Page 57 of A Dance with the Fae (Mistress of Magic #1)

A few weeks later, Faye and Rav lay in Faye’s bed, their legs entwined.

‘If you go, I’ll make you a cup of tea every day for a week,’ Faye offered.

‘Make me one today, then.’ Rav snuggled next to her. ‘I don’t want to get up. It’s too nice in here.’

‘If you make it, I’ll bring you cake with your tea every day for a week,’ she counter-offered. ‘Please, Rav. Go on.’ She pulled the duvet off his side of the bed. ‘See, you’re cold now, anyway. Might as well get up.’

‘Oh, fine.’ Rav got up and pulled on a hoodie over his boxers. ‘Only because you might turn me into some reptile or something.’

‘Shut up,’ she said, then, after a second, called after him. ‘An otter. I could turn you into an otter, that would be a cute replacement.’

Faye’s smile faded as she stared out through the window at her late-summer herb garden. She had never told Rav about the love spell that had brought him to her; that had also brought Finn Beatha into her life.

She had wanted to tell him, but something had kept her from doing it.

What good was a relationship where you kept secrets?

She had tortured herself with the thought, but she didn’t want to tell Rav that she had engineered them meeting with magic.

She knew that it would worry him, or make him feel that their love wasn’t real.

She thought that it was , despite everything. It was better left.

She hadn’t had the time to tend the garden much.

Soon it would be time to harvest everything for the winter: the rose hips dried for incenses, or made into a vitamin-rich syrup for coughs and colds.

The lavender had to be dried, the nettles, too, for tea or healing tinctures.

The apples would be made into apple jam and apple chutney; for a few weeks in late summer, she would fill boxes of the sweet, red fruit and put them outside the shop for anyone to take.

The irony of witches giving away free apples wasn’t lost on her, but otherwise they would waste.

Rav was recovering slowly. After the concert they’d shut themselves away in Faye’s house.

She’d closed the shop – not permanently, but until she felt ready to reopen it.

She didn’t care that news of what happened at the concert – the mysterious disappearance of eighty people – had turned Abercolme into a media circus.

She could have opened the shop and talked to all the journalists that had, initially, waited on her doorstep, like they had all the local businesses, wanting a scoop, an insight, some secret that the people of Abercolme were keeping to themselves.

She could have made a fortune, selling to all the curious that streamed into the village, determined to uncover the truth behind the rumours of alien abductions, or kidnappings by secret sects within the village.

Or, worst of all, that Abercolme was the centre of a black magic community that had sacrificed all eighty to the Devil.

Perhaps now the residents of Abercolme would understand how Grainne Morgan felt, all those years ago.

But Faye kept her mouth shut. Nobody talked to the press; not Muriel in the bakery, not Mrs Kennedy, not the minister or anyone else. They kept to themselves, and, slowly, the press began to leave.

Rav had been left weakened by his abduction into faerie.

Faye was shocked at how little energy he had for weeks afterwards, and the deep cuts on his back, legs and arms that were only now starting to subside with her repeated treatment of comfrey salve.

He had hardly any appetite for the first week, and had gone in and out of consciousness for days until she brought him round, finally, by making him eat some soup.

Midsummer sacrifices . Finn had spoken of it; Grandmother had warned her, in her way.

A familiar stab of guilt wrenched Faye’s stomach; ever since the concert, after she had limped home in exhaustion, unable to do anything more than slump into her bed, beside Rav, she had felt it.

Had she known what was going to happen, would she have been Finn’s willing sacrifice?

Should she have stayed, so that he didn’t have to look elsewhere, and find Aisha and the rest of them?

Midsummer sacrifices . Finn had spoken of it; Grandmother had warned her, in her way.

She had been back to Black Sands, but the faerie road had vanished.

At least, it had for her. She knew that Finn had revoked her access to Murias, and Aisha and the others would eventually die if they stayed there.

She doubted she had anything left that she could offer Levantiana in exchange for Aisha’s release, and a dungeon awaited Faye if she managed to find her way back.

She heard Rav’s footsteps on the stairs and sat up in bed, chasing the dark thoughts away for now.

Though they were both recovering in their own separate ways, their time together had been sweet.

It was just them, eating the food she had in her larder and the freezer, and the ripe fruit and vegetables from the garden.

