“I thought you might have your cycle at some point during the quest, and I wanted to be prepared. Fae do not experience these, but I know they are difficult. Here, I also brought this as well.” She handed me clean rags, enough to see me through the week.
“Thank you,” I said, my heart warming. Even after jumpingdown her throat last night, Hesper didn’t hesitate to help me. I studied her face. Her eyes were creased with worry, her full lips down turned. “Hesper, I’m—uh—I apologize for—”
“You don’t owe me anything.”
“I do, though.”
Silence hung in the air between us. We’d already run into our fair share of nightmares, and we were guaranteed more mischief before the quest was over and done. Without her, I’d already be dead. Without her, there was no way I’d get back home.
I continued. “This quest, this whole situation, really, is the epitome of everything I have ever been afraid of. I am scared I will never get home, I am scared of the Prince I just found out is alive and well as of yesterday, I am scared that I will fail. I am scared of magic, of Dwindle. Everything. But I shouldn’t put you in the cross fire of all of that. So I do owe you an apology, actually.”
She gave me a long, hard look, then a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.
“Truce,” she said, holding out her hand to me.
“Truce,” I replied, giving her hand a firm shake.
And for a single moment, when our hands were joined, I thought a thrum sounded deep in my chest. A kernel, a spark, the familiar humming back once more. Distant, butthere.
“So does that mean you don’t think I’m a brat?” I asked.
“Clara Thorne”—she pulled me close to her, our mouths centimeters apart—“you’re very much a brat, but I never said that was a bad thing.”
She let go, and the humming in my chest went with her.
Perhaps it was nothing after all.
The sun rose high in the sky, drying my clothes from the night before. I basked in its warmth until it began to get hot and humid. We were headed northward, but the weather was growing hotter, my sweat becoming… profuse. Were we heading north? Hesper had pored over maps the last few weeks, red lines delineating several different paths, all of which took us roughly the same direction. Except for one.
One that had to be impossible.
Flies buzzed all around us, and I slapped bloodsucking bugs off of my face at least one hundred times. By midday, I had spent the last of my strength, and my patience waned every time I caught a whiff of myself. Worst of all, everything stuck—my arms stuck to my tunic, my legs stuck to my pants, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. And Hesper’s expert movements through the forest only worsened the mood.
“Can you just move like a normal person?” I snapped as I tripped over a root… again.
“What are you talking about?” she said as she practically flew over a boulder as if she had wings. My only option was to walk around the thing. If I tried to scale it, say goodbye to my sweaty, salty neck.
“You move too fast. And it’s not human, or normal, or peaceful. You’re just—” I pushed a wayward tree branch out of my face, which then immediately got caught in my hair. “You’re just too graceful, it’s wild—I can’t—why do you have to—gah! Fae suck!” I cried out, trying to untangle my hair.
Hesper was there in moments, adeptly unknotting my hair from the tree branch. Not a strand lost.
“I have something to show you, princess.” She bound ahead of me. “It’ll make you feel better. Come on!” she shouted from far ahead. Too far ahead for my liking.
A vision of Margast played through my brain.
I trudged on, my walk turning into a run to catch up to her.
“For someone who never wants me to leave their sight, you certainly leave me behind!” I called out, my voice getting swallowed by the trees.
“Who said you were ever out of my sight?” Hesper came up suddenly behind me, whispering into my ear.
“You know, if you keep doing that, it’ll lose its effectiveness.”
Hesper shushed me and pointed ahead to a gap in the trees that I hadn’t noticed and wouldn’t have had Hesper not called attention to it. The gap was shaped like a thin crescent moon. If I moved even a little, the trees lost their shape.
“Follow me.” She grabbed my hand and pulled me behind her. I almost tripped over another root, but she steadied me without even looking. Now, she just wanted to show off.
She took me through that peculiar opening, and suddenly, the trees gave way to a shimmering pool. A waterfall flowed into the crystal blue water, a rainbow sprouting from where the falls met the mist.
