Fen tore into the wood with no regard for his passengers. While Elodie was used to the motion, Braum was not. He rocked backward, and Elodie had to forego all unspoken rules of decorum to yank his chestguard down so that he wouldn't be smacked off his seat by the large branches that swung over them. Her fingers curled onto the stiff leather collar, and she gripped it so tightly her knuckles turned pink, and then white. Like a sea captain twisting a steering wheel on a great wooden ship, she leaned him left and then right as the forest attempted to block their advances.

After the first few swings, he picked up the rhythm by intuition.

"They're not reins," she told him, rather boldly swatting his hands where he yanked at Fen's fur. "If you pull too hard you'll hurt him."

Now that he was closer, Elodie could see a small amount of purple ringing his eyes and a weariness in how he held his posture. Compared to the Braum she'd known in the castle, it was like night and day.

"You've become quite the fairy folk," Braum said blithely, inches from her ear. As he spoke, his breath came out in warm puffs against the frigid air, and he smelled like a winter cabin with a fire set in the hearth. "Riding wolves through the woods and all. Are you luring me to the meadows as an offering to the trees?"

"I would do no such thing," Elodie responded, suddenly letting go of his armor so that he wasn't as close. His weight shifted backward, but he chuckled a good-natured, round sound that was a relief for her to hear. When he laughed, he looked more like the Braum she'd known. If he was still angry about her absconding into the woods with Fen, he hid it as a professional courtesy, or the feeling had passed.

What she still didn't understand was why he'd go to such lengths to find her. If he wanted to recover her, some wardens or aides would have been sufficient; enlisting the warden-commander and himself for the team seemed positively overkill. The only conclusion she could come to was that he wanted an orator on his court badly enough to chase her down personally.

A chill settled over her as she realized this was probably not personal. He was likely ensuring the protection of an essential asset to his kingdom. She understood a little bit of why Thalia receded into their woods.

"And he's a gelert, your Highness" she added with a touch more formality in her voice, "Not a wolf or a fox."

"What's the difference?" Curiosity piqued in his tone, and he leaned closer to hear her answer.

Fen interjected, craning his head upwards just slightly as he continued to run, "I'm a canine spirit. One that eats children and princes."

Braum's jaw tightened with annoyance. "Is that so?"

Elodie didn't have time to mediate the argument as tree trunks rumbled above them. Two large forest spirits blotted out the light of the moon, and raced closer behind them. She was horrified to see they had spider-like limbs with articulating joints and hairy, tenebrous bodies. They were pitch black, creating an effect that made it seem like the stars above were swallowed by their inky bodies.

Through the leaves and branches whistling past, she could see them crawling along the treeline and then springing forward, leaping onto closer trees like toads across lilypads in a pond. Where there should have been mandibles and eyes, a cloud of sapphire butterflies burst from their body and trailed behind them.

The boughs of the trees they landed on sagged downwards with each leap, and she yelped as one of them sank into place just inches from Fen.

The gelert swiftly dodged the attack, then veered left in an attempt to lose them in the underbrush, but the creatures merely paused to recalculate with a chittering noise. Their heads- or where their heads would have been if they'd had them- tilted at odd angles as they analyzed the gelert's movements.

"Spriggans," Fen muttered, like he was swatting away a few rather annoying flies at lunch. Although they faded into the distance, Elodie could hear a sickening whumph as they renewed their chase in earnest, and she could see butterflies gleaming in the moonlight marking their pursuit.

Braum yanked his axe out from its loops with a heavy snapping sound and held it level. He balled his free fist in Fen's dense fur and looked back. With each leap, the creatures got closer to landing on top of them.

He scowled, but never took his eyes off the creatures, saying, "Friends of yours?"

Fen scoffed in response, and Elodie shook her head.

"Figures."

Whumph. On a trunk directly in front of them, one of the creatures had landed and now clung to its surface like a gecko to a wall. Its body tweaked and lurched, preparing again to spring, this time back in their direction. Butterflies sprayed and enveloped the air like a smokescreen. Elodie's sight spun, disoriented, lost in the chaotic tornado of flickering wings. Fen's fur tightened in loops around her hands, and it was all she could do to duck her head down.

Unfettered by the distraction, Braum's eyes locked on some target she couldn't see, and he swung his axe in an upward crescent. She heard a cracking noise as the axe got stuck. Then, with a full-body motion, he yanked, and the blade completed its arc, slicing clean through. The spirit shrieked, recoiling its tendril, which was stumped on the end where Braum had cut it. The noise was sickening to her and painfully sad.

"How much farther?" Elodie asked.

The butterflies receded to the stump and cleared the air long enough for Fen to regain a sense of direction. He shook his head once, twice, and then bounded into the clearing Braum had created.

"We'll be there soon," Fen responded, sensing her apprehension. "They act as Thalia's scouts but are extensions of the forest and will return to the soil. No need to hold back; cut them down, prince."

