Page 73

“It’s fine,” I’d whispered, needing to put my foot down even while trying to not make a scene. “You don’t need to get me something just to placate me. I’m not a stranger to being bounced.”

Callum frowned, but the shopkeeper’s eyes were bright with excitement, and it was enough to have my defense mechanism wilting just a bit. Hesitantly, I’d held my hand out and allowed her to arrange the bracelet on my wrist and the ring on my finger, adjusting the small chains of silver that connected the two along the back of my hand until she was satisfied.

It wasn’t until we were outside, walking toward another building on the opposite side of the town from the inn, that he’d frowned, his eyebrows drawing close.

“Bounced?” he’d asked. “What does that mean?”

“Oh. Um…” I wrapped the cloak tighter around me to give me something to do. “It’s… a crude way of saying being sent to another place to live.”

His lips had flattened, but he hadn’t asked anything else.

Now I watched in a forcibly detached interest as the diffused light of the sun, hidden mostly behind thin, light gray clouds, set the blue stones sparkling. The shopkeeper had been right when she said color went well with my skin. It drew out the cool undertones, turning my skin from a pasty, papery white to a soft alabaster, almost like marble. I wrapped my arm around my stomach, keeping my hand tucked under the cloak and out of sight. I wanted to throw up from the mess that was happening just under the surface, all the memories twisting into a vicious mass impossible to swallow down whole.

Phillip’s calm instruction pulled me from my spiraling.

“We’ll need to condense down to two across,” he said.

When I lifted my gaze, the entire group was adjusting around Callum and me, the frozen central point around which everything else was reorienting. The sun was low on the horizon, only another few hours before it disappeared completely, though my internal clock might be off on that length of time.

The prairie grasses surrounding the road had given way to small copses of trees with white bark like an aspen. Between them, low-growing bushes spread along the ground, their branches equally bare as the trees. In the distance, maybe a few hundred feet in front of us, was an entire forest.

How long had I been ruminating to miss the fact we were approaching an entire forest?

The trees were tall, at least fifty or sixty feet, their branches spreading wide and flat rather than round, the leaves a narrow oval. And they were green. A bright, vivid green even in the middle of winter. Moss clung to the trunks, coming into greater clarity with each foot of distance we closed. There was a clear line of demarcation, of where the rest of the land ended and this forest started. Where the white-barked trees suddenly stopped and the bright green leaves rustled in the light breeze. Those low-lying bushes continued into the new trees, though they were no longer bare, their leaves a deep purple that seemed to swallow the light. One bush grew right over the invisible line. The portion that grew inside the forest was shining, the leaves fresh and plump like it was a summer day, while the portion lining the road between the last copse of white-barked trees was as bare as the rest we’d passed.

From what I could remember of Sloane’s deep dive into them, this place had all the hallmarks of a temperate rainforest. Except even those went dormant in the winter months.

What was this place?

“What is this?” Monique’s question was so near to mine, I thought for a moment I’d actually muttered the words. She rode a few rows in front of me now, her horse tied to Arden’s with the same sensible rope and knot that held Elyssian to Callum’s horse.

Arden reached across the distance separating them, circling her wrist for a long time.

“The Zimerus Forest,” Phillip said. He rode along the edge of the road in the small gap left between where Vincent and Amaria rode just in front of us and our own horses. His gaze was even more sharp than typical, his hand on a dagger he kept on his thigh at all times. “It is a place held by neither Tousir nor Marish though it separates the kingdoms. It has been here for over a millennia, long before either nation formed.”

Nerves tightened my chest as we neared the demarcation line. As Elyssian stepped into the forest proper, they morphed into a true anxiety that stole my breath. The air was heavy and stagnant, the way it had been on Magefall. That same disturbed, heavy feeling was in it, too, though not quite so pronounced. This made the hair on the back of my neck stand up rather than that all-consuming knowledge we didn’t belong like it had been in the other forest.

I twisted my hands into the sweater I wore under the cloak, trying to keep my strange reaction under wraps. Even still, with each step we took deeper into the trees—the sunlight becoming a dappled thing through the canopy that held a green tint—my stomach twisted and my throat burned with panic-induced tears. I forced myself to breathe heavily through my nose, counting until the air burned in my lungs, before blowing it out. My hair flicked in a sudden breeze, lifting off my shoulders. Elyssian’s mane did the same, swirling in the disturbed air.

Phillip frowned as his gaze caught on me. The color drained from his face, and his hand tightened on the dagger. Amaria twisted in her saddle, her eyes landing on me without error. Callum frowned, his eyebrows drawn low enough they pulled on his scars.

“Amethyst?” he asked, no more than a whisper. “What’s wrong?”

Any words caught in my throat as the panic grew larger, a heavy band around my ribs until I truly couldn’t breathe. The scent of stale oranges swirled around me, caught in the same sudden breeze.

Callum’s touch on my thigh was soft, but I barely felt it. The world seemed farther away, like I was hearing and seeing everything in a long tunnel, the light growing more distant rather than less. It had been years since I’d had a true panic attack, and I resented that it was happening now with so many near-strangers watching every second of it.

The touch on my leg disappeared, and then there was a heavier touch on my chin, turning my face. Callum’s face was blurred. It took me too long to realize it was from tears that had lined my lashes. I blinked them away. I didn’t cry, and certainly not in front of people. The urge to lash out and slap away his touch roared up in me. My hands shook with the desire even as the last remaining logical part of my brain reminded me it would be more than just foolish to slap these people’s prince in front of them. Instead, I twisted my hands deeper into the sweater. The small stones caught on the fabric, but I didn’t dare try to get them free.

“Amethyst?” Callum’s voice was softer, like he was trying to not spook an animal.

It took me a long minute to realize the group had stopped moving. He’d guided his horse closer to me, too, his knee brushing mine. His grip on my chin was heavy without being hard enough to bruise. Wisteria surrounded me in a wave, and some of the strange panic lessened.

Even so, my breath sawed out of me, my chest heaving with the harsh pants. His gaze didn’t waver. No one said a word, even the horses mostly still. Phillip was even more pale, his eyes wide. Heath had crept forward from his own position behind Phillip, his dagger drawn and held limp against his thigh.

I swallowed heavily, trying to shove down whatever the fuck that anxiety attack was.

“You all right?” Callum asked. His thumb traced my jaw, and I shivered. My hair stirred again, as did his. His lips flattened.