Page 99 of Fae Crown

I didn’t. Unless heading toward Elowyn counted.

Elowyn, however, was unlikely to be deeper in the palace. And that was the only place this tunnel led.

23.DON’T DO ANYTHING STUPID, AND WHY DOES EVERYTHING HAVE TEETH?

ELOWYN

The moon was new. Thus the night was a darkness that enveloped us in what felt like an oppressively clinging embrace. I wanted to break free of its weight but couldn’t.

Most especially, I wanted to break free of the pain that ratcheted along the length of my body with every one of the giant frog’s leaps. The creature was the size of a horse, and each of its bounds jostled me down to my bones, rattling my thoughts loose from where I attempted to coalesce them into a better plan than the vague one Edsel and I had hastily concocted before setting off on this dubious mission with even more dubious odds.

With all the strength I possessed, I clung to the frog’s neck with the same grit that had kept me from sliding to the ground for what felt like long, eternal days but had surely only been hours. Branches whipped at us. Thorns tore at my leathers. Leavesrustled in a hum to all sides of us, and on occasion, water rushed off in the distance. The sunrise was still far away.

My consciousness wavered as we traversed what seemed like forest and more forest. I asked to stop countless times. The response was always the same: breathless pants from Edsel, who ran alongside the frog on his short, wompa legs, and then an insistence that we couldn’t stop until we were far enough away from the queen and her possible pursuit.

The refusals stung nearly as badly as my many cuts. By that standard, we might never stop. Not when there was no outrunning the queen anywhere in this cursed Mirror World.

I was about to suggest we perhaps portal away from the place. Edsel would be no more excited than I at the prospect of abandoning our loved ones and friends. But wouldn’t it be better to be alive with the chance to return for them once the queen forgot her bloodthirsty obsession with murdering me? Surely our friends would prefer us alive and absent thandead.

But before I could posit my idea, Edsel rasped out a jarring, “Halt.”

Hope bloomed throughout my aching chest. Even the stab wound through my heart had been hurting. My body was too raw, too freshly pieced together.

The frog landed from its leap, gave a final swoop and dip, and finally—fucking finally—the world stilled. “By sunshine,” I groaned against the creature’s back, unable to lift my head. My cheek was possibly fused toits skin. “I never want to move again. I might want to die here … whereverhereis.”

The muscles I had demanded to hold on for so long gave up the fight, going completely limp.

“I’d be careful saying stuff like that if I were you,” piped up a tiny voice that had to be the parvnit’s though I still couldn’t see her. She might have remained invisible, I couldn’t tell; the night was the darkest I’d seen since my time in the Sorumbra. For an instant, I wondered if we might have somehow entered the Wilds, but no. They edged the Mirror World, claiming the farthest outskirts of the clans, weeks of travel on horseback from the royal city of Embermere.

“My ma always said you’d better be well careful what you wish for,” said the voice, even closer now.

It was good advice. I still didn’t want to move for the foreseeable future.

“‘Cause you might just get it,” the parvnit finished.

I grunted noncommittally. “Maybe I should get to wishing the queen would die, then.”

“If only it worked like that,” she said, wistfully.

With my mouth already open to ask Edsel for help getting down since my bladder suggested I did need to move after all, the frog bunched quickly into its forelegs, then reared. Though I scrambled to hold on, my hands and arms refused to obey now that I’d released them, and I slid down its back and onto the ground. Landing on my butt, I crumpled into a heap of abused body with a deflated “Hmm.”

I couldn’t even summon the energy for someproper outrage. “You could’ve waited for me to dismount,” I told the frog, the accusation watered down by my mumbling.

The creature bounded away.

“Where’s it going?” I asked. As much as I’d absolutelynotenjoyed the ride, I was equally certain it was a far better solution than my running alongside Edsel in my current condition.

“Itis aranucu,” answered Edsel. “And he’s likely going to relieve himself or to drink from the stream, or maybe he spotted a rabbit.”

“Toeat?” I asked, slightly alarmed to discover my steed was possibly carnivorous. With all the open cuts I still sported, I probably smelled strongly ofmeat.

When Edsel didn’t immediately respond, I repeated, “To eat the rabbit, you mean? As in, the ranucu has teeth?” I gulped.

“‘Course he’s got teeth,” Edsel muttered, but he sounded distracted.

“I can’t see a damn thing,” I complained as I untangled my legs and flopped them out in front of me. “Can you do one of those glowy light thingies, like Pru does?”

“Alumoon? ‘Course I can,” Edsel said.

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