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The next morning, they packed up, cold and hungry, and continued on their way. By Juliana’s estimation, they could reach the capital by midday. There was little food to be found, nothing but a few nuts and another handful of black, bitter berries. Juliana ate hardly anything at all.
Not long before midday, when glimpses of the Acanthian spires glittered in the distance when the trees moved a certain way, Juliana stopped.
“Do you hear something?” she asked, sword drawn.
Hawthorn hesitated. The wind blew through the trees, the undergrowth murmured—sounds of birds and squirrels scuttling, nothing more.
“No?” he offered.
Juliana nodded, continuing.
A low sound pricked at his eardrums, a slight, whispered hissing.
He stopped, staring at a patch of ferns.
A small green snake slithered through them.
Juliana stiffened.
“It’s all right,” he told her. “It’s just a grass snake—“
Juliana bolted into the trees ahead.
Thinking that they were under attack, that there was an enemy he did not understand, he fled after her. His heart sped in his chest.
The path was abandoned. There was nothing, no one—
“Juliana?”
He couldn’t see her, but footsteps showed that she’d passed this way. He followed them until the trees panned out, and found her sitting on a log, panting hard.
“Jules?”
She didn’t speak.
Brow furrowed, he dropped down by her side. She was shaking like a leaf, pale and sweating. Was there another snake he hadn’t seen—a venomous one which had struck her with its bite?
“Jules, talk. Are you injured?”
She shook her head.
“Then what’s wrong?”
“I… I’m…” She swallowed. “Promise not to tell?”
“I’m not making that promise until I know what it is I’m consenting to!”
She took a deep breath, slow and steady. “I’m… I’m terrified of snakes.”
“What?”
“Snakes. I can’t stand them. Something about the way they move just… I can’t.”
“You’re afraid of snakes.”
“Deathlyafraid,“ she clarified, voice quavering.
