He laid his hand on the asphalt road and asked it to tell him what it knew of her. The oldest roads in this in-between land that bordered England and Wales, and Other lands and Earth, were more sentient than most realized.

The road woke and gave him the impression of dichotomies. Strength and fragility. Exhaustion and determination. And magic. So much magic.

And something else. There was something about her. Something distinct, perhaps even familiar. He strained to glean more information, but the road had ceased talking to him and had fallen asleep again.

“I wish to know what you are doing here,” he whispered to the unknown woman, drumming his fingers on the road. “And what you might have to do with a stray puck and an enemy Queen.”

Now that he had located Robin’s fading scent, he stood and followed it a few meters farther until it disappeared. Then there was only the woman’s scent for many meters. Unless Robin had managed to take flight somehow—and the puck could change his shape into many creatures, but he could not fly—the woman must have picked him up.

Nikolas tracked Robin’s scent backward to the place where it left the road and disappeared into a hole in the bordering hedge. Robin had cut across the land until he reached the road. Then Nikolas turned to trace the woman’s scent back along the road and came to a place where tire tracks disturbed the tall grasses on the narrow shoulder.

There had been a Mini, Gawain had said, and the woman must have been driving it. When it broke down, she walked into town.

And she had encountered a wandering puck along the way.

The rest of the tale would not be told here. He walked back to the Porsche and drove into Westmarch.

The town was younger than that ancient, cataclysmic battle but older than most. Worn cobblestone streets cut across one another in a crooked pattern. The shops had closed some time earlier, all except for a single newsagent’s, a liquor store at one end of the high street, and a large, sprawling pub nestled in the center of the town, named Dark Knight.

The pub’s wooden sign had a painting of a knight, bearing a shield with Oberon’s crest—a white lion rampant against crimson crossed swords on a black background. Some people had long memories in these places.

When Nikolas came to the pub’s parking lot, he saw Gawain’s Harley-Davidson parked between other vehicles. A Mini was tucked out of the way at the back of the lot. He pulled in and switched off the engine.

Briefly he checked his phone. Gawain had texted him fifteen minutes ago. Waiting for you in the pub. Robin’s been here. I can smell him.

So as he had suspected, the puck and the woman had indeed come into town together. That was a tale Nikolas quite wanted to hear.

And if the Mini was any indication, at least the woman was still here.

He texted Gawain, Guard the front door. I’m going to test a theory and come in the back way.

You got it, Gawain replied.

* * *

Sophie couldn’t make it until the evening.

No matter how she fought to stay awake, an inexorable black tide washed over her, and she fell into a deep pit of unconsciousness.

She dreamed she lived in a cage.

She stared between the bars at a woman who was both beautiful and terrible to look at, with long, shining golden hair and wide, cornflower blue eyes, and a lovely, young face that was a cross between a flower and a nightmare.

The woman’s gigantic face came closer, and the nightmare was the rage in the woman’s eyes.

I warned you to watch your tongue, Imp, the woman said. So. You will watch your tongue.

Then others came and put their giant, hurting hands on her. No matter how she struggled, she couldn’t break free of their grip. They had too much strength, too much magic. They forced her mouth open, took hold of her tongue in iron tongs, and ripped it out. She screamed and screamed, a wordless wail of bloody agony. As she watched, they threw the piece of her flesh into a fire.

With an appetizing smell of roasting meat, the tongue turned black as it burned.

Sophie woke with a muffled shout. Heart pounding, she stared around the shadowed, unfamiliar room. For a moment she felt completely displaced. Where were the bars of her cage?

Then a snore beside her on the bed snapped her fully back into reality.

She was in her room at the pub, lying fully clothed on top of the covers. The newly shorn and washed dog lay sleeping at her side.

When she had arrived, Arran, the owner of the pub, had sent his son, who owned a rusted Land Rover with a tow bar, to retrieve the Mini. According to the son, when he had turned the keys in the engine, the Mini had started perfectly.

Of course it had, the fucking fucker.

Arran’s son had towed it into town and parked it at the back of the pub. When she had tried to apologize for the inconvenience and pay for the tow, neither Arran nor his son would accept her money.

Arran had told her good-naturedly enough, “Not to worry. Odd things happen around here sometimes. Living here, ye get used to it.”

“Good to know,” she muttered. The Mini inspired her with hope. Maybe her cell phone wasn’t as dead as she had thought. Pulling it out of her pocket, she checked the power. Sure enough, the screen lit up.

So she had settled into her room, borrowed sewing scissors from Arran’s wife, Maggie, who had clucked sympathetically over the dog’s condition, and had cut away all the matted hair. Underneath, he looked as starved as she had suspected, with protruding ribs, a concave belly, and hip bones visible under his skin. The area around his neck was thick with deep, half-healed blisters that were half her thumb’s length in size.