain to find a dignified position, my derrière on display and my ribs smarting from the ride.

“Cease your twitching, moppet,” the centaur clips. “It will disturb your balance, and I am not in the mood to retrieve you from the ground, should you suffer a tumble.”

“In terms of kinetics, the logical arrangement would be to let me sit astride,” I inform him. “That would relieve your discomfort as well as my own.”

He snorts at my rebuttal. “The discomfort of a human.”

“An unencumbered journey means a quicker arrival.”

“Which of your Fables did you memorize that axiom from?”

It wasn’t from a Fable. I’m quoting from my Papa Thorne, whom the centaur has no business mocking.

In any event, Cypress speaks as though mortals are incapable of feeling discomfort, the same way portions of my kind dismiss the possibility that animals have the capacity to suffer.

If I value my tongue, I must hold it—leash it, muzzle it. Regrettably, my bladder has other ideas. It swells, the pressure causing my eyes to water. “I suggest you readjust me so that I don’t soil your glossy coat.”

The centaur halts, processing my words. “Are you lying?”

“I’m not one to degrade myself with infantile tactics. What’s more, urine—mortalurine—has a pungent odor, and I doubt you’d enjoy a human marking you.”

In less than thirteen seconds, I’m off my stomach and straddling his back. A small triumph, but I congratulate myself nonetheless and abstain from thanking him. Faeries loathe gratitude and aspire to favors instead.

Once I’m settled, the centaur twists ahead. His baritone is thick and accented like Puck’s tenor, except less coquettish and certainly less playful. “Contaminate my coat, and I will buck you to the ground. Then I will stomp upon your puny carcass until you are fodder for the wild.”

I ignore the knot of terror that cinches my chest. Unlike humans, Faeries can’t lie. This mammoth isn’t bluffing; if given the opportunity, he wouldn’t hesitate to squash me beneath his hooves.

He wouldn’t, but for one fact. His kin had called me to this weald. I hadn’t merely skipped past their forbidden borders out of curiosity. I came at their behest.

I point out, “That would void the love letter your people sent me.”