But Faye hardly slept, racked with worry for Aisha.

Whenever she thought about her friend – even though she had gone willingly with Finn – she felt shadow overtake her.

Rav found it hard to get through to her at those times.

But, nonetheless, she and Rav were talking, sharing themselves with each other.

And that, in itself, was a healing. She resolved to get Aisha back somehow.

Faye had failed Rav. She was the reason he had been taken, endangered.

But you’re also the reason I’m alive now , he’d replied, holding her shaking hands when she told him how she had been seduced by Finn, how she was half faerie, and how that had initially blinded her to the darkness of the faerie realm.

But there was also something in the shadow part of her that loved faerie and always would.

On the nights after Rav had fallen asleep and she sat up in bed, hugging her knees and watching the moon, she worried about Finn.

It wasn’t over; he had more or less said so.

But she wanted it to be. She wanted a normal life.

You can’t be anything other than who you truly are , Rav had sighed. And, now that I know all of it, I can make the choice to be with you or not . Problem is, I can’t help loving you. It’s not a choice. It just is.

He set a tray with two of Grandmother’s old china cups painted with faded roses, a teapot and a packet of biscuits on the white-painted bedside table.

‘I checked the post.’ He handed Faye a sheaf of envelopes and papers. She made a face at a couple of handwritten notes from journalists with their business cards attached and screwed them up.

‘No thanks,’ she muttered.

Faye got out of bed and went to stand at the window; she stared out at her garden, bathed in the rich gold sun of early August. She opened the window and leaned out to breathe in the air; the smell of the wild roses, the raspberry leaf and lavender scenting the soft air.

‘There’s a card from Annie, too.’ Faye felt her heart lift; she missed her best friend terribly. She let out a short laugh when she looked at the photo, which was a London Beefeater mooning the camera; the caption said: Having a ball in London!

‘Typical Annie.’ She showed Rav, who rolled his eyes affectionately.

Dear Faye , Annie had written in her rounded script.

Hope you’re okay. I tried calling a few times, but I couldn’t get hold of you. I hope you got my emails and letters. I’d come up and check on you, but the filming schedule down here is mad…

Faye hadn’t had it in her to reply much to any of Annie’s emails yet, except to say that she was all right, that she and Rav were taking it easy together, and that she’d catch Annie up with everything when she was up to it.

Anyway, it’s fun. Coven of Love is kind of cheesy, but I do get to wear great outfits.

Plus, things are going well with Suze. Will fill you in more when I see you – come down and see me when you’re feeling up to it, maybe.

There’s room for you here if you want. Thinking of you and love you always, sweetheart. Annie xxx

Faye smiled and handed the card to Rav, then stared back out at the garden.

Roses would always mean faerie to her now: the crystal castle of magic where they were underfoot, the petals she had taken and used, wrapped in a piece of kelpie’s scale.

It had been the smell of rose in the air when she had first made love to Rav at the beach, almost upon the faerie road.

But the wild white and yellow roses that had grown in this garden all her life were a different smell, and they reminded her of Grandmother and Moddie, and playing at witches with Annie in the summers long before Faye knew anything of love.

If she drew power from the realm of faerie, then she also drew it from this house, this garden, and her ancestors, the Morgans.

She had absorbed the powers of all of who had come before, and, over time, she would unwrap every piece of knowledge, and know what they had known; feel what they had felt and seen and heard.

‘You’ll put this right. I know you will.

’ Rav stood behind her. His arms circled her waist, and she turned around to kiss him.

There was electricity between them like there always had been, and there was kindness and warmth, too.

For the first time in her life, Faye felt known.

And she knew that, in part, that was because she had begun to know herself for the first time, and accept her fae self as well as the self she had always known.

It wasn’t over, with Finn, with the war, with all of it.

She had only just begun to come into her true power, and she still had more magic to learn, if Levantiana would teach her.

If the prophecy is true, then I’ve got a lot more to do , she thought, as she inhaled the scent of the roses. But I’m ready. Bring it on.

To be continued…

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If you were totally swept away by A Dance with the Fae , you’ll love the second book in the Mistress of Magic series, A Kiss from the Fae . Faye Morgan barely escaped from the faerie realm, but now the fae king wants her back…

Get it here or keep reading for an exclusive extract.