Hippy looked away.

Flower continued, her voice calm. "Your sister was afraid for you. I wasn't able to speak to your parents, the elders wouldn't allow any muses near the camp after you left. They were furious."

"They were right to be furious," Hippy said. "They were right about everything." She grasped Flower's hand and dragged her into an empty, raggedy tent when they reached the border of the muse camp, so they could speak privately. The words tumbled out. "Flower I'm pregnant. I don't know how to tell him. What's he going to say?"

Flower blinked. "Pregnant? Who to, Hippy?"

Hippy let out an explosive breath. "To Pierus of course!"

Flower let go of her hand and moved a step back. "What?"

Hippy stomped her foot. "You heard me!"

"I know, I heard you, I just-" Flower made a helpless gesture. "I don't get it. What happened? He's a muse, you're a fairy-"

"Well yes, I did notice that, as I was getting banished from my tribe. This is useless. I'm sorry I brought it up." She turned to go.

"No wait!" Flower grabbed her hand and pulled her back. "I'm the one who should be sorry, Hippy. I'm just a little shocked. At him, not you. I thought better of his intentions." A line marred her forehead. "Is that why you hit him?"

"One of many reasons."

"It puzzled me when he was so determined to take you with him rather than return you to your family. I understand now."

"Tell me what to do." Hippy glanced nervously over her shoulder. "How do I tell him?"

"Honey just tell him," Flower said. "You're not afraid, are you?"

Hippy opened her mouth, but couldn't find the words to explain to Flower exactly how terrified she was. Or what she had to do before it became obvious she was pregnant. If he knew anything about fairies at all he would guess by the end of the week, and she didn't even know what he'd done with the Apple of Chaos.

"Just tell him." Flower's voice was firm. "Everything will be fine. Pierus is a great king, I'm sure he'll be a wonderful father."

Hippy bit her tongue. She'd got so used to people who thought Pierus was an a.s.s, as Poppy had so succinctly put it. She'd forgotten the muses worshipped the ground he walked on. She couldn't talk to Flower. She couldn't talk to anyone. She was completely on her own.

"Tell him," Flower repeated, as though she'd argued.

"Tell him what?" Pierus ducked his head to enter the tent at that moment.

"I'll leave you two to talk." Flower backed out and left.

Pierus looked down on Hippy as though she were an angry snake in a corner. "Are you quite finished hitting me?"

Hippy nodded. He took up all the s.p.a.ce in the tent. She wanted to back away, but now was not the time to set a precedent like that. There was a horrible icky feeling in the pit of her stomach. What if Flower was right and he was a good king? What if Mr Silver was right and he was just all bad?

Pierus took her hand. His voice gentled. "They banished you?"

"They said I had to repudiate you or leave forever."

He gave a short, sharp laugh. "My, that's a big word for a pack of fairies."

Hippy moved away. "That's all you have to say? Maybe I'll go back and tell them I changed my mind!"

"I'm sorry." Pierus put a finger under her chin and lifted her face. "You did the right thing, my love. I will never forget that you chose me over your tribe. It means everything."

Hippy closed her eyes and rested her face in his hand. Surely Mr Silver was wrong. Surely a man who could look at her like that was good.

"You have something to tell me," he said.

Without opening her eyes, Hippy took his hand and guided it to her belly, where she laid it flat.

He was still and silent.

She opened her eyes to find him regarding her with a mixture of curiosity and something cold. It was not a comforting look.

"A child?"

"Yes."

"Are you quite sure? It's awfully soon to know."

"Fairies always know. We have a dream."

"I see."

"You've never encountered a pregnant fairy, have you?"

"My dear girl, I've made a habit of avoiding fairies for thousands of years, so no, I can't say I have."

Hippy scowled. "If that's all you've got to say, I'm going home."

"No, you're not." Pierus put an arm around her shoulder and guided her through the battered, torn camp toward his tent. "Don't you worry about a thing, my love, I'm going to look after you better than anyone else could."

"Really?" Hippy looked at him doubtfully. "Have you ever had a baby before?"

"I should think not. Always seemed like a dreadfully awkward process." Pierus pushed aside a tattered curtain and they walked into his tent. Inside was a shambles. He sighed. "What in Shadow happened in here?"

"I killed some vamps while you set up the door into Dream," Hippy said. "Remember? I smashed one in the head with that statue there, which was kind of fun. Then Rustam Badora came in." She paused. "What did you do with him?"

"He's in the Gulakh," Pierus said. "He'll never find his way out of there without my express permission."

Hippy shuddered. No fairy liked to hear about Shadow's most infamous prison, the Gulakh. Sometimes some of her cousins from the Feathertip tribe disappeared into that dark, cold place after a.s.sa.s.sinating the wrong people. n.o.body ever heard from them again.

Pierus picked up the broken statue and set it on the nearest pedestal. "Tell me about this dream of yours."

Hippy kicked some rubble on the floor into a pile. "All fairies have the dream when they get pregnant," she said. "The child visits you."

"How do you know it's your child?"

"She called me Mum. It was pretty obvious."

"She?"

Something in Pierus's voice made Hippy stop and look over at him. She scowled. "Yeah, she. What about it?"

"What did she look like?"

Hippy studied his profile. Definitely. Definitely Mr Silver was right. She should find the Apple of Chaos, steal it and run. A dart of panic went through her. Run where? Mr Silver hadn't said what she should do after upsetting the most powerful muse in Shadow.

"Hippy?" his voice took on an edge. "What did she look like?"

"Who?"

"The girl."

