Its lip curls as though it can hear my thoughts. Then it turns and walks away.
One second those eyes are fixed on mine, the next it crosses to the far side of the hollow and crouches. It presses one palm against the ground, lips moving. I strain to hear, but no sound reaches me. Then it straightens and moves to one of the trees. Palm against the bark, its mouth works again. Then to the next tree. And the next. A circuit being repeated over and over, while I shiver in the dirt.
“Please.” The word comes out before I can stop it. “My father is the king. He’ll pay any ransom you want. Gold, land, anything. Please.Pleaselet me go.”
It doesn’t give any sign that it’s heard me as it walks to the next tree.
“Did you hear me? I said my father …”
I might as well be talking to the wind.
I wrap my arms around my middle, trying to hold myself together.
Where are they? The Dell can’t be that big. They should have found me by now. They have dogs and trackers. They can follow prints and broken branches. So why haven’t they come?
My eyes dart to the fae, kneeling on the ground again, one hand braced in the dirt, the other pressed against a trunk.
Has it hidden me somehow? Or did they go back to the lodge for more people?
I don’t know which thought is worse.
My eyes snag on something. A ring of pale mushrooms on the far side of the hollow. As I watch, they start to glow—faint at first, just a halo around their caps. Then brighter. The fae steps into the circle, drops to its knees, and digs its fingers into the earth. The glow builds until my eyes ache, then fades again when it stands and walks away.
I start counting. It’s something to focus on, a way to stop my thoughts from spinning apart.
It spends three heartbeats at each tree. Four at the patch of bare ground. Eight at the mushrooms.
I force my eyes away and look around the rest of the hollow. The path we came from is no more than twenty feet away from me, opposite where the fae is.
I could run.
The thought rises from the same place that’s been hissingdon’t movesince it dropped me here. I shove it down. I’ve seen how fast this thing moves. I’ve felt how strong it is. Running would be suicide.
But lying here waiting to see what it does when it finishes …
My heart thuds against my bruised ribs.
I can’t outrun it. Iknowthat. But I can’t just lie here and die, either. At least if I run, I’m doing something. I’m not accepting that I’m nothing more than prey.
I watch it complete another circuit. Then another.
I push myself upright. The fae doesn’t even glance my way. It places its palm on another trunk, head turned away.
I shift to my knees, eyes fixed on it as it moves to crouch inside the mushroom circle again. Silver light climbs its fingers, throwing strange shadows along its arms.
If I’m going to move, it has to be now. While its back is turned. While it’s as far from the gap as it gets.
Now!
I snatch up the nearest handful of debris—stones, broken twigs, a clump of wet leaves—and hurl it as hard as I can to my right. It hits the undergrowth with a rustle and a clatter that sounds deafening in the silence.
The fae’s head snaps toward the noise.
I launch to my feet andrun.
Not toward the obvious gap. That’s too exposed. I sprint left, toward the darker space, where shadow gathers between the trunks. My legs don’t want to work. The first step nearly pitches me face-first into the dirt. The second catches. The third turns into a stumbling, lurching run.
Roots grab at my ankles. I jump one, clip the next, and slam my palm against a tree to keep from going down. Bark scrapes skin from my hand. I don’t care. I don’t care about anything except reaching those trees.
