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“Are you really going to fight with me right now?”

“I do love your bite.”

Adira let out a grunt of irritation and quickened her step as we shot for the open gates, guards raging at our backs. And they were gaining, filling in the gaps on all sides.

“Wildling, I’m going?—”

“Do not finish that thought, Kage Wilder,” she shouted. “Side by side this time. We’re finished with sacrifices, you hear me?”

By the skies, I would devour her should we make it free of here in one piece.

Twenty paces and we’d be free of the gates. From one of the archways a guard burst out from his position. Adira screamed. I wrapped my arms around her waist, forcing her behind me, but the ground shuddered.

Or perhaps it was the walls.

A wrought iron hook holding a lantern unfurled, like a metal serpent, and coiled around the guard’s throat, pinning him against the wall.

“Hugo!” Adira’s voice cracked.

There, on the ledge of a parapet, hand outstretched, was Hugo. His light hair stuck to his face from sweat, but through the damp gaps his expression was one of despondency.

“I am trusting,” he called down to us, casting a wary glance at his fellow guards, tripping and stumbling over the sudden fall of sconces, torches, and hinges on high windows. Like an iron rain shower, bits and pieces of the Sanctuary fell and guards leapt aside to avoid the strike.

Hugo looked to me, holding my gaze. “Do not prove my instincts wrong.”

What could I say? There was no simple way to explain anything to Hugo, not yet. I said nothing, merely left him with a subtle nod, and raced with Adira into the open blossom fields, free of the Sanctuary gates.

CHAPTER 37

Kage

We sleptunder the long branches of the willow deep in the Greenwood. Cy had reached the tree first and set to casting different warding spells using narrow capped mushrooms called pixie fronds found at the base of the tree.

Clever, since the mushrooms could string around the neck as a sort of talisman that would carry the wards with us as we made our way . . . somewhere.

Each of us were named as fugitives. There was nowhere truly safe for us in Magiaria.

Well before the dawn peeled back the haze of mist, the others slept, tucked next to each other. I left my cloak over Adira’s body and went to wash away some of the spiced herbs we’d packed into my stomach last night.

Damn bastard caught me deeper than I’d thought.

Ponds scattered the Greenwood. Some thought them to be filled with water nyks or nymphs that might lull the weary into a state of slumber before wrenching them down into the reeds. I did not know much on such creatures, but I knew the gentle water had properties to bolster good health.

I stripped my tunic and used the sleeve to dab at the gash. Thewater, cold as it was, simmered along the edges, tugging at the skin like it was suturing it closed.

“Want to know something that is annoying?” Adira split the shoulder-high grass with her hands and stepped onto the bank.

“Tell me your annoyances, your joys, your frustrations, Wildling. I wish to hear it all.”

Her fingertips ghosted over my bare shoulders, lifting my skin like its instinct was to reach for her touch.

“It’s annoying that the whole of my mortal life I was alone. I had guardians, sure, but I was rather solitary. I’d accepted it, grown accustomed to it.” She kicked off her boots near the water’s edge. “Now, I’ve had my memories for two days and already I cannot sleep if you’re not next to me.”

I chuckled and pulled her against my chest. “Do you know what I find aggravating?”

“Tell me.”

My lips brushed over the curve of her ear, and I took some pride in the way her breath stuttered. “I find it aggravating that . . .” My mouth dragged down her throat, my hands on her ribs, down to her waist. “That you stillkickme all damn night.”