turning back to Ash, “that is the situation. And as I cannot go into the courts any longer, I need someone who can. That’s where you two come in.”
“I cannot just walk into Arcadia,” Ash said. “I will be trespassing, and by law the Summer King may have me executed if we are discovered. You know this.”
“I know, darling,” Lea placated. “But I suspect you’ll be able to come up with something. Especially if you have Master Goodfellow with you.” She smiled and puffed a smoke rabbit at me. “Unless, of course, he is not up to the challenge. Unless he’s afraid of his terrible Summer Queen.”
“Oh, please. Don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing,” I told her, raising an eyebrow. “I’m not dumb enough to fall for that, Lea. Who do you think you’re talking to, anyway?”
“I would think this is right up your alley, darling,” the Exile Queen returned. “Sneak the Winter prince into Arcadia, right under Titania’s nose? Steal something from the bitch queen’s room, only to hand it over to her rival? It has ‘Robin Goodfellow’ written all over it.”
Yeah, it did, didn’t it? This sounded exactly like one of my pranks, and truthfully, under other circumstances, I’d be more than eager. Titania wasn’t fond of me, and the feeling was mutual. Any chance I got to annoy, irritate, or piss off the Summer Queen, I’d jump at the opportunity. It wasn’t that I hated her, she was my queen after all, but she really needed to lighten up. Besides, I’d heard about what she did to Meghan the first time they met, and that needed a little payback. No one turns my Summer princess into a deer and gets away with it, even if it is the Seelie Queen. Even if Meghan would never know that I’d defended her.
Right now, however, I understood Ash’s impatience. The vow he made to Meghan, his promise to return to her, didn’t really have an expiration date, but I figured it would be a long, arduous adventure without all these annoying side quests. We needed to be searching for a certain obnoxious furball, not pranking the Seelie Queen, no matter how entertaining that sounded.
Except, Lea really wasn’t giving us a choice.
“So, if you two could get right on that—” she smiled, waving her cigarette flute at us “—I’d be ever so grateful. When you have the violin, just meet me back here, darlings. I’ll have my spies monitor your progress. But now, you must excuse me. I’m afraid I left Razor Dan in charge of security while I was gone, and I must return quickly before he or his motley eats someone. Good luck, pets! Don’t get yourselves turned into a rosebush!”
Another swirl of glitter and lights, and the Exile Queen was gone.
Ash sighed. “Don’t say anything, Goodfellow.”
“What? Me?” I grinned at him. “Say something? I’m not the type who would point out that, for once, this absurd situation isn’t my fault. Of course, I know better than to make deals with crazy Exile Queens with goddess complexes. And if I did, I would expect them to call in the favor at the worst possible time. But I’m certainly not one to rub it in. That would just be wrong.”
Ash pinched the bridge of his nose. “I’m beginning to regret inviting you.”
“You wound me deeply, Prince.” I laced my hands behind my head, enjoying myself. “Especially since you’re gonna need my help to get into Summer. Don’t think Oberon and Titania won’t notice a Winter prince strolling right into the heart of Arcadia. You’d stick out like an ogre in a china shop.”
He scowled, whether from the seemingly impossible task of sneaking into Arcadia or because I just compared him to an ogre, I didn’t know. “I assume you have a plan?” he muttered, crossing his arms.
I shot him an evil grin and was rewarded by his brief look of trepidation. “Please. Did you forget who you’re talking to, ice-boy? Just leave everything to me.”
Chapter Two
For Oberon Is Passing Fell and Wrath
It was twilight when we crossed the barrier from the mortal realm into the wyldwood. Then again, it was always twilight beneath the wyldwood’s huge canopy. Sunlight couldn’t penetrate the thick branches of the trees rising hundreds of yards into the air. Unlike the vivid brightness of Summer and the frigid harshness Winter, the wyldwood was eternally dark, tangled, and dangerous. It was constantly changing, so you never knew what you’d run into next.
I loved it. Even though I was Summer, this felt more like home than anywhere else.
“Here we are,” I said, stepping beneath a pair of cypresses twisted together to form an arch between the trunks. Around us, the murk of the wyldwood closed in, though a few lone will-o-the-wisps bobbed through the leaves, looking for lost travelers. Thick black briars crawled between trunks, creeping along the ground as they strangled the life from all other vegetation. “Arcadia isn’t far. I would’ve used the trod that takes us through the quartz caverns, but I’m afraid a lindworm has taken up residence since the last time I was there.”
Ash looked around, always alert, and raised an eyebrow. “You do realize you’ve brought us right into the middle of hedge wolf territory.”
Inwardly I winced. I was hoping he wouldn’t notice that small fact. “Well, we’ll just have to sneak through nice and quiet.”
“Hedge wolves don’t have ears,” Ash continued. “They hunt by sensing the vibrations in the ground. And in the air. They’re probably listening to us right now.”
“Do you want to reach the Summer Court or not, princeling?” I challenged, crossing my arms. “This is the quickest way.”
A rustle in a bramble patch drew our attention, and we caught a glint of a baleful green eye as something huge and bristly drew away into the shadows.
“And…there it goes to alert the rest of the pack.” Ash glared at me. “Why do things always happen when I’m around you?”
“Just lucky, I suppose,” I said cheerfully, as we hurried away before the rest of the pack could arrive.
It didn’t go as well as I planned. Hedge wolves were ambush predators, though certainly not the nastiest monsters we’d ever faced. But they were tricky bastards, and had the bad habit of looking exactly like an innocent briar patch until you were right up on them and then boom, you had this big, wolf-shaped bush lunging at your face. We dodged, ducked and slashed our way past the first dozen or so, avoiding the spiky bushes of death that leaped at us with no warning, or lunged out from the briars. Unfortunately hedge wolves also had the audacity to learn from past mistakes, and they started using strategy and group tactics against us.
We stepped into a clearing just as one of the bristly creatures slid into the brambles ahead of us. As we eased forward, tense and wary, four bushes around us sprang to life and charged. Ash and I spun, going back-to-back instinctively as the spiky creatures lunged from all sides. Ash’s sword lashed out, slicing one from the air as I stabbed upward with my dagger, caught a hedge wolf under the jaw and hurled it into its friend. The last wolf met a sudden end on Ash’s blade, but then without warning, another pair of brambles unfurled and lunged, catching us by surprise this time. I felt the spiky body of a huge wolf slam into me, knocking me flat, as the second wolf chomped down on the prince’s sword arm.
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