It was an utterly disheartening realization, but I swallowed it down as I raised my lantern before me and ducked my head below the first overhanging branches to step inside the deeper darkness of the bluebell woods...and into fey territory.
A cool breeze rustled through the leaves above me, carrying a faint, eerie echo of distant horns. The sound shivered across my skin, sending goosebumps prickling across my body.
Whenever the bluebells opened, the veil between worlds in these woods became thinner than the finest gauze, allowing the fey to move seamlessly between them. Who knew where those horns were truly sounding? Or what wild hunt might be taking place in these very woods tonight?
No human could ever be safe in these woods tonight. But no one turned back. We all clumped together to form a tightly huddled mass, and I turned to Mr. Luton.
“We’ll follow your directions through the woods to find her.”
“Miss Harwood?” Miss Hammersley’s voice shivered behind me. “I don’t think we’ll need to.”
She held up her lantern, followed by all of the others...and their gathered glow revealed a long, thick green vine, studded with glistening thorns, lying curled and waiting on the grass before us, twitching with impatience like a serpent preparing to strike.
I sucked in a breath. Before I could speak, it unspooled its curves, rapidly shook itself out, and then turned and flowed sinuously away into the woods...just slowly enough for us to follow.
“So.” My voice shook, but I took a purposeful step forward. “I believe we have our directions.”
“This is absurd,” Lady Cosgrave muttered as we all shuffled forward together. Her voice was low, but in the throbbing darkness of the woods, it carried easily to my ears. “Amy,youat least must see sense: there is nopurposein us all sacrificing ourselves together. This is a matter for magicians, notpoliticians—”
“And yet you, Honoria, are the one who invited that creature—twice—into Cassandra’s home, creating this danger in the first place.” Amy’s voice was perfectly cool and utterly inflexible, and despite everything, my lips curved with pride as I picked my way forward through the darkness, listening.
She had taken Lady Cosgrave’s arm as we’d first set out, in what might have seemed a friendly gesture—but when Jonathan had closed in on Lady Cosgrave’s other side, I’d understood that they were working together, as always, to box her in at the center of our group.
“Perhaps,” Amy continued sweetly now, “if you’d wished to stay safely out of fey affairs, you might haveseen senseyourself before choosing to mortally imperil my family and betray all our years of friendship.”
That winding, teasing tail of the fey’s vine slithered ahead, just within the farthest circle of our lanterns’ light. The scent of wild garlic blossomed and clouded in the air around us, its leaves hidden in the darkness but crushed by our heavy feet. We’d left the smoother, tamer, established path behind. Now, sticks and tree roots crunched with every step as we made our way up an angled slope, between dangling branches that poked and stabbed at my eyes, while curving leaves stroked and clung to my hair.
Lady Cosgrave sucked in a breath behind me. “Itoldyou why I had to make those decisions! I thought you understood—”
“Oh, I do,” murmured Amy, “and I could easily forgive you for dropping my acquaintance. But the moment you chosemy sister-in-law’s homeas the setting for a fey assassination attempt, placing my family in mortal danger—”
“That wasnevermy intention or—”
“Shhh!” I hissed, coming to a halt.
The thorny tail of our guiding vine had just disappeared, whipping with a sudden burst of speed up a tree, through its leaf-heavy branches, and out of sight. I rose to my tiptoes, raising my lantern high and casting its glow as far as it would spread. Our group came to a ragged standstill behind me. We huddled together, darkness pressing in around our lanterns.
Quick, unsteady breaths sounded behind me, unreasonably loud to my ears. My heartbeat thudded in my throat. Something snuffled low to the ground nearby, grass rustling by my feet. I clenched my fingers tightly around my lantern to keep myself still. As I took a deep, sustaining breath, a tawny owl cried mournfully through the trees like a warning—and behind me, one of my students let out a muffled whimper.
That did it.Fury subsumed my own fear, and I stepped forward, jerking free of the protection of our group.
“Well?” I called out to the creature who hid in the darkness, as Amy and Jonathan stepped up behind me. “What are you waiting upon? I’m here, where you wanted me. You needn’t settle for lurking about my dreams anymore.”
A woman’s low laughter sounded, uncomfortably close but impossible to locate. It had a jagged, broken edge, and it seemed to come from before me and from my left, both at once. “Ah, you truly are a Harwood, aren’t you? I know that imperious tone so well.” Grass rustled suddenly around my feet in a rapid, slithering circle that sent an icy chill rushing through my veins.
It was the sound of her vines, looping around me like a noose. But she wasn’t drawing that noose closed—at least, not yet. She said, her tone wondering, “You never believe in the truth of your own danger, do you? You Harwoods walk into these woods and into my arms as if nothing could ever harm any of you.”
At that, I choked on a bitter half-laugh of my own. “You may have invaded my dreams, but you don’t know much about me if you actually believe that.”
When I’d been younger, her words might well have described me. Last year, though, all of my fiercely maintained certainty in my own abilities had been shattered beyond repair. I’d spent months putting myself back together with the help of the wise, strong people who loved me—but every mistake that I’d made in these past few days had stemmed directly from my own raw pain, and fear of failing so catastrophically once again.
“It’s not that I don’t believe in my own danger,” I told her steadily. “It simply doesn’t matter as much as what I’m fighting for tonight.”My love. Our home. My school. Our future.
I wanted to spit out threats every bit as vicious as the dreams that she had sent me. But with Amy and Jonathan standing in silent support at my back, I drew on their combined strength to summon long-ago lessons from my mother, who’d tried so hard to groom me for future political alliances. “My family has lived in harmony with the creatures of these woods for centuries. That long peace doesn’t have to be broken now.”
“Iam not the one who broke that peace,” she snapped, and the vines tugged closer around my feet. “It was betrayed long before today. I’ve only been waiting for the chance to take my payment!”
Payment? “Did someone agree to a bargain with you, then leave it unfulfilled?” I asked. “One ofmyancestors?” Which of them could have ever been so reckless? And how in the world had they survived it?
