You cannot outrun fate.
I recognize Bogdana’s spidery handwriting. I hate the thought of her intruding on the place where I feel most safe, and the note itself makes me angry. A taunt, to make it clear that she hasn’t given up hunting me. A taunt, like giving me a head start in a game she is sure to win.
I crumple the note and shove it into my backpack, settling it beside the little silver fox.
“Got everything?” Oak asks, and I straighten up guiltily, slinging my bag across one shoulder.
A gust of wind makes my threadbare dress blow around me, its hem dirtier than ever.
“If you thought we went fast before—” the prince begins to say, his smile full of mischief. Reluctantly, I walk to the horse and resign myself to getting on her back again.
That’s when arrows fly out of the dark.
One hits the trunk of a nearby maple tree, just above my head. Another strikes the flank of the knight’s horse, causing her to let out a horrible whinny. Through my panic, I note the rough, uneven wood of the shafts, the way they are fletched with crow feathers.
“Stick creatures!” the winged soldier shouts.
Tiernan gives him a look of banked fury, as though this is somehow his fault. “Ride!”
Oak reaches for my hand, pulling me up onto Damsel so that I am seated in front, my back against his metal-covered chest. I grab for the knots of the horse’s mane, and then we’re racing through the night, the horse thundering beneath us, arrows hissing through the air at our heels.
The stick creatures come into view, beasts of branches and twigs— some shaped like enormous wolves, others like spiders, and one with three snapping heads, like nothing I have seen before. A few in vaguely human shapes, armed with bows. All of them crawling with moss and vine, with stones tucked into packed earth at their centers. But the worst part is that among those pieces of wood and fen, I see what appear to be waxy mortal fingers, strips of skin, and empty mortal eyes.
Terror breaks over me like a wave.
I throw a panicked glance back at the wounded horse riding after us, carrying Tiernan and Hyacinthe. Blood stains her flank, and her steps are stumbling, uneven. Though she is moving fast, the wicker creatures are swifter.
Oak must know it, because he pulls on the reins and Damsel wheels around, back toward our attackers. “Can you get behind me?” he says.
“No!” I shout. I am having a hard enough time hanging on, pressing my thighs against the horse’s flanks as firmly as I can and clinging to its neck, my fingers tangled in its mane.
His arm encircles my waist, pressing me to him. “Then crouch down as low as you’re able,” he warns. With his other hand, he pulls a small crossbow from a saddlebag and notches a bolt with his teeth.
He fires, missing spectacularly. The bolt strikes the dirt between Tiernan and the wicker men’s deer. There isn’t time to reload, and the prince doesn’t try, just takes a sharp, expectant breath.
My heart sinks, desperately wishing for some talent other than curse breaking. Had I the storm hag’s power, I could call down lightning and singe them to cinders. Had I better control of my own magic, perhaps I could hide us behind an illusion.
Then the bolt Oak shot explodes into blue shimmering fire, and I realize he didn’t miss after all. Burning stick men fall from the backs of their stick mounts, and one of the spidery creatures darts off, aflame, into the woods.
Tiernan’s horse has nearly caught up to ours when we gallop away. I feel Oak tense behind me and I turn, but he shakes his head, so I concentrate on holding on.
It was one thing to have Lady Nore’s power described, but seeing the stick creatures with their bits of flesh made me all too aware of how easy it would be to harvest human parts from cities like she might take rocks from quarries, and carve armies from forests. Elfhame should worry. The mortal world should fear. This is worse than I imagined.
The horses break free of the woods, and we find ourselves on suburban roads, then crossing a highway. It’s late enough that there’s little traffic. Tiernan’s glamour settles over us, not quite a disguise but a piece of misdirection. The mortals still observe something out of the corner of their eyes, just not us. A white stag, perhaps. Or a large dog. Something they expect and that fits into the world they can explain. The magic makes my shoulders itch.
We ride on for what feels like hours.
“Oak?” the knight calls as we come to a crossroads. His gaze goes to me. “When was the prince hit?”
I realize that the weight on my back has grown heavier, as though Oak slumped forward. His hand is still around me, but his grip on the reins has loosened. When I shift in the saddle, I see that his eyes are shut, lashes dusting his cheeks, limbs gone slack.
“I didn’t know—” I begin.
“You fool,” mutters Tiernan.
I try to turn in the saddle and grab for the prince’s body so it doesn’t fall. He slumps against me, large and warm in my arms, his armor making him heavier than I am sure I can manage. I dig in my fingers and hope I can hold him, although it is all too easy to imagine the prince’s body dropped in the dirt.
“Halt,” Tiernan says, slowing his horse. Damsel slows, too, keeping pace with the knight’s mount.
“Get down,” he tells Hyacinthe, then pokes him in the back.
The winged soldier slides off the horse with the sort of ease that suggests he’s ridden many times before.
“So this is who you follow?” he asks sullenly, with a glare in the prince’s direction.
Tiernan dismounts. “So you’re suggesting I throw in my lot with those things?”
Hyacinthe subsides, but he studies me as though he wonders if I might be on his side. I am not, and I hope my look tells him so.
Tiernan strides to Damsel. He reaches up, taking Oak’s weight in his arms and easing the prince onto the leaf-covered earth.
I slip off the saddle gracelessly, hitting the ground hard and staggering to one knee.
A bit of blood shows that one of the arrows struck Oak just above the shoulder blade. It was stopped by the scales of his golden armor, though; only the very tip punctured his flesh.
It must have been poisoned.
“Is he . . . ?” I can see the rise and fall of his chest. He’s not dead, but the poison could still be working its way through his system. He might be dying.
I don’t want to think of that. Don’t want to think that were he not behind me, I would have been the one struck.
Tiernan checks Oak’s pulse. Then he leans down and sniffs, as though trying to identify the scent. Takes a bit of blood on his finger and touches it to his tongue. “Deathsweet. That stuff can make you sleep for hundreds of years if you get enough in your system.”
“There can’t have been more than a little bit on the arrow,” I say, wanting him to tell me that couldn’t possibly have been enough.
Tiernan ignores me, though, and rummages in a bag at his belt. He takes out an herb, which he crushes under the prince’s nose and then presses onto his tongue. Oak has enough consciousness to jerk his head away when the knight’s fingers go into his mouth.
“Will that fix him?” I ask.
“We can hope,” Tiernan says, wiping his hand on his trousers. “We ought to find a place to shelter for the night. Among mortals, where Lady Nore’s stick things are unlikely to look.”