diff --git a/map.go b/map.go
index f0871cad..7042db83 100644
--- a/map.go
+++ b/map.go
@@ -57,12 +57,16 @@ func unquote(s string) (string, error) {
 	s = s[1 : len(s)-1]
 	var out strings.Builder
 	for s != "" {
-		value, _, tail, err := strconv.UnquoteChar(s, quote)
+		value, multibyte, tail, err := strconv.UnquoteChar(s, quote)
 		if err != nil {
 			return "", err
 		}
 		s = tail
-		out.WriteRune(value)
+		if multibyte {
+			out.WriteRune(value)
+		} else {
+			out.WriteByte(byte(value)) //nolint:gosec // UnquoteChar returns a single byte when multibyte is false.
+		}
 	}
 	return out.String(), nil
 }
diff --git a/map_test.go b/map_test.go
index d5327d99..b25624e0 100644
--- a/map_test.go
+++ b/map_test.go
@@ -54,6 +54,30 @@ func TestUnquote(t *testing.T) {
 	require.Equal(t, expected, actual)
 }
 
+func TestUnquoteByteEscapes(t *testing.T) {
+	type grammar struct {
+		Text string `@String`
+	}
+	parser := mustTestParser[grammar](t, participle.Unquote())
+	for _, tc := range []struct {
+		name, input, want string
+	}{
+		{"hexadecimal byte", `"\xff"`, "\xff"},
+		{"octal byte", `"\377"`, "\xff"},
+		{"UTF-8 bytes", `"\xc3\xbf"`, "ÿ"},
+		{"mixed byte and Unicode", `"a\xff\u00ff"`, "a\xffÿ"},
+		{"Unicode escape", `"\u00ff"`, "ÿ"},
+		{"literal Unicode", `"ÿ"`, "ÿ"},
+		{"ASCII escapes", `"\x41\101"`, "AA"},
+	} {
+		t.Run(tc.name, func(t *testing.T) {
+			actual, err := parser.ParseString("", tc.input)
+			require.NoError(t, err)
+			require.Equal(t, tc.want, actual.Text)
+		})
+	}
+}
+
 func TestUnquoteShortToken(t *testing.T) {
 	type grammar struct {
 		Text string `@String`