Everyone I loved was a monster.
I don’t know how long I stood there, but it must’ve been long enough for Fox to come and find me. “I wondered where you wandered off to,” he said quietly, but still his voice echoed in the cavernous shrine. He came up beside me, and I handed him back his warm wine as he looked up at the stone statue of the Lady of the Wilds.
I wondered where she’d gone, if she wasn’t here in Voryn. I wondered why she’d left all these people defenseless. Was the Lady of the Wilds responsible for the curse? Had she lied to her own people?
And that made me think of the things we believed in Aloriya. The things that had since proven false. Did King Sunder know they weren’t true when he returned from the wood with the crown all those centuries ago? Was Aloriya built on a lie, too?
The music from the bonfire drifted into the small shrine, and the candles danced to the melody. A gentle breeze swept into the shrine and played through Fox’s long hair. Some parts of his skin were still a little red and blotchy from the woodcurse. He looked . . . tired.
I was tired, too.
“What was it like?” I asked.
“Oh, the meat pie was excellent—”
“No.” I laughed a little, and then said more quietly, “The woodcurse.”
He stilled. He didn’t say anything.
I took a deep breath. “When I was nine, I got lost in the wood, and my mother came to save us. She . . . disappeared. With the prince and his guard. But a few days later, she came back. Or at least a part of her did. The wood had taken her. She tried to kill me. So I guess I just wanted to know . . .”
“If she knew it was you?” he guessed.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and nodded.
He took a deep breath, as if steeling himself, and then said, “I was hungry. Not like I am now.”
“Like you pretty much always are.”
He nodded. “Not like that. I was voracious. It was the kind of hunger that burrowed down to my bones. It was all I could think about. I don’t even remember feeling it start. The hunger just was. So, to answer your question . . . she might’ve known it was you, Daisy, but she didn’t care anymore.”
That was the answer I was afraid of. “And you? Did you care?”
He didn’t say anything for a long moment, and then—
“No. I doubt Wen would, either. Seren, though, he was different. He seemed to have control over himself, even if he is controlled by the wood like the rest of the bone-eaters. And that’s why . . .”
“What?”
“I think you did something to him, Daisy. Or your blood did. When he found me in the wood, he was . . .” He breathed out through his nose in frustration. “I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Maybe it was a trick. Seren was good at those when he was alive. He was good then, though. The best squire on the Sundermount, and he knew it, too. Kingsteeth, he was so full of himself, and he always complained about having to babysit us, but . . . we knew he liked hanging out with us brats.”
“Because he got reassigned, but he asked to stay where he was.”
I cast Fox a surprised look. “Yeah—that was a good guess.”
“He seemed like the type,” he replied smoothly, and nudged his head toward the exit of the shrine. “C’mon, let’s go see if we’ve lost our guards yet.” We started out as another woman came in to honor the Lady. She braided a flower into the chains that looped over the stone woman’s arm. The braid was familiar—it wasn’t a style anyone in Aloriya knew, but my mother had taught it to me. I touched the braid in my own hair.
As we made our way toward the bonfire, even more people arrived to join the wedding celebration. The two brides swirled in the middle of the dance, their gowns fluttering behind them in trails of blue and gold silks. Most people lingered on the outskirts of the dance, clapping along to music that reminded me of the ballads played in my village’s tavern in the evenings, when everyone had had just a little too much beer. It reverberated against the stone buildings, and laughter sang across the expanse like shooting stars.
In the middle of the courtyard stood the gigantic bonfire, decorated with beautiful golden chains and feathers laced into ribbons slowly catching fire as the flames climbed higher. The brides spun each other around the fire, joining with the rest of their wedding party.
And the guards were still there.
Annoyed, I returned my attention to the dance—when an idea struck me. “Fox, dance with me.”
He snorted. “Foxes don’t dance.”
“Fine.” I stopped a man with cool, tawny skin and a neatly trimmed beard, in a waistcoat the color of saffron seeds, and asked, “Would you want to dance?”
The man gave a grand smile. “It would be an honor.”
I handed Fox my half-empty cup. He squawked in protest, but the man was already leading me onto the dance floor, and all he could do was watch. The steps were familiar—I moved slowly at first, my feet unsure, but I had been the witness to too many garden waltzes to not catch on quickly. The charming man guided me around the dance floor, and I stumbled after him, but I was laughing nonetheless, and he was gracious enough to correct me when I misstepped. I tried to keep up, staring down at our feet.
