Page 39 of The Princes of Stone and Steel

We popped out of the water just offshore from the beach and the forest that had grown darker, blacker since we’d left Roshambo, letting the tide drag us onto the wet, pulpy sand. I crawled up to the dryer area of beach to where the dried silica granules stuck to my wet skin and clothing, coughing and choking up brackish water, my skin begging for moisture the minute the sun hit it, drying a coating of salt over my body.

Soldiers not of rock, paper or ore, but of mud stood in a line five deep, five across, waiting for us to right ourselves.

They actually waited patiently.

“Which clan are they from?” I whispered to Steele.

He pushed his rose gold locks from his face, squinting because the sun on this part of the beach pretty much blinded us. “I’ve never seen them before.”

Of course not. My hopes rose and were dashed in a blink, though I shouldn’t have been surprised. I felt a massive headache forming behind my eyes.

As we approached, the soldiers bowed. I figured they bowed for the Forfex prince. But once we stood in front of them, the whole of them shifted their bodies so they bowed toward me.

“What’s going on?” I asked aloud now, pressing a palm to my forehead.

The front centermost soldier looked up and spoke but didn’t meet my eyes. “We’ve been ordered to escort you to the witch of the wood. She has been waiting on you.”

Right. Why didn’t I think of that? A person I only just found out existed an hour or so ago had been waiting on me to get here. Could this day get any weirder?

They led us through the nettles and hedges covering the forest floor of the outliers.

We weren’t, for once, made to run. The soldiers took care of us. Treated us as guests of the land, rather than intruders needing to be destroyed.

I felt confident they’d keep us safe. Where my confidence in them came from, I didn’t know, only that I felt it deep, to my core. The phantom wisps of a heart memory, like those heart memories connected to Steele rather than the ones so vivid in my mind with Cynthia and Mármaro.

“We’re safe only so long as we reach the witch before dusk.” The lead soldier invaded my mind, reading my unspoken question and answering. I startled only for a moment, only for that split-second of time that it took for hearing a man’s voice in my head to feel natural.

“Why?”

He spoke for the prince to hear now, too. “The mist grows restless. No one, not even the witch of the wood, can control the mist. It makes deals with no creature. If it chooses to kill you, it will kill you.”

At the soldier’s words, Steele picked up the pace considerably, even if he didn’t know the way to the witch, forcing the soldiers ahead of us to move faster.

They didn’t seem to fear the mist.

Somewhere toward the middle of the outlying woods, where the branches of ancient trees twisted and intertwined so severely that they blocked out any natural light, we came upon a small clearing where not branches, but tree roots sprouted up from the ground to form a hut. Only they weren’t square like a cabin, but circular like a yurt.

From the front door—well, not really a door, but the hide of an animal I couldn’t pinpoint, hung to cover the opening—an old woman emerged. If I thought the hag ravens looked a thousand years old, she looked twenty thousand years old.

But looks, as we all knew, could be deceiving. She moved as spryly as a woodland sprite. Not a hint of age.

And how would I know how spryly a woodland sprite moved?

She was a large woman, tall and wide. Her snow-white hair draped low down her back, tangled beyond repair. I didn’t think she’d ever run a comb through it. What could equate to a potato sack fell only to her hips. Below that, feathers.

Yes, feathers.

Attached to chicken legs.Come on now, chicken legs?I was torn between wanting to laugh and preparing to cry. What if all this had been a bad dream? Like, some jerk-wad slipped something in my drink at the club in Detroit. I might simply be hallucinating.

“Quick, pinch me,” I whispered to Steele without taking my eyes off the woman in front of us.

He sort of choked out a, “What?”

“Pinch me. I think I’m hallucinating.”

“Sorry my love, all pinching will accomplish is bruising that silky soft skin of yours. The woman is real and she’s standing in front of us.” Then he took a step forward, calling out to her. “Did the hag ravens inform you we were coming?”

She ignored Steele to address me.

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