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If I’d taken one of the fairytale nuts from this forest, it wouldn’t have fazed him. But taking the one from Mista’s castle...the one Robin had sacrificed herself for...thatdidmatter.

And while loving this man, I’d also been lying to him.

“Aire.” I moved toward him but stopped when he tensed, as if detecting my approach. “Aire, please. Let me fix this.”

How could I possibly do that? Even as I blurted it, I recognized it for a dishonest plea. An empty one.

When he turned, I didn’t see him. A saw a knight, but not him. His eyes had been stripped of tenderness, of warmth. This void of emotion was worse than rage or hurt or disgust. I couldn’t read him like this, aloof and brusque, as far from my grip as the sky, as a gale—something that had touched me briefly, swept me up in its arms, and then let me go.

“Yes, you shall fix this.” His voice sent a chill through me, more of those foreign bumps littering my arms. “You shall fix this by getting out of my sight.”

But he didn’t toss me out. Instead, he left me standing there, gathering his swords and cloak, then striding from the house. The door slammed, the frame jolting.

I buckled, sinking to my knees. He’d looked at me as if I were a stranger, a thief.

A liar.

30

Honesty

She was, and always had been, a liar.

Fleeing from the bungalow, I strapped the swords to my hips and made haste to the courser, my cloak a veritable storm around my limbs.

My steed grazed in the undergrowth but lifted her muzzle, hearing and heeding my arrival. I strode toward her with purpose, with urgency, and from somewhere to my left, Nicu’s voice skittered through the trees. He called my name, but I refrained from replying. I should have been more charitable, however the flute of his voice, the slick texture of his alarm offended me.

Nicu hadn’t been privy to the circumstances regarding Robin’s death and its relationship to the acorn. Indeed, he shouldn’t know of the acorn at all. Yet Aspen had confessed to the contrary, so I could only presume that he’d stumbled upon a conference between his parents and taken it upon himself to eavesdrop on the subject.

Nicu had also lied, knowing of Aspen’s agenda and claiming it as an excuse, a platform to embark on his own rebellion. He had withheld this information from me with as tight a grip as her own.

Never once had I led anyone in this motley group astray, yet it had been so thoroughly accomplished, so easily done to me. If there ever was an example of an authentic fool, it was I.

“Aire?” Nicu repeated. “Aire—”

I untethered the horse with violent jerks, forgoing a saddle. As I swung onto her back, the steed sensed my purpose, sensed my mood.

As did Nicu. “Aire, where are you—”

I dug my heels into her flanks.

“Aire!”

We took flight, her hooves slamming into the dirt, the woodland reduced to an abstraction on either side of us. The wind pushed us, assisting us through trickles of color and the gloss of afternoon sunlight. I rode that wind, soaring on a bitter current.

I banished all memory of that lumber maiden. To that end, I would not recapture the smoky essence of her voice, the taste of her gluttonous mouth under mine, the clutch of her limbs around my waist as I made love to her, the ravenous burn of our couplings—the way her body arched for more and my constant desire to oblige.

All along, she had been dishonest, bent on winning my favor, using me as a pawn to deflect punishment. She had practiced the most devious of arts to ensnare me, involving rapturous entreaties, a false kinship, and a make-believe affair. The forgery of her friendship, and the greater forgery of her kiss, had drawn my heart to her. All the while, she had been a villain, pilfering the symbol of my grief, the very item tainted with my wife’s blood.

Robin had believed in the power of fairytales, but she held to another creed as well: Nothing of such value should belong to one person. No such reward should be granted to a lone soul, for we all deserved a bright life. She had believed that was the true spirit of the tale.

She had wished to donate it to the Crown, to the kingdom and all its people. The Royals had sworn to keep it until, with the passage of time, they would deem it safe to announce the acorn, to organize a public viewing, so those in need of hope—hope for happy lives, or new lives, or restored lives—could view nature’s offering.

Aspen did not, would not, could not comprehend this. If things did not directly affect her, they did not matter.

Had she truly meant to use the acorn for her mother, or had that been an additional ploy? Had it been a disguise for the real aim, to shed her woodskin?

I hadn’t known that the woodworker commissioned to encase the acorn had a daughter, or that the daughter had been involved, or that she possessed a lumber hide or “skin deficiency.” The Crown had not imparted those details. They weren’t so ignorant as to sort people into base categories, to identify people as “others” on the basis of their exterior. They would not have made it an issue, would not have brought it up to me at all.