Croi narrows her eyes, thinking.

“Please?” The entreaty is soft and sounds awkward on the princess’s lips.

TWENTY-TWO

THE QUAVER IN THE PRINCESS’S voice convinces Croi. The tightness in her shoulders and the sheen in her eyes all point to a sentiment Croi knows too well. She hands the book over without a word.

It doesn’t mean anything to us anyway.

“Yeah. Our pack will be lighter and our shoulders will hurt less,” Croi agrees silently.

The pixie gives Ceara a reproachful look, but the princess doesn’t pay her any mind, cradling the book in her arms with a reverent expression on her face. Daithi pretends he hasn’t seen anything, immersed as he is in the items he keeps unearthing from the Redcap chest.

“Thank you,” the princess whispers after a moment.

Croi shrugs. She doesn’t particularly want Ceara’s gratitude. Her stomach growls indignantly, and Croi remembers that her last meal was a very long time ago.

“My stomach must be hungry. I shall go feed it,” she says to no one in particular, and walks briskly out of the room, through the hall, and out of the caravan without waiting to see if anyone is following her. Soldiers, with swords extended, are standing at attention outside the caravan. One of them squeaks when Croi emerges and immediately blushes. These rebel soldiers are very young, too young. Croi wonders how they were recruited into the rebel army—don’t the families of these young kin have anything to say about them risking their lives? The sound of wings comes from behind her, and the faces of the soldiers ease. They put down their swords and back off. Oh, so they’ll trust a pixie, but not her.

Croi leaves the caravan and walks farther into the clearing, looking around at the little campfires dotting the landscape. The clearing is sizable; it would have to be to accommodate the cage train and the caravan. The surrounding forest looks inky in the night. Not a place Croi would want to spend any time in. For a second, she misses the familiar paths and turns of the Wilde Forest. She longs for the warmth of the flower sprites.

Before she can truly wallow in self-pity, however, her stomach grumbles again. She chooses a campfire farthest from the rest and walks over. Only two kin sit around this fire. One is solidly built with red hair peppered with brown, while the other has the most intriguingly striped skin Croi has ever seen. He has black hair tipped with silver. When they see her approach, the kin duck their heads and touch their right hands to their chests. Then they leave, joining the campfire closest to this one. They seem not to care for the whole hare roasting on a spit on top of the fire. Croi looks after them with not a small amount of puzzlement.

“Word has spread that you killed the Redcaps. This is their way of showing you gratitude,” Tinder, who followed Croi, explains.