28. Forest help me
Forest help me
Torren watched Cypress etch her message into her lieutenant’s chestplate.
Stay out of the Wylds.
He huffed a silent laugh. She’d signed it with her mother’s name. Caelith might recognize it, though Torren doubted it.
Caelith never troubled himself to learn the names of the Fair Folk Nobility.
But what was Torren to do with the Lass?
She was apparently Faerie nobility, someone with influence and power in his realm.
The trouble was, Torren didn’t know how she would use that influence. What would her mission be now?
Perhaps Cypress would want to turn him in just to regain favor with Caelith.
And there was the ever-persistent problem of the imminent Hunt. Every day, the escaped Hounds grew hungrier and more restless. They sought their master—to wake him with their call and wreak havoc across the continent.
Cypress stood and put her dagger away, then spun on her heel to look at him. “Where are we taking the horses?”
"A’aravos Paravale is close. We can take them there, rest, and come up with a plan?" Torren said, leaving the last as a question.
He still wasn’t sure what she would want, or what her next move would be.
Cypress nodded, then, without a word, went to her horse and mounted. There was a long scratch on her cheekbone, several bruises, and bits of broken skin across her knuckles.
The woman fought like a warrior—someone without fear, not because she welcomed death but because she’d trained for moments like this, living and breathing the dance of battle, more so than her opponents.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” Cypress drawled when Torren still did not move.
Torren smiled to himself and shook his head. “Are you leaving him a horse?” He asked while he placed his foot in the stirrup and mounted.
“No. He can find his own traitorous way.”
Torren nodded his approval, then uttered his thanks to the Dryaads of this area for their help.
Truthfully, A’aravos Paravale was still a distance away. But when you know the right words to ask, the right plea to the forest, the Wylds will shift. Suddenly, your destination would be around the next bend.
Sometimes the forest wouldn’t answer, wanting travelers to see its beauty—enchanting them for good or bad.
But in this instance, Torren thought it would help.
The Dryaads would choose to bend the land to their whim.
Cypress had accepted the Wylds as part of her, so Torren doubted the Forest would abandon her now.
“Rrófhada heach, ach caillte. Cabhraigh fhoraois,”1 Torren said in the language of Faerie.
The trees whispered back. All around them, branches swelled and sighed in the wind.
Torren didn’t hesitate. He spurred his horse into action, Cypress hot on his heels. Then they were galloping, the forest shifting around them.
It would be slow going with ten horses trailing Torren’s, but nothing compared to crossing through the Wylds unaided by the Dryaads.
Compared to what the lieutenant's journey out of the Wylds would be like, Torren and Cypress’s walk to A’aravos Paravale would be simple. Fun, even.
As they trotted through the forest, Torren’s mind wandered once more to Cypress’s use of her mother’s name.
Did it mean she’d aligned with Faerie, or just used a name Caelith would potentially recognize?
Torren sighed and tried to focus on planning how to get the scepter, now that they were fugitives—wanted dead or alive, as Oswald’s posters had declared.
“What is it, Princeling? I can feel you thinking even over here,” Cypress asked with an exasperated expression gracing her beautiful face.
“You can not feel me thinking,” Torren scoffed, then checked behind him for a moment to verify all the horses were still trotting behind.
“Oh, but I can. Out with it.”
"Why did you sign with your mother’s name? Was it a statement or just meant to rile Caelith?" Torren blurted, halting his horse and caravan.
Cypress whirled her horse around in an expertly trained maneuver. “A statement. A declaration,” she said, the words sharp and angry, her chest rising and falling with shaky, heaved breaths.
"I am not something the Crown can use, chew up, and spit out. I built my whole life protecting Cade and the kingdom, and this is my reward?
I don’t give a flying fuck about the title that comes with that name, by the way. If Aithlin really was my mother, if she protected me even in death, then that’s the legacy I want to claim.
“So, if this place was her home, then it’s mine too.
“Regardless of all that,” Cypress said. Her hand cut through the air like a blade, and her mismatched eyes burned in a way Torren had never witnessed.
“Regardless of all that,” Cypress began again, much softer this time.
“No one deserves to be hunted for sport. No one deserves to be seen as lesser just because of their differences. I will not help protect a kingdom that is an aggressor. I will not stand by and do nothing while people are run down in the middle of the night because of some superiority complex.”
By the time Cypress had finished speaking, Torren thought she would make a fine ruler. The people of Eobbaara would be lucky to have her.
Hell, he would be lucky to have her on his side.
“Well, Duchess,” Torren said and leaned on his pommel. “Welcome to the cause.”
Cypress snorted. “Didn’t I just tell you I didn’t care about the title?”
“Yep. But if you’re declaring yourself an Ilirona, then you’re a Duchess. Facts are facts.”
She heaved a great sigh and rolled those amber and verdant eyes. “If you make anyone else call me Duchess, I’ll remind you I know where you sleep."
Torren waggled his eyebrows, pushing his horse ahead. "And what will you do when you find me, Duchess?"
“You’ll die a slow, painful death, Princeling.”
Torren laughed with his head back. “Sure, Lass. Keep telling yourself that.”
"Must you be so—" Cypress said and waved her hand in his general direction.
“Charming? Handsome? Irresistible?”
“Annoying.”
Again, Torren laughed. “You are charmed by me, Lass. You don’t have to lie to yourself, you know.”
“I really am going to kill you one day, you know?” Cypress mused, then pulled her hair from the braid it had been in.
This morning, the plait had been tight to her scalp. The fight had mussed the lengths.
“What if I kill you first, Lass?” Torren asked, trying not to stare at the way her hair fell around her face. He wished she would wear it that way more often.
This time, Cypress chuffed a laugh, looking over her shoulder at him. “Oh, I’d like to see you try, Torren.”
The look in her mismatched green and brown eyes had blood rushing straight to his cock, his pulse jumping.
1. I have wandered too far from my home, but I am not lost. Forest Help Me.