“It’s a dragon, isn’t it?” Eva screamed from inside the tent. “I freaking knew we’d see a dragon!”
“Not a dragon, sugar!” Hunter called, sounding as baffled as I felt, staring at the swarm of teeny tiny pixies swirling around Andre.
Prince Halad was up, too, clearly trying to bargain with the pixies, which snarled and darted around him. A fair distance away, his cousins were sniggering and not even bothering to hide it.
“Maybe a dragon would be better?” I muttered as a pixie started yelling at the prince, who stepped back and cupped his hands around his mouth.
“Get up, everyone!” Halad called out. “We have to leave now, or the swarm will attack! They’re only holding off out of respect to my mother!”
I blinked. Pixies attacking? Aswarm? Was this a joke?
But instead of wasting time questioning things, we did as the harried Prince Halad said, hauling a whimpering Eva out of the tent, and taking it down in record time. As the guys rolled up the canvases, I glanced at the moon, high in the sky. It was probably near midnight.
“And don’t think you can just move down the hill and camp there!” one of the larger pixies yelled as Prince Halad mounted his horse. “We own all the land until the next grove!”
The prince’s lips flattened, but he didn’t argue, merely nodded and told everyone else to saddle up.
I did so gingerly, my body still aching from earlier.
Once I was sure Eva was in her saddle, I rode up to the prince. “So, what happened back there?”
Prince Halad rolled his eyes. “Wild pixie swarms. They’reveryterritorial, and this is their land. They weren’t pleased when we made camp here, but decided against retaliating out of respect for my mother. Their resistance held out until the chief’s mate couldn’t find her favorite cooking pot. After that, he lost it, attacked Andre when he got up to relieve himself, and, as you’ve noticed, kicked us out.”
Cooking pot? My mouth fell open, recalling Eva’s description of the item she laid on. All that was for a cooking pot?!
“Okay, so they were upset, but why did you look so freaked?” I leaned close because I wasn’t sure if pixies had sensitive hearing. “In case you didn’t notice, they’re tiny.”
“Tiny anddeadly,” the prince said. “They have venomous fangs. With that number, we’d all have been dead in minutes.”
“Deadly?!Did you just say ‘deadly’?” Andre pulled his horse up next to us. He held up his arm, on which was a single, swollen, red lump.
“Not fromthat.” The prince was unable to keep the exasperation from this tone. “One pixie bite is nothing. You’ll be fine. But if the swarm had gotten to you . . . That would be a different story.”
“It’s not nothing,” Andre muttered. “This shit stings.”
I muffled a laugh and, as the prince cantered ahead, dug my heels into my horse’s sides.
Between Andre’s hysteria over his pixie bite and Eva’s‘I knew it was a pot!’ramblings, it was an hour or so before exhaustion took over our group once again. When everyone finally fell silent, it was still dark, and the prince estimated that we had at least three more hours until the sun rose. I wasn’t sure if we’d reach the next thicket of trees that indicated the end of the swarm’s land before then, but I sure hoped so. I was desperate for sleep.
As it happened, I was fated for disappointment. We came across the grove about a half hour after the sun inched over the horizon.
Prince Halad pulled his stallion up to the grouping of trees and squinted into it.
“Is it safe? None of those tiny devils?” Andre asked, his eyes narrowed.
“I see no signs of a pixie swarm living here. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s not in another swarm’s territory, but as long as they aren’t nearby, we should take this chance to sleep for a couple of hours. The closer we get to the Rift, the more alert we need to be.”
I blinked through blurred vision and nodded. A nap sounded glorious.
This time, when we dismounted, we didn’t bother setting up tents, but simply lay in the grass and passed out.
Francis woke us all up three hours later, and we trucked onward. By the time the sun hung at its zenith, I was more than ready for another snoozefest, but knew that wouldn’t happen.
According to Prince Halad, we would reach the aether-blessed fae’s cottage at any moment. More importantly, we were approaching the border of the Riverlands and Dark Court—the Rift.
I’d noticed it an hour ago, a dark cloud on the horizon. As we’d journeyed closer, the inky stain had grown and expanded to encompass miles and miles. A cold emanated from it, one that made me shudder every few minutes.
“Wild, isn’t it?” Alex said from his place at my side. “I feel like depression is washing over me, just seeing it.”
