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The patchwork knight angled to the side, trying to draw the boar away. The boar never so much as looked at him. It stared only at Guinevere.
The patchwork knight rushed it. Finally, the boar reacted, lunging its head and great tusks toward the knight. The knight leapt over the blow, rolling once on the ground before jumping to his feet and plunging his sword into the boar’s neck. It let out a horrible squealing scream, then swiped its tusks against the patchwork knight, throwing him.
Its focus was immediately back on Guinevere. It no longer ran. It stepped purposefully and measuredly toward her. It moved not like a beast, but like a hunter.
Like a person.
“Who are you?” Guinevere asked.
The boar lifted its head, turning so it could fix one red eye firmly on her. And then it stopped as the knight’s sword drove straight through its neck, severing the connection between head and body. The gleaming red light in its eye dimmed, and the boar fell, twitching. Then it went still.
The patchwork knight yanked his sword from the creature.
Guinevere stumbled backward, tripping on a root and sitting down hard on the ground. She stayed there, staring at the dead creature. Not wanting to touch it. Needing to touch it. She crawled to it, resting a hand on its now-still flank.
Berries. Mushrooms. Sunlight. Mates. Wary avoidance of predators. But then—there—something older. Something darker.
Something foreign.
She felt it curling beneath what the boar had been, seeping through it, poisoning it. Taking control. It was the same thing that had nearly killed Sir Tristan. And then it turned, focusing, toward—
Guinevere yanked her hand free, scrambling back. Whatever had taken the boar was still there. It had seen her. It knew her.
The patchwork knight wiped his sword clean on the boar’s flank, then sheathed it. He grimaced, holding his side. The boar had hit him hard and he wore no armor. Guinevere could not quite make sense of the knight. He was different. Without his armor, he—
“You are a woman,” Guinevere gasped. That was the secret. Not a fairy. A woman.
“And I am bleeding,” the patchwork knight said. She lifted her red-coated hands from her side. Guinevere rushed to the knight and peeled back her tunic. The knight hissed in pain.
There was the faintest tickle against Guinevere’s arm, and then a sting. She looked down to see an elegantly sinister black spider with its fangs embedded in her arm. She brushed it away, leaving two tiny pinpricks of red circled by white. The white spread, and turned purple as she watched.
“Oh,” she said, and then darkness claimed her.
* * *
“She should have woken up by now.”
“Keep going. There, not too much. Ailith, you next. If you start feeling dizzy, stop.”
“What did this?”
“I have never tasted such darkness. And I kissed your brother once.”
“Girls. We need to focus.”
“Can I help?”
“No. Save your strength.”
The voices pulsed in and out as though heard from a great distance. Everything hurt, but the pain was dulling from a lightning-bright tempest to a punishing rainstorm. Guinevere felt fingertips at her hairline, smoothing stray hairs back from her forehead. And she felt something else—soft but insistent—on her arm.
“Spider,” Guinevere whimpered.
“No, dear. The spider is gone. We are taking care of you.”
Her eyelids protested, but she cracked them open. The room was dark, her vision blurry. Someone was sitting next to where she lay on a cot. And someone else was—
“Sucking on my arm?” Guinevere tried to sit in shock but was unable to move.
