Page 26

Thea

A forlorn star, high up in the fathomless black sky, was what greeted me at the first wink of consciousness. The second thing I noticed was the line of treetops floating past me like restless clouds, which didn’t alarm me much even though I had no idea which one of us was moving. My body felt numb, light as air. I could only lie there, cataloguing their many leaves. There were birches and hemlocks and the occasional almond tree, which I recognized by its shivering pale blossoms. They reminded me of the night I arrived at the Castle, that dreamy, blossom-paved path I had followed with my suitcase pressed to my chest.

Vaguely, I recalled something Esperida told me once. No one can step into the Castle twice. Either you have changed or the Castle has. Indeed, how strange it was to be out of the Castle now. I felt so different from when I entered it.

Finally, it struck me. The Castle. The Valkhars. Hector.

With a gasp that sent a flock of blackbirds into a frenzy, I sprang from a pair of hands, hitting my forehead against another.

“Bloody Tartarus,” crowed Arawn, dropping me remorselessly to the cold, hard ground.

“You bastard!” I seethed as I staggered to my feet, clutching skirts I had not put on myself. “You dressed me?”

“Did you prefer to venture out into the woods in your nightdress, you crazy woman?” Arawn growled—the audacity of this man!—then hurled my suitcase to the ground so he could rub at the red mark on his forehead.

He’d be lucky if a headbutt was all he suffered tonight.

“Take me back,” I snarled. “Take me back now, and I’ll forgive you.”

“Forgive me,” he echoed angrily.

I lunged at him in full force, grabbing him around the collar of his overcoat. “You abandoned him!”

“I did what he asked of me!”

“He’s not your damned sovereign! He’s your friend! He’s your friend, and he needs you!”

Arawn shook me off, his fair eyes looking wraithlike, almost insubstantial in the enduring darkness. “He made this decision himself.”

“He didn’t make a decision,” I hissed. “They gave him no choice. Someone orchestrated this. I know it. I—”

“Thea,” Arawn sighed, coming forth to seize my arms. “He did make a choice. He chose to die with honor. He could have stepped down—”

“And surrender his legacy? His own home? Have you lost your mind?”

“Look at me. Look at me, Thea,” he panted, cupping the sides of my neck and forcing my head straight so I could see all the things I was too selfish and frightened to care about right now. His pallid skin. His sunken eyes. The alarming hollows of his cheeks. “I’m a mess. I’m heartbroken and sick to the marrow of my bones, and I’m in no position to stand beside anyone right now. I could not protect him, but I can protect you. I can still honor him by taking you away from here. Please.” His voice broke, his eyes shining with unshed tears.

I could not find the grace in me to feel sorry for him. Hector was in danger, and he needed us, and that was all I could think about.

Suddenly, a loud rustle sounded from the bramble to our left, a heap of leaves yielding to movement. Arawn surged his body before me while I clutched my skirts, ready to bolt if need be. For a second we both kept still, waiting for the prowling creature to reveal itself. Fear lapped over me as I realized how deep we were in the woods, the trees billowing into dark hills and mountains not too far in the horizon.

In the end, only a nervous rabbit hopped over the thorny shrub, scurrying into the night.

Still, I was not appeased. The hollows of the forest swelled all around us, and in them, I could sense that something was lingering, watching us. Something that, evidently, not even a vampire could detect.

“Let us leave this wretched place at once,” sighed Arawn. “We’ll find accommodations in the city. After you’ve settled somewhere safe, I’ll return to the Castle.”

Another wave of resolution set in my bones. “I’m going back, Arawn.”

“To do what? To watch him die?”

“He will not die!”

“Have you ever seen him in the future?” Arawn demanded, his lips curling over his fangs. “Have you ever had a vision of him that goes beyond tonight?”

One moment I was trying to remember how to breathe, and the next I was hurling myself at him, my fists beating against his chest. “I can’t believe I thought you were my friend! I hate you!”

Arawn raised his arms to embrace me, which only made my rage burn hotter, brighter, vengeful as a blade. “Don’t touch me!” I howled.

But Arawn, even in his weakened state, was still a vampire, and it didn’t take much for him to band his arms around mine and trap me against his solid body.