Although she appreciated his attempt to comfort her, the corners of her mouth pulled down, and an unsettling feeling sunk into her stomach like an anchor. The pained sounds reminded her too much of Ann for her to find any victory in it. The stick she'd been turning into an instrument remained in her bag, and she could feel its weight with each of Fen's bounds. One more reminder that she wanted to be home, and soon.

A shadow darkened the air above them. A huge tree branch slammed down with the total weight of one of the spriggans. Braum brought his axe over his head as a reaction and gripped it with two hands. His mouth ripped back in a grimace from the effort it took to intercept the branch, and he let out a bellow as he tried to heave it off. His cloak tangled in the branches, and his entire body was pulled into the mosaic of leaves with a sudden jerking motion.

"Braum!" Elodie cried just as suddenly, her head swiveling around with the motion. She yanked on Fen's fur as a reaction, to which the gelert winced.

"Easy," he snapped, and she could feel waves of annoyance coming from him. "Hold on."

She did, and Fen jumped onto a nearby tree, using it as leverage to turn himself around. Extra fur rose from his body to hold Elodie in place, but the motion still joggled her around like a sleigh hitting a massive rock in the snow. From the new angle, she could see Braum dangling from the tree by his cloak, pulling and tugging at his shoulders. The fabric was beginning to tear, agitated by the spriggan's playful swipes, which left cuts along his cheek and arms. Braum did his best to swing his axe at them, but his angle was wrong, and he could only slice air.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

From the center of the butterfly tornado, a dense webbing shot out and wrapped around his legs. One of the spriggans hooked a tendril down into the mess of ropes and began to tug as though it wanted to take his body away like a misbehaving suitcase.

Do something! she shrieked at her muse.

The voice responded languidly, like a cat batting at a feathered toy. Do something? Anything I'd like? We could, for example, squish him like a bug.

Frustration erupted out of Elodie after piling up within her. Frustration with Thalia only telling her half-truths. Frustration with Fen's obfuscation. Frustration with Braum for putting himself in harm's way when he could have- should have- stayed behind.

It was easy enough to blame others, but the biggest wash of shame came from her frustration with herself. She wished that words and meaning came to her as naturally as they did to Nadya, that she could release them effortlessly like a river flowing through a wood. She wished that someone- anyone- else had become an orator and would be able to make use of this power in a way more elegant than her.

What was the point of having limitless power if you were unable to utilize it? She thought to Thalia and questioned why any time an orator tried to help, their voice swallowed them up like a dinghy caught in a summer storm.

The thought burbled in her and boiled over as a booming shout that reverberated through the woods with a sound much louder than she should have been able to produce. It wasn't a word so much as a howling, piercing communication of her helplessness. Her hair drifted to her sides, lifted into the air by an unseen wind. The air grew dimmer, and snow fell from the gray clouds above, each flake a glittering flame in the dim forest. Her eyes glowed with the same soft white color, two luminous beads stinging the darkness.

Although Elodie couldn't see it, Braum ceased his struggling and stared at her with unguarded reverence.

That's more like it. Good. Borrow my voice.

"Let Oberon and Titania's command be unbound," Elodie called to the woods, air filling her lungs with each annunciated syllable. The words spilled from a font that wasn't her own, from something much older and wiser. Her muse's power thrummed through her vocal cords with an electric tingle. "You that circle the green circle now ring the tenth voice, broken from ivy entwined."

The spriggans were entranced. They dropped from the branches, landing on the earthen soil, first one, then the other. They moved less like marionettes now and lumbered with a measured pace. They plodded toward her, where she stood frozen, confidence rapidly draining. Then, each lopsided creature dipped its body as though bowing after a magnum opus performance and melted back into mud and dirt.

Elodie's hair hung limp at her sides once more, and her eyes dimmed to a pale blue. Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. She slid off Fen's back, and in response, he lowered himself at an angle to support her. Her boots hit the dirt, and a wall of dense fur held her up until she was strong enough to right herself. His snout came over her shoulder, and she weakly nodded her thanks.

"Incredible."

"Oh!" Elodie exclaimed. In the whirlwind of a moment, she'd forgotten entirely Braum was still held aloft by the branches. She looked to the ground and held out her hands. "Would you make some stairs, please? Like the ones in the wisteria grove."

And please don't drop us, she pleaded silently.

"Me? I don't see how I-"

The ground rumbled and split beneath her hands. A curtain of little fiddleheads parted to make room for roots lifting from underground, forming a staircase up to Braum. She quickly ascended the roots, her shoes tapping in rhythm against the fibrous wood. Braum's boots touched down on wood, and he finally regained his footing. The air that flowed back into his lungs did him good.

His cloak was dense and textured beneath her fingers, wool that no doubt kept him warm on his ride here. The twigs and branches of the tree were tangled within the stitches like fish hooks in the mouth of a bass, and it took careful maneuvering to remove them. Her mouth soured into a frown as she worked. Seeing the shallow cuts on his arms and shoulders where the branches and spriggans had lashed him made her stomach twist, though whether it was from a place of compassion or a sense of crown loyalty, she didn't know.

