by Piper Rayne
Rosaline, who was already dressed in a fresh tunic, leggings, and her boots, braided her hair over her shoulder as she answered. “Only for the last few minutes or so. The rest of the night, you slept peacefully, and thank goodness—I have a feeling we’re both going to need our wits about us today.”
Today.
That’s right—we were going to check all the protection spells along the border of the Fair Forest, as well as search for Mortas. The very thought of bumping into that traitor filled me with a beastly fury—I swallowed it down, gritting my teeth as I stood and drank from a pitcher of water. “About that… Rosaline, I’m not sure if I should accompany you today.”
She was packing a bag of supplies, food, clean rags, a bladder of water, and glanced up at me with concern and surprise in her emerald green eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I just—I don’t know if I should be alone with you. Out in the woods.” My dream, chasing her, the light coming in dappled through the canopy, the smell of my meal as I tracked it through the underbrush.
“You were alone with me last night.” Rosaline curled a hand around my bicep and squeezed, her eyebrow cocked in a suggestive hint.
“Yes, but…” I sighed, rubbing my face in my hands. “I don’t want to lose control. Here, I’m in my hut, surrounded by my things. It’s familiar, it’s charmed. It’s human. Out there, in the woods… I don’t know, maybe I’m being too cautious. But I don’t want to—to go wild.”
Rosaline chewed on her bottom lip, thinking. But she finally nodded, though she didn’t look pleased about it. “I’ll just check the border spells quickly,” she told me as she slung the bag over her back. “If there’s anything amiss, I’ll come back and get you, and we’ll go dismantle it together.”
I pulled her in for a tender kiss—worry was still brimming from her eyes, but I held both sides of her face and leaned over, searching deep in those brilliant green orbs of hers. “Be safe out there,” I told her. “Mortas might still be prowling around. And there are wolves and other predators—”
“None so deadly as the predator who I found last night.” Rosaline ran her hand down my torso, teasing me with the briefest touch, making my blood run hot.
“I’m serious,” I told her, grabbing her hand so I could kiss the center of her palm. “Be on your guard, always.”
“What are you going to do?” she asked, and I chuckled.
“I’m going to stay home and cook a big lunch for you,” I informed her, “like a properly domesticated beast. Maybe I’ll make some more bread.”
“Bread, yes. I love your bread.”
“I’m happy to have someone to make it for,” I said.
Rosaline kissed me one last time before she walked out into the trees. I followed her until she vanished against the green, and after I had tidied up the hut, eaten some eggs for breakfast, and replenished the water from the well outside, I sat down at my table with my bones.
Over and over, I rolled them out, trying to make sense of what they were telling me—but the bones did not want to be read today. They were being deliberately vague, almost as if something was shielding their prophecies—or as if they didn’t want to tell me what they had seen.
Too horrible, too dark.
Too much for the Beast of the Fair Forest to know.
Chapter Nineteen
ROSALINE
The forest was glorious to walk through, as ever, but it was very apparent that something had shifted.
The soil beneath my feet was barren, the leaves on the trees almost transparent, their veiny structures visible as the sun shone through them.
Bark on the trees was shriveled, the streams seemed lower than usual, and the birds… The usual chorus of rustlings in the bushes, notes trilled by the warblers of the sky, the soft treading of padded feet—it was muted.
And below all this unnatural silence, I craned an ear, listening for the forest—listening for it to tell me what it needed, what it sought.
The words were jumbled, though, and try as I might, I could not decipher them.
“We will get you right,” I promised the forest as I walked. “We will stop whatever it is that is making you like this—we are your protectors, and we will make it…”
I paused as I approached the first of the protection spells.
Wards set up to keep villagers like me out of the Fair Forest, but it seemed they had also served to keep Gawen in its trees as well.
It was strong magic—I could feel it from here, radiating like a fire. I wondered what would happen if I crossed its threshold. Would I be turned into a beast, like Gawen? Would I be cursed with my own fur, fangs, superhuman strength?
I paced along the length of the spell. From what I could tell, it cast its boundary from one giant sitka spruce outward, causing discomfort and even pain to anyone who dared come near its span.
But it seemed to be intact.
The next one was strong too, casting its protection, and the next, and when I had checked on six different wards, all of which covered about two miles of the forest’s massive diameter, I paused.
There were no breaks here, no way that the protection spells had been damaged.
Good, then. The forest was not in any danger of being invaded by villagers—at least, not this area. I would check the rest of the wards throughout the day—but first, I bent over a stream, dipping my hands in the water, splashing it on my face to refresh myself, and then I heard it.
A voice, tugging me downstream.
The pond—the very same one that I had fallen into last week.
The pond that had lured me under its surface, then whispered things to me that, at the time, had not made a lick of sense.
But now, as the pond bid me come closer and closer, I wondered what the water might say to me this time.
I wondered what secrets it might share with me, and this time, I went willingly into the water.
Wading through the algae-slicked pond, I walked along the squishy bottom until the chilly water reached my chin, and then, holding my breath but trusting that the forest would not let its keeper drown, I ducked my head under.
