Lux [h.s]

thirty-four

When they reunited with the Fair it was evening, and the wagons had already stopped for the night in the middle of a small clearing not too far from the road. A fire had been lit and its flames went up into the black sky, its sparks mixing with the stars.

The children were playing, hiding between the carts and running in the trees, and the adults shouted out their names when they got too far from time to time. Every once in a while there was a branch flying or a burst of water or an attempt at a cold wind or a flock of birds catching flight at once as they used their magic, that never lasted long. Cora wondered if Harry had ever been like them and chuckled, imagining a little Harry struggling to keep his flames burning for more than a few moments.

They got off their horses and Arnold put them with the others, leaving them to walk the small distance that separated them from the fire.

Cora stared at its flames as she walked towards it, frowning when Harry's blue ones came back to her mind. It was only in that instant that she realised that if he hadn't been so fast in protecting her, she would've ended up like those men—nowhere to be found. The thought disturbed her more than she would've liked to admit. She could've never protected herself from something like that, from that untapped energy that had drawn a circle of burnt ground around them. Harry had told her he was dangerous multiple times, and she was realising that she hadn't truly understood what he meant—until now, that is.

A cold wind blew through the clearing and the fire shivered. Cora draped her cloak around her body, rubbing her nose to get rid of the smell of ashes and burnt wood that had come her way.

A hand closed around her wrist and she turned her head, her heart beating faster for an irrational second.

"Come with me," Harry said, pulling her into the woods before anyone could notice their presence.

"Where are we going?" Cora asked, and he brought his finger to his mouth to signal her to be quiet.

They walked through the woods in silence and then came to another clearing, much smaller than the other one.

His gaze moved from the moonlight-grazed grass to the black trees on the other end of it, a faint smile playing on his lips.

"When I started the Fair there were only a few of us," he shared. "We only had a cart and were terrified of hunters, so we used to hide here at night." He chuckled. "It was very different back then."

Cora moved some steps into the clearing, looking around. It truly was small. Only about three wagons could fit, and every road that brought to it was narrow enough for her to know it must've been hell to get through the woods to stop there. The trees all around drew a circle around her, and while only some time before she would've been scared of their shadows, she felt safe now. Sheltered. She was starting to understand what Harry meant when he told her he preferred the woods to the chaos of the city.

"When did you start it?" she asked, turning around to look at him.

He was still standing in the mild darkness of the trees, the moonlight glinting in his eyes as he observed her. "I was eighteen," he replied.

Cora raised her eyebrows. "Only six years ago?" She felt like it'd been much longer.

Harry nodded. "It was only me and a couple of friends at first." His eyebrows furrowed. "You surely know by now that I ran away from home. I was very young when I left, but I wasn't the only one. Hunters separated a lot of children from their families. We were forced to escape to survive, and we found each other. I suppose that's why I've decided to create a home away from home for the fays that have nowhere to go anymore. If we run, we run together."