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“Yeah,” she said. “You?”

“Yeah.” The horses stumbled forward in the darkness. We all wanted to get as far away from the genius’s mother as we possibly could.

Without the panic-fueled kick of adrenaline keeping me awake, the exhaustion of the past few sleepless days caught up with me all at once. I slumped in the saddle. My eyelids felt weighted with lead.

“Thanks for spotting the quicksand,” I mumbled to Ilyana. “You saved our asses.”

“Yeah, well. I know the swamp.” There was something guarded in her voice. A wariness that didn’t quite fit her words.

Oh. Right. I fumbled the ring off my finger and held it out to her. “Here.” Its power left me, draining away until it was only a hundredth of what it had been. My fairy-gifted senses dwindled, shrinking back down to the paltry reach I’d had before.

I could barely see the shadowy form of her head as it turned. “You’re just…giving it back to me?”

“It’s yours, isn’t it?”

“Huh.” She took the ring from my hand. A moment later, her silhouette started shifting form, taller, shorter, stouter, thinner. I hadn’t even realized that had stopped. With everything going on, I’d never gotten a good look at her with the ring off.

“I want to try something,” I said, sliding out of the saddle and onto the ground. Without the horse’s hooves interfering to slow the process, the trail of umbrella plants and marsh spurge that had sprung up in Sunbeam’s footsteps ran riot, curling around my legs.

The power I’d gained from the ring had vanished, but the knowledge had stayed, that intimate awareness of the endodermis and pericarp of plants, the cut and clarity of gemstones. I supposed I couldn’t unknow what the ring had taught me.

Hush now, I told them, using my newfound understanding to reach deep into their roots and petioles, their stems and flowers. I lessened the flow of florigen from the leaves to the shoot tips, decreased the uptake of minerals from the soil. Slow down. You can grow, but not so fast. Be gentle with me.

The blossoms stopped in the middle of unfolding, and no new flowers came out to join them. The ground around us stayed quiet.

“Well,” I said. “That’s nice.”

My knees buckled and I dropped. I might very well have fallen asleep before my head landed in the mud.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Kiss Marry Kill

I woke with a start, half-convinced that I would find a passionflower twisted around my neck.

Nothing was trying to strangle me. A blanket of blossoms spread out from where I lay, more than there were when I fell asleep, but not nearly enough to cause me harm. Their colors shone bright in the strong daylight. I’d been out for a good long time; the sun was high in the sky.

I’d asked the flowers to be gentle with me, and they had. Without Yudit by my side, there was no way to stop them entirely, but I could convince them to slow down. Sprout at a more leisurely pace. I could calm them. Tame them.

For the first time in a very long while, it was safe for me to sleep on my own. Thanks to Ilyana and her ring.

There was a smell of roasting meat in the air, competing with Ilyana’s floral scent for my attention. My stomach gurgled loudly, reminding me that, for the last few days, I hadn’t eaten much besides tea leaves and a slice of spotted dick.

Ilyana had impaled a hunk of meat on my sword and was roasting it over a crackling fire. Sunbeam and Stinky were sound asleep, lying on their sides in the deep slumber of exhausted horses.

“Whatever you’re cooking,” I said, “is extremely puce.”

“Yeah, a crocodaemon attacked us in the night. You slept right through it. I borrowed your sword and stabbed it to death. Hope you don’t mind.” She came over and sat next to me, blowing on the oddly colored meat to cool it.

“You fought a crocodaemon and didn’t bother to wake me up?”

She shrugged. “You looked like you needed the sleep. Besides, they’re easy to kill when you know how.” She ripped a strip of flesh off with her teeth. “If you hold their jaws closed,” she said through a mouthful of crocodaemon, “there isn’t fuming slit they can do about it.”

I wished I’d known that when I had to fight one. Oh, well. Any battle you can stagger away from is still a victory.

She held the sword out, offering me a vividly puce bite. “Want some? I promise it’s edible. There’s a traditional Moersbadian festival where we have it deep-fried and sprinkled with sugar.”

I took a bite. It was far too hot and tough as an old boot, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever eaten. Sort of like goat, if the goat spent its days eating skunk cabbage.