The wilds are more like a jungle than a humble, temperate forest, and I sure hope Randyll isn’t stupid enough to venture onto the Fae side of the road. He’s far too tempting a snack, and if he plays that lute, even more so. Faerieslovemusic.
I shove thoughts of the musical human aside as I push aside a curtain of moss. “So? He’s outlived his usefulness. Now, let us return. We still have a three-hour hike ahead of us.”
As I speak, a poster catches my eye. It’s been nailed to the mossy bark of a conifer, and the human who tacked it there had some nerve.
Some faeries call these trees home. Some of these treesarefaeries…
But where I expect to see my scowling, horned face gazing back from the vellum, instead, I find a flaxen-haired beauty with lips to die for. Rosebud lips, for that matter.
The blood leaches from my veins. I’d recognise that heavenly pout anywhere.
“Tegwyn? What’s the matter? Why have you—?"
The breath drains from her lungs when she stops beside me, turning as still as a statue. I can’t look at her, my mind spinning with a million questions.
Why is she on a wanted poster?
She’s been lying to you. How can you be so blind? As if she would ever spill her deepest, darkest secrets with you, monster…
At the sound of Rosemary’s cruel taunt, I tear the poster from the tree, almost ripping it from its tack. The shadows of the forest make their presence known again, curling around me like the claws of death.
My breath comes in quick bursts, and I finally find the courage to look at her. I regret it immediately. As I thought—guilty.
Sheishiding something from me, and just when I thought we’d turned a new leaf. Ivy doesn’t trust me, and it hurts more than a hot iron rod.
“Is there something you want to share, Ivy?” I ask quietly, my tone ominous.
She pales, glancing at her feet. “I… have nothing to say...”
And then she’s off, braving a step into the mossy wilds.
I burn holes into the back of her head the whole way home, and the shadows don’t leave my side. Not once.
One way or another, I’m going to get my answers.
No more secrets.
22
Ivy
PrincessIvora.
The name still sounds so foreign.
Could it be true? Could I really be a princess?
I’ve always just been Ivy—well, at least to the townspeople back at Charstown. Yet my full name has and always will be Ivora.
Now it all makes sense—why my parents told me to keep my full name a secret. Maybe that’s why the king sent his men to our cottage, because someone had found out my real name and reported me to the guard.
Perhaps someone saw me wearing the necklace. It’s all my fault.
Now, my parents are gone because of my foolishness. Worst of all, now I’m not even sure if they were my real parents to begin with.
If they weren’t my biological parents, then who were they?
I’ve barely slept since Tegwyn and I stumbled upon my wanted poster by the roadside, and there was no mistaking that the girl had been me.
