Page 46 of A Dance with the Fae (Mistress of Magic #1)

On her foraging walk, Faye avoided Rav’s house by the sea, careful also to skirt the faerie path that ran alongside the house. That wasn’t why she was here; she was staying in the ordinary world for now.

In the distance, she could hear the sound of clanging as the festival stage was erected, up on the cliffs: Abercolme Rocks was near now, and the village had been busy with trucks and food vendors all week.

She followed her usual path down to the beach.

Some things could be collected here: small shells to include in the ready-made spell bags she sold alongside the Mistress of Magic incense.

Small spells could still be remarkably effective.

Feathers, too; she picked up a few small grey feathers belonging to sea birds, and one black crow’s feather.

She walked along the beach, filling a bag with sea buckthorn berries, intending to dry some for incense and make some into the tart jam she liked.

She filled another bag with lovage and one with orache, which was better than spinach to eat.

Pine was everywhere: she used it in incenses for purification and divination.

Faye could never forage without remembering Grandmother – the way she taught Faye which plants could be eaten; which berries could be dried and burned, like hawthorn and rosehip; which looked tasty but were poisonous, like the red yew berries that covered the trees in the churchyard so prettily every year.

For an hour or more, Faye lost herself in her foraging, taking pleasure in the small finds along the familiar ways she had trod since girlhood.

As evening came, she turned and followed the coast path back to Black Sands.

The pull of faerie was strong now; more insistent than it had been before.

Faye recognised the familiar call in her blood as her gaze settled on the faerie pathway outside Rav’s house again, and, clearer than before, she found she could see the fae twisting and running along it in their chaotic way.

In the old faerie stories, humans sometimes had their eyelids anointed with a faerie balm that meant they could see faeries in the ordinary world, but this seldom turned out to be a good thing.

Faye remembered one story where a cunning woman had taken the balm and put it on her eyes herself rather than the faeries doing it.

She had delighted in being able to see the faeries play their tricks on the unknowing humans, until the fae realised she could see what they were doing and struck her blind.

Faye could see the point of the story now. So far, it had felt like a curse to be half faerie.

‘I thought you’d be at the shop.’ Rav’s voice broke into her thoughts, and she looked up, startled.

‘Oh. Hi.’

There was an uncomfortable silence.

‘Well, nice to see you’re still alive, anyway…’ He looked at her expectantly.

‘I’m alive,’ she said slowly. ‘I…I wanted to see you, but…’ How was she going to explain?

‘But what?’ His tone was cold. Faye could feel his hurt, and her heart twisted with sorrow.

‘I do want to see you. It’s just been…’ She sighed, not knowing what to say.

‘You don’t have to explain.’ He refused to meet her eyes. ‘I thought we had something, but I understand if you don’t feel the same way.’

‘We do. We did. There’s a connection here, between us, Rav. But…’ She bit her lip and looked away, unsure what to say.

There were some black clouds coming in, far off on the horizon. Rav nodded to them. ‘Black horses coming. Better head in,’ he said.

‘That’s a strange expression.’ She was grateful for the change of subject; she sensed that he wanted to stay, to talk to her, and that was something.

‘Oh. Is it? My mum used to say it about a storm. Like white horses in the sea.’ He kicked at the sand.

‘I haven’t heard it.’ She laid her hand on his arm. ‘Look. Can we talk?’

‘Sure.’ Rav met her eyes with a direct but kind stare; he didn’t make any move to either remove her hand or put his own hand on top of hers.

‘Okay. So…I’m sorry. About not answering your texts, about being distant. There is a reason, but it’s…it’s hard to explain.’

‘What are we going to talk about if you can’t explain anything?

’ He shrugged and pulled his arm away from her hand.

‘Seems to me that you think you want to talk, but I don’t think you do.

Do you know how weird it was for me to see you just disappear like that?

It was terrifying. No explanation of what happened.

It’s been torturing me. I can’t sleep. I feel like I’m going mad. ’

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, feeling hopeless. ‘I’m so sorry, Rav. I would like something with you, I just…I just…can’t, right now.’

‘Whatever.’ He turned and started walking away. ‘I’ll see you around, Faye. Let me know when you’re ready to talk like an adult.’

The storm clouds were growing nearer; the air was changing. Now, it had an electric smell like burnt ozone. Fear contracted Faye’s body; she didn’t want to lose Rav. Her heart ached, and suddenly she was sick of all her secrets. She knew she had to open up to Rav. To tell him everything.

She ran the few steps between them and made him turn around to face her.

‘Please. I will explain. Everything. Just listen.’ She reached up to his face and touched his cheek. His eyes met hers again, and she dropped her hand.

‘Faye, I don’t know…’ he muttered, and a distant thunder rumbled in the distance. ‘I don’t want to get involved if you’re going to mess me around. I like you too much.’

