I steeled myself and turned around.
“Sir,” I said to Gadfly, “my Craft has wearied me, and I’m running low on pigment. May I take a break?”
He clapped his hands together. “Of course, Isobel. You needn’t even ask, you know. You’re the guest in our court, and deserve every courtesy I can offer.” The fair folk waiting in line sighed as one, whispering their disappointment. “Now, now,” Gadfly chastised them before his attention sprang back to me. “Would you like someone to escort you through the forest? Rook, perhaps?” He suggested this without a hint of guile.
I glanced toward the game of shuttlecocks and found Rook standing there watching me, chest heaving with exertion, his game forgotten. A birdie whizzed past his head, ruffling his hair.
“No, I’ll do quite well on my own.” I spoke evenly, hearing my own voice as though it came from someone else speaking around a corner. “I plan to remain close by, and I wouldn’t wish to trouble the prince over something so small.”
I had no way of knowing whether Gadfly’s question truly was innocent. If he were to suggest anyone to accompany me, Rook was the natural choice. But I couldn’t shake the scrambling paranoia that he knew. Perhaps that he had even seen something—something in the future—
I smiled at Gadfly and curtsied my leave. Then slowly, deliberately, I gathered up the teacups and walked away toward the glen, where the top of Rook’s autumn tree spread its scarlet leaves in the distance. I felt Rook’s gaze searching me, but I didn’t once turn to look.
I had to accustom myself, after all, to leaving him behind.
Fifteen
AS I SLOGGED through the undergrowth, I assured myself Rook would be all right. He was probably already languishing insufferably after having beaten everyone at shuttlecocks for the dozenth time over. But why did he have to be so utterly, stupidly transparent? He might as well have I’M IN LOVE WITH ISOBEL! written across his face for everyone to see.
With a frustrated shout, I yanked my boot free from a vine’s ensnaring tendrils. Even the delicate spring foliage had started to feel less friendly. Fleeced with clouds, the blue sky beamed as harmlessly as Gadfly’s smile, and squirrels bounded along the branches above me, shaking loose showers of white petals. But if I had learned anything from fair folk, it was not to trust the way things appeared.
I cleared the thicket and sat down on the same stump as the afternoon before. A breeze rattled the leaves of Rook’s tree, and a few twirled downward, scattering across my lap. I picked one up and traced its edges. Its color stuck out like a sore thumb, much like Rook himself.
Things weren’t going entirely as I’d expected. I shouldn’t have let myself get so carried away with Aster. There was no mistaking that she had felt real anger, human anger, as impossible as it seemed. Not only that—my portraits had affected some of the others, too. I’d been painting fair folk for years, and never once had I seen such reactions to my Craft. Foxglove had felt something, I was sure of it. Perhaps she had experienced emotion. Or perhaps she had caught a glimpse of what it meant not to, and found herself confronted by the emptiness of her existence, the hollowness of never having once known joy. I wasn’t certain which possibility was more alarming—or more dangerous.
All I knew for certain was that I couldn’t fail. My life wasn’t the only one at stake.
I realized I had torn the leaf apart, stripping it down to its fibrous veins. I flung away the pieces and put my face in my hands. My eyes prickled. My heart ached. Even if everything went perfectly according to plan, and I was working myself up over nothing, I faced a future I was no longer certain I could bear.
“I wish you were here, Emma,” I mumbled, wanting nothing more in that moment than my aunt’s embrace. She would know what to say. She would reassure me that I wasn’t a terrible person because there was a part of me that didn’t want to go home. Perhaps she could even convince me that I could live with myself after I buried my heart in the autumnlands and left it behind forever.
“Who’s Emma?” a cheerful voice asked, right next to my ear.
I nearly jumped out of my skin. “Lark! I didn’t know you were there.”
She sat perched on the edge of my stump like her namesake, smiling at me with her hands cupped around a pile of freshly picked blueberries. When she saw my face, her smile vanished. “You’re dripping!”
“Yes, I’ve been crying.” Seeing her raised eyebrows I added, “It’s what mortals do when we’re sad. I miss my aunt, Emma.”