Page 12 of Lily of the Valley

"Stay there!" Scout bellowed.

Minutes later came the sound of someone running through the forest, rustling branches and shrubs and detritus—and then Scout burst into view. "What in the hells are you doing all the way out here!" Surging in close, she grabbed Lily's arms and shook her so hard her teeth rattled.

"Unhand me!"

Scout let her go with one more good shake. "Why are you out here? If you needed to hide, fine, but that doesn't require getting yourself lost all over again. Why are you so stubbornly determined to venture off alone?"

"Because there's no one to come with me!" Lily bellowed, startling some nearby birds. "Because they're all dead! Fucking dead! Because the only person I know right now thinks I'm a stupid twit she can't wait to be rid of! Leave me alone and stop acting like you care when we both know you don't."

Turning sharply away, shoulders so tense they ached, Lily kept her eyes on the forest floor, looking for any sign of the forgotten road. She gritted her teeth against the pain in her feet that she'd been able to ignore until now.

A hand curled around her arm, and Lily barely bit back some choice crude words as Scout forced her to turn around. "Stop touching me unbidden," she said with all the frost of a furious queen.

"You're right, I'm sorry," Scout said, which was so unexpected that Lily remained where she was. "I'm also sorry for being so hard on you, Your Highness."

Ice filled Lily's veins. "What— Why would you call me that?"

Scout sighed and ran a hand through her short hair, making it stick up in a way that softened her somehow, made her look approachable and, though Lily would never say so aloud, adorable. "Those people you were hiding from were citizens—milliners, though that scarcely—anyway, they talked about the strife and upheaval in the city, how many nobles are missing, rumored dead, or have new and greater authority because of the so-called Regent. They say there are also rumors that the crown princess is still alive, and the Regent is desperately trying to find her."

Lily pinched her eyes shut, but tears trailed down her cheeks anyway. Her father. Her friends. Her people. When she trusted herself to speak, she opened her eyes and lifted her chin. "I am not a princess. I am a queen."

"Of course, Your Majesty," Scout said with a faint smile. "My apologies."

"How did you know the missing princess was me?"

"The pieces weren't hard to put together once I had them all. None of that explains why you're in the middle of the forest trying to get yourself killed. You can't reclaim your throne if you can't walk properly."

"What does it matter to you, woodcutter?"

Scout dragged her hands down her face in a display of frustration that frankly seemed unwarranted. "If I absolutely did not care, I would have left you to die. Instead I followed that stupid fox—"

"A fox! You saw a fox?"

"Why do you ask it like that?"

Lily clapped her hands together. "Because that's how I got all the way out here! I was hiding at the tree line, and it came out of the bushes and indicated I should follow it. Dark red and gold, right? Bigger than usual."

Scout huffed. "Its name is Reynard, and he's the single most irritating creature in the world." She folded her arms across her unfairly ample chest. "What did he lead you to? Or was he simply leading you away?"

"To something," Lily said softly. "I— When I was running away, before the last of my— my guards fell protecting me, one of them said that I was to get to the ruins, that Sergeant Josiah had a plan. I had no idea what that meant…until now."

"You can't mean the old castle."

"You know it?" Lily asked.

"I know of it, but that's all. Hard to live in the Laughing Forest and not hear about the castle or find occasional hints of it."

"Like a road carved with roses?" She moved back to the bit of road the fox had shown her, wincing with every step, and dropped to her knees to trace the rose she'd found earlier. "Like this?"

Scout crouched down opposite her, balancing with careless grace on the balls of her feet. "Yeah, I've seen these all over the forest. Used to be several roads to the castle, supposedly, stretching out across the entire continent. There were bandits back then, so legend has it, who would rob all the wealthy who traveled to or from the castle."

"Probably bandits now."

"None that last terribly long," Scout replied. "The forest doesn't tolerate it." She stood up and brushed off her hands. "For now, it's time to go home. There's chores to finish, your feet need proper rest now you've undone all the healing achieved so far, and no good comes of being out here after dark."

"I have to get to the ruins!"

"You need to be able to stand without falling over, Your Majesty," Scout said shortly. "You're a queen? Act like it. Now, it's time to go." Before Lily could even draw breath to reply, Scout bent, scooped her up, and strode off.

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