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Was he alright?
My breaths were shallow as I sat alone in the dark, wondering what he was doing at this moment. I had no idea what time it was exactly—the forest had grown pitch black the moment the sun set and in this pressing darkness, every minute felt like an hour. Was he eating dinner? Was he alone or with his brother? Had he simply gone to bed like it was any other day?
I’d grown to loathe that bed, and that bedroom, and that entire overstuffed and crowded palace. But now I would have given anything to be back there. With him.
When was the last time I’d kissed him? During our lunch in the kingswood? That felt so long ago already. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d told him I loved him. He’d said it to me in the rose garden, when I was still the wolf, so I hadn’t been able to say it back. I should have made sure to tell him one more time before I left.
I shouldn’t have left without speaking to him first. I shouldn’t have done something so cruel.
Before I even realised what I was doing, I was rising to my feet. My legs were trembling wildly, the rustle of my clothes against the tree trunk and my boots in the dead leaves sounding disturbingly loud in the void that was the forest around me.
This had been a mistake. I had to go back.
An inhuman sound came from opposite me, those orange eyes even more alert as they stayed locked on me. I ignored them, feeling along the tree trunk as I turned and took a wary step forward, until my hand slipped off into space and I stumbled briefly before righting my footing.
Each step felt endless. I was unsteady without anything to cling to, my arms outstretched and ready to grab the next tree just so it didn’t feel like I was stepping into emptiness. But now that I was moving, heading back—I hoped—in the direction I’d come, I couldn’t stop.
I had no energy left to shift into some nocturnal creature that would let me move much quicker and see much better. I’d escaped seelie as the blackbird, but had barely had time to land unsteadily—landing on only one leg was going to take some getting used to—before I was shifting back. I had simply lain there on the forest floor, panting for breath for long moments, completely drained of energy. I hadn’t slept in two full days, and it felt like I was relearning the skill of shifting forms. I’d forgotten how taxing it had been as a boy, every time my mother forced me to change into something new.
Of course, those forced shifts had been especially painful. Her use of my true name to do it meant my body had been compelled to obey, despite my having no frame of reference for the animals she’d demanded I become. I could still remember the agony of my bones popping, lengthening, shortening, twisting as she ordered me to change into a crocodile before I even knew what a crocodile looked like. Or a panther. Or a muntjac. I could still remember screaming as she and Balor watched impassively while my body contorted on the floor, while I pleaded for her to stop.
I could still remember her cold voice, completely unaffected by my begging. “Your traitorous pig of a father could become whatever he wanted. If you can’t even do that, you’re more worthless than I first thought.”
I still didn’t know for certain why she had been so determined to have me become such a skilled spiritsmith. I suspected that my resulting abilities weren’t the end goal for her, despite them allowing me to go mostly undetected when she sent me out to spy on and slaughter Folk.
No, I thought she’d had an ulterior motive. And it had worked. She’d broken me.
She had trained me like a dog.
I almost let out a hysterical laugh as I stumbled forward into darkness. Why had I been so defiantly angry at the thought of being turned into a pet and nothing more? It was what I was good at. It was what I’d been shaped into.
Had I even stopped to consider what I would be like as the unseelie king? Was I even capable of making decisions on my own? Or knowing what was good for the unseelie Folk? It wasn’t like I’d ever spoken to many of them. They all despised me. For good reason.
I wasn’t going to be adored or admired as a king, like Ash already was. I was going to be the king they all remembered lurking in the darkness, spying and slitting fae throats. I was going to be the king living all alone in his palace, even more isolated than the Carlin had made us. I would have no caring brother by my side, like Ash did. I would have no trusted staff who chattered cheerfully while delivering my breakfast, like Jora.
I would have no guards I trusted enough to train with. There would be no Sanya there for me.
Now that I was away from seelie, I felt nothing but an utter fool. I had left Ash to become king of a court that already despised me. I had left the only person I loved to live alone in a cold palace, in a role I didn’t even want, just because some monstrous ancient fae squashed into a tiny hut had told me it was my fate.
I’m sorry, I thought desperately, wishing there was a way for Ash to hear it over the distance between us—distance I had created with my cruel, impulsive decision. But I would say it to his face soon. Gods, how pathetic I’d been. I could handle the damn heat. I could withstand it. It wasn’t killing me. I wasn’t really rotting. Why had I been so melodramatic?
“You’re going the wrong way.”
The whispery voice didn’t register at first as I stumbled through the dark, feeling my way between the trees. I dismissed it as the rustle of leaves, perhaps the faint call of a creature searching for its mate or its next meal. I kept stumbling forward, exhausted and miserable and feeling smaller than I ever had.
“You’re going the wrong way.” It came from everywhere that time, still soft and faint like it was being carried on the wind, but reaching me from all directions. As if the entire forest itself was trying to tell me.
I ignored it. They were wrong, anyway—Ash was my path. Ash had always been my path. And I didn’t want to think about some unknown thing standing there in the dark, watching me stumble my way unseeing through the trees. So I ignored it.
My next step had me stumbling, thudding hard onto my knees. I hissed in frustration, trying to stand back up and quickly realising my right foot was trapped by something. Crouching awkwardly, I felt along my boot until my fingers reached the thick, exposed root of a tree arching up from the earth, the toe of my boot wedged beneath it.
Everything felt twice as difficult in total darkness. I wasn’t used to it—usually I could see well in the dark, but this was absolute. Not even a speck of starlight could break through the ancient canopy above me. As I tried to yank my boot free, I briefly wondered what, exactly, those orange eyes had even been reflecting as they had stared at me, but in the next second my attention was diverted.
Because the roots beneath my fingers began to move.
I froze in shock, then reflexively yanked my hand away when I felt a root slither over my fingers. My heart already thudding harder, I tried to jerk my boot free again and again, but it was still stuck. Gritting my teeth, I fumbled over the leather until I found the laces, then hurried to undo my boot so I could get my foot free. I wasn’t waiting around to see what these roots planned to do.
But before I could, there was sudden pressure against the sides of my boot. Then a soft creak as something wormed its way between the sole and the leather.
