Complaining wasn’t in order at a moment like this, so I kept my mouth shut, but I couldn’t help clawing at his arm in protest. He was wearing his raven pin again, and it was at just the right height to stab me in the back of the head.
“Stop that. As soon as the hounds lay eyes on us they’ll go straight for you. Slaying them alone is child’s play, but protecting a mortal at the same time . . . you must do whatever I tell you, without hesitation.”
Throat dry, I nodded.
A spectral shape bounded toward us through the undergrowth, emitting a faint light of its own. This was no living hound, but a fairy beast. It took the guise of a white hunting dog with long legs and flowing fur, but I knew to look beyond the surface, and soon enough its glamour flickered, so quickly I was left with only the impression of something old beneath the illusion, something dead, dark and clotted with vines and dead leaves. Silently it launched itself over the honeysuckle, its soft liquid eyes fixed upon me. I caught a stench of dry rot before Rook’s sword darted out and reduced it to a clattering rain of twigs entangled with human bones. A quiet, musical sound rose from it when it died, almost like a woman’s sigh.
A chorus of howls swelled through the forest. I shuddered in Rook’s arms. The wintry lament was so lonely, so hauntingly sad I found it difficult to believe those voices belonged to beasts that wanted to kill me.
Listening to this, Rook made a contemptuous noise; I felt the vibration of it in his chest. He sheathed his sword and turned me around.
“There are over a dozen of the creatures, and they’ll all be upon us at once. We cannot fight. We have to run.” It was obvious the idea of fleeing rankled him.
“I can’t—”
“Yes, I know,” he said, casting me an unreadable glance. “Stand back.”
Wind crashed through the trees, sweeping a dizzying flurry of leaves through the forest that broke against Rook like a wave. Then he was gone, and a massive horse stamped and snorted in his place, watching me with unnervingly pale eyes. It was unmistakably him in the same way the raven had been. The fairy light now hovering above my shoulder revealed a hint of auburn in its otherwise black coat. Its mane and tail were wild, thick and tangled. It lowered itself to its knees beside me with an impatient toss of its head.
I was about to break yet another rule of life in Whimsy.
If an unfamiliar dog follows you at night, don’t stop to look at it. If you wake up to find a cat you don’t recognize sitting in your yard, watching your house, don’t open the door. And most of all, if you see a beautiful horse near a lake or the edge of the forest, never, ever try to ride it.
As Emma would say, Oh, hell.
I yanked my ring off and returned it to my pocket. As eager as I was to revenge myself upon Rook, forcing him back into his normal form just in time for the hounds to devour me seemed rather counterproductive. I paused just long enough for a fortifying breath, then climbed astride his broad back with my skirts bunched around my thighs and buried my fingers in his mane.
He lurched upright, powerful muscles bunching beneath his coat, and took off at a ground-swallowing canter. Even clinging to him as if my life depended on it—well, my life did depend on it—I barely stayed on: I lifted clean off his back every time his hooves struck the ground, then slammed down afterward with such painful, tailbone-jolting force I already felt my rear going numb. Whenever he dove sideways to avoid a tree, I slid precariously. He breathed between my legs like a forge’s bellows, and with each shift of his ropey muscles I was reminded that I sat atop a creature ten times or more my own size. The ground was very far away.
I didn’t like riding horses, I decided.
The howling followed us, growing ever closer. Soon I made out elegant white shapes darting through the forest on either side. The two nearest hounds sped up and angled inward to cut us off. A gap in the canopy admitted a shaft of moonlight, and when they bounded across it, their spectral fur gave way to the emaciated bark-skinned frames beneath. Thorny jaws gaped and empty pits stared where their eyes should have been.
Rook gave a brash snort and lunged forward, eating up the distance between us and the hounds. They turned, teeth flashing, far too late—he trampled them to kindling beneath his hooves.
I sensed a trace of smugness in his loping stride and the way he eyed the other hounds, now falling behind us, with his ears flattened to his skull, daring them to come closer. As they say, pride goeth before a fall. We entered a clearing and Rook lurched to a halt before he collided with the figure standing at the center of it, directly in our path.