Troy went down and Lily had no time to understand how.

Between one heartbeat and the next, he went from gaining ground to rolling down. The redcap figures they’d been tracking vanished in thin air, mere specters made of smoke and faerie glamour, and as they did, the real creatures were unveiled. They stood in the yard, much too close.

Lily jerked to a stop, contorting her body to the left, and a flash of reddish bronze swept the air where her leg would have been. The redcap who had exploded out of the shadows in front of her didn’t lose his balance and followed up the strike with another, a backhanded arc meant to catch her across her belly.

She let herself fall back on instinct. The weapon missed her, but the price she paid was dear, for now she lay upon the muddy ground and the redcap had every advantage. She couldn’t stay down. She needed to be able to move if she wanted to escape. Images from the bogeys tearing into her with their razor-sharp teeth after bringing her down to the living room’s floor flooded her mind, and panic shot a current of raw determination along her spine.

The redcap shifted and swung his little hatchet once more, intent on crippling her. There was a maniacal grin on his face as he aimed for the fleshy meat of her thigh where the blood loss would be greatest and, coupled with the resurfacing memories, it gave Lily the strength to kick out. Her boot produced a satisfying crunch when it crashed against the redcap’s knee and the blow made him lose balance and stumble back.

Lily didn’t wait to see how long the redcap remained staggered or to check if she had aimed well enough to cause a break. She rolled to the side and fought to climb to her feet. She had to run.

Her head wrenched back, held fast by a handful of hair. The angle of her attacker twisted her neck to the side and made her fall again after she had barely pushed to her knees. Another redcap gave her a predatory grin, barely a few inches from her face. His eyes, crazed white engulfing a blue much too pale, focused on her exposed throat.

She screamed.

Fueled by nothing but adrenaline, she swung her arm back and then forward. The iron chain unfolded between her fingers, and the iron coins slipped free. The makeshift weapon lashed across the redcap’s nose and stuck in his eyes.

The hand let her loose, tearing bloody tracks in her scalp in the process, and the creature shrieked. The smell of burnt flesh assaulted her nostrils and the redcap recoiled.

Pop.

She heard the sickening wet noise over the sounds of the brawling, like a lollipop being pulled from one’s mouth. Except it was the iron coin, pulled free of the redcap’s face.

Bringing a roiling, sizzling eyeball with it.

Time stood still. She stared horrified at the burned socket, the blood blackened and dribbling down his cheek, finding the deep paths burned by the chain and running through them like a river down a crevice, eating the flesh up like acid and burning it and making it rot.

The eye shriveled, died, then turned to ash and dust right there where it hung from her hand.

Lily jerked back and struck again. And again. And again, until the redcap stopped eyeing her with the grin of a predator, until he stopped seeing her at all.

Then she stood and she ran.

She jumped over the drowned redcap, skidded around yet another who laid in a pool of blood, his macabre cap discarded a few feet away and his head split open by a powerful blow. She finally found Troy, blood gleaming down his side as he danced in and out of the shadows with two more redcaps around him.

She saw him stumble, saw one of the redcaps jump upon him, wicked sickle already glistening with blood.

“No!” The scream tore free without asking permission. She heard it, the rage and desperation and pain in a single syllable, almost as if she were a bystander outside her own head. Almost as if those hadn’t been her lungs giving air to the heart-wrenching denial.

She reached into her pocket, then hurled a coin through the air. It bounced off the redcap, leaving a blackened, burned trail across his back just as he hit Troy.

The little beast went through him.

He went through him.

Troy’s figure shuddered in the air, mingled with the shadows that had danced around him but a moment before and then scattered with the breeze. Troy, the real Troy, stepped out around the fading illusion and brought a jagged stone to the wounded, dazed redcap’s head. The cap was knocked aside, dyed in blood one last time.

Troy straightened. The hand clutching the rock was covered in blood, the droplets having splayed up to his elbow. A wound did mar his side, a long, shallow cut that oozed slowly and dripped down his leg. The second redcap moved to circle him, wary after what had happened to his partner, but his eyes regarded her with a look of startled curiosity and paid no mind to his opponent.

Lily was suddenly very scared.

