Page 86 of The Crimson Throne
Wills-o’-the-wisp love the chase. This one only bothered to stay still with me because we were stopped. Now that Samson’s racing after one, it’ll just play with him until he wears himself out or falls into the bog, whichever comes first.
Samson calls to me to hurry up—“I damn near had her this time, the dodgy girl!”—and I can’t help but smile.
He stumbles, dropping to his knees and smearing mud on his clothing. He doesn’t seem to mind, but he does pause and reevaluate the situation. He catches my grin and matches it. “This is why you do it, isn’t it?” he asks as the will-o’-the-wisp dances out of reach, trying to entice him to come closer again. “All that guardianship, worry, and care you do, the formalities and the service in the shadows. You don’t care about prestige. You do it for the wild creatures like this one, don’t you?”
I nod, a lump in my throat blocking speech. I swallow hard. “Creatures like this, they’re not good or bad. They’re wild. They drift between the worlds, and they deserve to be protected from fae and man alike.”
They deserve to be appreciated and loved just for existing. And if no one else will do it, I will.
I was wrong before. I told Samson of Red Caps so he would know what I was fighting against.
But all I had to do was show him what I was fightingforinstead.
22
Samson
The wisp shimmies in flares of brilliant light from plant to spindly plant, and I follow it with my head tipped, unable to staunch my wonder.
It’s a pretty little fairy light, dancing happily through the bog, and we’re just trotting after it, hoping for—
Alyth’s fingers dig into my shoulder. “You div! The wisp almost took you into the peat. Don’t you see?”
I stagger, only losing my balance in her grip, but my sudden rocking—or maybe Alyth’s calling out the game—makes the will-o’-the-wisp let loose a tinkling bell noise, maybe a giggle.
My knees hit the ground, and a hair in front of me, so close that the earth gives under my legs, I see now why the grass is flattened. This area’s different, peat, like Alyth said. If I’d walked across it, I’d have dropped into the muddy trap, easy.
I look up at the wisp, where it hovers a few paces ahead, and give a bemused grin. Tricky girl.
I regain my feet and turn to Alyth. “Aw, you do care.”
She scowls. “Just don’t want your death on my conscience.”
“I thought the wisp was meant to show us to the witch, not lead us to our doom.”
“Why can’t it do both? If it can trick you on its mission, it will.” Alyth steps around me, taking the lead in following the wisp now, which we should’ve done at the start, only I was so besotted by the little fairy light I couldn’t help myself.
“Are most fae creatures bloodthirsty?” The connection settles uneasily in my gut. “Are most of ’em like Red Caps, then?”
Alyth whips a horrified look back at me. “The will-o’-the-wisp is not a Red Cap,” she says in disgust, but she stops with a heavy sigh and scrubs her hands over her face.
“I’m sorry,” I try. “I didn’t mean to offend.”
She shakes her head once. “Don’t apologize. You don’t know, and it’s hard for me to wrap my head around—that you’re part of this world but know nothing of it. Magic is not bound by human time and logic. Even creatures like the will-o’-the-wisp. It isn’t trying to get us to go into the bog out of malice.”
We walk on. The wisp bounces ahead but comes to stop over a small creek.
“Alyth—”
“It was more…playing a game,” she continues, trailing the wisp without pause, and I follow, my eyes pinging from the creek to the wisp to Alyth. “The way a puppy might get carried away and nip at you. It’s not doing it to hurt, and a fae creature like this doesn’t have a concept of intentionally harming you. They just don’t always remember that humans are mortal—”
“Alyth.”
She looks back at me again but keeps walking, making to step overthe narrow creek with her focus twisted to me.
“The wisp stopped moving,” I point out, brow furrowing.
Something’s…off. About the creek, about the wisp being stationary. There’s no sign of more peat in this area, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong.