The water was frigid, but when I opened my eyes, that same warm, golden light hovered right in front of me, and I focused on it, my hair loosening from its braid, my ears ready to listen.
The forest did not speak to me; it showed me something instead. A vision.
Through the water, I watched.
An old man, his wrinkled face like a bunched-up sheet, his flesh yellowed and falling off his face, his eyes dead and beady, barely alert with life. Mortas. I recognized him on sight; though, I had never known him to be this ancient, this wizened.
He pulled his black robes over his hunched back, scurrying into the trees of an overgrown forest, and there, shining before him, a silver birch tree—one which I recognized as the birch which I had been tied to when I’d been brought into the Fair Forest as a virgin sacrifice.
I watched as the vision showed me Mortas, who was already nearing the end of his long life, find a magical source in the birch tree. He drew it from the roots, and it made him young and vibrant again, and filled him with its powers.
But the magic was unstable, the vision showed me.
Everywhere Mortas went, disaster struck—as if the magic itself was overflowing, unable to be contained in a single man. Crops failed. Grass died. Cattle turned inside-out, their ribs jutting like sickening meat cages for the crows that landed on them and feasted.
And Mortas knew, the vision showed me, that if he was going to steal the magic of the Fair Forest and use it to keep himself from aging and dying, he would have to find another source to hold it.
To a far-off town he rode, and when the vision showed me a young boy with brown hair, waving to his shoulders, kind, curious eyes, and a serious mouth, I couldn’t help but grin.
That was Gawen. I’d know him anywhere.
In the vision, I watched Mortas grab him by the shoulder and nod at the orphanage master, indicating his selection.
I watched him take Gawen over field and hill and river to the Fair Forest. I watched Mortas imbue part of the birch tree’s magic in Gawen, and I watched the magic splinter, a big silver piece of it floating out of Mortas’ grip, out of the forest, toward the village of Fairfront, where it landed in a pregnant woman’s soup as she sipped it out of the bowl.
My mother.
I nearly gasped but held my breath as the vision showed me what had happened.
A splinter of the magic, swallowed by my mother when she was pregnant with me, and then I was born.
And the forest’s magic was born with me.
It had always been a part of me; no wonder I had always felt drawn to the trees. No wonder I had always imagined a life beyond the village, and no wonder the forest spoke to me in such clear tones.
The magic that had once belonged exclusively to that silver birch tree…
It had now been split into three parts.
Part of it, Mortas had drained for himself. He had put some of the magic back into Gawen, in order to stabilize it, and he’d warded the forest to keep Gawen here, so Mortas could draw on Gawen’s magic whenever his own was depleted. He was using Gawen as a container for this magic. My Gawen, set up to be nothing more than a source of magic for that snake, Mortas.
And the third part of the magic was within me.
Earlier this year, the vision showed me, when the village started to show signs of famine, Mortas realized the magic was unstable again. It was beginning to eat him alive too. He was unable to keep himself youthful and energetic. He was unable to draw on his own well of magic, or on Gawen’s. He realized that he needed to give back one portion of the magic to the forest, or else the forest itself would die.
And that was the real reason why he’d sacrificed me to the Fair Forest.
He’d been hoping that the birch tree would devour me, or that I would die in some other way, and that the forest’s magic would be restored, and he could continue to draw on its powers for another century or two.
What, then? I whispered in my mind, asking the trees for the answer. What could we do?
The answer was as clear as a summer sky—the magic was divided into three people.
One of those people needed to give their magic back to the forest, or the forest would die.
Mortas, Gawen, or myself… One of us had to give ourselves to the forest, or else the magic would consume all three of us.
And Gawen’s curse? I begged for an answer to end his curse, but the forest had no answers. It was a dark magic that was turning the love of my life into an animal, and the only one who could remove this curse was Mortas.
So the answer was clear, I thought as I surfaced, breathing in air and squeezing the excess water from my hair.
Mortas had to be stopped.
We had to stop him before he sacrificed me to the forest for real this time, and before Gawen’s curse was too far gone to undo.
I emerged from the water, wringing my tunic out and shaking off like a dog, and when I rubbed the pond water from my eyes, I blinked, glancing around me.
A sickening fear buried itself in my stomach.
When I’d ducked my head under the pond’s surface, the forest around me had been quiet and anemic, drained of color, but unmistakably springtime.
The forest I saw now was full of golden leaves, tumbling down from blackened branches, gray soil, thin sunlight shining through the crisp, smoky air.
The canopy was bare, the underbrush already crunchy and scarlet red, and the chill that covered my skin was not just from the newly dropped temperatures.
It was autumn.
The forest had been plunged into autumn.
Everywhere, I could hear it—roots of trees straining for breath, the forest choking, spiraling in the beginnings of its death rattle.
“How long?” I cried out to the orange and brown world that surrounded me. “How long do we have to fix you?”
Tomorrow at sunset, the forest replied.
Or else I would have to sacrifice myself to keep the forest—and my Gawen—alive.
Chapter Twenty
GAWEN
It doesn’t take any magic to make soup.