"Girl? You mean our daughter?" Hippy picked a curtain up off the floor, considered it and dropped it again. Cleaning up really wasn't her thing. "She looked like any other fairy baby. Small. Fat." There, the lie rolled off her tongue as easy as that. She stepped around the curtain and poked at a head broken off a statue with her toe.

"What colour was her hair?"

Hippy glanced at him sidelong. Green. Her hair had been green. That hadn't struck her as all that strange in the dream, but now it did. Something about it bothered her. Something else she'd seen. "That's an odd question," she said. "Babies don't generally have hair."

"Of course not." Pierus picked up the spear she'd used to hold off Rustam Badora and propped it against one wall. He brushed debris from the table and neatly rolled up the map that still lay there. "My dear girl, perhaps you would be so good as to help me pack some of these things up, rather than picking them up and dropping them. We leave within two hours."

Hippy sighed. She'd known they'd be leaving. The muses wouldn't stay now the vamps were gone. She'd be far, far from her family for a long time. "Where are we going?"

"To my home."

"Where's that?"

"Beyond the forest."

Hippy paused in the act of prodding at a gas lamp to see if it would pack itself into something. "The forest?"

"Yes."

"I don't like the forest."

"Why?"

"It's all dark and full of trees."

"I thought fairies liked trees?"

"Yes, trees are fine, but forests are not."

Pierus took a deep, patient breath. "You will have nothing to fear in the forest. You will be with me."

"Well that's comforting. The forest people like you even less than they like fairies."

Pierus left his organising and moved across the tent. He put his hands on Hippy's shoulders, pushed her into a chair and stood over her. "I do believe the so-called Invisible Army filled your head with all sorts of fantastical stories while they had you under their sway." His voice was soft and just the tiniest bit menacing. He looked right into her eyes. Hippy couldn't tear herself away. She clenched her fists so tight her nails dug into her palms. Any moment she would be swept under by something she didn't understand, his voice, his eyes, the way everything dropped away until there was nothing left but darkness waiting to suck her in.

"You need to forget all that," Pierus said. "You're with me now, not them. You trust me, don't you?"

It was pretty hard to argue with that piercing glare. "II guess."

He dropped into a crouch and placed his hands on her wrists. "No. You don't guess. There is no room for uncertainty. If you are with me, then you trust me and you are guided by me. I am your protector. I am the one keeping you and the child safe. Do you understand?"

Hippy nodded.

"Tell me you trust me."

"I trust you." She gripped the edges of the chair so hard her knuckles turned white.

"Good girl." Pierus leaned in and brushed her lips with his. "Now go, before you break something. Find Nikifor and tell him to prepare for a journey." He moved back to the table and busied himself.

Hippy scrambled out of the chair, left the tent and gulped fresh air outside, ignoring the curious stares of the other muses, themselves all making ready to leave. She hurried across the camp and hid herself between two tents where she could be alone, then jumped up and down and madly brushed down her skin and clothes trying to rid herself of the icky feeling Pierus had just left her with.

It didn't work. She stopped, crouched and buried her head in her hands. Bad. He was definitely bad. She knew it because she knew if she hadn't fought what he just did with every fibre of her being, she'd have been swept under like a fish in a tidal wave. She had a horrible feeling it wasn't even the first time he'd done it to her.

She took a few deep breaths to calm herself and wondered if this was what Pandora had run away from.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE.

Hippy sat on the back of a cart and watched the ruins of the fortifications dwindle into the distance. There went her family, her life, her home.

Behind her, Nikifor was piled under the big domed roof along with boxes and boxes of Pierus's things. His skin was the colour of the clouds overhead; if it hadn't been full daylight, she'd have taken him for a vamp. Pierus rode at the front, holding the reins of the two sleepy-looking donkeys pulling them along. The cart swayed on every bend and corner as though it would topple over and take them all with it.

She watched everything she knew disappear with dry eyes. Some little part of her had hoped the fairies would change their minds. Someone would come running after her and find a way to make her stay. But n.o.body had. Not one fairy even left the camp to wave goodbye. And why would they? She'd rejected them in favour of a muse.

She sniffed loudly. She'd been doing that ever since Pierus told her Flower wasn't coming with them, he needed her in Shadow City. The sound didn't seem to bother him though, sitting all the way up the other end of the cart.

She gave a disconsolate sigh. They slowly trundled around a bend, and the fortifications disappeared. There, home was gone. She may as well put it out of her mind.

They slowed to a crawl at a sharp corner. The cart tilted, then landed on all four wheels and rocked. The rutted road wound through the forest like a lost snake. The donkeys plodded on, unconcerned. The wheels turned up clods of mud and flung them out onto the road behind. Ancient fig trees with twisty branches and thick, whispering cl.u.s.ters of leaves pressed in on both sides of the track. Anyone might have been in those branches, watching. She'd have been a lot happier if she'd thought Fitz and Ana were lurking there this time.

A pebble hit the side of the cart and bounced up near her hand. She scowled and threw it onto the road. Stupid flying pebbles.

They trundled on. It must have been a whole five minutes by now since they'd entered the forest. She was bored. Nikifor was asleep and talking to Pierus was about as much fun as poking herself in the eye.

Hippy glanced over her shoulder, disinterested, at the sound of a knock from amongst the boxes. Nikifor had probably b.u.mped something. Pierus certainly hadn't noticed.

Fluffy Ducky ran out of his pouch and up her arm. He settled on her head and rested there, quivering.

Hippy tried to look up at him and almost toppled herself over in the process. "Fluffy Ducky? What's the matter?"