Chapter 47

I knew that little nickname—Fungus—would be the thing that got him.

As suspected, Fergus roared and charged toward me, dagger swinging alongside him.

I turned and ran. Pushing past ferns and brambles. Leaping over dips and roots. Instinctively humming at trees to move their branches out of my way.

They did, clearing a path for me, and I pushed my legs forward even as my vision still sparkled with darkness and aches blossomed in spots along my body—my head and stomach and back.

"You know," Fergus called from behind me, his footsteps no longer light and airy, but heavy and pounding as he thumped after me. "Maybe I'll have a taste of you before I cut your flesh, Drey. I heard you were loud as shit with Steeler, so I wonder—how loud would you be with me?"

I didn't waste my breath to tell him how sick he was. I just ran and ran and ran, clawing my way through the pain, my hums breaking into low sobs.

I'd done it, though. Led Fergus away from my friends. Without him and his peculiar magic skills, Lander could deal with the Summoner, and Emelle could call out for enough friends of the jungle to take over Jenia and her butterflies.

"Getting tired, Drey?" Fergus panted. Closer than before.

Yes. Yes, I was getting tired, but again, I wouldn't waste a single breath on him now that I'd gotten what I wanted. And I was getting closer to my destination.

The ground squelched beneath me. My footsteps slapped against the water.

From up above, a troop of monkeys threw down knock, knock jokes, which I completely ignored. I could barely hear them, anyway, what with the ringing still swamping my ears. I could only propel myself forward, until—

The marsh sucked me in, and Fergus yanked himself to a halt moments before he would have been close enough to reach out and grab the ends of my hair.

I swam further in, until bubbling movement swirled around my feet.

A grayish-green snout broke the surface of the muck, followed by a pair of piercing yellow eyes.

"Have you come to bring me another crab, friend?" the crocodile asked.

"No." Dense dizziness circled me. "I just really need your glorious company right now. I… I missed you."

It was hard to come up with praise in a situation like this, but totally worth it when I looked up to find Fergus tilting his head at me from the edge of the marsh, not daring to step any further in.

"I am glorious, aren't I?" my crocodile said. "But it seems you've brought me something to eat, after all. That human is no longer welcome in our swamps." Just as his slitted pupils shifted to Fergus, more crocodiles rose from the depths of the marsh all around us, gliding slowly, slowly, slowly toward the shore.

I hesitated for only the span of a deep, dragging breath. If Fergus was willing to kill my friends and me, if he'd already confirmed killing once before… then I didn't have any qualms about watching the crocodiles tear him apart.

"Yes," I nearly squeaked. "You're welcome to have him, but I'm afraid I can't get him any closer. If you could just drag him in here, you could—"

Fergus breathed heavily from the shore. The blood on his face wasn't drying in this swampy air. It glistened on his upper lip and chin, matching the glint of grease in his hair.

"Here I was, believing everyone when they said Rayna Drey was the sweetest, most disgustingly likeable girl in our sector… only to discover that you're actually a bitch, aren't you?" He didn't wait for me to respond. "But you're a stupid bitch, Rayna! You do know that you just submerged yourself in a festering pool of lichen that I could use to end you at any moment, right?"

Indeed, he didn't seem at all perturbed by the dozens of crocodile snouts easing toward him. I gasped out, "Like Kitterfol Lexington said, you can't kill me with magic. Come in here and use that dagger of yours."

Not that I thought he'd do that, but what else could I say?

Fergus pretended to contemplate it, tapping the tip of his dagger against the blood on his chin.

Once again, I cursed myself for keeping my mother's knife in my bag. For not learning how to use it.

"Nah," Fergus said finally. "I think I'll make you come to me."

And the blanket of algae and lichen and moss on the water began to… to stiffen. To harden and solidify into outstretched clumps.

The clumps converged on me like the strike of a viper, pushing the crocodiles out of the way and shoving me toward the shore. Toward where Fergus stood.

I spent three seconds thrashing and grappling at the hardened green fungus before I knew it would be pointless. It was like a giant cuff around my entire body, dragging me forward. Fergus had me, and the only thing I could do now was…

Was…

I closed my eyes and let the song of the jungle dance along my bruised and broken skin. I sunk into the hums and warbles and croons of story after story, pretending this was just another test with Mrs. Wildenberg. That I just had to pass.

But no, the jungle wasn't some test to pass. It was alive. It was aware.

And it wanted me to look back at it.

I know you, I thought. My mother was a faerie, and I know you. Half of me may have been made from passing dust, but the other half was made from the loam between your roots, and I know you. I know the colors you don and shed. I know the animals you house. I know the way you mourn a fallen tree, how you plant seeds around its grave. Your breath gives life to me, and mine gives life to you. I know you, I know you, I know you.

The jungle's song increased in tempo, breathy and wild and free.

Moments before my knee thumped against the upward slope, I sang back.

Fergus snatched me with his dagger-free hand and yanked me forward.

Just as a vine shot out from the trees where the monkeys had converged, noosing Fergus's throat and pulling tight.

He flailed. Dropped his dagger and groped at the vine.

But another one joined the first, and another and another, until Fergus Bilderas was firmly contained within their combined embrace.

Do you want us to end him? the jungle whispered in my ear… like a caress.

I didn't answer. Couldn't. Fergus kept jerking and writhing, and I couldn't say the words to make him go still. I didn't want that kind of blood on my hands.

A movement behind Fergus gripped all my attention.

Someone was coming.

A whimper escaped my mouth, and I backed up a step, but—

"It's okay, Rayna. I'll be the bad guy so you don't have to."

Coen stalked from the trees, positively drenched in barely-contained wrath. I saw it in the harsh angle of his mouth, from the veins throbbing in his biceps, from the way his eyebrows slashed downward and met his snarling expression.

"Bad guy?" I got out.

Coen was here. He must have followed the sound of my mind and found me.

I could almost faint from the relief. Not just because I was happy to see him after so many weeks of cold emptiness, but because together, the two of us could easily carry Fergus back to the Institute to turn him in. Or Coen could command him to turn himself in.

But in one fluid motion, Coen scooped up Fergus's fallen dagger and hissed into the boy's ear, "I told you to never touch my woman again. Yet here you are, trying to touch her. I won't make the mistake of letting you go twice."

Fergus widened his eyes among the strangling vines.

And Coen swiped the dagger through the vines.

Then plunged it into Fergus's throat.