Gorga Girl. How hideous. She should tell Shaw. He could never complain of being called “Prowler” again.
Lux’s chest hollowed, and she flattened her hand against it. It’d been doing that for at least a week now—whenever she thought of him. It was so different, missing someone who lived. She couldn’t say she’d had any real experience with it until now, and she disliked it just as much. There were so many things she longed to tell him, she’d taken to writing them down.
She would have been embarrassed if she also didn’t want to cry.
The autumn sun beamed down on her head, and Lux pulled her hood forward to shield her eyes. Already, she’d learned the clouds in Ghadra had both created a problem and protected her. Her pale skin reddened within minutes of exposure.
She tracked the vague blot of the carriage all the way to the blurred canopy it headed toward. The road to the sea meant a road first through the trees.
And trees—well, she and they didn’t have a history of getting along.
Chapter four
Ravenwood,saidtheweatheredsign staked into the dirt. At the forest’s edge, Lux could see the bark of the trees was red and not black. That the moss was green and lush, not dark and putrid. It was another of Shaw’s paintings here before her own two eyes, and she’d wanted to be here, experiencing it, for so long. But she couldn’t go in.
Lucena. Lucenaaa.
She shivered with the memory.
She’d not touched a single tree since abandoning Ghadra; she’d not even gone into more than a grove. A massive part of her wanted to—begged to, even—but she couldn’t force her feet to move. Today seemed to be no different.
No, today must be different.Because what was the point in testing if she could grow if she didn’t give herself the room?
“You can’t exchange fears,” she scolded her head. “Besides, you’ve been through worse.”
The bandage on her finger loosened again, and again, she pulled at the tail with her teeth. Riselda would have been perfectly horrified by her wrapping. The thought only made her grin.Good riddance, you wicked hag.
“I guess trees are not all bad,” she said to the wood. “Your relatives did eat mine and saved me a lot of trouble.”
Lux leveled her shoulders and straightened her spine.Look at the difference in them. They even smell like they’re good.She glanced to her left, into the distance. Barnabus Pass wished her well on her journey, the snow-topped mountains glistening beneath the sun. And that Edgar Dosem, for all his oddness, had told her she would find no greater welcoming than Ravenwood.
“Those trees cherish their travelers. Stroke one and see. Tell them Edgar says ‘hello’ while you’re at it. They’ll know whom you mean, even though it’s been so long.”
Lux stepped one foot beyond the forest’s edge and, ever-so-slowly, stretched out her hand—
Something whistled past her head.
She whipped around.
“Next one will stick if you move more.”
Lux took one lingering look at the stranger, from his worn hat to his battered boots, and snarled, “You wouldn’tda—”
A twang was her only warning. A second arrow snagged the folds of her cloak before ripping free.
She shrieked and leapt and heard him say, “Third one willreallystick if you speak again too.”
Movement caught at her periphery; she didn’t dare look away from the man with an arrow nocked and aimed. Given the situation, whoever else came upon her was likely on his side and not hers.
A bandit was not a worthwhile—or even plausible—occupation in Ghadra’s marshland. But here? On the traveler’s road? Lux transferred her weight to her toes.
“Good girl. Now kindly hand over—”
She bolted into the forest.
“Hey!” screeched the voice at her back, but she’d already dodged behind a tree and kept running.
Remembering Edgar’s words, her hand whipped out and brushed a curled, green leaf, the velvet feel startling even as she ran for her life. “Please,” she huffed, her laden pack banging against her hip with painful slaps. “I came all this way.”
