The figure turned to her with wide eyes. “Kerrigan?”
She gasped. “Fordham?”
He looked… wild. It was the only way to describe him. His clothes were tattered, his face covered in mud, and he was brandishing a stick that he appeared to have whittled down to a point.
“What are you doing here?”
“What happened to you?” she asked at the same time.
He shook his head. “I’ve been in this wretched forest for nearly an entire day. I passed my first test, and then it brought me here. There’s nothing to eat, and the forest is a maze. There’s no way out.”
“Wait… you’ve been here all day without food?”
He nodded.
She rummaged through her bag and brought out some provisions, passing it to him. “Here, eat this.”
“Gods,” he breathed as he reverently took the food.
“Sit at my fire and eat.” She busied herself, building the fire back up, as Fordham tried to force himself not to devour every scrap she had given him.
“And this place… it’s… it’s haunted.”
“I thought you didn’t believe in ghosts,” Kerrigan joked.
“Not like that. It’s dampened everything. I had some berries and ran around in circles for hours. I’ve been too terrified to eat since then. I don’t know what’s going on.”
And then it clicked. “Noirwood Forest.”
“What?”
“We’re in Noirwood Forest. It’s a black forest just off the western coast, where everything you could eat within it is poisonous. We don’t know what happened to the woods to make it this way, but travelers who pass within must bring enough provisions to survive without eating or drinking anything in the forest. The berries likely made you hallucinate. You’re lucky you didn’t die.”
Fordham looked back at her blankly. “I’m beginning to think my education about Alandria is woefully incomplete.”
Kerrigan frowned. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine,” he said, taking a sip of her waterskin and nodding his thanks. “And you were sent for me?”
“A vision,” she admitted.
“Did the vision show you how to get out of here?”
“No. It didn’t tell me anything, except to walk through the portal.”
“Do you still have your magic?”
She shook her head. “But I have this.”
Then, she produced Lyam’s compass. She’d had it with her at all times since they had gone together to the alley where he had been murdered. It had just been a trinket, a memory. But right now, she had never been gladder to see it.
He came to his feet. “Well, that’s lucky.”
She swallowed back the lump in her throat. “Lyam here to save us after all.”
“We should probably set out at dawn,” Fordham said. “Together, we can get out of here.”
“All right, princeling,” she said with a half-smile. “But first, we’re going to need some pinecones.”
Fordham didn’t ask, just helped her cover a few pinecones in sap, and then she cracked the two biggest sticks she’d found on a sharp piece of rock, placing the sap-covered pinecones inside and dipping them in the flames.
He looked at her, impressed. “Torches. How did you know how to do that?”
“House of Dragons teaches us more than just etiquette,” she said with a grin. She brushed mud off his brow and laughed. “You look ridiculous.”
“I ate poisonous berries,” he reminded her.
And then they both laughed.
The weight and fear of the night before had dissipated at dawn. They had gotten through a lot together this last month. This was one more adventure.
Together, they tracked through the forest, heading north through the woods by the dial on Lyam’s compass. Though they saw more eyes peeking out at them and a few howls in the forest, nothing else approached them. And by high noon, they reached the edge of the trees.
Fordham sighed in relief and wiped sweat and mud from his brow. “Thank the gods.”
“Second test complete.”
“Yeah… wonder what the third will be if the forest was…”
But he didn’t finish. If Fordham Ollivier could be shaken by the Noirwood Forest, then it was an atrocious hellhole that she never wished to venture into again.
A snap jolted both of them to rush farther out of the forest. When they turned around to face the beast that surely was going to attack them, Darrid strode out of the tree line toward them. Kerrigan frowned. Darrid had had a grudge against Fordham from the start. He’d tried to attack him in the first task and pushed him off the platform in the second. Him being here in the forest was not a cause for celebration.
Kerrigan instinctively reached down into her well of magic to keep her safe before remembering that it didn’t work. She had no magic to defend herself against Darrid.
“Ollivier,” Darrid said.
“Darrid,” Fordham volleyed back, already stepping closer to Kerrigan.
“Fancy meeting you out here.”
“What do you want?”
“No pleasantries?” Darrid asked. “Right down to it?”
“What do you want?” Fordham repeated.
“I’d like to know what your leatha whore is doing in the woods with you.”
“Don’t call her that,” Fordham snarled.
Darrid laughed. “You know, I thought that it must just be a dalliance. What would a prince of the House of Shadows want with a half-Fae girl when your people have slaughtered them for millennia? But do you actually care for her?”
Kerrigan bristled at his words. She hadn’t realized that Darrid was a bigot. They just hid in plain sight, ready to use that horrid name and reveal themselves at such inopportune moments.
“We don’t need to deal with you,” Fordham said. “Be on your way.”
“See, I would,” Darrid said, revealing a short dagger from his waistband. Kerrigan tensed. “But I don’t like you, and the last thing we need are more bastards like you in the Society.”
Kerrigan sighed. “You’re all so predictable.”
“Shut up, bitch,” Darrid snarled, brandishing the weapon in her direction.
“It’s two on one, Darrid,” Fordham said evenly. “What do you think you’ll accomplish?”
“Oh, is it?” he asked.
And then Kerrigan realized Darrid had been the distraction. Taiga came out of the woods to their left and Chelcie to their right. From high in the tree above Darrid, Posana knocked an arrow and let it loose at their feet, just to let them know that running would be no use.
“There’s nowhere to go,” Darrid jeered.
“Four against two. That’s almost a fair fight,” Fordham said confidently. “Look at you, the little gang leader of the wayward competitors.”
Darrid stiffened at the words. “We’re going to cut you down, Ollivier, and no one will mourn you.”
“Fordham,” Kerrigan whispered, drawing even closer. “The medallion.”
He nodded his head once and then tensed, as if preparing to meet Darrid’s attack. But they had been training so long that they both saw it coming. Darrid hadn’t been training out his mistakes, and he had many.