Chapter Thirty Wilde
The Next Day
The Not-So-Grimnight Forest
No Monsters Yet
On the third day of our quest, we found a field of flowers. Red flowers clustered together on the right, slowly turning orange, yellow, green, and blue, until they were finally a deep violet on the left.
“They’re beautiful!” Delilah spread her arms wide and ran for the field.
Maximus blocked her path with one arm and scooped her up when her momentum carried her forward. Her legs briefly kicked the air before she realized she could go no further. “Careful,” he warned. “They might be cursed.”
Delilah’s face fell as she gazed at the lake of color. “But wasn’t the curse broken?”
Maximus shrugged his oversized shoulders. “Or poisonous.”
“I’ve got a book on flora from the region,” Fitz said, holding his hand out to Angelica.
During the shopping trip, she’d purchased the same bottomless bag she’d carried during their original quest. Some things stayed the same even as the rest of the world changed.
She handed the bag to him, and Fitz fumbled around in it, pulling out book after endless book, until he found the one he wanted.
“It might take me a while to find the right entry, so don’t get too close to the flowers until we know more about them. ”
The field stretched as wide as the eye could see in all directions. The only way to continue would be to find a way around it or turn back the way we’d come. Perhaps that wasn’t a bad idea—we could follow the original route the minions had prepared, and we’d only lose a few days of travel.
Fitz found an overturned log to sit on. As he lowered himself, Delilah screamed at the top of her lungs, “Wait!”
Fitz froze in midair, crouched over, hovering a few inches above the log.
Delilah picked up a stray stick and poked the log. Since it was only a small stick, it snapped without affecting the log at all. She tossed the piece still in her hand away and shifted position.
“Can you hurry this up?” Fitz asked, straining to hold his position.
“You can stand,” Trey told him.
Fitz blinked, then straightened into a more comfortable stance.
Delilah pressed her boot against the log and pushed until it rolled over, then she crouched down to investigate the dirt. “No centipedes! You may sit.”
“Why so worried about one little insect? There are plenty of them all over the forest,” Angelica said. “I’m pretty sure I’ve even seen you eat a few.”
“I was sniffing them,” Delilah corrected. “And I’m not worried about a little insect, I’m worried about the really, really big one that comes afterwards!”
“Technically, centipedes are arthropods, not insects,” Fitz corrected. “Though I admit, I’m not fond of the idea of one crawling up my back, so thank you for checking, Delilah.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied primly before flouncing away.
Fitz settled down on the non-centipede-riddled log and opened his book.
While he researched on the page, I stepped as close as I dared to the field.
The rainbow flowers waved in the breeze, filling the air with a scent I didn’t recognize.
Somewhere between a honeyed apple and a sour orange.
Not necessarily unpleasant, but so many growing together overwhelmed the senses.
“Ugh, they reek,” Angelica complained. Out of her pink pouch she pulled a dainty cloth to wrap around the bottom half of her face.
“Can anyone describe what they look like without getting close?” Fitz asked.
“Besides the colors, you mean?” Delilah asked.
“Yes, I need petal number and shape, leaf shape, whatever you can find.”
The thick clusters of colors made it difficult to discern specific shapes. I stepped closer, peering at the closest line of flowers. “Star-shaped petals,” I called. “With spiky leaves.”
“Spiky as in sharp or spikey as in pointy?”
A hand grabbed my wrist, preventing me from taking another step. “Don’t,” Trey warned, his gaze narrowed on the field. “He said not to get too close.”
Maximus crouched a few feet away from us. He’d found a single stray flower away from the rest. “Spikey as in needles,” he told Fitz. “Like a nettle.”
Fitz flipped through the pages, scanning the book’s contents before moving on to the next section.
Delilah dropped to her hands and knees and crawled through the dirt. “Buggy, buggy, buggy,” she murmured, chasing something through the grass, already forgetting her earlier concern about centipedes.
Trey tugged on my arm insistently, trying to drag me backwards. “Wilde, come on.”
I turned on him and grabbed his face with one hand, holding his jaw firmly and pulling his head down so he had to look me in the eye. “You don’t have permission to give me orders.”
“Found it!” Fitz called. “Somnus ecrosia. The locals used to grow it for its various medicinal properties. The flowers are used in perfumes, the leaves are boiled into a sedative tea, and the roots can be ground into a salve for wounds. The different colors indicate which properties they’re better for.
The redder varieties have the strongest scent, the bluer have the thickest roots.
This is probably an old field that could finally thrive once the curse broke. ”
He stared at the book for a long time, then said, “Where did it go?”
“Where did what go?” Angelica asked.
Trey tried to pull my hand off his face, but I wasn’t finished scolding him yet. “Apologize.”
“Wilde, what the fuck is wrong with you?” he demanded. He finally pried my fingers away from his jaw. I would have protested, except then he intertwined our hands, and that was sort of an apology. I squeezed his hand and pulled it toward me, pressing it to my heart.
“The book is gone,” Fitz said, looking up at Angelica with all the sadness in the world.
She stared at him for a moment before saying, “It’s in your lap, Fitz.”
He looked down again and screamed, “My lap is gone!”
Trey started to walk away. Panic displaced all the air in my lungs. If he walked away now, he wouldn’t come back. The next time I found him, it would be with another damn tree through his chest.
“Stop,” I ordered, grabbing his hand with both of mine and holding on with all my might.
He looked over his shoulder in exasperation. “I’ll be right back—”
I hooked my foot around his ankle and pulled. His eyes widened in shock as he fell backwards. Since we were still holding on to each other, I went down with him. I didn’t mind, as long as we were together. I landed on top and pinned his shoulder to the ground with my free hand. “Stay.”
Angelica had gone to see what Fitz was shouting about. Good, let her deal with the problem. Trey could stay here with me.
“Mushroom,” Maximus said.
Trey tilted his head back as he tried to see what was going on.
Jealousy blazed bright and hot in my chest as he looked at someone else.
I needed him to look at me, see me, remember me.
I shifted forward until our faces were only an inch apart, my hair creating a white curtain around us, shielding us from the rest of the world.
“Wilde—”
I kissed him while my name was still on his lips.
He softened, silently submitting to my demands and allowing the kiss to deepen.
It’d been too long since the last time I’d tasted him.
For some reason, he tasted like apples, honey, and sour oranges.
I wanted the real taste of him, beyond the surface, and plunged my tongue deeper.
Teeth scraped along my tongue, biting down hard enough to flavor the kiss with blood.
Better than the sickly sweetness. It would have been better yet if the blood was his instead of mine, so I bit him back to return the favor.
He shoved me off him and I rolled away, away, away, right over a cliff and into the sweet-smelling rainbow depths.