We must be almost upon the carriage. I’m running low on the landmarks I made note of to guide our way—
Whitt has sauntered farther ahead. He halts, his head jerking around to scan a small clearing—a clearing that’s familiar and too empty for comfort. An annoyed breath hisses through his teeth.
“Our ride appears to have conveyed itself without us.”
I curse under my breath. I know the true names of every family of tree in this wood and any other; I can talk a seed into a sapling; but while I’ve lived so far from the Heart of the Mists, my magic has dwindled. All it would take is for some other nearby fae with greater reserves calling for a vehicle, and my hold on the conjured carriage would falter.
August swings around, a shadow crossing his normally cheerful face. “How are we going to get back? We’re still too close, and the moon—”
“I know.” I swivel, taking in the forest. “I can fashion another carriage.” It might take a minor sacrifice after all the power I’ve already expended this evening, but a bit of skin is nothing compared to the vengeance Aerik will want to rain down. “I just need to find a juniper.”
None of that specific tart scent reaches my nose. There is nothing I can use close by. A fresh wave of the full moon’s prickling energy washes through my body, making my thoughts twitch. Soon I’ll lose my ability to control them—to control all of me—altogether. My jaw clenches.
“Let’s move!” I bark, and lope through the trees at a faster pace, drawing lungfuls of air through my mouth. If I can catch even the slightest hint of juniper to direct my way… I train my dead eye as intently as my whole one, willing it to offer some fleeting image that might help, but all it catches on is a shimmering echo of the carriage racing away through the forest as it must have done not long ago.
A shiver runs through my body, nearly making me stumble. My muscles aren’t just prickling now but coiling in anticipation. My skin tightens, and an ache runs through my gums where my fangs are on the verge of springing forth.
The change is coming on faster, stronger, than ever before. That’s the story of our wretched lives, isn’t it? Even if I slammed into a juniper right this instant, I’m not sure I could hold onto my awareness long enough to work the necessary spell.
A growl is building in my throat, and my shoulders are itching to bow. In a matter of moments, I’ll be nothing but a mindless beast.
The wrongness of our malady stabs through me. I am Sylas once of Hearthshire, lord of my lands even if those lands aren’t much better than a dung heap these days, and I succumb to no one.
No one except my own raging beast erupting out of me to meet the moon.
I wheel toward the others. August has stumbled with a ragged grunt. He bends, his back shuddering, the girl slipping from his grasp. Her bandaged wrist falls toward the ground, and one solid thought anchors me in the midst of the storm rising within.
I didn’t want to do it this way. We don’t even know what she is or how she is it. But none of that will matter if we lose ourselves to our beasts tonight.
With the last bit of conscious will I have in me, I throw myself to August’s side, raise the girl’s hand to my lips, and nick her forefinger on my sharpening teeth.
The merest bead of her blood seeps into my mouth, sharp and metallic with that odd glimmer of resin-y brightness that I recognized from Aerik’s tonics. The second it touches my tongue, the furious clouds rolling through my mind dissipate. The contractions in my muscles release. My fangs retreat.
I am myself again—fully, gloriously myself, like stepping out of searing heat into the cool spray of a waterfall. I could roar with joy.
But I don’t, because I have my cadre to think of. I grasp August’s shoulder and press the girl’s split fingertip into his mouth. His breath hitches halfway into a snarl. He gazes up at me with startled, awed understanding lighting in his face.
Whitt pitches forward, his body shaking. He lurches into a tree trunk. I scoop up the girl’s horrifyingly meager weight and stride toward him. It takes a few seconds, his head thrashing from side to side as his skull stretches, for me to get a grip on his jaw tight enough to be sure he won’t chomp her whole hand off. I maneuver the nicked finger between his lips.
With the taste of her blood, he sags onto the ground, his features reverting to their usual configuration. He takes a deep gulp of the night air and laughs with abandon.
Kellan has collapsed into the dirt, his limbs bending into their wolfish alignment, his face now fully canine. As I approach, he snaps at me, staggering up on four legs. His body isn’t quite finished reshaping itself though, and his balance is off. I swipe a smear of the girl’s blood across my own finger, catch his muzzle in mid-sway, and dab the miraculous substance on his tongue.
He finishes his shift, but with alert awareness in his darkening eyes. His wolf stretches and shakes out its body, and then he rears up to transform back into a man. He stands there staring at the girl in my arms with an expression that looks as revolted as it does elated.
Yes, I will definitely need to keep a tight leash on him around the human.
Whitt has picked himself up, brushing grit from his clothes. He’s ogling the girl too, but in his case it’s only open amazement.
“By all that is dust. To halt the change right in the middle of it—it barely took a second—” He shakes his head with another laugh. Then something in his face shutters again. “What is she? How in the lands did Aerik find this treasure?”
“I expect we’ll get more answers from her back at the keep,” I say. “We must get the entire measure of the situation before we decide how to proceed from here.”
Kellan’s lips curl into a grin that can only be described as vicious. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what she is. There’s no way the arch-lords can dismiss a gift like this.”
August’s head jerks around. “Who says we’re offering her to the arch-lords just like that?”
I tuck the girl’s limp body over my shoulder much as he did before and raise my other hand. “We aren’t doing any offering or gifting or anything else until we understand what we’re dealing with. And for that, we need to get home. Whoever finds me a juniper first gets the last of yesterday’s roast.”
That both shuts them up and sets them stalking off in different directions. I adjust the girl in my grasp, the sap-like note of her scent teasing my nose again.
She’s a treasure, all right—a prize beyond imagining, and a complication far more immense than I’d made any preparations for.
4
Talia
The first thing I’m aware of is the drape of a soft sheet over my shoulders. My head is nestled in a fluffy pillow. Fresh summer-sweet air grazes my cheek.
The sensations are so familiar and yet not that my mind jars to a halt around one thought: it was all a dream. No, a nightmare. An excruciating, seemingly endless nightmare that I’ve finally woken up from into my actual bed in my actual bedroom, and any second now Mom will rap on the doorframe and ask whether I want waffles or French toast for Saturday breakfast, and Jamie will leap onto the bed and insist I help him with some tricky level in his latest video game, and everything will be perfectly, blissfully normal.