Page 9 of A Kiss from the Fae (Mistress of Magic #2)

Excerpt from Grainne Morgan’s diary

The harvest festival sees the village piling up their vegetables and breads for a feast. This year the harvest has been good, and I thanked the fae accordingly with offerings of the best cream, cabbage, wild flowers and oat cakes out on the faerie road.

My daughter danced with the village children in the village square. She has been practising for months. I saw her father look on kindly; he suspects that she is his, but I have never told him. It is irrelevant.

Marian’s waist grows thicker, and she has been frequently absent from coven meetings. I fear the worst: that she is being taken gradually into the fae kingdom and, come Midwinter, she will be gone. I have summoned Gwyn Beatha and asked for a parley.

They stood in a circle an arm’s length from each other, able to touch hands when they needed to.

Faye stood between Gabriel and Ruby and watched as Penny called in the elements, just as Faye had done so many times in her herb garden or on Black Sands Beach.

Just as many times, she’d stood on the worn hearthstones inside Mistress of Magic, in front of the fireplace where generations of Morgan women had opened their arms to the moon and asked for its blessing.

They had sung the simple song about the growing and the cutting of the grain over and over until Sylvia had beckoned them to stand in the circle, drawing it outside them with wand, lit censer, cup and by sprinkling earth around them to create a protected space.

‘I call to the watchtowers of the spirits of the north, of earth, be with us in our rite!’ Sylvia’s voice rang out clear and confident in the night.

Her face was lit by candlelight as she moved from one quarter of the circle to the next, calling in the elements as power to the circle.

As she did so, Faye felt the hairs on the back of her neck prickle, and a chill went up her spine.

She felt the raw elemental energy coming: earth from the north, air from the east, fire from the south and water from the west; their power rushing in to the circle and melding, merging into something new.

The circle held their energies; the men and women around the edge were part of the circle.

Everything of them was part of the circle, and the circle was part of them.

Even though that elemental energy was the energy of faerie, there was no getting away from it, and Faye would never want to.

The energies of nature were one thing – dangerous faerie kings and queens were quite another.

Faye half closed her eyes, watching the energies shift and dance in the circle.

She could see the air sprites, the sylphs, dancing like dust motes in the shafts of moonlight that sliced into the clearing.

She watched the fire elementals, writhing like snakes, salamanders, changeable as their native element; and the earth energy, slower and fuller and richer, like stones building into cairns, combining to spiral up in the space between them all.

Her heart beat faster for a moment as she felt the energy of water rush into the circle, recognising its familiar lull. Did Finn Beatha and Levantiana know she was here? She hoped not.

Sylvia stood with her arms outstretched and called out loudly.

‘Blessed Morgan Le Fay, goddess of magic, witch, independent woman, be with us at this time when light and dark are in perfect balance; bless us with your wisdom this equinox! Enchantress, we implore thee, lend us your power to see clearly in the coming dark! Keeper of wisdom, teacher of the crescent moon, healer of the sick! Goddess of magic, we beckon you, protect the balance within us, protect us in the darkness and open its mysteries to us. We implore you, grant us your sight this Mabon night.’

The circle joined hands as Sylvia continued to call out raptly to Morgan and started to pace. Faye was still surprised that Ruby’s London coven honoured Morgana Le Fae, a faerie queen.

In Abercolme, it was the fae kingdoms they were closest to: in the sea, in the wind, in the ground under them.

Perhaps the faerie kingdoms were closer in those rural places; in cities, she’d supposed that people would find it harder to connect to the nature elementals.

But, she reminded herself, Morgan’s influence in books and films was considerable.

She remained the iconic witch: misunderstood and misrepresented perhaps, but a symbol of power, nonetheless.

Faye heard Ruby and Gabriel chanting, Morgan Le Fay, Lady of Magic!

Morgan Le Fay, Enchantress of the Moon !

and followed suit. The circle’s pacing turned into something faster and more unruly.

Still, their hands stayed clasped together.

Morgan Le Fay, Lady of Magic! Morgan Le Fay, Enchantress of the Moon!

Faye heard her voice rasping as she started to lose her breath, the volume of the chanting increasing.

Faye was sweating from the wild skipping and chanting.

