He found it in a moment: the shoulder was swollen, the fabric drawn tight over it.
"Explain this," he said. "Clearly."
Chasey tried to cover it and say that it was nothing, and even as she was saying so, she watched the understanding arrive in his face. He knew when it had happened. He knew because he had done it — that grip on her shoulder in the yard, the wall she had been shoved back against.
He turned toward the fallen half beasts with fury rising off him like heat.
"Wait — no," she said quickly, catching his arm. "They never touched me. You arrived before they could. It wasn't them."
That left only one place for his suspicion to go, and it went there. He glared at the elf boy, holding him up by the collar, scrutinising him with narrowed eyes.
"Please put him down," Chasey said.
Only then, dangling and furious, did the boy consent to introduce himself. "My name is Zephy."
The prince did not let the matter go. "Who hurt your shoulder?" he asked again.
"I injured it while exercising," Chasey said.
"You did not."
The lie came apart the instant she offered it. He exposed it without effort, and then, since he was already there, he mocked her for it.
"You. Lecturing other people about looking after their health, while you oversleep every morning of your life."
She went hot to the ears and could not think of a single thing to say back.
Unwilling to let the atmosphere between them grow any more awkward than it already was, the prince changed his approach entirely.
"I am not a man with the patience to stand here waiting," he announced — and then he brought his authority down on her.
The pressure filled her with a strange, overwhelming wave of fear, and the words came out of her mouth before she could stop them.
"It was you. You gripped my shoulder and shoved me against the wall, and that's how it happened."
The prince went absolutely still. The guilt came over his face all at once, and it had nowhere to hide.
And Chasey, breathing hard, realised what he had just done — he had used a spell of compelling truth on her, to force the confession out. Playing dirty, she thought bitterly. That's playing dirty.
"I'm sorry," said the crown prince.
She froze. It came as a genuine shock that a man as proud as this one could say those two words sincerely, and for a moment she stood unable to believe her own ears.
"This injury can't be taken lightly," he went on. "The moment we return to the palace, I will arrange proper treatment for you."
"That's really not necessary," she said gently. "Seeing a doctor should be enough. Or a priest. It'll heal soon."
He remained uneasy. "If the pain worsens, you tell me. Immediately."
She bowed her head slightly and thanked him for a concern she had not expected and did not know where to put.
Somebody cleared his throat.
Zephy, still hanging by his collar from the prince's fist, had run out of patience. "Put me down. On the ground. Now."
The prince gave him a sharp warning glare, held him there just long enough to make the point, and let go.
The boy landed safely, shot him an annoyed look, and immediately ran to Chasey and pressed himself against her side, seeking protection and comfort, which irritated the prince thoroughly.
Elves, Chasey thought, half remembering something from a book. Elves are supposed to be healers.
"Your shoulder really hurts," Zephy said, looking up at her. "I can feel it. I'll heal it — right here, right now."
"Stop," the prince snapped. "Don't touch her."
"I'm only fixing the wound you gave her," Zephy shot back.
He turned to Chasey and warned her that she might feel a slight tingling, then closed his eyes and gathered his focus. A stream of magical light rose and enveloped her shoulder while all three of them watched.
The healing unfolded in a silence full of anticipation.
The light gradually faded. Zephy opened his eyes and looked puzzled, then more puzzled, then downright bewildered — the magic had reached its target exactly as it should have, and the wound showed no sign of improvement whatsoever.
"Perhaps my body is just resistant to magic," Chasey said, smiling to reassure him, while privately wondering why on earth this was so different from anything in the original novel.
"Leave the boy," the prince said. "The two of us are going back."
Zephy panicked and grabbed hold of them both. "Don't leave me! Not alone, not in this forest, please—" And then, with the desperate cunning of a child who knows exactly what will make adults stop walking: "I have a secret. An extremely important secret. Both of you absolutely need to know it."
They stopped walking.
"My true identity," Zephy announced, "is the supreme leader who unites all the half-beast tribes of this forest."
Chasey and the prince stared at him.
"Except," the boy admitted, deflating, "I haven't completed my coming-of-age ceremony yet. So nobody in my tribe is willing to listen to a word I say."
And with that, out it came: the real reason behind the half-beast uprising, and the deeper cause that had drawn the crown prince and his army into this forest in the first place.
Zephy bowed his head. "It's my fault. All of the trouble happening here — I'm the source of it."
He looked up at Chasey with those enormous eyes.
"So I want to borrow your strength. There's a ritual. If we perform it, I think it can protect the forest and the people in it."
Raven stood beside them, watching the boy with an expression of deep and unfavourable suspicion.
"No," he said, without a moment's hesitation.
"Your Highness—"
"It is our absolute and unbreakable rule," Raven said, "that we do not interfere in the internal affairs of other races, and we do not trespass on their territory. That is the whole of it."
Then, having refused, he turned and asked anyway.
"What conditions does this ritual of yours require?"
Zephy hesitated. "To come of age," he said reluctantly, "I need to be recognised by the elf god. And the god has been refusing to recognise me."
"Why would a god refuse a child of his own tribe?" Chasey asked, surprised.
The boy's face fell. "Because I'm only a half-elf," he said quietly. "I'm of mixed blood. I carry the lineage of the elves and of another race, both. That's why they call me a half-breed."
Then, as suddenly as it had come, the gloom lifted off him.
"But there's still one way left!" he said, brightening. "If I get married, the god might change his mind. He'd have to recognise me as properly grown-up then."
Both Chasey and Raven froze.
Zephy dropped to his knees on the forest floor, took Chasey's hand in both of his, and proposed marriage to her right there on the spot.
A dead silence fell over the clearing. Raven and Chasey turned and stared at each other, dumbfounded, neither of them able to produce a sound.
"If I can't come of age," Zephy said, still on his knees, "this forest will stay in danger forever. Everyone will keep suffering. And it will be because of me."
"Absolutely not," Raven said flatly. "I will never approve of such an absurd marriage."
Chasey looked down at the small figure kneeling in front of her, at the pitiful, pure, entirely endearing face turned up to hers, and felt her heart go soft in a way she recognised as extremely dangerous.