“Please, Thea. Please, darling, let me take you away from here,” he murmured in my ear, his cheek pressing against mine. “You’re shaking.”

I was shaking. But it had nothing to do with the cold.

It came to me like the surge of a lamp in a dark room. Cold. My coat. My suitcase—and the pouch of soporific dust inside it.

“I—I have a coat in my suitcase,” I stammered, forcing my teeth to chatter. “Can you let go of me for a moment?”

Arawn exhaled, slowly unhanding me so I could trail back to where he’d dropped my suitcase. I gathered up my skirts, got down on my knees, and flung it open. The velveteen pouch lay at the very top, right next to the sentient compass Nepheli had also gifted me. With one hand I pried the velvet apart, grabbing a fistful of dust while I pretended to fumble for my coat with the other.

When I got up, veering to face Arawn, I found him staring at that forlorn star, his throat outstretched, his soft hair falling back like a disordered halo. He looked tormented, broken into a million pieces, and for a moment, guilt spread in my chest.

I closed the distance warily, hesitantly, my whole body aching. “I’m sorry,” I whispered, although a part of me wasn’t, and for that I felt the greatest guilt of all.

His head straightened, his eyes meeting mine in a split second of confusion. “What?”

The dust twirled kaleidoscopically as I blew it in his face, shifting specks glimmering in the air. His lashes fluttered rapidly, then, knees buckling, his eyes rolled white, and his body slumped on the ground with a grim thump .

Hardly a second passed before a high-pitched voice sounded behind me, making me jump. “I like your compass.”

A small sprite was floating above the cluster of shrubbery, her viridescent skin sparkling like a spill of treasure in the gloom. Her dress was made of fresh moss, her hair a leathery tangle of vines, standing out in all directions. Her huge yellow eyes, framed with thick, dew-kissed lashes, darted curiously from the compass to Arawn before circling back to the glowing object.

“You know,” she said in a congenial, almost concerned manner, “if you leave your friend here and he doesn’t wake up before dawn,” she made a theatric arch with her tiny hands, fingers fluttering in explosions of golden dust, “he’ll light up like a solstice firework.”

My heart dropped.

I had absolutely no idea how long the dust’s effects were meant to last. It could be ten minutes or ten hours. And then the sun would rise.

How— how —had I not thought of that? Gods, what was wrong with me? I was about to murder poor Arawn out of sheer negligence.

With a frustrated cry, I buried my face in my palms and slumped on the ground next to him, despair sawing at my chest. “What am I going to do?”

I wasn’t expecting an answer, but the sprite offered one regardless. “You need to dig a grave. Just in case. He’ll crawl out of it when the sun comes down.”

My head jerked up from my hands. “Well, as you can see, I forgot my damned shovel!”

Failing to read the sarcasm in my voice, she nodded solemnly. “It’s okay, I can dig one for you. I’ll make it really nice.” Flying down, she held her palm right above the ground, green light flickering under the curve of her fingers. Breathless, I watched the soil crack, giving way to her influence. Then she stopped. “But I do require an offering.”

“Excuse me?”

“I’m a forest sprite, silly,” she said very seriously. “I deal in goods. Now, if I were a fairy, I might be content with your favorite childhood memory or the taste of your first kiss, but we little folk like a good trinket.” Sniffing the air, she shook her head and cast me a disappointed look. “I can smell the magic on you. You’re from Thaloria. So you ought to know this.”

I did know this. But I also knew that sprites were not supposed to dwell outside the Dragonfly Forest, for their powers tended to deplete in magicless lands, and they needed double the amount of offerings from desperate humans such as myself to maintain them.

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Haven’t you ventured a little far from home?”

She lowered her gaze, twirling a finger in the stringy foliage of her hair. “I am an exile. We tiny creatures have our issues too, you know.”

Great. Hector was all alone fighting for his life, and Arawn’s only hope was an exiled, possibly dangerous, and most definitely insidious forest sprite. “Things cannot get any worse.”

“Actually,” the sprite said cheerfully. “There is a high chance of rain tonight, so we should probably speed this bargain up unless you wish to catch yourself a nasty cold as well.”

“I will not bargain with a criminal,” I clipped.

