Chapter 3
“COME HERE, sit, sit!” Poppy returned with a finely woven basket hung in the crook of her arm. She corralled them to a raised flat of rock surrounded by soft moss. On the stone table, she laid out broad leaves. On top of those, she piled berries, mushrooms, and nuts.
Damion plopped down and began stuffing the mushrooms into his mouth.
Magda lingered next to Kaelan, watching Honey dance around the trees, singing sweetly as she twirled.
“I’m sorry, Kaelan,” she said.
“What for? She’s alive, isn’t she?” Damion said through a mouthful of food.
“Sit, sit,” Poppy said gently, giving Magda’s shoulder a nudge.
Magda lowered herself to the ground. Kaelan’s misery hung as thick as smog around him, and even though they were not empathically connected, it weighed on her, leaving a restless itch in her legs.
Still in flight, Poppy wrapped her arms around Kaelan’s neck briefly. “Eat, eat.”
Magda popped a smooth red berry into her mouth. The skin snapped and juice flowed down her throat, thick, like cream and sweeter than pineapple. The tension in her shoulders melted as the sugar rushed through her. She’d forgotten how much better food in the Lands tasted.
Kaelan sank to the ground next to her, but didn’t touch the food in front of him.
Poppy flew off and returned with a water jug crafted from more waxy broad leaves. She landed between Damion and Magda, setting the jug down and, with quick fingers, made boat-shaped cups out of more leaves. Once filled, she held one out to Magda.
Magda took the cup, her fingers grazing the sandpapery skin of Poppy’s hands.
“Thank you.”
She drank. The water tasted cool and rich. She smiled.
Poppy placed a leaf-cup before Damion and another in front of Kaelan, giving him a pat on the shoulder.
“As soon as you’re able, we should leave for the Spire,” Damion said to Magda after washing down the last of his food.
Magda chewed the rich meat of a nut slowly, ignoring Damion. “Ouda wasn’t like anything I’ve ever seen before.”
Poppy landed on the opposite side of the table, between Kaelan and Damion. “She was not Ouda.”
“What do you mean?” Magda asked.
“Ouda was the Elder Spirit of our forest,” Poppy said.
“But hundreds of years ago, long before I was hatched, her tree began to die. Ouda appeared less and less. My grandmother told me that for most of her life, they had believed Ouda long dead. But then she started to reappear again. Yes, yes. There were stories that she had changed, that some who sought her out never returned. Yet, we all believed it to be Ouda, because . . . our forest was safe. But it is clear now, she was not Ouda. No, no.” Poppy shook her head, her floppy ears drooping.
Magda glanced over at Kaelan. She set down a half-eaten mushroom. “Where are my knives?”
“I have them,” Damion said. He reached into his vault and withdrew her sheaths, setting them before her.
She took them up and slid them on. Their weight was both comforting and, somehow, heavier than ever.
“My ghast blade?” she asked, holding up the sheath, which no longer held a knife.
“We were in a hurry. Sorry,” Damion said, scooping up a handful of berries the moment Poppy laid them before him. Red juice dribbled down his chin.
Magda pushed up from the table. “Then I’ll go back.”
They all stared up at her.
“Now?” Damion asked.
“Why not?” she said.
“Because you are weak,” Poppy said. “Rest, rest.”
“I just want to go back to look for my blade. That shouldn’t require very much energy.”
“Ouda’s lair is far, far from here,” Poppy said.
“Then Kaelan will have to take me,” she said, turning to him. “Can you?”
He frowned, sagging. “I’m tired.”
“Then we’ll leave now so you can get back and rest,” she said. “Do you want to put on a shirt?”
“You’re not going without me,” Damion said.
“I’m just going to look for my blade. You said Lavana is gone.”
“Yes, but . . .”
“What about Ouda?” Poppy asked, wringing her hands.
“She’s dead,” Magda said.
“You don’t know that,” Damion said with a deep scowl. “We don’t even know what manner of creature she was. She could have recovered. She could still be there. You’re not going—”
“Are you giving me an order?”
Damion lowered his head. “No, Mistress.”
She placed her hands on the table. “If there’s even the slightest hint of trouble, I will return at once.”
“It seems an unnecessary risk,” Kaelan said.
“That blade is one of a kind, made just for me at my birth and infused with the rarest of magic. Magic that saved us. It’s priceless and irreplaceable. I can’t just leave it. I don’t want to come face to face with another creature like that and have no defense against it.”
Kaelan rose to his feet. Poppy raced away. A few seconds later, she returned with Kaelan’s tunic. Hero, too, rejoined them, clambering up to her shoulder.
