“We have to keep going,” she said. “I’m supposed to be there by now. Alison is going to worry.”
“Rinka, you can barely walk,” said Drystan. He’d been trying to get her to stop for over an hour now. “You’re exhausted. I’m exhausted. We can barely see, and it looks like the road is never going to level out. We can make it there in the morning once we’ve rested. A carriage could even come by and get us there sooner. But I don’t think we can make it further tonight. Let’s rest for a while. Alison will worry for a night, but I’m sure she’ll be relieved when she sees you tomorrow.”
He was right, as much as Rinka didn’t want to admit it. Her feet hurt so much—her shoes had been gone since she went overboard—she could barely move them. But they were so close. Just a few hours away…
“Fine,” she said. “But only for a quick nap. Then we’re back on the road.”
Drystan led her from the path a few feet until he found a low-hanging branch. He draped the sheet he’d found over it, using rocks to anchor it to the ground.
“I don’t suppose you could magic us a feather bed?” asked Rinka.
“I’m afraid not. Or I could, but it would be gone the moment my head hit the pillow.”
Rinka understood.
The makeshift tent was small, too small for even one of them to lie down without their feet hanging out the end.
Drystan cleared the ground as best as he could with a magic burst of wind, and then he removed his shirt and placed it down to give Rinka something better than the dirt to lie on.
“Thank you,” she said as she collapsed to the ground.
He lay down beside her, careful to keep a few inches of distance between them even as it forced him to lean against the sheet.
The nearness of him awoke her in spite of her exhaustion. They had touched before—his strong arms pulling her from the water, his hands holding hers as he showed her the force of his magic—but this was different. Facing him in the dark, she felt as if the energy still flowed between them, invisible and powerful. A vital pulse, something both careful and wild, that was in the tent with them and that was them, together.
“Rinka?” he whispered. There was no one around, not for miles as far as they knew, but he kept his voice low all the same. “Are you still awake?”
She nodded, not daring to speak, knowing he could feel the movement.
His hand moved at his side, fumbling in the dark for her. It reached her shoulder and then her ear and then moved to cup her cheek.
She sighed even as her body tensed.
And then he traced the line of her jaw to her chin and then up to her lower lip, his fingertips brushing the soft skin impossibly lightly.
She drew in a breath, her lips parting under his touch. Her heart raced, the pulse so loud in her own ears that she thought he must have been able to hear it too.
And then there was a laugh—bright and clear—but it didn’t come from Rinka or Drystan.
It came from outside the tent.
Rinka snapped upright. “What was that? Girls? Did you follow us here?”
That wasn’t possible. They were miles from the water now, and the laughter wasn’t the same as the sweet giggle of the mermaids, anyway. It was musical, melodic, and it went round and round the tent in an impossibly fast circle.
Drystan’s hand was in his pocket, and in a moment, Rinka’s eyes caught the glimmer of a dagger as the coin changed shape once more.
He tore back the sheet. A light floated in the darkness, a glowing orb as large as a fist, a shimmering yellow and green that laughed as it flew.
“Fairy fire,” he said. “A will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Can it hurt us?”
“No,” he said. He pocketed the coin and retrieved his shirt from the ground. “It wants to help us.” His eyes were aglow in the light of the strange creature, his face awed and filled with childlike wonder.
“Come on,” he said, taking her hand. “We might manage to get that feather bed for you tonight after all.”
Rinka was uncertain—all of the stories she’d heard about following lights into the woods at night ended in death or disappearance—but Drystan knew things about the magic of this world beyond even her wildest imaginings.
