flee at any moment. Edward, on the other hand, was taking time to savor his rabbit. He was finding this fire-cooked food better than anything he’d been served in the palace, because now when he ate he was always so hungry, and he could feel the food giving his body strength that he desperately needed. This food was giving him life.
“So is it really only a day left before we arrive at Helmsley?” he asked when he was finished.
“If we don’t run into any more problems.” Gracie sucked at a bit of rabbit grease on her fingers. “But, like I’ve said time and again, we could get there much faster if you’d only—”
“And I’ve told you time and again,” Edward interrupted. “I’m not going to become a bird and ride on your shoulder like your pet. If it were so simple as that, I could change and fly straight there, couldn’t I? I could leave you behind.”
“Well, don’t be staying on my account.” She leaned back on her arms and gazed up at the stars. “Fly, then.”
“I can’t,” he admitted. “I don’t know the way.”
She made a sound like a chuckle.
“Besides,” Edward continued lightly, “I suppose I’ve come to enjoy your company.”
It could have been hopeful thinking, but the Scot seemed pleased at this announcement. “Have you, now? Well, I suppose I like your company as well, when you’re not being a spoiled brat.”
“Oh, thank you very much,” he muttered.
“You’re quite welcome. But you should fly away, if you can. Helmsley wouldn’t be very far as the kestrel flies.”
He shook his head. “When I’m a bird, I forget myself. I forget everything but the wind and the sky. I’m just flying, floating above it all, and it’s the best feeling in the world. I’m not sick. I’m not king. I’m free.”
She’d moved closer to him when he spoke of flying, her expression pensive. She gazed up at the stars, and he tried not to be distracted by the alluring arc of her neck. “It does look lovely up there,” she murmured. “I’ve often dreamed of flying.”
“But I lose all sense of time and purpose when I do,” he continued. “Does that happen to you when you change? Does the animal take over?”
She looked thoughtful. “I do have foxy thoughts, sometimes. A love of holes. Of running. The squawk of a chicken just before my teeth sink in—” She blushed and showed her dimples again, eyes dancing in the firelight.
He pretended to stretch his arms, in order to shift even closer to her. (This isn’t in the history books, of course, but we’d like to point out that this was the first time a young man had ever tried that particular arm-stretch move on a young woman. Edward was the inventor of the arm stretch, a tactic that teenage boys have been using for centuries.)
Gracie didn’t move away. The kiss might have happened then, but at that exact moment the wind shifted, sending a cloud of smoke from the fire into their faces. They both coughed, of course, but Edward coughed and coughed until his vision blurred. Curse Dudley and his poison and his plan and all this wretched coughing, he thought. No way she’d kiss him after he just hacked up half his lungs.
Gracie jumped to her feet and made herself busy tending to the fire. “Anyway, you’re a greenie,” she said as she strategically arranged more pieces of wood. “You’ve just discovered your E∂ian form. You’ll learn to control it, in time.”
He sighed. “How do you do control it?”
“It’s not so hard. When I want to change, I take a deep breath to clear the head, and I think something like, To be a fox now would be to find our supper, and to find our supper would be to help the young king, and then the fox rises to the occasion. Speaking of which,” she added, turning to her pack. “I’ve brought us some dessert.”
She took out a handkerchief and unfolded it, and there, glistening in the firelight, was a handful of blackberries.
Edward didn’t know what happened. One minute he was fine, pleased, even, at the prospect of having the taste of blackberries on his tongue again, and then the next he was thrashing in a violent series of seizures, his eyes rolling back in his head, his mouth foaming. He could barely discern Gracie’s face over him, her eyes wide with worry.
After several moments the shaking passed. He lay for a while curled on to his side,