The sprite scoffed, or rather she tried to, for her voice was so thin it sounded more like an outraged squeal. “Says the girl who knocked out her friend and is about to leave him for dead.”

“I beg your pardon—”

“You can beg all you want, it won’t make you any less of a murderer.”

“I’m not a murderer! I am desperate!”

Her expression grew positively demonic. I felt like I’d fallen into some kind of trap. “Well, look at that,” she chimed. “So you do understand what it is like.”

I had no words, only the same old feeling of lost agency.

The sparkle of the sprite’s silhouette dimmed as she rested between the dirt-spattered folds of my skirts, continuing in a more contemplative manner, “It’s a rough world out there. For the different ones, I mean. If you’re not one thing, you’re bound to be another, and no one likes anything with the word other in it. It certainly got me exiled.”

My eyes blurred with tears as I pulled Arawn’s serene face onto my lap. What am I going to do? I asked myself over and over. No answer emerged from the squall of my thoughts.

The sprite reappeared before me, her tiny face bright with hope. “If you take a chance on me, I will not disappoint you. I swear it on the stars.”

Conflicted, I glanced down at Arawn, then back at her, time slipping from me like water down a drain. “Please, don’t hurt him. I’ve done enough damage.”

“You know how this works. If you give me an offering, I have no choice but to uphold my end of the bargain.”

“If only your greatest mission in life wasn’t to lurk about the woods so you can dupe helpless wanderers such as myself,” I grumbled.

“And perhaps if I were better at it, I wouldn’t be so far away from home now,” she shot back.

I didn’t want to trust her. For all I knew, she wanted me to give her my compass so I would get lost in the forest and then fall into some kind of elaborate fairy trap.

But what other choice did I have? Hector could be dying right now. I had to go back. I had to try to wake up the Castle somehow.

Tremulously, I stretched one arm to fish the compass out of the suitcase while still cradling Arawn’s head with the other.

It pained me to see the object plucked off my hand, but not more than the possibility of losing more time, of returning to the Castle only to find it without an Aventine waiting for me in it.

The sprite dug no grave, after all, for which I was more thankful than words could express. Instead, she threaded a cave of thornless vines around Arawn’s sleeping body and vowed to protect him if he did not wake before the first rays of the sun touched the sky.

“Thank you,” I sighed, facing the black hollow of the forest. I didn’t know the way back, but I hadn’t a minute to spend in worry. Each moment felt the length of a lifetime.

“As do I,” said the sprite with a huge, sharp-toothed smile. “This is my first trade. I will cherish it forever.”

“I have to hurry.”

I was about to bolt when she stopped me, her voice behind me high with curiosity. “Are you going back to the Castle?”

“You know it?”

“Everyone knows the Castle. It appears like a ghost in the night. Its white spires reflect the moon and make the whole forest shine. It brings us all great terror and great pleasure to see it coming. It’s funny how these things go so well together, isn’t it?”

“Do you know the way?” I pressed, breathless with impatience. “Or perhaps do you have another compass I can use?”

She frowned at me, perplexed. “Don’t you have magic?”

“I can see the future sometimes,” I blurted out, too anxious for instructions to talk about magic right now.

“It’s very odd for a seer to rely on a compass to cross a path her future self already has,” the sprite mused unhelpfully.

“That’s not how fortune-telling works,” I groaned.

“Follow your instincts then,” she advised. “Run. Run until you see the lightning-stricken tree. Then go straight through the thicket. Trust your magic to do the rest.”

It was easier said than done. The forest was a sloping mass webbed in shadow. It was impossible to see anything further than two steps ahead of me, listen to anything beyond the beat of my own blood.

Still, I ran. I ran until my muscles burned and my lungs drained, and the tears in my eyes meant nothing more than fear leaving my body.

In the end, it was a lot like the sprite said. Everywhere I went, I found I’d been there already. The woods were dense, threaded as a labyrinth. The air was musty with far-off woodsmoke and sharp with dawn chill. But my heart knew the way, and it refused to give up. Even as it knocked itself against my ribcage, bruised and bleeding, it kept on guiding me forward.

Please, I beseeched my throbbing body. Please hold on for a little longer. He has to know. He has to know I love him.