Page 12 of The Girl in the Forest

She shook herself as if realigning something. “The spells are all tangled and frustrating with teensy, hidden knots. You need to be careful. One wrong move and—poof. The magic takes your hand off.”

“How old?” Out of everything she said, I keyed in on how old? I already knew the book was centuries old. Grayson told me that much. But Aine was talking about magic taking a hand off, and I remembered how the book made me chase it through the pocket, then glued my fingers to its surface.

Maybe I’d gotten off easy and hadn’t known it.

Aine’s smile widened. She was standing in the middle of a white-graveled path as if waiting for me to stop thinking and pay attention.

“It’s exciting, isn’t it? Realizing you might read a book written by a queen? One of the originals, who’d had a wolf before her king stripped it from her. Not one of those pretenders who followed. The secrets to be uncovered… and with you and your mother, we were so very close… oh, well,” Her shoulders lifted in a show of elegant defeat I didn’t believe for an instant. “No crying over spilled milk.”

“Perhaps there’s another faille out there.”

“Wouldn’t that solve our problems? I’ll have to ask Fee.”

She fell silent, as did I, while the tinkling water in the fountain continued with an unchanging rhythm. Ripples spreading across the pool had a perfect symmetry. When I looked down at my empty hand, I could have sworn I’d passed through the magic with my bow, but it was nowhere to be seen. Then I chewed on my lip, pressed down on the sore spot. There was no pain.

As a last test, I picked a flower from a nearby bush. The petals remained supple between my fingers, which meant Aine had deliberately crushed the flowers she’d plucked. Perhaps a sign of anger, or another trait of nymphs. Oblivious to their strength.

Cautiously, I inhaled the fragrance, sweet like honeysuckle… but the minute I thought of roses, the scent changed. Then I thought of pine trees. The scent shifted again, and I wrinkled my nose.

“This is lovely,” I said, as if I’d noticed nothing strange.

Aine beamed. “I’m so glad you like it. I cultivated that species. Took three decades here to get it right. Nearly a century, if I’d tried it on the outside.”

I strolled around the rim of the fountain. “How does that work—three decades being nearly a century?”

“Well, when you first arrive, time is more like what you’re used to. But the longer you stay in the wrinkle, the faster time moves on the outside, and if you wait long enough, everyone you know will be dead when you go back.”

I flinched.

Her mouth formed a perfect pout. “There I go again. Forgive me. I don’t mean to hurt, but who doesn’t want the chance to start over? Make better choices? It’s worth thinking about.”

I gazed up at what she’d told me was the real sky, but I wondered at the perfection. “I’ve lost track of time since everything is so beautiful. How long have I been here?”

“An hour or so.”

I started to relax.

But Aine put a hand on my arm. “I’m sorry, dear, but they’ve already moved on, the pack, your dread lord. While we’ve been talking, five days have passed. They agreed you were innocent where the creatures were concerned, so there’s no need to go back to defend yourself. Everyone’s gone home. Gone on with their lives. But maybe we can get Fee to ask your dread lord to give him the book. Magic like that is too dangerous to be left with wolves so close to the human world.”

I turned to hold Aine’s gaze. Her eyes were nymph-black, tilted at the outer corners, and I felt more wolf-like than ever in my life.

“I’m not sure if the book survived,” I lied, surprised by the ease. But I was part of the alpha’s inner circle, and I plucked at the leathers I wore. Inhaled the lingering traces of smoke clinging to my skin. I remembered the fires. Arrows arching through the air. Flaming funeral boats floating on a starry lake. My goodbye to Halwyn. Catrina.

The darkness that still churned inside me.

I held on to those scents, memories, sensations when I said, “Grayson stored it in some archive. He didn’t say where. But I thought it was in Azul, down in a basement with all the other dusty books. Creatures overran the town. Buildings burned, others were plundered, and fighting caused significant damage.”

“A pity if the building was damaged.” Aine’s smile was quick and tight-lipped, as if she knew I knew the book was indestructible and had lied about it. “We can always hope for a miracle. Ah… here she is. Effa… come and meet Noa.”

The Queen of the Forest clapped her hands with enough innocent excitement to make me doubt my caution. Perhaps I was seeing normal nymph expressions, but thinking in human terms, because when she turned, her face glowed with the warmth of a setting summer sun.

“I know you two will become fast friends. Come, come.”

CHAPTER 4

Noa

Effa’s mahogany skin took on a rosy glow in the light, while her hair was the color of coal, bound at the crown of her head with a string of smooth pink stones. From there, her black hair became a wild fountain of dyed-red curls that bobbed every time she moved. She was a meadow nymph, she said, and she’d lived in the wrinkle for a time longer than two centuries on the outside.

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