Three steps to the left, one back, one over, turn—
On the next spin, the man grabbed my hand again. But his hand felt different, softer, not as callused—
I glanced up, and Fox smirked at me. “Your partner had to move on,” he said almost apologetically. Over his shoulder, I saw that the man was dancing with another partner now. I suspected that he hadn’t changed partners because he’d wanted to.
I laughed. “Were you jealous?”
He inclined his head. “Of course not. I’d suspect that anyone here would love to dance with me. I am, if you haven’t noticed, quite gorgeous. And I’ve just discovered: a fantastic dancer, too.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ugh.”
He positioned one of my hands on his shoulder as his sank to my waist, our other hands clasped tightly together, and gave me a smile so radiant, it took my breath away. I had never seen him smile like that before, wide and genuine, and my heart pounded against my rib cage.
“So what’s your idea, Daisy?” he asked.
I tried to reel in my treacherous heart. “Bring everyone onto the dance floor. Get them all moving. Lose the guards in the packed group of bodies.”
His eyes sparkled. “Create some chaos. I like it.”
Oh dear. I wasn’t sure which thought was worse—that he relished chaos, or that I was becoming more like him. Or, stranger yet, maybe that I was always the kind of girl who didn’t belong trapped inside garden walls.
We spun away from each other, each of us grabbing a new partner in the onlooking crowd. I went for a young child—maybe twelve—and he picked an old woman with a toothless smile. We danced around the bonfire, twirling away from our partners, gathering more people into the mix, and then they went to fetch their own partners, and then they found new partners after that, until the dance floor spun like a colorful hurricane.
And then—I dared to take hold of the hand of one of the guards. She was tall, her hair cut short, a scar on her lip. She wasn’t willing at first, but then she joined in the madness. Her partner quickly followed, and soon they were both swept up.
Everyone was dancing now, and that’s when I felt someone snag my hand and whirl me around. Fox grinned as he caught my other hand and placed it on his shoulder, his on my waist.
“Well, this is chaos,” he said.
I glanced around at all the people laughing and dancing—something that we’d started, but within which we were now anonymous. Which was exactly what I’d hoped. “Good. We should leave before the guards wonder where we are.”
“Must we?” Fox asked.
Time was of the essence, but he held on to me so tightly, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt . . . seen. Like this.
“Okay,” I relented. “One more dance.”
We followed the flow of the dancers around the bonfire again. The waltzes at the castle in Aloriya were not like this. Those were stuffy and regal, and the dignitaries rarely looked to the edge of the garden, where I stood. But here I was dancing with a boy who was handsome in a way only wild things could be, as if he wanted to be bigger than his skin instead of wanting to fit inside it.
As the song ended, we held each other close. I wanted to let go—really, I did—but I couldn’t bring myself to. I didn’t want the moment to end, because at that moment, I didn’t feel like a girl who lived inside a walled garden.
There were no walls here.
And that frightened me, because this was fleeting. This was not permanent. Like a match flaring in the dark, this was only a flash, here and soon gone. I wanted to hang on to it. This feeling. He was a fox, and I was a gardener’s daughter, and there were no stories for enchantments such as us.
He leaned into me, pulling me gently against him, and I let him, my fingers falling into the curls of hair behind his ears. He was going to kiss me. I’d never been kissed before. I closed my eyes and waited for his lips to find mine.
28
The Forest of the Forgotten
Fox
“WE . . . SHOULD PROBABLY get going,” I said, pulling away from Daisy. Her eyes flew open. At first she looked confused; then something flickered in her eyes, and she looked away.
I had . . . almost kissed her.
She blinked rapidly and glanced around for the guards. They were caught up in the next song. “Right,” she agreed, but her voice was distant.
I’m sorry, I wanted to say, though I wasn’t sure what I was sorry for. That I hadn’t kissed her? She had to know that we couldn’t. That it would change everything. She was who she was, and I was . . . someone who would not last. I was a fox. Not a person.
The orchestra struck up another song, and the people around me jumped into motion again, but it was as if I didn’t remember the steps anymore. It was too loud, and the bonfire too bright. My skin tingled as if little tiny ants raced up my body—my bones jittery. I knew the feeling—it was like I was being hunted. My heart thundered in my ears.