She nodded. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry. You deserve to know everything.’

‘Why does it have to be difficult? I like you and you like me. I think you do, anyway,’ he murmured, stepping close to her. He pulled her to him and stroked her cheek.

‘You know I do,’ she confessed, her tone urgent. ‘But I’ve got something to tell you. It’s going to sound really strange. But I have to, I think.’

He pressed his finger softly to her lips. ‘Tell me later. All I care about is that you like me.’

‘I have to tell you, Rav. It’s important.

Please?’ she insisted, fighting the desire to kiss him, to lose herself in him.

It would be terribly dangerous, a kiss; the faeries had watched them make love on the beach before.

This close to the faerie road, any number of Finn’s spies might be watching, or even Finn himself.

‘All right.’ His lips brushed hers, and Faye felt the heat between them build.

He kissed her. It was a sweet yet rough kiss; his mouth was warm, and her own deep yearning for him responded.

She closed her eyes and surrendered to it, unable to do anything else, despite the danger.

His hands pressed into the small of her back; his touch was at once intimate and gentlemanly, and she breathed in his warm, woody smell, remembering how he touched her, how cherished he had always made her feel, how powerful.

The thunder had moved quickly, and the kiss brought on the rain, or so it seemed.

The black sky rumbled ominously, and lightning split it like slivers of moonlight.

Rav pulled away from the kiss; they both stared up at the storm for a brief moment, startled at its speed, and Faye felt a wave of unease clutch her heart.

‘God. Come on, we’ll get drenched,’ he shouted over the thunder and guided her down the path towards the beach, but the rain came down hard and there was no escaping it.

Faye’s gaze flickered to the faerie road alongside Rav’s house.

There was something odd happening. As she followed him, ducking her head under her arm in a vain attempt to keep off the rain, some of the black clouds had lowered to the path itself, disconnected from the sky, like a stray, angry storm cloud, separated from the rest.

The seawater rose in tall waves and crashed onto the beach, and when Faye looked into the waves, she saw the shapes of horses surging forward, relentless, their glassy black manes driving through the white sea spray. Her breath caught in her mouth. No.

She saw the power in their legs, which was the weight that drove the waves forward and rolled underneath them. She knew what the horses were, and why they had come.

Rav started running ahead. He turned back to wave something at her, but she couldn’t make it out.

He shouted something, but the wind took it away.

He pointed to his house. She took it to mean he was going to open up so she could run straight in.

She screamed at him, ‘ No, run, run ,’ but he was too far away to hear her over the wind and the crashing waves.

Unlike her, Rav couldn’t see the fae or the faerie road. He was completely ignorant of the strangeness ahead of him. And the cloudy blackness was so close to the house that Faye started running after him, a shout growing in her throat, ‘ No, no, no !’

Faye watched, aghast, as the black water horses – kelpies – rode out of the sea towards Rav with a white fire in their eyes.

They galloped towards where Rav was standing with his back to the sea, fumbling for his door keys. Their serpent tails powered them along, swishing side to side in the wet sand.

‘Rav!’ she shouted. ‘ Rav! No!’

He hadn’t seen them; perhaps he couldn’t.

Faye wanted to scream at him to run, run away as fast as he could from the kelpies, but she knew he would never be able to outrun them.

Rav turned around just as a kelpie reared up towards him; its webbed black hoof struck Rav at the side of the head, and he crumpled to the ground.

The water horse gripped Rav’s arm with its long teeth and swung him onto its back in one lithe, wet motion.

Black tethers of some kind lashed him to the horse’s back.

Sprinting towards him, Faye watched as he struggled but failed to get free.

Faye screamed at the kelpies to free Rav, but they showed no evidence of having heard her.

She felt the betrayal slap her in the face; she had ridden a kelpie, she had taken its leathery scale as a token of her communion with it, under the sea.

And yet, that meant nothing now. Her hand went to her neck, to the kelpie charm that Moddie had given her, but it was only there in the astral plane, in dreams and in the faerie realm.

It couldn’t be touched in the human world.

‘Rav!’ Faye yelled again, panting with the effort of trying to catch up to the kelpie.

The kelpie galloped away, along the faerie road and over the headland. The rain pelted her mercilessly.

‘Stop, please stop!’ she shouted, trying to run, but no one was listening to her, and the wet sand underfoot grabbed at her, refusing anything other than a fast walk.

From the side of the road, tendrils crept out and wound around her ankles; grinning faces appeared on the buds and flowers of plants she could not identify.

She shook them off, tearing at their leaves desperately as she tried to run.

By the time Faye had reached the headland and gone on to the gates to the labyrinth, Rav and the kelpie had disappeared.