"Can you give me something to cut through the webbing?" she asked her muse.

Before her inner voice could answer, Braum reached for his axe and handed it down to her. She was momentarily confused and then realized he had thought the question was for him.

"Ah, thank you," she said, taking the axe from his hands. Its weight was unwieldy in her hands, and her arms sagged under it's weight. It was a finely crafted weapon with a smooth hickory handle curved at the end. The head was beaked in a hook, with a thinner cheek and a more extended heel than most axes she'd seen wardens using. She noticed that engraved in small script below the head of the axe were the words "Due Diligence." She did not doubt that this axe had been custom-made, and she held it with a gingerness worthy of the craftsmanship and pedigree of its wielder. She hefted it back over her shoulders, and the sheer weight of it caused her to sway down a step. Thankfully, some of the roots caught her.

"I don't ... um ..."

Breathe on the webbing, her muse told her.

Elodie complied despite the strangeness of the request, and in the places her breath touched, heat rendered the webbing flimsier. Taking the axe through it was a courtesy at that point, and she was silently grateful to her muse for saving her from the embarrassment of being unable to cut through the webbing. Her fingers carefully plucked at the vines, pulling them away from him like a sailor pulling fish from a net.

She was keenly aware that the prince was observing her the whole time with a stupefied grin. The realization of her forwardness hit her like a cold splash of water, and she stepped down two of the roots, offering his ax back to him like a knight offering fealty with a sword.

"That should be enough. If you tug, I think you can get free," she mumbled.

The twigs and leaves rustled, and he seemed to puff up like a bird with extended feathers, pushing the bulk of his weight against them. For a moment, their hands touched on the shaft of the axe, and his free hand grabbed her shoulder to steady himself. For just a sliver of a moment, he seemed reticent to move his hand, but he readjusted and recomposed himself away from her.

Entirely freed, he leaned on the axe like a cane. He looked down at her and commented, "Pity. You lost your chance to ransom me to the fairy queen. I was tied up like a yule tithe and everything."

It made Elodie crack half a smile, and he took it as an invitation to continue, "Or maybe you would have forced me to eat strawberries, so I'd be trapped in your forest forever. You do strike me as quite the nefarious orator."

He removed a small twig from Elodie's hair, and she found herself unable to look away from him, thinking he looked much more himself out here in the woods than in any ballroom she'd ever seen him in.

Fen sidled to the base of the staircase and barked a reminder of the impending doom racing towards them. Braum offered her a hand to escort her down the stairs.

Elodie reached back, but before their hands touched, she hesitated. It seemed too familiar, the distance too close. After all, he was a prince who would rule the entire kingdom someday. She appreciated his kindness but worried at the prospect of growing too accustomed to it lest those viewing from the outside misunderstood. Worse yet, to mistake it for a kinship, it wasn't.

As though sensing the eddies she was spiraling in, Braum lifted his hand to meet hers and wrapped her palm gently with his. "Are you alright?"

The question brought her back to the present. "Yes. Thank you." As the words left her lips, she felt Fen's warning ghost through her mind. That gratitude was a taboo in the forest, and the leaves around them appeared to ripple in response to the words. Perhaps they felt obligation to bind Braum to her by merely speaking the sound.

Braum either didn't notice the ripples or chose to ignore them. With the same curiosity he'd held for Fen, he asked her, "Does magic ... Do you need rest? Does it hurt you?"

She thought about how to answer the question as she lifted her skirts to keep them from getting tangled and positioned herself on Fen. "It's a bit like going for a walk. A little walk through a garden is fine, pleasant even. It's barely something you think about as you're doing it. A whole day of hiking is exhausting but exhilarating. And if you sit for too long you feel the need to stretch. Does that make sense?"

"Some," he responded, "How much of a walk have you taken then?"

"A brisk jog, maybe. I'll be alright." She clenched her fists together in determination. It wasn't a choice; if she didn't keep her head on straight, none of them would escape the forest.

"If you need a break or it's hurting you, I'd like to know. I'll do what's within my power to share your burden."

Elodie nodded sheepishly as though she was eavesdropping on a private prayer. "I'd feel strange imposing on you," she admitted, "You're a prince."

"You're still a person," he replied confidently. "What? Don't look at me like that. Is it so bold a claim that Lady Elodie Auclair is still a person? Unless this is your way of telling me you're a fairy after all."

She stifled a laugh and told him honestly, "I'll try."

Sh still felt unable to discern if this was a concern for her as his orator or as his kingdom's subject. Braum's dark eyes were deep mirrors that hid his emotions and reflected only her riddled expression. She supposed this was what made him a good prince, and would one day make him an excellent king. On the surface, compassionate, but beneath that, unreadable. She wanted to live up to that nobility. It inspired her to take her role more seriously.

She repeated, with renewed verve, "I will."

Once they were bounding away, Braum called over her shoulder, "There was one good thing about all this." His smile was bright, hopeful even.

"What's that?"

"You finally used my name."