My sisters add their lanterns to mine, and we settle cross-legged around the candlelit blaze. When Juniper isn’t carrying a weapon, she’s fondling an encyclopedia. Sure enough, she plucks reading spectacles from her nightgown pocket, reaches for a book from the floor stack, and thumbs through it. “Tell me again—”
“Let’s recite our favorite Fable,” I prompt.
Juniper snaps the book shut. “No. Don’t you dare, Lark.” She turns to our sister while gesturing at me. “Cove, tell her.”
“We don’t have a favorite Fable,” Cove supplies.
“Not what I meant.” Juniper bristles, then levels me with an I’m-not-fucking-around scowl, her eyes narrowing through the lenses askew on her nose. “This is hardly the appropriate time for a distraction.”
“You’re never in the mood for a distraction,” I say. “What’s a few lost minutes? I promise, you’ll be the only sister to predict our fates. Nobody in this wagon’ll have the answers before you do, so loosen your knickers.”
“I resent that.”
“To be fair, you resent anybody who’s smarter than you,” Cove reminds her.
“Choose diversions wisely, lest they lead to downfall,” Juniper says, quoting a lesson from one of the Fables—I think it’s The Fox and the Fae—before moving on to The Stag Hunts a Doe. “Intelligence is the ally of intention and the foe of lethargy.”
“How’s about I go first?” I clear my throat. “Under the vicious stars—”
A pillow smacks me in the beak. “Will you please stop tarrying?” Juniper grouses over my curse, too exasperated to adjust her lopsided spectacles. “You need to take this seriously.”
“You think so?” I snap, rubbing my nose. “As opposed to the fun I was having while galloping for my fucking life?”
Cove sighs. “One day, I will get you to stop cursing.”
“One day, I’ll get you to start.”
“Lark.” She sets her hand on my thigh. “It wasn’t your fault.”
A lump congeals in my throat. I turn away before they see what those words do to me.
If I hadn’t picked the wrong bed partner. If I’d figured out a better direction to lead him and his cronies. If I hadn’t trespassed into Faerie. If I hadn’t endangered my sisters.
We might be the first mortals to cross that border and then step right out. But nobody enters Faerie undetected.
Earlier, when we slogged back home, we’d bundled ourselves in my bed. I’d whispered to them, recounting everything I heard and saw in the forest before they got there. Juniper had made me repeat myself a dozen times, then she plunged into one her books, trying to decipher what kind of pickle we’re in.
When Juniper failed to glean a single clue—since no human has ever returned from the Solitary wild—she threw the tome across the attic. My sister prides herself on being a know-it-all and can’t handle loose ends or getting anything wrong.
What we do know is simple—and not so simple—about the Faeries who reign in Middle Country. Far from this village reside the Courts of Flora, Suns, Harvest, and Moons. Closer afield to Reverie Hollow live the Solitary Fae, who’d long ago laid claim to this rural region. Uninterested in the politics of the distant Seelie and Unseelie Courts, the Solitary Fae spend their lives independent of the kingdoms.
Notwithstanding, all Faeries have similar goals when it comes to humans. As nonmagical beings, we’ve been judged the lesser species for eons. Those monsters believe we’re only good for amusement or servitude. Either they’re slipping into our village undetected—glamoured to look like us—or they’re manipulating the elements to wreak havoc on our lives, or they’re luring mortals into their realms, to who knows what end.
Then came the uprising. We call it The Trapping.
Nine years ago, the Folk’s games took their toll on the peasants, farmers, and merchants of the Hollow. Done with being terrorized, the enraged villagers armed themselves and invaded the Solitaries’ domain.
Here’s the gist. The villagers didn’t go after the Faeries.
They went after the wildlife.
The mystical fauna of Faerie give the landscape its life force. Without them, The Solitary Mountain, Forest, and Deep would deteriorate. And without the land, the Fae would weaken. Eventually, they would fade altogether.
Since humans don’t have the power to battle the Fae, capturing the animals was an indirect tactic. The villagers stampeded into the wild at dawn with iron blades, arrows, forks, traps, and cages. Our blacksmith had even invented a net strung with bits of iron.
They seized droves of wildlife while the Folk slumbered, the iron weakening those creatures to the point where they couldn’t defend themselves. Many of the fauna were killed, deemed a plague like their kin. Whenever I think about that, shame curdles in my belly.
Of course, a handful of the Fae awoke from the upheaval and charged, hellbent on saving their fauna. Rage tends to strengthen willpower and fists. There’d been a brawl, which led to bloodshed, which led to broken necks and broken skulls. By a force of conviction and iron, the inflamed villagers managed to capture the Fae rescuers and then slaughter them.
All except three.
As the story goes, they escaped, retrieved the few surviving animals, and returned to their domain. After that, the remaining Fae appointed this infamous trio monarchs of the Solitary wild: rulers of the sky, woodland, and river.
Ultimately, The Trapping failed. Since then, the Solitaries have vowed eternal revenge. Their kind attack us more spitefully than before. We know this from messages they’ve left, carved into human scalps, or nailed into human chests, or scrawled across foggy windows, or engraved into tree trunks, or swirling inside water wells.
Beware of the wind, the roots, the water.
The unknown is harrowing. We can’t say what happens to mortals after they’ve been lured into Faerie. What’s more, nobody ever knows who’ll be next.
If a commoner strays past the Triad uninvited? Well, that’s just as fatal.
My sisters and I shouldn’t be alive. That doesn’t mean we’re in the clear.
A hand cups my jaw. Cove’s blue gaze swallows me whole. “It wasn’t your fault,” she repeats. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault.”
Another body scoots closer until we’re tethered together, our foreheads pressing. “You didn’t make us go after you,” Juniper says. “Do you hear me?”
I hear them both. And I would’ve done the same thing, if it had been one of them. I would have torn into that wilderness without a second thought.
This is the sweet and salty truth. I don’t love anything as much as I love my family—sisters, father, and animals alike.
Plus, one traitorous face that I can’t seem to let go of—the source of that blue feather.
We break apart, the lanterns sketching our figures across the curved wagon walls. Juniper twists around to dump the book onto the floor, the sheer fabric of her nightgown stretching. A tattoo of crossbow bolts forming an X peeks through the material, a relic from her childhood.
Juniper’s voice brings to mind roasting campfires—snappish, smoky, and busy. “Fine,” she says. “I’ll postpone contingency plans for the next seven minutes.”