“Nobody,” said Fable.
Flinty narrowed his eyes again. “Do you lack the strength to finish this?”
“Violence and strength aren’t the same thing,” said Fable. “Besides, you told me yourself—that powder makes you wrong. It makes you not yourself. Well, you didn’t tell Mr. Hill that, did you? He didn’t know what he had found or what it was doing to him. Maybe if we had just talked to each other and helped each other understand instead of keeping secrets and smashing things, then none of this would have happened. Everything Mr. Hill did today was wrong, yes, but his death won’t make it right.”
“The man will never be right,” said Flinty.
“Maybe not. But I still forbid any of you from killing him. There’s been enough violence.” Her eyes flicked to the place where her mother’s body lay, and her throat tightened.
“She forbids it?” Flinty said. His brow rose.
There was tense silence across the field, and then, slowly, the flinty spriggan took to one knee.
“The queen forbids it,” he said.
The queen. The title ran through Fable like a stab of electricity. It felt prickly and wrong and it made her shoulders tighten. All the confidence she had mustered for the speech suddenly wanted to leak out through the corners of her eyes. Fable did not want to be queen. She wanted her mother.
THIRTY-ONE
A bullet is such a small thing with such a short life—but all lives are short in the end. So little time to get it right.
From the moment the bullet left the barrel of Old Jim’s rifle, it had done everything right. It had been aimed directly for the woman’s heart. She had been a bear when it found her. That might have surprised the bullet, if a bullet knew the difference between a bear and a woman—but it was the same heart in the end. It was the same life.
The bullet had flown straight and true, the wind parting on either side of it—and for just a fraction of a second, it had come alive. In that fleeting fragment of a moment, the bullet had awoken, and it had felt something.
And what the bullet had felt . . . was a nudge.
Chief Nudd’s magic could not bend the forest to his will. He was no Witch of the Wood, after all—he was only a humble goblin. But a goblin could give a small thing a small nudge.
At exactly the right time.
Raina opened her eyes.
The world was a blur of harsh light and confusing shadows. The first thing she felt was pain—a sharp throbbing ache in her chest. Close on the heels of pain came confusion.
Where was she? Where was Fable?
She could feel soft sheets around her and a pillow under her head. The air smelled like wool and cat hair and freshly baked bread. She took shallow breaths, her chest impossibly tight. Slowly, Raina’s vision slid into focus. Sunlight filtered into the room through pale curtains. A room. She was in a room, on a bed. Her bearskin cloak hung over the back of a chair beside her.
She sat up—tried to sit up—and was immediately overwhelmed by a piercing pang like a lance being driven through her chest. She fell back on the soft mattress again until the room stopped spinning and she could think.
Where was Fable?
The door creaked and Raina turned her head weakly toward the sound. Annie Burton crossed the soft carpet to her bedside.
“Good morning,” she said, relief in her eyes. “You’re going to be okay—but I wouldn’t try to get up just yet.”
Raina drew breath to respond, but the soreness pulsed through her lungs and she said nothing instead.
“Dr. Fisher says the bullet missed your heart by about an inch. It grazed a rib and planted itself snug against your lung. You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Unh,” Raina managed.
“Well, as lucky as a person can be when they’ve just been shot in the chest, I suppose. Probably helped that you were a bear when it happened. The bullet might have done more damage if you had been human at the time.”
Questions swam around Raina’s mind. How long have I been sleeping? How did I get here? Where is here? Where is Fable? She managed a wheezy “H-how . . . long?”
“You’ve been sleeping for two days. I’ll be putting some soup in you as soon as you feel up to eating.”
Two days? Raina reeled. Two days! She couldn’t afford to leave the forest for two minutes, not with everything spiraling out of control. The pixies and the spriggans and—
“Stay still.” Annie put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “You’re not going anywhere right now. You need time to heal.”
“F-Fable,” Raina managed. “Where is . . . Fable?”
“Fable is fine. More than fine, actually; she’s doing remarkably well. You should be proud of your daughter. She turned that field in the hills into a sort of neutral meeting place—not exactly part of the woods, but not properly part of the town, either. She’s spent most of the past two days supervising things—whenever she isn’t right here watching over you, that is. She checks in every few hours to see if you’re up yet.”
“She’s there now? Alone?”
“Never alone. The boys have been with her nonstop, and Chief Nudd lent a few goblin guards to help her keep the peace, just in case anybody decides to get ornery—but as far as I’ve seen, they’ve all been on their best behavior. She made it pretty clear that she wasn’t going to tolerate any sort of mischief. You should’ve heard her threaten the gnomes. She reminds me of you, actually. Heck, she’s even kept my boys out of trouble for two days straight, so I suspect there must be some sort of magic involved.”
“Fable . . . is giving orders?” Raina said.
“Lots of them,” Annie chuckled. “Smart ones, too. She’s good at it. And having a chance to meet the so-called enemy face-to-face has taken the edge
