I need water so badly that another beating is starting to seem worth the risk. My throat is so dry. My lips are cracking. My head is pounding.
He saiddon’t. I know he meant don’t run. But getting water isn’t running. I’llcrawlto the stream, drink, and crawl back. That isn’t running.
I uncurl slowly, biting back a whimper as my ribs protest. Every movement is agony. I get onto my hands and knees, pause to breathe through the pain, and look over at him.
He doesn’t stir.
I crawl toward the sound of water, moving slowly across the ground. It’s so close. I can smell it now. My tongue drags over my lips, already anticipating the cool, fresh taste of it.
When I reach the gap between two trees, I stretch my hand out. My fingers hit a wall.
I snatch my hand back. There’s nothing there. But when I reach out again, my fingers meet resistance.
Solid, invisible, and impassable.
No!
I shuffle to another gap. The same barrier is there. Another gap. The same. I circle the entire hollow, pressing against the boundary at every opening. Every single one is sealed.
No. No, no, no.
I turn, pressing my back against the invisible wall, and find those golden eyes open and watching me.
“What did you do?” I hate how my voice shakes. “What is this?”
He closes his eyes and ignores me.
FOUR
ALLERIA
I don’t meanto fall asleep.
I’m sitting with my back pressed to the invisible wall, knees pulled up to my chest, watching him. If his eyes open, I want to see. I need that warning, even if it won’t save me. But at some point my eyes must have closed because the next thing I know my head is jerking upright and my heart is slamming against my ribs.
It’s still night. The ring of mushrooms glows faintly to my right, and the fae?—
The fae hasmoved.
He’s not where he was. I twist, pain shooting through me, and scan the hollow, searching for antlers, for wrong-colored skin, for any sign of movement.
There!At the base of the largest oak. He’s slumped against the trunk, one leg stretched out and the other bent, his forearm resting across the knee. His head is tipped back, and the antler tips are resting against the bark.
He’s asleep.
My eyes track over him. The torn tunic hanging crooked offone shoulder. The muscles in his forearm where it rests over his knee. His bare shins and feet smeared with dirt. And my mind replays the moment he pinned me down. The weight of him across my thighs. The solid press against my hip. I can stillfeelit—the phantom imprint of his body holding mine to the ground, the way I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t doanythingexcept lie there and wait to see what he’d do.
My stomach turns. I redirect my gaze higher, toward his face, but that’s worse because all I can see are the antlers.
I drop my gaze to his chest and hug my knees tighter.
One breath. Two. Ten. I count them because it gives my mind something to do that isn’t replaying his hand on my throat.
It doesn’t work.
I keep counting and I keep feeling those fingers pressed against my windpipe anyway. That slow squeeze, and the way the world turned dark at the edges while those gold, odd-shaped eyes watched me struggle.
Twenty-three. Twenty-four.
