Page 34 of Lady Knight and the Thief

The afternoon sun drifted away while Cypress took note of how the trees shifted and morphed.

The longer they traveled south, the more they became something far older, wilder, and far deadlier.

“Do you feel the change, even here at the boundary? I’ve heard that even humans can feel the shift as we near the Wylds,” Torren asked.

Cypress didn’t have to think hard to guess what he meant– the feeling of the trees, the landscape. Instead, she asked a more pressing question.

“You mean we haven’t even crossed the border to the Wylds?”

“We’reinthe border, Lass. The Lae lines here don’t influence the surface nearly as much, but many of the Fair Folk make homes here.”

Cypress hummed in response, attributing that to the sensation between her shoulder blades, as if she were being watched oncemore. “And are any ofthosefolk going to try to make me their dinner?”

Torren flashed a grin in her direction. “You never know, Lass, maybe I’ll eat you myself.”

“Have you no shame?” Cypress asked while suppressing the soft laughter threatening her composure.

“Why should I?”

“One would have thought you would have learned such things since youareroyalty.”

“I can either be fun, or I can play by the rules of old men who barely have a brain. What would you prefer?”

Cypress pressed her thumb to her chin dramatically, mulling over the options he’d presented. “Hmmmm…”

“Don’t hurt my feelings now, Lass,” Torren said, hand pressed over his heart.

She laughed and decided to say, “Whoever you lay your sights on is destined for a lifetime of irritation.”

“Is that so?”

“It is.”

“And you think your lover will be any better? You’d emasculate every male within the Keep the moment they found out who really wears the helm of the famedCaptain Cy.”

Torren was right, of course, but Cypress would never say as much. “I’ll take my chances and offer my blade to your bride whenever she needs to keep you in line,” Cypress joked, eyes catching on a small, brightly colored dragonfly flitting past.

“You’d take the side of my–imaginary– bride against me?” He asked, sounding as if Cypress had wounded his pride.

“You bet your ass.”

“But you don’t even know her, so much forloyalty.”

Cypress scoffed. “What would the loyalty of your father’s– who you loathe, by the way– Captain be worth to someone like you, Torren?”

Torren shrugged, then drawled, “Under the right circumstances, it would be invaluable.”

“And what would those circumstances be?”

Torren shook his head.

“Oh come on, don’t hold out on me now.”

“Not now, Lass. We’ve officially crossed the border lands.”

Cypress sat straighter in the saddle, taking stock of everything around her, trying to spot the differences from the forest they’d been walking through for weeks now.

Branches hung lower, laden with large leaves. The tree trunks were enormous, so thick that Cypress felt like five people could stand with their arms outstretched around it and still never touch. Everything seemed bigger, as if the sheer amount of life teeming within the bounds of the forest had multiplied tenfold. Every branch was laden with nuts and fruit, every bush bearing a veritable rainbow of blooms.