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“Oh. Yeah.” None of my kidnappers had been especially interested in my personality, either. “They only care about what they want from you.”

“You get it.” She opened her eyes and swam closer, flipping upright to tread water beside me. “It makes you feel like a…possession, right? When someone looks at you and only thinks about grabbing the gems out of your mouth. Or in my case, jamming something into my mouth. Or wherever.”

I could feel my cheeks reddening, heat rising in my face. “I hope I’m not…I mean, let me know if I—”

“Hey.” She put her hands on my shoulders. “I put the moves on you, remember?”

“Tell me if I ever make you feel like that, all right?”

“Trust me, the people I’m talking about wouldn’t ever say that.”

She pulled me in for a kiss. Her tongue darted out to meet mine. I made an immediate revision to my recent promise: No more sneaking off with Ilyana until after dark, when searching for the Freemartin would be pointless anyway.

What would happen between us once I captured the Freemartin? Capturing it came with a cost. A curse. One that would leave me forever changed.

Ilyana had explained the problem to me on the first day of our search. Any man who took the Freemartin captive would become a woman; any woman would become a man.

“That’s why the genius was never going to get a soul out of it,” she’d told me. “The task was a trick. The emperor’s only getting around it because he’s the kind of bathwipe who sends a proxy to do his questing for him.”

“Because women can’t marry women in the Red Empire.”

“Yeah. Wait, hold on.” She gave me a sharp look. “In the Red Empire? Does that mean there’s places where they can?”

“A few. I know there’s one in the far northeast. And also in the countries ruled by the fairies. Their only requirement is that you’re willing and of age.”

She’d seemed very, very thoughtful as she said, “Huh. Interesting.”

I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of being transformed; I rather liked my body as it was. But I wasn’t overly fussed about it, either. It would still be me inside the body, no matter what it looked like. That wasn’t what worried me. I was more concerned that my trysts with Ilyana might end if I became a man. She hadn’t said so, but she’d carefully set up a task to prevent any man from marrying her. I couldn’t help but wonder if she was attracted to them at all. Although maybe, all things considered, she’d be the last person to be bothered by a shift in someone’s outward appearance.

I wouldn’t know without asking, and I was reluctant to ask, for fear of the answer I might get.

Ilyana splashed my face with water. “Hey,” she said as my attention snapped back to the present. “Are you in there? You got quiet and your eyes went unfocused.”

“Sorry. I was wondering if we should get back to the horses.”

She grinned at me. “Do you think they know what we’ve been up to?”

I returned the smile as best I could. “I hope not.” I wasn’t entirely sure what Sunbeam’s reaction would be, but I doubted he’d miss the opportunity to make fun of me relentlessly. “Let’s go before it gets any later.”

She answered me with a quick peck on the lips, and we paddled to shore to retrieve our clothes.

Even if my changed body didn’t affect Ilyana’s feelings for me, it wasn’t likely to matter much. There were too many other reasons things would end for the two of us if I succeeded at the emperor’s task.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

In Search of the Elusive Swamp Cow

“Hey, bog wight!” I called. “I’m over here!”

The monster shuffled around like it hadn’t heard me, even though it’d been following us all morning. It wandered between the trunks of the swamp elms, its feet making squishy noises in the mud as it hunted for us.

The bog wight’s leathery, flat-nosed face peered around tree trunks. Its claws dug into the bark, leaving deep gouges. But it was looking in the wrong direction.

The sun edged out from behind a cloud. A light breeze shook the elm leaves.

“Try to be louder,” Sunbeam said. “I know you can make more noise than that.”

I raised my volume. “I’m over—”