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“You can’t carry me all the way,” I say after an endless stretch of silence during which Wolf has walked out of the city and over another bridge, through a hamlet and countless fields, heading toward the blue mountains looming in the distance. “How far is this gate? It will probably take days.”
“I can carry you for days,” he says, a little indignantly, and I smother a tiny smile against his shoulder.
“I’m sure you can.”
“But a horse would carry us there faster,” he admits.
“Do you have a horse?”
“I used to. A mare.”
“What happened to her?”
“Had to leave her when I entered the castle and was almost caught.”
“And then you climbed the tower and... you don’t know what happened to her, I guess.”
“Her name is Sioko.” His gaze darkens. “I hope she will forgive me for abandoning her.”
“I’m sorry,” I mutter.
The Fae have a special relationship to horses, I know. If he didn’t look for his mare after climbing down the tower, it must be that he had no hope of finding her.
“So... you’ll walk?” I hazard. “All the way to the gate?”
“Unless your Highness has some better solution?” He grins with too many sharp teeth.
“Buy a horse? Steal a horse?”
“Are you inciting me to crime, Princess?” He arches his brows at me. “Honestly, I didn’t expect this from you. I am shocked, I tell you.”
“Stop it.” I splay my fingers over his chest. “Maybe alone you can run like the wind, but unless you leave me here—”
“Not leaving you,” he growls, the sound so wolf-like I flinch.
“Look.” I sigh as he slows down, approaching another hamlet. “I have a pendant. It’s worth something. Take it and buy a horse. After you leave me at the gate, a horse will serve you well.”
“Keep your pendant,” he says. “It’s something from your past, as my ring is to mine.”
“And yet you have given me your ring so that I can cross the gate. And...” I press my lips together. I don’t want to tell him that I don’t think a pendant will be enough to help me make a life for myself in Faerie. “Besides, it means nothing to me, this pendant.”
And I have the feeling that his ring is important to him.
“Fine,” he says. “Let’s get ourselves a horse.”
I still can’t believe I’m going along with this crazy plan. Me, in Faerie.
Absurd.
Totally, absolutely absurd, and yet here I am, handing Wolf my only piece of jewelry so he can leave me here and gallop away without a backward glance.
All my misgivings are back by the time we enter the hamlet and he sets me down on a pile of hay outside a farmhouse.
“Mina?” he says when I just stare at him. “The pendant.”
“Right.” I pull it over my head and hand it over to him.
“I will be back,” he says, his face grave and I nod, unable to find words. “Don’t move from here.”
I watch him stride away, my pendant clutched in his big fist, and smother a cough against my sleeve. In his arms, the coughing had been non-existent. Does being in contact with a Fae also help with the disease?
Despite his admonitions, I struggle to get up—only to find my legs weak, forcing me to sit back down. This is it. If he leaves me here, then there’s nowhere I can go. I’ll be lucky if the farmer sends me away and doesn’t kill me the moment he realizes what ails me.
The sun beats down on me. Sweat makes the back of my neck itch and shortens my breath. The hay doesn’t help, something on the air around here clogging my throat, making me cough more.
Reaching for my bundle, I find it gone. It must have fallen at some point, either while climbing down the tower or as Wolf carried me out of the city.
I draw the blanket around my shoulders, feeling cold despite the warmth of the sun. Still, I think. I won’t die in that tower. Thank all the gods. At least I can be grateful to Wolf for that.
It’s not until I hear hoofbeats heading toward me much later that I realize I’d fully convinced myself he was never returning.
How sad is that? And how pathetic that I find myself smiling so widely at him that my cheeks hurt as he leads a sleek bay horse toward me. Not a work horse, I realize, but a fine horse, maybe meant to draw a nobleman’s carriage through the city.
Wolf meets my grin with an answering smile, patting the horse’s neck as he leads him to the hay pile. “Miss me?” he says.
“I thought you weren’t coming back,” I blurt out.
His smile falters. “You really think that low of me. I’m wounded to the heart, Princess. Literally dying, bleeding out on the hay.”
“Wolf...”
“I give you my word as a Fae scoundrel that I won’t abandon you.” He performs a ridiculous bow, with several flourishes. “Pinkie-swear, Princess. All right?”
“All right,” I mutter, still grinning. “Until the gate.”
May the gods be in our favor.
***
“Pinkie-swear?” I mutter as he helps me up into the saddle. I’m a good rider, but I’ve always sat sideways, as a good lady should. Sitting astride the horse feels weird. Then again, Wolf is right, this way will be more comfortable and secure. “That’s a children’s oath. Not a serious one.”
“Are you doubting my seriousness?”
At this point, I’m finding it hard to do, if I’m being honest with myself.
He checks the saddle belt, the stirrups, and then swings himself up on the horse behind me. Without another word, he grabs the reins and clucks his tongue, and the horse jumps forward, eager to go.
Ready or not, here I come, I think, hysterical laughter bubbling in my throat, a cough caught behind my teeth. I don’t ask again how far it is—if he decided a horse was a good idea, then it’s not nearby, that’s for sure.
Only problem is that, just like when I invited him into my bed in the tower, I didn’t quite realize what it would mean to ride a horse with him. His arms are around me to reach the reins, his thighs pressing on the back of mine, his chest flush with my back. His breath is hot on my neck. I feel safe with all that strength of his wrapped around me and yet strangely unsafe, because my thoughts keep straying to how his chest had looked, the curve of his neck... how his mouth had felt on mine.
