“Oh, good, you found her.” I tried to grin at him, but I was feeling oddly tired at the moment. “Yeah, it was quite the performance, wasn’t it? Good enough to fool a faery queen and the entire Summer Court. This will probably go down in history.” Ash didn’t smile, and I sighed. “So, how much of that did you hear?”

“Enough.”

“That so?” I gave him a half weary, half challenging look. “And do you have anything to say about that, ice-boy?”

“No.” He shook his head solemnly. “You said what you had to. You did what was required to get the job done.”

“Oh? That’s awfully generous of you, Prince.”

“None of it was a lie, Goodfellow.” Ash gave me a hard stare. “Nothing you said or did was against your nature. That’s why Titania believed you so quickly. I would have believed it, too.”

I sighed. “Good to know where I stand,” I muttered, and scrubbed a hand over my eyes. “Well, come on, then, ice-boy. Let’s get out of here before Titania catches your doppelganger and finds nothing is holding him together but twigs, string and a bit of your hair. With all the commotion going on, it should be easy to sneak out nice and quiet.”

Not entirely. Thanks to my little Ash clone, the Summer Court was in chaos, scrambling over each other looking for him, but our escape wasn’t entirely without problems. We ran into a lion topiary that needed to be cut down, and ice-boy’s disguise finally shattered when he drew his sword to battle the creature. Of course, right after that, we ran into a squad of Summer knights and played a rousing game of catch-me-if-you-can before we finally escaped into the hedge. With the knights hot on our heels, I led us down a twisting tunnel of bramble that got smaller and smaller until it abruptly came to an end.

Ash muttered a curse and looked around as the sound of booted feet crashed toward us through the branches.

“Did you take a wrong turn, Goodfellow?” he growled.

“Relax, ice-boy. I know what I’m doing.” Fishing under an old log, I pulled out a simple green cloth, ripped and torn with use. Shaking it open, I hung it on a pair of thorns then peeled it back to reveal a narrow hole in the brambles. Ash ducked through carrying Vi, and I followed, tearing the cloth away as I did. The wall of thorns vanished, and the sounds of pursuit cut out as suddenly as if you flicked off the TV. As darkness closed in, I sighed in relief.

“Where are we?” Ash whispered close by.