“Púca.” Kestra takes my arm carefully, twisting it this way and that. “It tried to take you,” she whispers.
“It tried to kidnap me?” I look at Tiana and Finn, then Kestra. All of them stay silent. “Why?”
“Púca aren’t usually hostile,” Kestra says slowly. “They’re tricksters, sure. Forest dwellers. But not harmful.”
“Are they native to the Dark Forest?” I press my hand back to the scratch as it burns.
“Yes.” Kestra kneels before me, pulling my arm out and pressing her hands to the wound. Ice flows into it, easing the pain. “It won’t heal it. A púca scratch.” She shakes her head.
“Are they Unseelie?”
“Yes,” Kestra answers. “But they aren’t evil by nature. This is unusual.”
“We should get going.” Tiana looks around. “I’d prefer to be at a new hiding spot by evening.”
“I agree,” I tell her. “You have any other hiding places?”
Kestra frowns. “Yes.” She reaches for my hand, pressing our joined palms to the soil beneath us. “The forest knows you. I’m just asking on your behalf.”
She closes her eyes. Breathes slowly.
Around us the earth rumbles and I swear some trees shift, leaning away from a path that wasn’t there before.
The forest goes quiet. Waiting.
Kestra opens her eyes. “It answered.”
She wipes the dirt off her hands and stands. “There’s a location in the center of our journey. We have a while to get there. Maybe six hours on foot.”
She looks pointedly at my arm.
“It’s all right,” I try to assure her.
She hums, but it’s Tiana who speaks up. “If you feel off at all, speak up.”
That sounds like a problem, for future me.
21
Orion
I haven’t sleptin four days.
This is not a complaint. This is a fact I am recording for the purposes of explaining what happens next, and why I, a man who has faced down Wild Court tribunal, three Unseelie boundary hunters, and whatever the hell that creature was on night two that Whispen insists doesn’t have a name, walked directly into the oldest trap in the Dark Forest like a fool.
For the record.
Four days. No Cauldron. No Finnian. No Ash.
Just me, Kieran, Whispen, and Badb’s rib in my pocket that pulses like a second heartbeat I didn’t ask for. I try not to think about what it cost her to carve it fresh that morning. I try not to think about a lot of things. I’ve gotten very good at that lately. It’s basically my only remaining skill.
The forest is quieter in daylight. Quieter, not safe, there’s a distinction the Dark Forest makes very clear if you stop paying attention for more than thirty consecutive seconds. The daytime creatures are smaller. Smarter. They don’t charge. They wait.
I respect that more than the ones that charge.
The ones that wait have decided you’re worth the patience.
Whispen floats three feet ahead of me on a path I can’t see, which he has explained twice is because I am not attuned to the borderland ley lines, and twice I have almost walked into a tree because I was watching him instead of the ground.
