Hold on to me!” Tedros yelled, hacking briars with his training sword.Dazed, Agatha clung to his chest as he withstood thorn lashes with moans of pain. Soon he had the upper hand and pulled Agatha from the Woods towards the spiked gates, which glowed in recognition and pulled apart, cleaving a narrow path for the two Evers. As the gates speared shut behind them,Agatha looked up at limping Tedros, crisscrossed with bloody scratches, blue shirt shredded away.“Had a feeling Sophie was getting in through the Woods,” he panted, hauling her up into slashed arms before she could protest. “So Professor Dovey gave me permission to take some fairies and stakeout the outer gates. Should have known you’d be here trying to catch her yourself.”Agatha gaped at him dumbly.“Stupid idea for a princess to take on witches alone,” Tedros said, dripping sweat on her pink dress.“Where is she?” Agatha croaked. “Is she safe?”“Not a good idea for princesses to worry about witches either,” Tedros said, hands gripping her waist. Her stomach exploded with butterflies.“Put me down,” she sputtered— “More bad ideas from the princess.”“Put me down!”Tedros obeyed and Agatha pulled away.“I’m not a princess!” she snapped, fixing her collar.“If you say so,” the prince said, eyes drifting downward.Agatha followed them to her gashed legs, waterfalls of brilliant blood. She saw blood blurring— Tedros smiled. “One . . . two . . . three . . .”She fainted in his arms.“Definitely a princess,” he said.
Iain MacGregor,” she whispered longingly, looking up. The woods were quiet. Strips of moonlight shone through tree limbs that reached like surreal black fingertips across her vision. A single tear slid down her cheek. She touched her mouth, imagining his kiss.Taking a small pocket knife out of her cargo pants, she looked about. A mystic had once told her that if she left pieces of herself around while she lived, it would expand her haunting territory when she died. Jane wasn’t sure she believed in sideshow magic tricks—or the Old Magick as the mystic had spelled it on her sign. She had no idea what had possessed her to talk to the palm reader and ask about ghosts. Still, just in case, she was leaving her stamp all over the woods.She cut her palm and pressed it to a nearby tree under a branch. Holding the wound to the rough bark stung at first, but then it made her feel better. This forest wouldn’t be a bad eternity.The sound of running feet erupted behind her and she stiffened. No one ever came out here at night. She’d walked the woods hundreds of times. Her mind instantly went to the creepy girl ghosts chanting by the stream.“Whoohoo!”Jane whipped around, startled as a streak of naked flesh sprinted past her. The Scottish voice was met with loud cheers from those who followed him. “Water’s this way, lads, or my name isn’t Raibeart MacGregor, King of the Highlands!”Another naked man dashed through the forest after him. “It smells of freedom.”Jane stayed hidden in the branches, undetected, with her hand pressed to the bark.“Aye, freedom from your proper Cait,” Raibeart answered, his voice coming through the dark where he’d disappeared into the trees.“Murdoch, stop him before he reaches town. Cait will not teleport ya out of jail again,” a third man yelled, not running quite so fast. “Raibeart, ya are goin’ the wrong way!”“Och, Angus, my Cait canna live without me,” Murdoch, the second streaker, answered. “She’ll always come to my rescue.”“I said stop him, Murdoch, we’re new to this place.” Angus skidded to a stop and lifted his jaw, as if sensing he was being watched. He looked in her direction and instantly covered his manhood as his eyes caught Jane’s shocked face in the tree limbs. “Oh, lassie.”“Oh, naked man,” Jane teased before she could stop herself.“That I am,” Angus answered, “but there is an explanation for it.”“I don’t think some things need explained,” Jane said.