Page 26

REED

By the afternoon, the endless rows of birch trees had blended into a blur of black and ivory, the music of their ghostly white leaves rustling in the wind like gentle waves. Rocked by his horse’s movements, Reed followed Dulce as they continued their journey north, exhaustion pulling at them.

Fingers going numb with cold, Reed smiled to himself at how easily the Leper’s men had fallen, how spectacularly they’d failed in capturing him. The Leper should’ve kept his trap shut about Dulce bringing anyone pleasure—he’d brought it all upon himself.

“You fight incredibly well.” Dulce grinned, glancing over her shoulder at him as her horse led the way. “You could join the royal guard if you wanted.”

“There’s only one woman I want to call Majesty.” He smirked.

She laughed just before her smile slowly fell. “Once we return to Moonglade, I’ll get everything sorted for you. There will be no bounty on your head, I promise.”

“And you? Won’t the villagers discover you’re a witch if gossip spreads further?”

“Rumors are easy to manipulate.”

“They’ll regret the day the Great Alexandra Josephine Bancroft intervened.” Reed winked, making her laugh once more, which was precisely what he wanted.

They would have to return from facin g La Bisou Morte first, however.

Anyone without magic would’ve been a simpler threat.

When Dulce went alone through the fog to halt the wild magic of the Tree of Life, he’d wanted to believe she would be fine, but a part of him had worried she wouldn’t be.

That the magic would turn against her and kill her in some horrific, unimaginable way.

And there would have been nothing he could’ve done to save her.

They fell silent, carrying on through the endless rows of birch trees as weak sunlight peeked at them through their leaves from farther along the western horizon. At least it wasn’t raining. They had that in their favor.

Reed, lulled into a half-slumber, wondered what his life would be like if he’d made different choices.

Would he have avoided ever meeting the likes of brutes like the Leper, Nickolas ‘the Pikeman’ Davies, and the many men of questionable morals who worked for them?

Would he have ever, like so many young boys before him, begun training to fight, to finally enter the arena hidden away in the Glen’s swamps, with its stench of blood and fear, and use violence to earn coin?

Would he have ever met Dulce?

The thought of never meeting her disturbed him more than he cared to admit. Especially knowing she could’ve easily fallen into death if he hadn’t dug her up when he had.

What was life but a collection of crossroads, each action taking destiny onto a different path? If Reed thought about it, the trajectory of his life could be determined by a single decision he’d made one winter day five years ago.

It was the first time he’d known true hunger.

Fear of not eating the next meal. Reed and his brother found themselves down to the last of their dead parents’ savings.

Despite his brother Philip working at the blacksmith’s and Reed himself doing what little he could to earn coin, the savings had slowly dwindled like sand falling through an hourglass, until coin for only one more month of rent and one more meal remained.

Philip unable to leave work until late into the night, Reed was tasked with taking the payment to the landlord and going to the market to buy whatever rations he could by using the rest. The lanes of Dogwood Glen had been covered in slushy mud that day, a steady curtain of snowflakes floating from the washed-out sky to cover every surface of the maze of crooked hovels all around him in snow, and Reed held his tattered cloak close to himself as he tried to avoid the trampled path’s deepest puddles.

That was why he hadn’t noticed the small boy until he collided with him, knocking Reed off his feet while he was thrown out a door two huts down from the landlord’s larger one.

“And stay out, you mangy bastards!” a deep voice bellowed, adding another and still another child to the last, the final victim hitting his head on the ground with an alarming crack.

Reed struggled to sit, ignored as the largest of the three helped the other two to their feet, frantically brushing snow off their clothing, and the youngest cried in earnest. None of them wore shoes, and their cloaks were threadbare in the bitter cold.

Their appearance was so pathetic that it made Reed, who donned his father’s tailored cloak, look like a wealthy boy by comparison.

They all had the same bright blue eyes and freckled cheeks. Clearly siblings.

“What will we do now?” asked the third boy to the eldest. “What chance do we have if we can’t—”

A girl rushed from the alleyway and joined them, taking the youngest into her arms. She was older than the rest, her expression furious as she turned identical bright blue eyes from her brothers to the locked door of the hut they’d just been thrown from.

“Leave,” she finished. “Now, today. Before they come back with more men.”

“He took the rest of our coin,” the eldest boy told her, staring at his bare feet in abject misery. “I tried to stop him, but…”

The four children stared at each other, pale and terrified, already trembling in the cold, and, as if the sun shone through the dense clouds above him, Reed knew what he had to do.

Even if it meant moving into a smaller hovel, even if it meant taking a job at the butchers, which smelled vile and gave him nightmares.

“Take this,” he called, holding out the bag of coin he carried as the four spun to face him. “It should be enough for passage south on the next caravan. Enough food for four days. Maybe even … some shoes.”

The four gawked at him in disbelief, the girl’s expression filling with distrust.

“Why would you do that?” she demanded. “Why would you help us?” The girl stepped back from him in horror, her arms wrapped protectively around the two smallest boys. “I warn you—we’d sooner die than work in the Leper’s brothel.”

