I don’t know how long we remain holding onto one another. Long enough for daylight to filter through the canopy and long enough for me to see Ezra’s face more clearly. He looks terrible, his skin grey, his eyes dull. A stubble has grown over his face, highlighting the hollow of his cheeks. The pain is evident in the way he holds himself, but at least he is calm now.

“How do you feel?” I whisper. It’s a stupid question really, but I ask it nonetheless.

“Like I’ve been trampled on by a horse.” He smiles, even though it seems to hurt him to do so.

“Do you have blood with you?” I know he needs it, and if he refuses to take mine then I will at least encourage him to drink someone else’s until I can change his mind. He points to his leather satchel that is lying on the ground a few feet from us. No doubt he dropped it during his terrible ordeal last night. “I’ll get it, stay there.” He groans as I get up from his lap. Even the slightest movement seems to pain him. Grabbing the bag, I return to his side. He takes it from me, opening the flap. From it he pulls a small glass bottle filled with blood. The moment his eyes fix upon it, his teeth lower from his gums and his mouth parts. He pulls out the cork stopper and downs the blood quickly, then drops the empty bottle back in the satchel. I hear it chink against the other bottles of blood in there.

“Better?” I ask.

He stands upright on shaky legs and leans against the tree. “I will be in a minute. Bottled blood is not as good as fresh blood from the vein, but it still has the desired effect. It just takes a bit longer.”

“Sure,” I say, unable to take my eyes off him. After a while, a little colour blooms on his cheeks and the bags beneath his eyes seem to fade just a little. He doesn’t look the way he did when I first met him, but it’s a vast improvement. “How much blood do you have left?”

“Three more bottles.”

“Will that be enough?” I chew on my nail, somehow knowing it isn’t going to be nearly enough.

He swings the strap of his bag over his head, adjusting it over his hip. “I will need to take blood more often to stay strong enough. This should keep me going for a few days, a week at most.” Ezra pushes off from the tree, far steadier than he was a moment ago.

“A few days? What happens when it runs out?”

He tucks his hand into the pocket of his coat, his eyes flicking up to mine. “I thought that was obvious by now. I will die,” he says simply.

My hand flies to my mouth. I knew his death would be the outcome eventually if he didn’t take my blood, I just hadn’t expected it to be so soon. After the trauma of last night, after all his suffering, after our kiss, I had hoped he would change his mind. Hoped that he would finally understand that he didn’t have to die, that he had a reason to live. But I guess that if Rhain and Devin couldn’t change his mind after being friends for a millennium, then I’m not going to be able to make a difference after such a short time. “You’re still determined then, even after…” my voice trails off.

“Accacia, I was out of my mind with pain.”

I flinch. “Oh, I get it. It meant nothing…” I start walking, following the vibrations of the stone once again.

“Wait, it meant something to you?” Ezra says, catching up with me. I look at him, unable to read the expression on his face.

“Do you play poker?” I ask.

“What? What is poker?”

“Nothing, don’t worry about it.” He waits, still expecting me to answer his question. I sigh heavily. “I didn’t know what else to do.”

“So, you thought kissing me would be the answer?” he asks. He doesn’t appear to be annoyed, or upset, more curious than anything else.

“You were in pain, I thought… I don’t know what I thought. It felt like the right thing to do in the moment.”

Ezra looks at me for a long time. I wish I knew what he is thinking, but he isn’t giving anything away. “Don’t do that again… Kiss me like that, I mean,” he says, the curiosity gone, replaced instead with a poker face.

“Fine. I’m sorry I kissed you.”

He nods his head sharply. “We’ll talk no more of it. Now, let us get on with what we came to do and find your friend.”

We traipse through the endless forest. On and on we walk, stopping every now and then so we can both rest. Ezra is still weak, and I am a human who needs to eat and drink regularly to remain standing upright, so stopping is a necessity.