Damion drummed his fingers against the rock. “At the first sign—”
“Yes, I swear.” She turned to Kaelan. “Ready?”
Finally, he pulled his gaze away from Honey. “I guess.” He held his hand out to her.
Over his shoulder, Magda watched Honey do a pretty pirouette with an attendant group of glowing fairies. Her laughter rang through the forest, but like her eyes, something about it was flat, transparent, brittle—not real.
Magda took Kaelan’s hand. She hoped Ouda was still alive, so that she could kill the leech-faced ghoul all over again.
When she and Kaelan had reappeared on the crest of the hill overlooking Ouda’s hollow, she withdrew her hand from his grasp. The tempest of his emotions was too much.
“How do you do that?” she asked. “Transport yourself from place to place in the blink of an eye?”
“I travel the Shadow Realms,” he answered flatly, eyes combing the hollow.
“I’ve never heard of—”
“Look.” He pointed to the dead tree. He tromped down the slope. She followed.
At the base of the tree, the ground had sunk in. The willowy impression was vaguely human-shaped and coated with a silvery substance. She crouched next to it, running her finger over the dust. It came away greasy on her skin.
“Gross,” she said, wiping her hand on her jeans.
“She is dead,” Kaelan said, in that same hard, flat voice.
She sighed and stood up. “I guess so.”
Kaelan looked at her fully. “I know what you were thinking,” he said.
“Do you?” she said, scanning the ground around the imprint and tree. No sign of her blade.
“You were hoping to find her alive. To find some way to help Honey,” he said.
“I came to look for my blade.” She turned away from him and skirted the tree. Signs of Lavana and her warriors were apparent—footprints, broken branches, some of Lavana’s blood still showed blackish on the ground where she’d been pinned to Ouda.
Magda came back around the tree, facing him again, across the deathly impression of Ouda. “Don’t you know anything, Prince? A Rae would never jeopardize her safety for a nymph.”
“I know,” he said, his eyes softened. “But I appreciate the thought.”
Her shoulders sagged. “It looks as though we’re SOL in either case,” she said, kicking a loose rock into the impression.
“SOL?”
“It’s a human expression. It means shit out of luck.”
His eyes narrowed as he seemed to try to wrap his mind around the phrase.
At that same moment, Hero leapt down from her shoulder and straight into the gaping blackness of the tree.
She hopped over Ouda’s death-mark and to the hollow. “Hero!”
Her voice echoed and echoed and echoed. Chilled damp air reached up to her from its depths.
Kaelan crouched next to her. “What—”
“Stay here.” Before she could let herself think about it, she ducked into the hollow and plunged down the hole.
The chill grew as she fell. Thanks to the relative darkness, she hadn’t been able to see just how far down it was or else she might not have jumped.
A clawing moment of panic tore at her chest as her body awoke to the sensation of falling, but before it could overcome her, her feet hit the ground.
She stumbled forward, over knots of roots and jutting rocks, hitting her head on the earthen ceiling of an adjoining passage.
She hissed, rubbing her aching scalp while crouching to peer into the tunnel. At the end of it, pale light shone. The air was chilled and thin, yet heavy with damp and humus.
A moment later, Kaelan came crashing down upon her. She slammed onto her stomach, cutting her chin on a rock, his weight crushing her legs.
She twisted, pushing him off and giving him a good kick in the chest. He grunted.
“I told you to wait,” she whispered. Her voice carried, as if the faint current of air curling through the tunnel had captured and amplified it.
“I don’t take orders from you,” he hissed, “Mistress.”
She rolled her eyes. “I know you have a chip on your shoulder about—”
He took her wrist and helped her back into the vertical tunnel. “I don’t have a chip on my shoulder.” He frowned. “What does that mean?”
“It means you need to get over it,” she said. “You’re a Prince, all right? There are plenty of worse things you could be.”
“Like what? An imp? A nymph?”
“There are no male nymphs.”
“You don’t understand what it’s like.” He took her wounded chin between his thumb and fingers, pressing hard against the stinging wound. She winced, but he held her tight. “Raes have all the power in this world, all the freedom.”
Soon, the sting of the cut subsided and then vanished. At the pain’s tail end, his emotions began to spiral into her awareness. So much anger . . .
She pulled away. “I didn’t know what freedom was until I was exiled.” Turning, she crouched before the adjoining tunnel again. “Being a Rae is as much a prison as Lavana’s dungeon.”
Kaelan peered over her shoulder into the narrow passage.
“But your very nature does not make you its slave,” he muttered. The force of his frustration battered against her back and left all the muscles in her neck tight.
“Doesn’t it?” she murmured, ducking into the tunnel.
On her hands and knees, she crawled in. “Hero?”