“No,” said Harry. “Really?” Harry was the one who liked to hear bad jokes.
“It’s true! I saw it with my own eyes!”
Harry guffawed, while Clem looked pained. “Eejits,” he muttered. He was the one who hated bad jokes.
Kit hardly said anything, although he frequently turned aside to hold a finger to his nose and blow the autumn leaves into swirling gyres, grinning too widely whenever he did. I was beginning to find him slightly unnerving.
Sam, when he was up to talking, mostly asked me questionsabout my life, which I fended off. I did the same to him, and he returned the favor.
I thought about what Clem had said and decided that flirting was an accurate way to describe what Sam and I had been doing. Practically since the moment we’d met. I liked Sam. His easy smile and his sense of humor. His attentiveness, despite his own injuries. I liked him rather a lot.
Which was perhaps not a feeling I should have been allowing to germinate when I was set to be married to someone else, and the consequences of endangering that engagement could be severe. I’d been fixated on my stepmother sticking me in a glass coffin if I defied her will, but that was only one of many possibilities. She might turn me into a bird and lock me in a cage instead. Or put me to sleep for a hundred years behind a wall of thorns.
Assuming the huntsmen’s intentions toward me were not nefarious, and I was being taken to the castle as they claimed, then whatever was going on between Sam and me would have to end as soon as I revealed my true identity. A pang of loss struck me at the thought, which was ridiculous considering I had known him for less than a day. But it would have been nice to find out what might have developed if I had really been a handmaiden named Clover trading veiled glances with a hunter named Sam.
Or even if I were a princess who’d been abducted by an attractive outlaw. I had heard of successful relationships with stranger origins.
Perhaps, I thought as we stopped at the bank of a wide river, I could still hold out some hope I was being kidnapped. Our insanely dangerous route through the forest couldn’t possibly be the easiest way to get to the castle. It seemed far more likely to lead to a robber’s den. Criminals might brave the dangers lurking in the woods to avoid a prison sentence—or a noose.
“I’m fairly sure we can ford it,” Jack said, staring into the swift-flowing water. “I don’t think it’s too deep.”
A virulently purple fish with the extended eyestalks of a slug poked its head out of the river, blinked at him, and then disappeared again with a quiet plop.
“Maybe not,” said Sam. “We don’t know what’s in there.”
“I can blow the rest of you across,” Kit offered.
Before I could point out what a terrible idea that was, Clem shook his head. “Och, ye dafty! We’d break oor arses oan they rocks.”
An argument immediately broke out, all of them talking at once.
“I’ll freeze the water so solid, the fish will think they’re already in the icebox—”
“—freeze us to death, more likely—”
“—shoot an arrow wi’ a rope tied tae it—”
“—worst idea I ever—”
“—if Sam can punch out a tunnel underneath—”
“—if I canwhat?—”
“—we should throw Harry’s leg over to the other side—”
“—drink the river dry—”
“—somehow learn to teleport—”
“—no, no, levitate—”
“—teleport!—”
“—levitate!—”
“—won’t even work, it’s not flying, you can’t go sideways—”
“Or,” I shouted over them, “we could make our way to the road! Where I imagine there is a nice, solid bridge over this river.”
