Page 16 of Royally Hacked Belle & Flame
I bend down to her eye level, then stall. I’ve never spent much time around kids and I don’t know how to talk to them. “Hi. I’m Daemon,” I say, after a second.
Behind me the teacher splutters. “That’s the king, Lily. You call him ‘Your Majesty.’”
“Don’t worry about that,” I tell Lily.
Lily looks between us with wide questioning eyes as the teacher squawks in protest. I run a hand through my hair nervously. I’m probably confusing the poor kid.
I change tactics. “What’s your name?” I ask her, even though I’ve heard the teacher use it several times now.
“Lily,” she answers shyly.
“Were you friends with Gwen?”
She shakes her head. “She’s older than me. She’s friends with my sister.”
I’m tempted to ask to speak to the sister instead, but Lily seems chatty and alert for such a young child. It’s probably worth seeing what else she knows. “Did you see anything happen to Gwen or her brother?”
Again, Lily shakes her head. “I didn’t see anything, but all the older kids like to play in the woods. It’s a game about who’s brave enough to go the furthest away from the others during witch season.”
My stomach sinks. If they’ve been in the woods all night, then the likelihood of them being attacked by an animal or otherwise hurt just went up tenfold. “Were they playing that game yesterday?”
She nods. I smile at her, even as her teacher’s voice rises behind me. “The woods are forbidden. You should all know better.”
I tune out the sounds of Madam Merriweather scolding Lily and get to my feet again. I catch Kastian’s eye and he tilts his head slightly toward the tree line, one eyebrow raised.
“Come on,” I mutter. “The sooner we start combing the woods the better chance we have of finding them.”
I don’t say the part we’re all thinking—we might still find them, but whether they’ll be alive when we do is becoming less and less likely by the minute.