She closed her eyes and saw the circle as if from above, the flickering candlelight, the moonlight on their faces.

In her mind’s eye, there were two dirt paths running from one side of the clearing to the other, crossing each other at the centre of the circle.

And at the point where they crossed, a gate made of the same pink-white crystal she remembered from the seven-pointed castle opened in the ground, and Morgana Le Fae appeared.

Faye opened her eyes, startled; as if they had seen the same thing, the circle stopped dancing. She narrowed her eyes. There was a shimmer of non-colour at the centre of the circle, and the candles inside the lamps guttered, making exaggerated shadows in the trees, but otherwise nothing.

It can’t be . Faye stared into the shadows, her heart full of anticipation.

She closed her eyes. Tall, silver-white-haired and black-skinned, Morgana wore long silver robes and a silver circlet on her head, with a crescent moon that pointed to the sky.

Her face wasn’t human, but a shifting mass of light.

She bowed her head to Faye; Faye bowed, eyes closed, in response.

Her heart was pounding with the shock of Morgana’s presence.

How had this happened? She’d been so sure that she was safe.

She’d clearly underestimated the power of the coven.

‘I bless your circle. I am Morgana, the one you seek. I am Morgana Le Fae, Goddess of Witches and Mistress of Magic,’ the faerie queen intoned.

‘She is here!’ Sylvia cried, exultant, her head thrown back.

Faye opened her eyes. She caught Gabriel staring at her.

‘You see the goddess?’ he whispered.

‘Not clearly in the circle. With my eyes closed, yes,’ Faye stammered.

‘I see you’re accustomed to using magical imagination.’ Gabriel smiled, closing his eyes. ‘Not everyone sees Her. That’s why Sylvia is…translating, shall we say.’

‘Oh.’ Faye couldn’t express what she was really feeling, which was a mixture of fear and anticipation; she’d been resisting the call of the fae ever since she’d been in London. But at the same time, her soul was alight.

‘I come with a message for one among you.’ Morgana’s voice hung in the air between them all and sounded inside their heads at the same time. ‘Faye Morgan, sidhe-leth , step forward.’

Faye’s heart beat faster, and she released Gabriel’s hand.

‘I’m…I’m here.’ She tried to get her voice under control, but her nerves showed.

‘Faye. There is something important you must know about the war between the faerie kingdoms.’ Morgana’s voice sang with the splash of oars in a still lake and the vibrant hum of the pink-white crystal of her castle. ‘I come to speak to you, and you only.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Please. I wanted to start a new life here. Can’t you leave me alone?’

‘No!’ Morgana’s voice echoed in her ears. ‘There is a prophecy that drives this war. The rifts between the elemental kingdoms are deepening because of it, and you lie at its centre.’

‘I am aware of it. I…I didn’t necessarily believe it was true,’ Faye replied slowly.

‘It is true. Do not doubt what you have been told, though the version of it may not be entirely accurate,’ Morgana said.

‘You have great power, Faye Morgan, but you must move quickly. The war between the elemental kingdoms rages on, and very soon, it will approach a tipping point. If nothing is done, the forces that wish to eliminate humankind altogether will gain advantage. You must intervene and return balance to the human and the faerie worlds.’

‘How would I do that? I have no idea what any of this means.’ Faye felt an odd sense of falling as she was talking to Morgana, as if she had lost her footing on the ground and was falling through space.

‘You made more than one bargain. You must fulfil them, and in doing so, you will fulfil the prophecy. But take care,’ Morgana warned. ‘Your involvement with Finn Beatha has begun a series of events that can only end in?—’

But there was an interference, sudden, like the irritating black and white snow on the TV set when a storm knocks out the aerial.

The goddess’s outline flickered. Faye stretched her hand out as if she could touch Morgana, but her fingers closed around air as the goddess faded.

‘They will not let me through,’ Morgana’s voice faded away. ‘Do not trust them!’

The sense of falling through space was gone, but it was replaced by something else that was just as disquieting.

A different forest had appeared around the circle, slipping against the oaks of the heath like a blurred negative. Faye looked around her, but the rest of the coven seemed to be caught in a moment of stillness, frozen in time.

‘Can only end in what?’ Faye cried out, but there was no answer.