Page 77 of Defy the Fae

I hold up my hand, shutting them the hell up. I need this. I have to feel this, to know what it’s worth for my kid, for Juniper, for this forest, for all of them. I need to face it and remember.

They wait as the aftereffects unspool through me. At one point, a snout nudges my arm. Sylvan must have shifted to a smaller size and stashed herself in the recesses until the fighting had ended. But now, she appears in her normal height and nuzzles me until I run my palm over her fur.

After that, we collect the fallen and set them to rest beneath the awning of a tree, where they fade into nothing. Then I swing myself onto Sylvan’s back and say in a voice chafed by sandpaper, “Let’s go.”

Cove had been right, and so had my woman. The wild’s topography has morphed in places, turning a gully into a chasm too wide to spring over, plus the western fringes of The Bonfire Glade have filled with an impassable overgrowth of stinging nettles.

We reach the margins of The Seeds that Give by late afternoon. The passage is barely recognizable with thorn vines roping through the place, so coiled and stocky none of us would be able to strap our arms around the stems fully. Our only choice is to split into pairs, to find a way around the brambles and signal one another once we’ve located an outlet.

Cerulean and Lark take to the sky, blending in with the clouds. Cypress and Foxglove go west, and I ride east with Sylvan.

Two hours later, the deer and I take a break. While she grazes, I round a corner and halt in the gap of a fern thicket. My brows furrow at the sight of Cypress and Foxglove bickering inside a glen laced in fronds.

“I’m telling you, we’re going in circles,” Foxglove gripes under her breath.

“And I am telling you, that is the point,” Cypress argues, staring down his nose at the female. “There is a pattern in the thorns, which I suspect is obscuring a channel that we can pass through. The more we retrace our steps, the more the pattern makes itself clear.”

“Hogwash, centaur. I enjoy illusions as much as the next Fae, but there’s no way a path is hidden in those brambles. They’re as thick as your eyebrows.”

“Leave my eyebrows out of this debate, tiny nymph.”

“Whoooo are you calling tiny?”

I fold in my lips, muffling a chuckle. I’ve got to hand it to Foxglove. As much as I hate her, the female’s got a whipcord tongue like Lark. Plus, it’s funny watching someone other than myself exasperating the centaur.

Foxglove folds her arms over her breasts. “I’m curvy and tall for a nymph.”

He mirrors her pose. “But not for a centaur.”

“Whatever. It still doesn’t make me tiny. I’m not Juniper.”

“No one is Juniper.”

“Such fondness for the mortal,” Foxglove marvels. “Though, I guess I’d be more surprised if I were talking to a covetous faun, not a dignified equine. You don’t sound remotely jealous. How do you manage that?”

I feel my eyes slit. What the fuck does that mean?

Cypress steels himself, yet apprehension twitches through his features. “I cannot fathom what you’re implying.”

“How nimble you are,” Foxglove praises. “You can’t fathom because, technically, I haven’t voiced anything specific yet. Nice way to lie without lying, but I think you understand me clearly. Your satyr might be ignorant, but I’m a nymph, and I’ve seen you two together plenty of times, as if friendship is still enough for you.”

Despite whatever she’s referring to, Foxglove’s compunction finally gets the better of her. “Anyway, we’re wasting time.”

But when she turns to leave, Cypress’s words stop her. “How would you recognize such ties, when you have never earned a true friend in your immortal life?”

Foxglove’s bare feet pause. Hurt creases her profile as she rounds on him. “Maybe not. But as the nymph who witnessed you barrel into The Herd of Deer when I had Puck trapped with Juniper in a Fae ring, it became pretty clear. I saw your face—that ferocious expression because your satyr was in trouble. That wasn’t the look of a friend protecting a friend.”

Cypress bares his teeth. “He is notmysatyr.”

“No, he isn’t. Puck is Juniper’s. So I repeat: You hide the effects of that fact remarkably well, considering.”

“Considering what?”

“Considering you’re in love with him…what?” Foxglove squints at Cypress in confusion, then follows the sudden direction of his gaze, which has landed on me.

18

I stand on the fringes, watching them. Foxglove’s words take a minute to penetrate my skull and root themselves into my brain. Even then, it’s as though they’re speaking in a language I’ve never heard.

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