“Oh, this is nothing,” Reed lied, shrugging. “Me and my brother, we have more than enough coin to live on comfortably. We have a rich uncle with no children of his own, and Father works in Moonglade for a grand duchess. My cousin Alfie is even the personal stable boy for a baron.”

They didn’t look convinced.

“Trust me, no one will even notice it’s gone,” he insisted, dropping the bag of coin at the eldest boy’s feet. “I was on my way to the market to buy the latest sled—you know, the red one, with the extended brackets and the new drag pads? But in truth we already have several of last year’s designs.”

Reed walked away, leaving them to watch him in stunned silence. Sometimes his lying skills were a little too good, but he generally only told untruths when it came down to survival.

He thought Philip would be angry at him for losing the last of their coin, but when he told his brother what he’d done, he only embraced him warmly in understanding.

“Don’t worry, Reed,” he’d said. “We’ll figure something out. We always do, don’t we? You did the right thing, helping those children.”

But when they couldn’t pay their next month’s rent in full, even after taking one of the smallest, most miserable huts available in the Glen, the Pikeman’s men had come sniffing around, looking for fresh recruits.

They were only too happy to add desperate boys to their workforce, especially those rumored to be foolish enough to help those more unfortunate than themselves…

“Reed, look !” Dulce cried, pulling him from the past. He raised his head to find that the endless sea of haunting trees had cleared, leaving a meadow of southern marsh orchids, their wine-red blooms spreading out to the base of a waterfall, the liquid like milk on black stone to meet a pool of deep green, lilies and sea campions decorating its shores in silvery mist surrounding them.

Tossing her reins to him, Dulce bolted from her horse’s back, and, skirts gathered in each hand, she ran across the meadow, her laughter filling the warm afternoon light as a flock of magpies took flight in a cloud of wings.

The horses, eager to drink, followed along as Reed dismounted and went to catch up with her. By the time he reached its shore, Dulce removed her boots and dipped one foot into the lake, clearly longing to enter the water as she hesitated. “It’s warm,” she breathed. “Do you think it’s safe?”

“It doesn’t seem to bother the plants or birds,” Reed pointed out. “Unless they’re an illusion and in actuality we’re surrounded by death and decay.”

“Ah, not the worst it could be then.” Dulce removed her cloak and untied her skirts—Reed spun from her to face the meadow.

“I’m not removing everything!” She laughed, and Reed glanced over his shoulder to find her cheeks flushed a deep pink. “My mother taught me a drying spell on rainy days years ago, when the washing was forgotten on the line.”

His throat bobbed as Dulce stripped away all but her thin black chemise, and he looked toward the meadow again while trying not to imagine what she looked like beneath the fabric.

“You can keep all of your clothing on,” Dulce called. “But I can’t promise your overcoat’s fur lining will thank you.”

Reed turned to find her wading into the pool until she lay floating at its center, her chemise clinging to her curves, a wide smile painted across her pretty features. He bit the inside of his cheek harshly to control where his mind was veering off to.

Once he gathered his wits, Reed chuckled. “You seem to be enjoying yourself.”

“If this is an illusion, I’ll enjoy it before it fades!” she shouted at the blue sky above her. “Who knows when the next opportunity for a hot bath will present itself!”

Shedding all but his drawers, Reed entered the water, petals of flowers he’d trampled on his way swirling around him as he swam beneath the falls, his sore shoulders luxuriating under the force of the cascading water.

He wondered absently if it was safe to be enjoying this astonishing place, or if the world was ending the closer they journeyed across this cursed land.

But as he watched Dulce, her joy so contagious, Reed decided that even if he died tomorrow, he would never regret coming with her on this mad adventure.

The horses grazed along the meadow, and Reed distracted himself from Dulce while he observed them, their tails swishing lazily in the fading afternoon light. As the water fell around him, Reed’s worries drifted away.

Exhaling, he let himself sink beneath the water, his body weightless, the current lifting him slowly back to the surface.

Pushing his hair from his brow, he opened his eyes to find Dulce standing before him, close enough to touch, her golden-brown eyes shining like a million stars, her raven hair falling around her perfect face, water dripping to her parted lips.

They looked at each other in silence, Reed’s heart pounding, his blood scorching.

“Would you mind terribly if I kissed you?” Dulce whispered.

Reed blinked, certain he had misheard her.

Was this some haunting ghost, trying to deceive him again?

No, this was real, this was Dulce. He had almost kissed her lips twice before, yet here she was, asking him to?

It seemed impossible that such a thing could be true.

He knew he was nothing but a swamp rat compared to this beautiful creature—however, Reed inched nearer to her and lifted her chin with his forefinger.

He brushed his lips along her warm cheek, and she arched toward him as he dipped his other hand to her lower back, closing the distance between them.

And then his lips, finally , captured hers.

Dulce sighed against his mouth when he drew her into his arms, and she tasted of the sweetest nectar of any flower. While time seemed to stand still, Reed thought of nothing but this utopia of wanting. Wanting nothing but Dulce, more of her, all of her.