Then, in a blink, the curiosity shifted to intensity and the redcap who tried to take Troy unaware gurgled. He didn’t drown, not quite, but he faltered and coughed, water pouring down his chin. Lily struck quick as lightning, following instincts she didn’t know she had. She collided with the gnome, threw herself at him, and managed to land him on the ground. Not stopping to think, she pulled the coin from her other pocket and shoved it into his coughing mouth.

Too pale eyes widened as the iron burned a way down the redcap’s throat and she stood as he began to convulse. She didn’t stop to watch the effects of iron’s touch this time; instead, she ran.

Troy had said to run to the trees beyond the yard to break far enough from the house and the redcaps to allow him to shift into his horse shape. She stuck to the plan.

“Lily Boyd.” His voice cut through her tangled thoughts like a knife, but there was a measure of gentleness behind the sharp command. “Calm down.” She twisted around and lashed out, the iron amulet still wrapped around her wrist. Her back went ramrod straight and her arm froze without her permission as a wave of pain hit her hard in the wake of another command. Never come upon me armed with iron, Lily Boyd. She choked on a sob. “Calm down.” Troy’s tone was a mixture of steel and velvet and his hands gripped her shoulders, his own tension belied under the firmness of fingers that tried to be reassuring. Her mind obeyed him, bypassing the fear and adrenaline coursing in her veins. She managed a small nod.

He took a step back, looked her in the eye. “You acquitted yourself well,” he said. “We must seize this opportunity to leave.”

She nodded again. He waited a split moment, only long enough to ensure she wouldn’t break down in hysterics, and turned his focus inward. Lily fumbled with the chain at her wrist, untangling it and dropping the small weapon to her feet while he shifted. It was taking him long, too long. The darkness that enveloped him pulsed in time with his heavy breathing, skirted over his wounds and became a diluted murk in contact with his blood. She began to shake again. They needed to get away, they couldn’t waste another instant, they had to—

Movement in the shadows caught her frantic gaze. There was a hint of red and bronze and she recognized the hatchet and didn’t stop to think. Her fingers reached into her sock, pulled free the last coin and hurled it through the air.

Her pulse was wobbly and the bit of iron sailed over Troy’s shoulder before glancing off the redcap. The redcap hissed in pain, but Troy screamed in terror. His green eyes flashed in the dark, showing white all around them, and he lost whatever grip he had managed to hold on the shift. The darkness unraveled and he stumbled back and to the side, all composure lost. Then he snarled at her, like a wild, caged animal.

Lily was horrified. After seeing how her own body had reacted to his command not to ever attack him with iron, she had somehow assumed it would be fine, that he would be safe because the binds he had placed upon her wouldn’t allow her to hurt him. She had thrown the coin holding on to that certainty, but she had been wrong. There were, it seemed, ways to circumvent orders. Because she hadn’t wanted to hit him, because she had been so focused on hitting the redcap to save him, the command hadn’t even registered her actions for, technically speaking, she was not coming upon him. And she had nearly missed. She had nearly hit him instead and she fought to get rid of the image of him burning black, dying like the redcaps had.

Loopholes. It was all about loopholes.

Troy pounced, body taut with anger and fear that overrode his natural grace, and Lily flinched, bracing herself.

He never hit her. He fell upon the crawling redcap, who bled and sizzled, but continued forward, dragging an awkwardly bent knee, with revenge in his eyes. Troy wrenched the hatchet from the redcap’s grip and discharged a blow on his head with a cry.

The little weapon stuck in the split bone and Troy shoved to his feet again, reached for Lily, and held her wrist with bruising force as he forced her to stumble along into the trees. He didn’t bother to try to shift again. He just ran, and it was all Lily could do to keep up as they darted in and out of copses of trees, far from roads and houses and all traces of man.

Troy allowed them to stop when they reached the crest of a small hill where old, ruined stones suggested a vigil tower might have sat once. Lily couldn’t breathe past the pounding of blood in her ears and throat, and it took an inordinate amount of effort to hear him speak over the agony of her burning legs as he shoved her into a corner of the ruin, pressing on her shoulders to make her sit.

“Hide and wait,” he said, the words making barely sense. “I must ensure we have not been followed. There could be more of them. Wait here until I return.”

And he was gone.