“No.” I flinched at the harshness of my voice, its echo shrill between the arches. I knew that I must not let him go alone. I knew it, like truth carved into bone. “I will go with you.”
I left no room for argument. Adrik mustered me darkly, and whatever he saw on my face must have been dreadful enough to make him see sense. He led us without argument to the stables. The stag was an even greater beast from up close, its white coat silver in the moonlight, antlers so high they might have scratched the skies open and made the stars bleed for us. Adrik placed me on its back, swinging up behind me, and we tore for the road.
It was a strange thing. Time seemed to slow and quicken all at once; thick like honey and slick as rain-sodden leaves. The air lay heavy on my tongue and tickled my throat as I breathed.
Birds hung like dots in the twilit skies. The riverwaves moved like sludge. The wind held its furious, hissing breath as we whipped past. Hooves thundered against frozen soil, louder and swifter with each leap until we flew over logs and streams and through the thicket. A scared part of me wanted to squeeze my eyes shut, but the wild thing within me insisted we go faster and faster.
We followed a thin path toward the heart of the cold, where drifts of snow hung unmoving in the air and the trees grew thick and dark. Behind them, concealed by spindly bushes, was a pallid light. I remembered its dull glow. I remembered the stench of rot. I retched into the sleeve of my coat.
The stag slowed. Adrik’s arms tightened for a moment around me, his breath warm against the side of my neck.
“You are certain this is where she went?”
“Yes,” I breathed. “Just past the treeline.”
The stag came to stand, ears twitching as it looked that way. “We must continue on foot,” said Adrik, sliding off the beast’s back and pulling me gently with him. “He will sink too deep in the mud.”
I swayed on my legs, weak from a night of dance and the unfamiliar strain of riding. Adrik’s hand found mine. I listened for squelching steps or for the sounds of a struggle before I guided him forth. The air was utterly still.
As we neared the spindly twigs, Adrik slowed. “What if you are mistaken?”
I did not turn to him. I kept walking, dragging him along. “I am not,” I whispered, voice thin. I breathed only through my mouth but the rot still burned my eyes and slithered over my tongue. “I saw her. I know we will find her here.”
He did not understand yet. He still thought Zora was just lost. He did not know that the lordling had captured her. He did not realize what it meant to become one of the treasures hoarded by the many-faced faerie of the swamp.
“We should go back,” he murmured. “We should not be here.”
I said nothing. I could hardly argue with him. There was such wrongness to every beat of silence. We reached the treeline, panting and sweating even though we’d walked barely a hundred steps.
I reached out to brush aside a bone-like branch, flinching as its rustle disturbed the silence. The swamp stretched like a pallid, half-rotten corpse before us. Amid gnarled and bearded trees, reeking mud and black waters knelt a figure on a tangle of roots. Head bent, snow-white curls plastered to her head, Zora cowered before the man who lived in my nightmares. I retched as I beheld him. A face carved of marble, hair so long it pooled like a puddle of tar at his feet. From his brow sprouted a pairof curled horns, sharp as blades. With black claws he grasped Zora’s slack jaw and smiled at her.
Adrik’s hand tightened around mine. “We must go,” he hissed, pulling me back. His voice was numb, an echo. “We must not disturb them.”
I turned, dread shackling me to the mud. His frosty breath gave me a shiver. He stared darkly and strangely at me, fists so tight his knuckles turned bone-white. He was right there, but not quite.
I whispered, “This is the faerie who hunts me.”
“That’s just Malek,” he said flatly. “He’s always been like this.”
I moved—seized by instinct—a beat before Adrik did. He grasped for me, right where my wrist had been, snarling when he clutched only air. I tumbled into the thicket. A flash of tar behind the treeline. The lordling lifted his head, crimson gaze bright with recognition. His terrible glee chilled me for one disastrous breath. Long enough for Adrik to leap and close his fingers painfully around my arm. I scrambled deeper into the thicket, sobbing as his fingers tightened. He did not blink as he drew a shriek from me.
“Hello, little bird,” he cooed, face like marble.
He stilled, eyes blank as he awaited the lordling’s next command. I snaked my free hand quietly into the dead bushes at my back. Their leaves turned to dust between my fingers. My magic did not stir, deeply asleep in this rotten land. I’d not remembered, in my panic, to take a knife or a needle to awaken it through blood.
A hiss of wind in the otherwise unmoved air drew my attention to the thicket over Adrik’s shoulder. Barbed twigs shivered in the breath of the wind. The leafless bramble was large as a maze and ancient.
Just a quick prick of the finger…
I had no chance of reaching the thorns while Adrik held fast, and to fight him was senseless. He’d snap me like a twig in his glamoured state. I had to be quick and clever. I squinted as covertly as I could at the bramble. The twigs were as thick as fingers, the lower stems the size of my arms. Between two of these stems was a gap, just large enough that I might squeeze through to escape Adrik.
I glanced to the side, alerted by the snap of a twig. Zora lay curled up at the base of a tree, black ropes winding around her hands and legs. She was alone. The lordling smiled—sharp teeth sprouting from horribly pink gums—as he strode through the swamp.
As he came for me.
I did not waver. I threw myself at Adrik, catching him off guard. He stiffened with surprise, faltering for a beat. I clutched the hem of his cloak and yanked him with me into the bramble. We landed in a tangle of limbs amid the thorns. He fell with a grunt on top of me, trapping my leg beneath his. Barbed twigs tore my back to shreds—I sobbed, not from pain, but from a desperate surge of hope. A trickle of warmth slid over my skin. I drew a finger over the scrapes on my spine and licked the blood.
My magic pricked its ears.
