Page 61 of The Heart and the Hawthorn

A flicker of panic crossed their face.

‘We don’t really have time,’ Moth chipped in helpfully.

Frida looked up at where Moth was sat in the grouting. ‘What do you mean?’

Dian, pressed against her side, tried to answer, but they started coughing instead. She steadied them, trying not to panic, but Dian’s answer, when the fit had finally subsided, was almost worse. ‘The others will come,’ they gasped, their chest heaving. ‘Sooner or later, I don’t know how long we have.’

Dread solidified in her gut, becoming a heavy-oak-supreme-sized lump. ‘What?’

They shook their head helplessly. With Frida’s help, they inched forwards down the corridor, step by painful step. ‘They won’t wait forever,’ they said with a weak shudder.

Frida’s hand tightened on their waist. ‘How long do we have then?’

Dian lifted a shoulder, and bit out, ‘I do not know.’

It was Moth who extrapolated, trying to sound cheerful, ‘Your time is different to ours. Also, it is impossible for anyone to predict what Dian’s cousins will do, and when they will grow bored of waiting.’

Frida heard this with a sinking heart.

Dian chuckled bitterly. ‘And they will be most amused to find I have trapped myself twice inside places that I needed your help to get out of.’

Frida rolled her eyes. No. ‘Without you, I’d still be hammering on that cellar roof.’

‘Without me, you would never have been in that cellar in the first place.’

Frida fell silent. She felt every place where their bodies touched, unnaturally hot.

‘Without you,’ she said, clearing her throat, ‘I might have still been trying to find Forge House, aimlessly lost in the woods. Or worse. Come on Dian, let’s not play this game.’

Dian lifted a shoulder in a miserable shrug. They took a few more shuffling steps before saying, ‘They only sent me in here to punish me.’

‘Punish you for what?’

But their lips tightened, and when Frida snuck a look up at them, she saw shame ingrained in the hard knot between their soft brows. She drew in a shaky breath, and although she had no idea what Dian could possibly have done to warrant such a punishment, anger at those fucking tree fairies roiled through her like fire.

‘Those pricks!’

A spark of disbelief crossed Dian’s face, and then they gave a fragile, surprised laugh as Moth hooted in delight.

‘Yes!’ the spider shouted, and she caught a flicker of him rolling around with his legs in the air. ‘Yes! You are correct, Frida Rose. Many of them are indeed terrible pricks!’

‘Well, screw them,’ Frida muttered forcibly. ‘What do they know? We might be having a great time, drinking wine, telling jokes about what happens when a yew fairy and an oak fairy walk into a bar, getting on like a house on fire.’

At Dian’s baffled expression, she lifted her chin, eyes flashing. ‘Well,’ she insisted. ‘We might! They don’t know. Let them fucking come,’ she ground out. ‘I’ll deal with them.’

Dian’s bafflement turned to awe.

But she didn’t have time to appreciate it, for the next second, another bout of coughing racked them, rattling their chest in a way that made Frida flinch. She and Moth, who’d sobered quickly, exchanged a concerned look as Moth took a flying leap onto Dian’s head. She strongly suspected that if she let go of them, Dian would sink back down to the stone slabs.

‘Come on,’ Frida urged, swallowing a jagged lump in her throat as she half-lugged them down the hall. ‘Let’s see if they’ve got any wine in the fridge, hmm?’

They mumbled something roughly.

‘What?’ She dipped her head to catch their words. From up ahead, she thought she heard a faint sound, like many butterfly wings, but she ignored it.

‘I said,’ Dian breathed, ‘you do not have to carry me, Frida Rose. You are much too short to do it with ease, anyway.’

Frida snorted. Trying to ignore the way they were shivering so fiercely she was struggling to hold them. She was about to make a crack about them not weighing half as much as most of the things she had to carry about on a daily basis. Instead, she found herself saying, ‘But I want to.’