The danger is inside of me, that desire, that urge to touch and kiss him again. His mere presence is a temptation, and his proximity is bypassing all my reservations and morals. If he stopped the horse and pulled me down, laid me on the grass and stretched on top of me, I’d let him. I’d let him do anything he wanted to me.
I’d have begged for it.
Words of prayer rise to my mouth, for all the good they will do to me, snatched away by the wind as we canter down the road leading to the mountains, passing by villages and orchards, brooks and streams, groves and woods. The wind takes my breath, and even Wolf’s nearness can’t stop the blood in my lungs from choking me, so that I cough red droplets, raining crimson on everything we pass.
The plague is passing by, in the arms of a Fae rider.
So fitting.
It will probably start another legend. I hope my bloody breath isn’t enough to sicken animals or people, but soon enough we leave the inhabited areas behind for wilder places, patches of forest leading away from the road that’s growing fainter, less maintained, fading into a wide path.
And then we veer off the path, too, the horse picking his way carefully among rocks and patches of swampy ground. An expanse of water shimmers in the distance.
A lake.
Flanked by weeping willows and oaks, its surface flat like a mirror, it reflects the clouds rolling overhead. It’s not very large, the opposite shore clearly visible even if mist is rolling in from the forest beyond.
Wolf pulls on the reins, slowing down the horse. “Here we are.”
“Here? Where is the gate?”
“Last chance to reconsider,” he mutters, his broad chest rising and falling against my back. “You will be fine. Remember, you have my ring, it will protect you.”
I glance down at it, where it gleams on my middle finger, and images from my dream flash through my head again—the long road, the urgency, the fire. “Wolf—”
But then he hisses and yanks on the reins to turn the horse around. “What in Maab’s name—”
Men sprout from the shrubbery and the trees around us—armed men with leather breastplates and drawn swords. Their livery is a bright marigold orange, their faces set in determined lines.
“Fae!” one of them shouts. “Surrender now before we cut you down.”
There are too many of them, coming at us from all sides. Can Wolf fight them all off? Fae aren’t gods, they aren’t invulnerable, and the thought of him getting wounded sends a pang through me.
“Let’s go!” I hiss at him.
“They’ll follow. They have horses tied behind the trees. Fresh horses, unlike ours.”
“Wolf...”
“Get down from your horse!” another soldier shouts. “In the name of King Pryam of Kyrene, greatest of kings in the southern realms, and on the orders of Prince Elyar of Sothia. We are here to stop Fae from crossing through the gates. Dismount now.”
King Pryam? My grandfather sent men to guard the gates to Faerie? I open my mouth to say I am the princess, that they need to stand down.
“Prince Elyar?” Wolf shouts, his voice calm. “Who in the Underhill is Prince Elyar to demand anything?”
He sounds every inch a bored, arrogant prince himself and I twist around, trying to look at his face. “Wolf, don’t.”
“That’s me,” a young man says, strolling forward as if he’s out on a Sunday promenade. He’s dressed in royal red, his breastplate made of beaten gold, a slender golden crown on his blond head. He lifts a hand. “Tie both Fae up. Kill their horse if you have to.”
Wolf growls, pulling on the reins, turning the horse in a tight circle. “No.”
“Listen—” I start.
“Mina,” he says in my ear. “Ride away, hide in a grove. Come back later, and steer the horse into the lake. That’s where the gate is. Don’t hesitate. Just go!”
“What? I don’t—”
“Just go, Mina.”
“No—”
But he’s already jumping off the horse. The moment he’s on the ground, he slaps its hindquarters and the horse springs forward. I grab fistfuls of the dark mane not to fall as we sprint away.
Leaving Wolf in the hands of the soldiers.
“No, no, stop. Stop!” I need to turn back around, order those men to unhand him, leave him be—but the horse is spooked and won’t stop. We gallop through one grove, then another, and my heart is pounding so hard I’m sure it will give out.
Eventually, the horse calms down and I pat his neck, my hand shaking. “Come, horsey. What’s your name, huh? Maybe I should give you one? Wind. You fly like the wind. Do you like it?”
He whinnies, eventually coming to a halt, his flanks shuddering under my thighs. He puffs.
“Come on, Wind. Let’s get back to Wolf, yeah? Save him from those men. Please. Look, here you have a princess, disgraced and dying, but a princess nevertheless, begging you. Help me out?”
I doubt horses understand what we tell them, but he seems to respond to my pleading, calmer tone. I grab the reins and tug on them.
“Come on, Wind. Let’s go.”
He goes willingly this time and we canter in the direction I hope we came from. I had taken note of a few landmarks in our mad flight, a crooked tree and a grove of red-leafed trees the likes of which I’d never seen before, and I look out for those as we regain the path.
It takes two tries to find the lake, and then I let Wind pace up and down the lakeshore, among the trees, trying to find the spot where the soldiers came out.
When we do come upon it, my heart drops.
It’s empty. Nobody is there. The earth is churned as if by the hooves of many horses but there is no sign of the men or Wolf.
But if they know my grandfather the king, if there is any chance that they are working for him... then I know where Wolf is: the palace from which we have only just fled, its deep dungeons or the cages in the square right outside.
Where would they put a captured High Fae?
How long before they torture or kill him?
I need to hurry back.