We need to get the dryad to her sister before the Saol ceremony. We don’t really have a choice in the matter if we are to accomplish the task Uaine set for us.

Croi is still deeply reluctant, and her expression illustrates this fact.

Tinder tosses her a quick glance, reading her face. “I’ve talked to Ceara. She owes you for the book. Let her compensate for it by letting us travel with her.”

“I’m going to sleep,” Croi says out loud. She refuses to answer either Tinder or her inner self. They can wait until she has talked to Irial.

Why can’t you make your own decision? What’s the point in talking to him? Admit it, you just want to see him again.

“I do. What’s wrong with wanting to see him? He is my friend.”

You want him to be more than a friend. He has someone he likes. Have you forgotten?

“I don’t even know what my face looks like. Do you think I have the luxury of time and mental capacity to romantically pursue someone I have only met in my dreams?”

Yes.

Croi refuses to talk to her other self anymore.

She settles down in front of the flickering fire, using her pack as a pillow. The sky above is crammed with stars, some falling, some flickering. Croi feels Tinder making a nest for herself in her hair and resolutely refuses to think about the tangles she’ll leave in it.

The pixie’s decision to stay with her is a surprise, especially considering her friendship with the princess. Croi doesn’t complain, however. She’ll take whatever warmth she can get.

Her eyes grow heavy and close. A second later, she opens them again, convinced that she doesn’t want to know the shape her body has changed into. She looks around her surroundings; the dreamscape is the clearing she went to sleep in. Tinder and the Fire Princess are nowhere in sight, however. The dream version is much more exaggerated; many more rebel soldiers stalk the perimeter of the clearing, their bearing not in the least like the saviors they are dressed as. Croi brings up a hand and is confronted by sharp, red-tipped fingers. Her breath rushes out.

She doesn’t dare touch her face; if she doesn’t know and cannot see, she can pretend she isn’t.

“You…” Croi is so absorbed in being disgusted by her new shape that she doesn’t hear Irial’s approach. As a result, she whirls around, gets dizzy, and falls to the ground. It is a good thing she has no attachment to dignity, as she currently finds herself lacking any.

The dream-Irial is standing over her with a horrified look on his face. “Why do you look like a Redcap?” he demands.

“I ran into some,” Croi explains. She loathes her shape, but she cannot change it, not until the dream breaks. She looks at the fae boy. “Do I stink? I can’t tell. They did.”

Irial sniffs. “No. I don’t smell anything. Is that why I haven’t been able to enter your dream for the last two days?” he asks, squatting down beside her so she doesn’t have to look up.