Page 41 of The Girl in the Forest

“Look around, Noa. Everything you see—you belong here as much as we do. You have friends here, ready to fight for you. Laugh with you. Fight with you. Ready to search the forest, sleep in the rain. Ready to drink tea with you and read all those faille journals. Ready to stand behind you when you fight with him, ready to stand with him when what he says is true. All you have to do is open your eyes and see us… waiting for you.”

More words from the stoic Mace than I’d ever heard from him. He lunged again, fierce, a warrior I met head-on. I expected him to pause, shrivel beneath the faille energy raging through my veins and into my fingertips the way it had raged with the trees and wildflowers.

Only he didn’t shrivel, and as we parried, my fists beating against his upraised palms, I asked, “What is this?”

“You’re finally seeing.” He smirked, and I was smart enough not to mock his victory. “What you’ve been able to do all along, but were too afraid to try.”

No more arrogance in failing.

Tension dissolved from my throat. Exhaustion slowed my momentum until I stopped fighting, focused on breathing and not panting. “I could have done worse with a trainer than you.”

“You could have had him,” Mace chided as he flicked my braid, which had somehow swung around and was now draped over my shoulder. “But he’s not as cuddly as I am.”

Cuddly was not a word I’d use for either Mace or Grayson, and my training did not end with one session on the path. I met Mace every day to go through a grueling routine. I learned avoidance tactics since I couldn’t morph into a wolf when I wanted.

My goal was not to be captured—the most likely threat I’d encounter because I was valuable.

Everyone wanted to protect themselves by having a faille under their control. I had to worry about rival packs. The nymphs, although they wouldn’t need to capture me, just send the puppy magic and I’d probably do its bidding.

The vampires could be another worry.

We talked about the silver streak in my hair, if I should hide it or not. Mace said to leave it visible. The enemy would recognize my face, but the foot soldiers might hesitate when they saw my hair. They’d know they didn’t stand a chance and let me slip away.

My faille warning system would alert me to any threats. As long as I was never alone, I’d have a fighting chance. I could threaten the enemy by burning a few trees or knocking a few rocks loose—although I’d need to practice more.

The day I dangled upside down in Mace’s cargo net was the day he started teaching me about snares. How to make them, recognize them. Get out of them, if necessary.

He took me to the armory and gave me arrows tipped in wolfsbane, told me not to stab myself because wolfsbane was poisonous to everyone, not just wolves.

I did not find that reassuring.

Then Fallon came to give her fear lecture, a big thing with the Gemini Witches, since they fed off emotions, got drunk on them. Fallon jogged beside me, telling her story, a twelve-year-old girl going into a cave with her pulse thundering.

I couldn’t imagine how she did it, found the courage, but she said fear was a test, and once I realized it, I’d know how to cheat. Buy myself time to think. Mace’s mantra, I thought, which was “don’t react blindly.”

“Courage buys you nothing,” she’d said, because it wasn’t courage the witches wanted. It was tears, self-reproach. Cowardice. I should pretend to be more frightened than I was because then the witches wouldn’t increase their witchy-ness. They liked to argue about impressions, sitting back-to-back. One could not see what the other saw, and that was the bargain: entertain them in exchange for what you wanted.

“Great,” I’d answered, as if bargain-making was how I made a living. “I’ll scream and pull my hair out. Get everything we need.”

“Only if you ask the right question, Noa.”

“Are there other failles,” I said.

“No.” Fallon looked at me. “You ask where is the closest living faille.”

“Precise,” I agreed, breathing hard as we jogged the last mile. For five more days, this was my life. October remained warm after a brief cold snap that turned a few leaves yellow and red. Then Laura arrived on my doorstep with Leticia, Cossa, and Vasha; they were armed with cosmetics, dresses, telling me I was going out that evening and had to look spectacular.

Feeling overwhelmed, I gave in and let them transform me the way they had for the Night of the Beacons. Tonight, Laura said, was a full moon night—and everyone in Azul loved a good party. The moon was as good an excuse as any. When I asked if they would shift into wolves at midnight, they laughed as if that was the silliest thing I’d ever said.

“You are a babe in the forest,” Cossa teased as she painted my fingernails. “No one shifts with the moon anymore, unless they want to.”

“I grew up on werewolf movies,” I said. “And I can’t shift, so I’m not sure why I have to go.”

“Because you’ve been cooped up here for days and days,” Leticia said, laying out the cocktail dress I’d be wearing. Skimpy, black, sexy. “Isolation makes you old.”

“Maybe I like old.”

“Liar,” Vasha teased. She’d been working on my hair again, creating a froth of curls and twists that highlighted the silver streak and made me look exotic.

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