“More difficult for you, or for me?” I puffed. “Because I did warn you that I will take pleasure in making things difficult for you.”
He took two steps, leaned toward me, and said, “That sounds like a challenge, Mayhem. Shall we see which one of us can make life more miserable for the other?”
Without so much as a warning, he spread his wings and took off, blasting me with a powerful gust of wind that left me sputtering and pushing hair out of my face.
“You gods-damned son of a bitch!” I cried as he spun up into the air, then flew away in the direction we’d been walking. “Oh, when I get to those falls I am going tofuckingdrown you!”
But getting to the falls was easier said than done. It took me another half-hour to arrive on my own, since I did not know where I was even going. When I finally reached the base of the foothills and crested the rise I’d been battling, I stopped to catch my breath, which had been stolen not by the climb, but by the sight in front of me.
It was like a scene from one of the storybooks Will used to bring me when we were young. Since the Abbey library contained mostly historical, religious, or scientific texts, whenever he had the opportunity to borrow books from the royal library in Nottingham Keep, he would bring them to me. Occasionally, they were illustrated volumes, and those had been my favorites. I would spend hours upon hours sitting up in the branches of my favorite oak tree, poring over every singlesolitary detail, trying to commit them to memory so I could return to that magical world even after I gave the book back to Will.
Now, I felt like I had been dropped into one of those illustrations again, and it took me nearly a full minute to get my bearings. I was standing at the top of the Hollow, where it met the foothills. In front of me was a span of rocky cliffs where a thundering waterfall cascaded down to fill an ocean-blue pool at its base. The creek that ran through the center of the Hollow apparently originated from this spot, flowing between moss-covered boulders and trundling away down the hill. All around the pool, in various states of undress, were faeries. I recognized many of the same individuals I had met the previous day, plus dozens more.
“She made it!” someone called, and all at once, a hundred pairs of strange eyes locked onto me. Murmurs and giggles began to fly around as some of the winged creatures took to the air for a better vantage point from which to gawk.
“Of course, she did,” replied Devil, who was lounging on a flat stone at the edge of the pool, trousers rolled up to his knees, dipping his feet in the water. His companions were all grinning, as if in on some joke I had yet to be told. I made my way over to him, trying desperately not to give away how furious I was, and he met me between the creek and his perch.
“I am going to kill you one day, Devil,” I told him, keeping my voice even and matter-of-fact.
“And I shall die happy when the last thing I see on this earth is your beautiful scowl,” he replied, draping his hands in his pockets. “Would you like to bathe before or after you send me to my maker?”
I glanced around, then averted my eyes when I remembered hownakedeveryone was. I had never seen so much flesh in one place before. While the Sisters did share bathing chambers, they at least took pains to maintain some modesty. But I remembered what Devil had said the first time we met in the forest.Modesty is such a human concept, isn’t it?
“Bathe first,” I said, clearing my throat. “But Aliena told me there is a…more private pool behind the waterfall.”
Devil released a long-suffering sigh. “She simply cannot help but ruin my fun. Come along.”
“My discomfort is fun for you?” I asked as we picked our way around the edge of the pool. I hated him for leaving me behind, but I hated him even more for how light he was on his feet. Not a stumble or a slip, despite how slick some of the stones were. It was all I could do not to go careening straight into several of the naked bathers, who just laughed or winked at me as I stammered my apologies.
“I find your human mores endlessly amusing, yes,” he laughed. “Why are you so disturbed by the sight of flesh? Especially when it is being displayed voluntarily.”
“I am simply…not used to it. You expect me to let go of everything I’ve ever been taught so quickly?”
“Youdidask me to show you a dream.”
“This is not the sort of thing I dream about.”
“How unfortunate, since it is a common sight here in the Arden,” Devil said. “But I think I know exactly what you need to make this feel like a dream.” He stopped on a wide ledge, just outside the reach of the waterfall’s thundering spray, and looked over his shoulder at me.
“If you remove even a single shred of your clothing,” I called over the noise, “I shall drown you first, bathe afterwards, then find myself a new escort for the revelry tonight!” He merely laughed again, before turning and vanishing into the curtain of water.
Chapter twelve
Peace & Light
Behind the roaring waterfall,it was surprisingly quiet. The cave’s low ceiling stretched back before dipping down and opening up on the other side of the hill, more like a tunnel than anything else. As I entered, Devil held his hands out and sent several orbs of light shooting from his fingertips. They floated up, illuminating a beautiful pool sunk into the stone floor, fed from a fissure in the cave wall above it. The steady trickle of underground water had created a delicate trail of moss and algae all the way down to the pool’s surface, which was releasing tendrils of steam into the cool air.
“It’s a hot spring!” I exclaimed, setting my extra clothes down and kneeling to dip my hand in the water.
“Donottell me you’ve never had a hot bath,” Devil said incredulously.
“Only once, for my sixteenth birthday. It’s a tradition at Locksley. The rest were lukewarm at best.”
“Well, I shall leave you and your modesty to enjoy it alone.” He turned to leave the cave, but I cleared my throat.
“What…what if someone comes in?”
“Do you expect a guard at the entrance?” he chuckled.
