“You’re [i]lost?[/i]” The words slipped out in Nikita’s surprise. This was practically [i]their[/i] forest in all but deed; how could he not know where he was? Her eyes narrowed at his next question, his cautious tone bellying the context; he wasn’t asking her for directions. 
	“It’s supposed to be near the center of the woods.” She dared a glance down to her feet, checking her position relative to her traps before she put a slightly safer distance between herself and Illion. The last thing she needed was to trigger one of them herself.
	She glanced up to the trees, searching for the sun behind the clouds. Finding what she thought was it’s lowering ball of blurred light, her jaw clenched, and she shifted uneasily; it was later than she’d thought. Penelope would be leaving Nico soon. And with the cloud cover, night would come sooner than normal. She needed to get back before darkness left her blind.
	But, despite her feelings toward elves, some part of her felt guilty thinking about leaving him when he was lost. It seemed a poor way to repay his lack of hostility, and his open curiosity almost reminded her of her brother, of how lighthearted he used to be before his sickness fully struck him down.
	Perhaps she could kill three birds with one stone; give him directions, avoid being put on a hit list for knowing too much about the elven city, and bring this conversation to an end so she could get home without a parting curse.
	She pointed through the trees, not quite in the direction Illion had emerged from. “Best guess is it’s that way, if the sun’s where I think it is. It’s hard to tell from here. It’d be a ways, though. Nowhere I could get to before dark.” Not that the night bothered elves, as the stories went.
	She tensed slightly with his last question. If he really didn’t know, offending him with the demonizing tales seemed a bad idea. But, again, lying was a risk all its own.
	She ran a few possible answers through her head—more half-truths, as well as full truths. In the end, the majority of it came down to one simple truth:
	“To already be dead,” she muttered truthfully as the first few stray drops of rain started pattering against the leaves.
	She scowled, her gaze flicking upward for half a second. [i]Oh, [u]perfect,[/u][/i] Now she’d have to fight her sled through the melting earth, on top of hoping she could get reasonably close to town before nightfall.