It took carrots, bay leaf, potatoes, flour for dumplings, and a broth I made with the wild boar I caught, which I hadn’t been planning to hunt—
I had been sitting in the hut, tidying, trying to make myself useful, trying not to be upset that, right now, Mortas could be prowling Rosaline as she checked the border spells—
She could handle it herself, I assured myself multiple times. She was the protector of the forest—and in turn, it would keep her safe. It would keep her alive.
Then a movement darted in the corner of my eye, and I spotted it, running past my window—a boar, slightly older than juvenile, its tusks digging in the soil for roots, and the beast within me snarled.
I lunged for it the moment I was outside, and my fangs tore out its throat before I even realized I’d caught it—
To be sure that I did not waste such a creature, I brought it back to the yard and cleaned it, saving its hide to use for brush bristles and a small sheath for a dagger, but I couldn’t assuage my guilt so easily.
I had killed.
I had killed almost without thinking—I’d felt my blood boil, my body taken over by the cursed Beast within me—at least now I knew that I had been right to insist on staying home while Rosaline checked the boundary wards.
That could have been her, I thought as I prepared the boar’s meat and strained the broth. I could have lunged for her instead, ripped out her throat with my fangs—my nightmare come true.
While I chopped the vegetables and let the soup simmer and bubble, I threw my bones, again and again, pricking my own finger to provide a decent self-sacrifice, just to further tempt the magic—but it was no use.
The bones would tell me nothing.
Another motion outside the window, and when I glanced up this time, I saw two things—first, I saw Rosaline, her face twisted deep in ponderous thought as she strolled back to the yard. She looked like she’d been wet and dried again, her hair in stiff waves down her shoulders, her clothing crunchy against her figure.
And I saw the first of the fall leaves.
I shook my head, doing a double take. No, it couldn’t be autumn—not yet, not this soon. The last of winter’s snow had just melted away from beneath the largest of the trees; the first of the rabbit and fox litters had just started scampering around the forest, chasing each other… It couldn’t possibly be time for the leaves to turn golden and begin their descent to the forest floor.
Impossible.
We still had a whole season to get through first—
But autumn was here, and it was as real as Rosaline was, walking through the door of the hut, her green eyes ablaze, her mouth pursed.
“My love.” I wrapped her in my arms, rubbing her skin to warm her—but she didn’t seem to be bothered by her chilly clothing.
She stripped out of her wet tunic, tossing it over the fire to dry, and without skipping a beat, said, bare-breasted, her damp hair clinging to her skin like she was a water creature, “I saw it. I saw it all.”
“You saw what?” I resisted the urge to steal a caress of her chest, despite her breasts looking so utterly tempting, and grabbed a quilt, draping it around her shoulders. “Come, sit, eat some soup.”
“Mortas. I saw Mortas.” Rosaline met my eyes, a slight tremble of her chin. “I saw what needs to be done.”
I managed to convince her to take a few bites of soup; between spoonfuls, she told me everything that she had learned from her vision in the pond, and I sank back in my chair.
“So that explains the seasons changing,” I murmured, but that was the tip of the iceberg—it explained so much else. It explained why Mortas had taken me from the orphanage in the first place, why the forest’s whispers had grown more desperate in the last few months.
It explained why I was cursed into this beastly form whenever I tri
ed to leave the woods—Mortas had probably spelled the borders to punish me with this animalistic version of myself, just to make sure that his source of magic never left.
It explained why he’d wanted Rosaline dead.
My old master… but he’d been using me all along. The forest hadn’t chosen me to be its protector.
He’d chosen me to hold the magic for him—and with my jaw clenched, I managed to choke out, “We have to find him, then. Find him and feed him to the forest—it’s the only way.”
Rosaline let out a scoffing sound. “How?” she asked. “How are we supposed to do that? Mortas is a powerful mystic—he’s had centuries to learn how to wield his magic.”
“And the magic is not responding to me,” I added. “Not in this form.” I glanced up at her, my chest softening. “That means you’ll have to do it. You’ll have to find Mortas and use the forest’s magic to defeat him.”
“I’ll never be powerful enough.” Rosaline’s eyes brimmed with frustrated tears. “I only just learned that I was capable of such things a week ago—there’s no way I’ll be able to face him. I’ll never be powerful enough to beat him.”
It killed me to see Rosaline like this—even I could feel her power wafting off her, almost like she was made of sunshine. But I understood why she was so overwhelmed.
Mortas had been hoarding this magic for centuries now—how could anyone think that they stood a chance against him?
No, I thought, gritting my teeth. That was backwards. Mortas was powerful, yes—but if anyone could beat him, it was Rosaline.
“You are at a disadvantage,” I reminded her. “I had a master to teach me the basics of spell work—you only have the forest giving you commands. An excellent teacher, to be sure,” I added, just in case the woods around me took this as an insult. “But it would be good to have a human helping you. A real mystic. Someone who knows spells.”
Rosaline scrunched up her face in a frown. “I seriously doubt that Mortas will—”
“Not Mortas.” I pointed at myself, aware that with my current beastly form, covered in fur, the fangs, the thick, muscular build, I looked about as likely to cast a spell as one of the wolves who roamed the woods.
