Page 62 of A Court of Sugar and Spice
I drink until the flow stops, and then I rub some of the water that splashed onto my cheeks over my eyelids. After a moment, I’m able to open my eyes, though they still feel puffy.
The creature before me is the strangest I’ve ever seen—human-shaped, but with limbs as delicate as flower stems, pale green and tapered. The body is impossibly slim as well, naked and green-skinned, with no genitals, just pale-green smoothness. The Fae’s long neck rises to a gracefully tapered skull and a face with large eyes and flat features. They remind me of a blend between a greyhound, a praying mantis, and a delicate flower. Wingless, obviously streamlined for running, yet with an unmistakable plantlike quality.
Maybe it’s the ethereal delicacy of the creature that prompts me to speak gently, despite my fear.
“Why did you take me with you?” I ask. “My friends will be worried.”
The creature cocks their head. “Friends? You were alone.”
“My friends were encamped nearby.”
Translucent lids slide over the creature’s large eyes for a moment, then retract. “You will not need your friends. You are mine now.”
“No, I’m not. You cannot claim a living thing, a being with speech and thought. I must go back to my people. I travel in the company of several Fae, and if you do not return me, they will be angry. But if we go back now, they might forgive you.”
“That is not possible,” says the creature. “I need a favor from the Rat King. I was hunting for an appropriate gift for him. Imagine my surprise when I smelled you—so luscious, so human. The perfect offering. The stars have sent me a blessing. I shall gift you to the Rat King, and he will grant my request.”
“No!” I lunge to my feet, but a wave of dizziness hits me, along with a burst of pain in my head. At the same moment, threadlike vines whip out from the creature’s delicate fingertips, wrapping me round and round, over and over, spinning me until I’m completely bound in a cocoon of them. The vines knot themselves tight and detach from their owner’s fingertips.
I feel like a fly, encompassed by a spider’s webbing, and the sensation only worsens when the Fae scoops me up and sets off through the forest again, traveling at a perilous speed. They must have keen eyesight and quick reflexes, because we streak through the forest without hitting so much as a twig.
This time I don’t pass out, since my captor is traveling more slowly. But I almost wish I could sink into oblivion. That would be better than hours of blindingly fast travel, during which I’m utterly helpless, increasingly nauseated, and tormented by dread.
I can’t bear to think how far away we are from camp now. It’s possible no one has yet realized I’m gone. And once they do realize it, they won’t know where to look for me. They won’t know I’m being taken to the last place I want to go.
The court of the Rat King.
18
The moth-girl descends from the sky into the center of camp, the gust of her wings putting out the fire over which Finias was cooking dinner.
“Watch it, Cahren!” he protests.
“I was flying over the forest,” says Cahren in her cottony voice. “Stretching my wings, looking for prey—and I saw the girl. She was taken.”
“Taken?” Finias rises, still holding the pan in which sausage and potatoes are sizzling. “Clara? Was Clara taken?”
“Yes. She was by the stream, and a Racer took her.”
Fin drops the pan and bolts through the trees toward the stream.
“A Racer?” My voice shrills as I chase after him. “What’s a Racer?”
“A species of Fae gifted with incredible speed,” Lir says from behind me. He’s running too, but since he doesn’t have all his Fae abilities, his speed is a match for mine. Finias has outdistanced both of us. Panic spurs me on, my heart thudding with a sick, growing terror.
When we jog up to the bank of the stream, Fin is crouched by two discarded waterskins.
“She’s gone.” He looks up at me, his yellow eyes wide and fractured with panic. “It took her. They must be hours away from here by now.”
“We can’t chase a Racer,” Lir says. “Not with me in this state, and her—” He gestures to me. “There’s no possible way to catch up.”
“What? What are you saying?” I’m shaking, my voice threaded with rage. “We have to go after them. We have to get Clara back!”
Lir turns to me, sorrow in his eyes. “None of us are a match for a Racer, Louisa. She could be anywhere by now. Once I have my powers back, I can find her. I can—”
“She might be dead by then!” I scream. “You said yourself that Faerie is dangerous for mortals. Who knows what that thing might do to her! You have to get her back for me. Youwillget her back.”
“I’ll have the power to find her once my curse is broken.”
