Page 13 of A Touch of Shadows

The boy? He thought she was a boy? The short hair, she realised, and her clothes… Yes, that was probably better.

If he didn’t realise what had happened, if he thought it was all part of a magical snare, all a dream or a nightmare, he’d be more likely to go. She needed him to get out of the forest and then she could head home in safety. Elodie would never forgive her if she turned up trailing a lovelorn stranger behind her.

‘You saved me, I saved you. Fair exchange,’ she replied, making her voice as gruff as possible. With her short hair and her practical clothes, she could pass for a boy. She had to.

If anything he turned even more pale. Some people, Elodie said, had a problem with two men. Perhaps he was one of them.

‘I’m sorry. I saw… There was a woman. I thought… Was it a dream?’

More like a nightmare from the look of it, she thought. But he didn’t recognise her now. Perhaps he didn’t remember the details. If they were lucky.

‘A hallucination,’ she told him quickly. ‘The darkwood can do that to the unwary.’

‘Did I—’ His hand touched his mouth, and then his cheek where she’d hit him and his face flushed. No, he remembered. In the way one remembered dreams perhaps, but he knew something had happened. A flicker of horror gave way to regret and contrition. ‘I have offended you. I apologise. I was… I was not myself.’

Wren almost laughed, despite the urgency of their situation. The understatement of the century. In any other circumstances she might have, but it didn’t seem so funny right at the moment. He gave a curt bow. ‘I’m in your debt. My name is Finnian Ward… Finn. If you should ever need?—’

Finnian Ward… she almost smiled. It was a good name, she decided. Finn.

What was she thinking? She didn’t need his name, good or not. She was never going to see him again anyway.

‘It doesn’t matter. The forest is dangerous, filled with enchantments. You should go back to Thirbridge. It’s that way.’ She pointed down the road winding through the trees. ‘Stay on the path this time.’

‘You didn’t use the path.’

No, she hadn’t. But she at least was safe in this forest. He was not.

She’d been too intent on getting away from Pol and his loutish friends. She’d have to tell Elodie about that even if she kept her encounter with Finn to herself. And she didn’t fancy that conversation either. Elodie had threatened to leave the area before this and there was every chance this would be the deciding factor. Pol and Lindie were meant to be leaving but the others had been involved and they wouldn’t be so forgiving, would they? And there was every chance Pol would refuse to leave. Because he had always been an idiot.

Perhaps it was time for Elodie and Wren to move on. They had been here twenty years, but now it was feeling less safe by the hour. A hedge witch could find work anywhere, she’d say, so long as she stays out of the notice of the knights and witchhunters. Which wasn’t entirely true. Some places, sure, the more remote the better. In the cities, they tended to lock witches up, or coerce them into service.

Or enslave them.

Or murder them.

The forest was safe. The forest was home.

‘I know this place. I live here.’

‘Alone?’

Wren frowned. Suddenly he was asking a lot of questions. Perhaps it was better when he was all addle-minded. At least then he seemed docile.

‘With my… my mother.’ Best not to get into the details of all that. The less he knew the better. ‘Finn, listen to me, you really should be getting back to the village, or heading on your way south if that’s what you’d prefer.’ The village might not be too happy to see him right now either, and if he was in his right mind he’d realise that too. ‘Knightsford lies the other way, but it’s a couple of days’ travelling. It’s the nearest town, and there’s a garrison there. The royal road runs south from there.’

‘Knightsford,’ he nodded, as if only just remembering something. ‘That’s where I was going before—those men in the village?—’

Why wouldn’t he just leave? ‘They’re just bullies with too much booze in them.’

‘Yes of course, but they mentioned a name.’ He paused, examining her more closely now. Could he see her hair edging towards her collar? Had he realised she wasn’t actually a boy? ‘Your name?’

She hadn’t given him her name. How could she? He thought she was a boy but, if she confirmed her name, he’d know differently.

She was about to reply – although what she was going to say, she didn’t know – when he held up his hand for silence. Before she knew what he was doing he dropped to the ground, his hand pressing to the earth, as if feeling for something. When he looked up again, his bewilderment had melted away. Instead, his eyes were cold steel and his mouth a hard line.

‘We have to hide. Now. Someone’s coming.’

CHAPTER 8

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