“Surely we must be close? I don’t understand how we can keep going for so long and still not come across anything resembling a fae village, or treehouse or whatever it is they live in,” I say, frustrated. “What about Rhain and Devin’s scent, can’t you just follow that or something?”

“I am not a wolf-shifter. I don’t have their keen sense of smell.”

“But Rhain, he could smell…”

“He was under the influence of the Claiming. His senses were heightened because of it. Your smell was… overpowering.” My head snaps around to look at Ezra, who is suddenly finding the canopy above very interesting.

“You smelt it too? But I thought you said that you don’t have a keen sense of smell.”

“I don’t have as keen a sense of smell as a wolf-shifter. They can smell a speck of blood from a hundred miles. We have a better sense of smell than humans, yes. I was able to smell you because you were undergoing the Claiming. Your desire was quite… pungent. It’s a wonder Rhain managed to hold himself together for so long.”

I feel my cheeks colour. Ezra eyes rest on my face, but I can’t look at him. “You shouldn’t be embarrassed,” he says quietly.

“What about now? How is your sense of smell at the moment, given you’re not your usual self,” I ask, ignoring his hot gaze.

“Not so great. I can’t track Rhain or Devin because I’m weak. My smell is not much better than yours and will weaken as I do.”

“Then take my blood, Ezra. Take my blood, you’ll be able to track Rhain and Devin. We can find them.”

Ezra stops short and sighs heavily. “This is the last time I am going to say this, Accacia. The answer is no. Nothing has changed. I will never take your blood.”

I grit my teeth, biting down on the frustrated scream that is desperate to be released. “Fine,” I snap.

“Besides, the fae clearly have magic. I don’t believe I would be able to catch my brothers’ scent even at full health. Your friend Clover is our only hope now. So, let us find her,” he says, holding his hand out. I take it, not because I want to, but because the canopy above is thicker in this part of the forest, and Ezra’s weakened senses are still better than my human ones.

We walk along in silence for a time until I notice a faint light up ahead. “Do you see that?” I say, pointing to a golden light flittering between the low branches of a tree.

“See what?” Ezra asks.

“There to your left.” He follows the direction of my pointed finger.

“It’s a firefly, they’re not unusual in Ever Vale. It is nothing.” He starts to move forward again, but the firefly catches my eye. This time there is another. They weave in the air about one another, a trail of light following their flight path.

“Wait. Look.”

Ezra stops. “So, there is another one. Perhaps they are mating?”

“I’m not sure, wait... Can you hear that?”

My attention is caught by a low humming from behind. I look over my shoulder and see a blaze of light as more fireflies move towards the dancing pair. There must be hundreds of them. The oddest thing is that the fireflies seem to be flying in the formation of an arrow. I watch in wonder as the brightness of their combined light illuminates the surrounding forest. They move at an alarming speed, I can feel the vibrations of their wings even from where we are standing. Just at the point I think they are going to smash against the tree, they disappear. One minute they are there, the next gone.

I stare opened-mouthed at the spot where they vanished. “Did you see that?”

“I did.”

“Where the hell did they go?”

“Accacia, I do believe we’ve found the hidden entrance to the fae realm.”

“The fae realm? I thought the forest is their home.”

“It is. What you see now, it is all just camouflage hiding the magic that lies beneath.”

“How do you know? You’ve not been here before, have you?”

“Nostra,” Ezra says. “He told me that the entrance to the fae realm would not be easy to find. That we may never find the secret entrance, even with the locator stone. We are fortunate, I guess.”

“If there was a possibility we would never find the fae realm, why did you agree to come with me. Why did any of you?”

“I’m here because of my promise. Rhain and Devin have their own reasons,” Ezra says, refusing to elaborate further.

“What are their reasons?”

“That is not for me to say.”

I am prevented from delving further by an image of Clover’s beautiful face suddenly appearing in my head, the echo of last night’s dream returning to me. Floating above her are two dancing fireflies. I smile. Clover has done this. Somehow, she has shown us the way. Maybe she wants to be found after all.