Lux [h.s]

sixty-seven

Two days passed uneventfully. They moved around in the woods as Harry and Thalia tried coming up with a solution, somewhere to go, something to do. They sent Thalia out of their makeshift camps often in their attempts to avoid being tracked down by the king's guards. They had to change route often, going left and right and left and right again until Cora's sense of direction was useless. Iris was always kept under Harry and Thalia's watch, as if they feared she'd escape to join the king's forces. Still, her gaze remained on Cora—glaring, judging. Cora kept well away from her—the glares she sent her way whenever she stepped to close were enough to get her to keep her distance.

They couldn't light real fires after the first night since they weren't sure whether their wards would work against soldiers wearing iron, so they had to rely on Harry to boil leftover snow while they hid the light of his small fires with their cloaks. They ate what they could find, nuts and mushrooms growing in warmer parts of the forest.

Each night Cora sat by herself, isolating herself from the others under the pretence of needing some time to think, watching from afar the moonlight coming through the branches glinting on Iris's white hair, the flicker of Aster's own light blond mane as he played fetch with his white fox, his laugh the only sound piercing the woods that wasn't the hooting of owls. Eames and Oden, sitting in silence and staring into the darkness without saying a word, as if they were expecting Arnold to step out of the trees at any moment scratching his red beard. Thalia and Harry speaking quietly, trying to come up with a plan. Raven was missing, and so were Dwyn and the others—Cora could only hope they were safe, that they hadn't been found.

She forced herself to act like she usually did whenever Harry spoke to her, not wanting to alert him—mostly because she knew that alerting him meant alerting Thalia, and she couldn't have her questioning the essence of Nature about her, not when so many heated, hurt and vindictive thoughts were filling her mind. Aster never came to talk to her at all after that first night, leaving her alone with her endless questions.

She still couldn't understand what Iris meant—why everyone had looked so concerned. It was clear that there was something everyone but her knew, and she didn't like it. She didn't know how to ask more about it without sounding suspicious. She lived in fear of Thalia catching on, even though she still didn't know what she was supposed to catch on about. The berries in the pocket of her dress got heavier every passing day.

"If we keep going north, we'll freeze to death," Harry was saying one evening, sitting cross-legged on the carpet of fallen pine needles. "We don't have coats nor cloaks, Cora is still wearing a dress. We need to find clothes."

"Entering the cities now is too dangerous," Thalia replied, shaking her head. It wasn't the first time they had that conversation, today.

"We don't have any other options."

"If we go south-west, we'll get to my home," Thalia insisted. "There will be food and cloaks there."

"Until the king comes," Harry said with a sigh. "If he finds us there he'll burn your home down anew, and we won't be able to fix it this time."

"Let's make it a quick stop. Then, if you still want to go north, we'll have warm clothes and food."

Harry fell silent, and Cora knew Thalia had won the argument. She looked at her as she retired against the trunk of a pine tree, looking down, her hands clasping each other. She was pervaded with a tension that Cora was certain had nothing to do with their decision and everything to do with Iris. She'd brought Iris to Harry's home, and she'd betrayed them. Soren may have destroyed the Fair, but the annihilation of Harry's mansion was entirely fay-made, and Thalia should've been able to tell, she should've known beforehand, but Iris had hid her hand and moved fast, and she hadn't suspected a thing until well after the king came to their doors.