Arsen broke the kiss, and I felt him gasp for air underneath me. Our positions had somehow ended up reversed, and I looked down into a face that was no longer flushed, but as pale as alabaster. Like the body I held, which was quivering, although not from lust. How much of his strength had I taken? I thought, suddenly afraid. How much had I—

Sound broke over me again, a startling wash of it. The newly arrived solders were getting closer, driving the trees this way. They’d be on us in a moment, and although I was completely free now and had to hurry, I knelt in the dirt over the trembling fey with tears in my eyes.

“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I didn’t mean—”

Some soldiers ran by, just outside the glade, with torches in their hands. But they kept on going, and I looked back down to find Arsen staring up at me strangely. “Are you alright?” I asked. “Did I hurt you?”

“Why do you care?” It was a whisper, a barely-there sigh on the air.

“Because I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to hurt anybody!”

“But you’re one of them, aren’t you?” His hand held onto mine when I would have gotten up. He couldn’t force me to stay, could barely manage to grip me at all, but I let my hand stay in his for a second anyway. I owed him that much.

“One of who?”

“The gods you say you fight.”

I didn’t know how he knew, or why he thought that. But I didn’t have time to debate it. “My mother was Artemis,” I said quickly. “She was a goddess, but she threw them all out. All of the ones like her, because they were monsters, just like your king. If they come back, they’ll be worse than a thousand Aeslinns. Think on that, when you serve him!”

And then I pulled my hand back, and shifted.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Chapter Thirty-Five

I reappeared inside the circle of guards and promptly fell on my ass. I was dizzy, the short shift having taken a lot out of me. Stealing energy from one fey was clearly not equal to having access to the Pythian power, and it showed.

I got back to my feet, shaking a little, but stayed in a crouch for stability. Which turned out to be a good thing since there was no tent to hide me anymore. Just the backs of a bunch of guards, some blowing sparks from the burning camp, and the rustling tops of retreating trees.

With the dragon gone, it looked like the fey had been able to turn their full attention on the invading forest, and the forest was losing. Or maybe the trees just thought that having more of them burned wouldn’t help the first one. Or maybe they weren’t as organized without Guinn to motivate them.