It didn’t go as well as I planned. Hedge wolves were ambush predators, though certainly not the nastiest monsters we’d ever faced. But they were tricky bastards, and had the bad habit of looking exactly like an innocent briar patch until you were right up on them and then boom, you had this big, wolf-shaped bush lunging at your face. We dodged, ducked and slashed our way past the first dozen or so, avoiding the spiky bushes of death that leaped at us with no warning, or lunged out from the briars. Unfortunately hedge wolves also had the audacity to learn from past mistakes, and they started using strategy and group tactics against us.

We stepped into a clearing just as one of the bristly creatures slid into the brambles ahead of us. As we eased forward, tense and wary, four bushes around us sprang to life and charged. Ash and I spun, going back-to-back instinctively as the spiky creatures lunged from all sides. Ash’s sword lashed out, slicing one from the air as I stabbed upward with my dagger, caught a hedge wolf under the jaw and hurled it into its friend. The last wolf met a sudden end on Ash’s blade, but then without warning, another pair of brambles unfurled and lunged, catching us by surprise this time. I felt the spiky body of a huge wolf slam into me, knocking me flat, as the second wolf chomped down on the prince’s sword arm.

I felt a flash of cold behind me and winced. Ice-boy’s temper had finally snapped. From the corner of my eye, I saw the prince step forward, pushing his arm farther into the wolf’s jaws. There was another flash, and the hedge wolf stiffened as icicles burst out of its muzzle, punching through its jaws like giant needles. Ash grabbed the wolf’s muzzle with his free hand and yanked it down with a loud crack, snapping its jaw like a frozen twig. The wolf yelped, curled in on itself and stopped moving.

I scowled at the wolf above me, holding those nasty teeth away from my face. “Ugh, my friend, you really need a breath mint,” I told him, sending a pulse of glamour into the brambly monster above me. “Let’s see what we can do about that doggie breath.”

Vines grew from the wolf’s thorny head, slithering over its face. They wrapped around its jaws like a muzzle, clamping them shut, and the wolf’s eyes got huge and round. Whimpering pathetically, it leaped away, clawing at its face, and ran off, disappearing into the woods.

Dusting myself off, I climbed to my feet. “Well, that was…interesting,” I ventured, deliberately ignoring Ash’s glare. His sleeve was tattered, and blood smeared his forearm up to his elbow. “I don’t remember hedge wolves ever doing that before.”

“If I didn’t need you to get into Summer…”