Page 37 of The Girl in the Forest

I shuddered at the pure threat and forced every bit of faille aggression I had into resisting him. “We need to read that book. Why should I risk blowing myself up with corrupted magic because you refuse to be reasonable?”

He cocked his head to one side, predatory—oh, the enemies we could be without even trying. “Did the book blow your mother up, Noa?”

I met him eye-to-eye. “No. But Aine said it took two to read it.”

“Two… what?” His teeth snapped.

“Failles,” I said. “Two people with equal energies.”

“Then Noa asks if there are more failles.” Mace was unyielding as he held Grayson’s gaze. “And you ask if Noa’s energy is equal to yours. Precise enough for you?”

“She wants to do this,” Fallon added. “She’s strong. What other choice is there after the attack on the Carmag? If that book can help us, we have the obligation to read it.”

I stiffened, unwilling to let them fight my battles for me. “I’ll go no matter what you say. By myself, if that’s my only option. You can’t lock me in.”

For an instant, I thought Grayson considered the idea. Then he held the cognac to his lips, swallowed. Nodded.

“The witches it is.” But I grew uneasy when he stared at me with those bi-colored eyes, and said, “Let’s hope they’re as easy to wilt as the roses.”

CHAPTER 11

Noa

In that one statement, I heard the end of our truce and the beginning of hostility. I could not imagine what the ancient kings did when their queens rebelled, other than strip away their wolves and banish them. As for the failles who came after—the vows of protection became battles for dominance and control.

But as I sat on the boat dock the following morning, what I felt was relief. No more worries over Grayson’s reaction. I knew, now. We were no different from those ancient couples, bound by sin and obligation.

I’d answered the question about being a savior or a weapon when I nearly burned down the forest.

Whether Grayson could control my wild abilities, when I couldn’t, had also been proven. Multiple times. But Grayson would not have his advantage for long. I would read. Learn. Train on my own. Ask the witches for what I needed and say I was fulfilling our bargain.

Because if the King of the Forest could change the rules, then so could I, and under my new rules, I’d do whatever I wanted—although what I wanted first wasn’t possible.

According to Fallon, my witch visit wasn’t happening until Grayson returned. He’d conveniently disappeared within minutes after our meeting ended—some urgent need to intimidate Mosbach.

Fallon said he was worried about spies. There’d been rumors while he was away that the attacks on Carmag were a distraction. Possibly a cover while new spies slipped into place.

I believed her because it was an argument I couldn’t win.

Just like the argument I had with myself over Grayson. When I couldn’t sleep at night, I thought of everything except him. I refused to reach for the comfort in a reeking shirt. When I wandered through the house, wrapped in a blanket, I wasn’t doing it to see if he was there.

I never hoped, not even for a second, that I was not alone.

When I became impatient, I focused on the healing I could do. Every day, I went with Leo to visit the old wolves, more cautious this time about the flow of energy. I tested my syphoning ability, my energy reserves. How to release the heat without leveling everything I touched—although the day I flattened an entire field of wildflowers had me tipping my head toward the sky and shouting to the Green Man, “Happy now?”

He didn’t answer—which made my question ridiculous, that I’d even asked it. I missed Caerwen, how she taught me every day, and we’d laughed at the dirt on our faces. The water soaking a bathroom. She told me the more I used magic, the more it would use me, and all magic came at price that wasn’t always what I thought.

Even Grayson’s black sigil came with lifelong strings, not that it worked right now—so it baffled me, why I missed that hateful little twitch beneath my skin. Or the way Grayson would listen in on my thoughts. How his shoulders would lift, or his lips tighten when he didn’t like what he heard.

But he’d stopped listening. At the end of our disastrous inner circle meeting, in those moments before he walked away, I’d thought every nasty word I’d ever called him… bastard… more.

He hadn’t reacted.

And that, too, had been a passing grief, a shooting star in the vastness of a midnight sky.

I missed the way we’d been, playing in a crumbling watchtower, looking for the passageway that changed my life. Only the two of us, together against the world. Or so it had seemed to me, when he turned, smiling with an open delight he’d never revealed before. As if he also found relief from the loneliness.

What I needed to do was adjust to what we had now. Open hostility. A conflict we avoided through distance. I didn’t see a path for us except plunging forward into disaster, and I reminded myself of that fact as I jogged through the trees, following my usual path.

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