A flush unfurled across her chest. “Again, it’s only because he is a Prince and I am a Rae. We are particular among our kind. Raes and Princes are drawn to each other sexually, but it rarely means little beyond that.”
“Isn’t that what you said about the other one?”
“Yes,” she said. “Because in both instances it’s true.”
“Then you will breed with both of them?”
“No!”
Damion shot another, more concerned, glance back at her. She frowned at him until he turned away.
“No,” she said again to Hero. “If I had my way, I’d be rid of both of them. But as it turns out, I might need Kaelan. If there’s anything more confusing than my kind’s breeding habits, then it is our social structures.”
“And the other?”
“He’s dangerous. I can’t trust him.”
“This one does not trust you.”
“Kaelan?”
“I heard him tell the nymph he is afraid you will go back on your word. He does not wish to help you. He thinksyouare dangerous.”
“He’s right. I am.”
“We’re here,” Kaelan announced as he scaled a small rocky rise and then disappeared over the top of it.
Hero’s claws jabbed into her skin again. Why hadn’t she worn a jacket to Python’s that day? Now she was stuck in a tank top with rat claws burrowing into her bare skin every other step.
“What’s wrong?” she said to Hero.
Sharp currents of his anxiety passed through her, his tiny heart racing.
“Be careful. I will wait here.”
Without another word, he leapt down and disappeared into the underbrush.
Damion stood at the top of the rise. “Are you coming?”
She frowned after Hero, but then hiked up to the crest and joined Damion, startling a fat black toad, the size of a big tomcat, from the log where he’d been squatting.
Down the hill was a small hollow cradling a giant dead tree, gray and tangled, branches frozen in bent, writhing death-throes like a gigantic spider’s corpse.
At the heart of the dissected tree, a gaping wound of darkness.
Honey leaned against the tree, peering into the hole.
Magda and Damion shared an uneasy look and remained far back from the tree.
“Ouda?” Honey called. “It’s me, Honeysuckle. I’ve brought Kaelan and... some others.”
From the black depths, a long, slender hand appeared, followed by an arm of ivory, then a head, fair waves of gossamer hair and a delicate-featured face. Honey moved back, smiling.
“Thank you, Ouda, for giving us audience.”
Ouda smiled down at Honey as she emerged, taller than all of them, moving with a gentle grace like a sapling swaying in the breeze. She turned her washed-out blue eyes from Honey to Kaelan, then to Damion and Magda.
Her voice was like wind through a fallen log, deep and low, melodic in a haunting way.
