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“You’re going alone?” I ask. I notice the sword sheathed at his side, but thinking of Zastel’s wounds, the idea suddenly has me worried. “Where’s Halima? I’d assumed if Destan was with me then she was with you.”
“My swordswoman goes where I ask her to go. It’s not necessary for her to accompany me today.” I’m aware he keeps eyeing my face searchingly, but I don’t know what he’s looking for. I close the gap between me and the horse again.
“I need to go to the Emerald Forest,” I state. “Take me with you.”
This, at least, seems to break through his caution. He laughs.
“Absolutely not.”
“I need to,” I insist, “for the experiment. I have to gather materials.”
“Eleanor…” He shakes his head, sighs, then speaks again with a gentler tone. “Ella, tell me what you need, and I’ll collect it.”
I narrow my eyes, wondering if the sudden use of a nickname is an attempt to soften me up.
“That’s no use. I’m not exactly sure what might work yet, but I’ll be able to tell if something might be useful when I see it.” It’s true. That was how I’d identified the augium in the first place. My mother’s notes pointed me in the right direction, but when I walked past Maidar’s stall at the market, it was like I could sense it calling to me. I just seem to have a knack for picking out what I need.
“It’s too dangerous,” he counters.
I fold my arms across my chest. “Do you want me do what you’ve asked or not? I’ll stay out of the way if you actually find the gryphon, I promise.”
He still looks reluctant, but to my surprise he just shakes his head and leans forward, holding out a hand.
“Come on, then. I don’t have time to have another horse saddled, even if you do ride, which I doubt.”
I don’t argue. Aside from a few donkeys I was given rides on as a kid for fun, he’s right—I have no riding experience. When I take his hand, he lifts me up in one, easy swing and drops me in front of him.
Oh.
I’m sat snug up against him, my backside nestled between his legs, and I hadn’t really thought through how close we’d be. The warmth of his chest seeps through the back of my dress and when his arms reach around me to take hold of the reins again, I’m bracketed by him.
I take a calming breath, reminding myself that things are different today. He’s not all hyped up on the moon and I’m not…well, I don’t know what my excuse is. But I’ve made my decision not to give in to him—not until I’ve worked my way past all of his defenses—and I’m not ready to budge.
Not even when he sets the horse off at a trot and the rhythm of it sends me bumping up against him.
“So,” I say, trying to keep my mind off the way our bodies are pressed together. “Why do you think the Hunt haven’t found this gryphon yet? Are they hard to find?”
“They can be,” he grunts, and I wonder if I imagine his voice sounding a bit strained. “They can nest in trees or on the ground so it’s hard to know where to look sometimes. But I don’t think that’s the real reason.”
“No? Then what is?”
“They’re too busy having fun to actually care about whether their fellow fae are getting mauled, I imagine.”
The anger in his voice is apparent, yet I can’t help but think back to that time in the dining hall, when Ruskin mocked Zastel. How callous he’d seemed then, and yet now he’s angry with the Hunt for acting very much like he did. Unless…
He’d said Zastel was stupid to go riding in the woods alone. If fae can’t lie, he could genuinely feel that way, and yet still be concerned about what has happened. I remember the seriousness with which he’d attended to Zastel. He did care, I was almost sure of it. It’s just that he buried that concern somewhere where his court couldn’t see it, instead playing up the little part of him that criticized Zastel for what happened. Perhaps a fae could behave in a way that was contrary to their true feelings if they needed to—to show strength, to save face, or whatever their reason might be. It was all in the presentation. The same went for the words he’d spoken about me, I suppose. He’d called me clever when we were in the Emerald Forest before, but a fool at that dinner. And yet I had been a fool not to look more closely at the wording of our deal. Even I could admit that.
“Insignificant by most standards.” How clearly his phrasing still rang in my head. There’s always a caveat, though. Most standards, not all. I’m sure by ordinary fae measurements it’s true, but if I’m significant in a few, very important ways, Ruskin might just have been trying to make me look unimportant for my own safety. His performance in the hall, I realize, was probably an attempt to protect me.
I still didn’t understand why Ruskin would allow the Hunt to re-form if he wasn’t happy about it.
“Have they been disbanded long, the Hunt?”
“About two hundred years.”
Two hundred years. It seems like everything around here happened about two hundred years ago.
“After your mother was attacked?” I ask softly.
