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“Two?Two?My wit alone is worth at least three—“
“Your wit earns you a minus three. I could list the other minuses, if you like?” She took a swig of their water.
“How many points does my pretty face earn me?”
Juliana spat out her water, and hurled the now empty container at his face.
They didn’t rest long, after the fish were eaten and the fire expunged. They packed up again and resumed their journey, eager to make the most of the light they had left. Hawthorn was aware they’d have to camp outside again, and wasn’t looking forward to that. He’d passed out in the gardens a couple of times during revels, and woken damp and crumpled at dawn. Doubtless whatever haystack or hollow tree Jules found would be equally unpleasant.
It was almost sunset before they stopped, deciding the best they could do was a fallen oak. Jules murmured under her breath about it being far from ideal, but they were running short of daylight to find anything better.
“We could keep going,” he suggested. “There’s still plenty of light left—“
Juliana cast her eyes downwards. “No,” she said, “there isn’t.”
He paused, realising what she meant. He had no idea how mortal eyes responded to the dark, but he supposed she must be half-blind by now. A faerie could spit in a mortal’s eyes to make them immune to most glamours, at least ones of illusion, but no permanent solution remained to alter their other deficits.
“We can’t start a fire, I suppose?”
She shook her head, and he decided to drop it. He felt like he was picking at a scab.
They dined on a handful of berries, a few rubbery mushrooms leftover from breakfast, and a few slices of fish they’d saved. Juliana’s stomach rumbled loudly. It was not a sound faeries were capable of, but his own was far from full.
“Why do you think Unseelie attacked the procession?” Hawthorn asked. It had been bothering him for some time. “They’ve no need to want me dead.”
Juliana shrugged. “Sluaghs attack indiscriminately. They might not have been after you.”
“And if they were?”
“You didn’t hire me for my brains.”
Hawthorn had to admit that was true, although Juliana was far from stupid. He searched for something else to banish the silence with.
“Did you like it here in the woods?”
“Parts of it. I liked being close to nature, liked the silence. Lack of decent food and monsters on my doorstep? Less so.”
“Did you often have monsters?”
She shook her head. “A few times a year.”
“And yet the sluaghs came when they did…”
“I thought we weren’t talking about that?”
“Then whatwouldyou like to talk about?”
“You didn’t hire me for my conversation, either.”
Hawthorn hesitated. “Do you like Faerie?” he asked. It was a question that had been burning inside him for some years now.
Juliana frowned, as though the answer to this was as simple as the colour of her hair, which, given its tendency to change colour in the light, might not have been so simple. “It’s my home.”
“But do you like it?”
“Yes,” she said quietly. “I do. I don’t have anything to compare it to, but the mortal world… it sounds grey and dull. I also hear they have strange views about women wielding the sword, and everything seems… slow.”
“Do you know why your mother went back?”
