A dry sob topples from my mouth, but I suck it up. Clinging to visions of him is safer than conjuring memories of chimneys. Rubble presses into my fingers as I locate clefts. The uneven bluff lacerates through the slit in my skirt and the folds of my dress, which is now in tatters, the navy material torn and ripped.
I should have predicted this would be a problem. I should have listened to Juniper, anticipated these scrapes, and picked sturdier armor.
Who knows how much time passes? But with that boy’s visage locked in my head, it goes faster. I creep to the apex, fall into a heap, and flop onto a patch of dewy grass. I gawk at a canopy of slanted rowan trees, their berries glistening in the dark. I’m still here, alive and breathing on solid ground.
Finally, the tears leak down my face, my voice reduced to a whimper. “I miss you.”
The words filter through the branches. For a moment, everything goes silent. Even the wind goes still, as if caught in a net.
I’ve never said that. But it’s true.
I miss him. I miss that masked boy, the exception to my rule, the Fae who’d turned my hate into something precious. Something lost.
I miss him. I miss my sisters. I miss Papa.
I miss the sanctuary. I miss the aviary.
Noises of the wild return, the boughs trembling and a distant bird cawing. I sit up and gape at the scene. “Oh.”
Woods cleave through the mountain. Brambles drip with jade leaves. White trumpeted flowers glow in the dark, their petals perfuming the air with a verbena mist that blades of grass visibly strain to catch, the verdant leaves straining. Wind chimes clatter from the branches.
What I’d seen from the other end of that web must have been a deformed perspective. It had indeed been a wooded area, only higher than it appeared.
My shoulders sag in relief, then lock back into place as waspish drones pierce the environment, buzzing, searching. I scramble from the ridge and dash into the forest. A crooked lane winds through the rowans, their trunks frozen in place unlike some of the others I’d seen. The path is uneven and strewn with twigs that crack under my soles. I stop, pivoting this way and that, mindless, delirious.
The world goes hazy, blurring at the edges. I break into another run at the approaching whirr of hornets. Knolls swell from the ground, and the route slopes downward. It leads to an impasse, at the end of which stands another hill and a round cottage.
The smooth-stone dwelling perches atop the knoll, its curved walls rising from the ground and capped in a miniature spire of ivy, the tip aiming toward the sky. Flagstones lead to an arched doorway—without an actual door. Instead, a curtain swings from the frame. A torch sconce above the archway blazes, and the matching windows—more curtains instead of glass panes or shutters—simmer with badges of gilded light.
Somebody’s home.
Before I can second-guess myself, I bolt toward the walkway. My mind runs amuck, leaping from one choice to the next. Once more, my vision slants, the landscape whirling out of proportion, spinning like a disc.
I stumble to a halt. This isn’t smart. Whoever lives in this cottage is no human, and that nonhuman isn’t gonna be welcoming. Not for free.
That’s assuming they don’t kill me on sight. Thinking better of it, I need to keep running, but fatigue unhinges my limbs. I’m desperate to faint right here, right now, and sleep forever. The temptation crawls along my calves and shoulders, both howling with pain.
More spinning. What the fuck’s wrong with me?
My wrist smolders. I glance down to where mottled red punctures the flesh. The gash of a stinger. One of the insects must have gotten me, and I can’t…I can’t…think.
Light bleeds onto the flagstones. Curtains shift, and a winged silhouette fills the arched doorway. The woodland capsizes.
And I collapse.
12
And I stir from a dream, something about wings—a mosaic of wings flapping over a mountain steaming with mist. I haul myself out of the ether. Noises overlap through an enclosed space, a pallet shifting beneath me, a set of footfalls approaching, and a pair of wings reverberating.
“Wake up,” a grumpy feminine voice snaps. “Are you alive? Because five minutes ago, you were.”
My eyes blast open and slam into a pair of topaz ones, a menacing glee crystalizing within those irises. Moth’s wings fan out. Despite her wee size, I reckon those silk flappers could crush me to a pulp.
Overhead, a conical ceiling supported by a starburst of wooden beams pitches upward, one section laced in a cobweb. Flat cream stone forms the rounded walls of a cottage. The dwelling lacks a solid entrance or glass plates in the windows, yet the draperies insulate the place from outdoor sounds or elements.
Soot mingles with the essence of clematis that nets up one side of the home. I’m resting in a living room, sprawled on a cot that’s stationed between two button-tufted chairs upholstered in a faded rust color. The seats front an unlit cobbled fireplace, a torch sconce projecting above the mantle, a wan oval of light twitching from the encasement and waxing the walls.
This cot seems set up for temporary use. I squint in time to behold Moth scuttling on all fours across the mattress. “Welcome back, little mortal.” She produces a fruit I’ve never seen before, as ruby red and bulbous as an apple but with the pitted flesh of a prickly pear. She cradles the orb in her palm, tipping it from side to side. “Hungry?”
