Page 21 of Faerie Fate (Fae Academy for Halflings #7)

Chapter Fourteen

D ormered windows with mullioned panes brought pale light to the interior, and the roof was covered in moss.

The posts holding up the roof of the front porch were carved with archaic symbols I barely recognized.

Mike was the first to recover his wits and stepped toward me, concern narrowing his eyes.

“Stop! Don’t move.” Poppy’s voice came out of nowhere. “Before you take a step, I have to open the protective wards to let you in.”

Mike glanced sideways toward her. “What happens if you don’t?”

“Then you’ll be burned to a crisp.” She said it easily.

Her cloak flapped behind her with each purposeful step and Poppy lifted her hands.

The effort hardly showed on her features.

She handled her magic as easily as she wielded her weapons.

The corners of her mouth twitched. A vein in my forehead pulsed and my breathing grew louder as I watched her weave her magic, making an opening for us.

She gestured over her shoulder for us to follow. “Don’t be stupid now. No weak stomachs here! I’m not going to hurt you.”

The moment I rose and took a step, I faltered. Crap, I must have lost more blood than I thought, and all because I’d been stupid. I’d let myself get injured.

Bronwen reached beneath my arm to support me and Noren was on my other side. “It’ll be okay, Tavi,” Bronwen whispered. “I don’t think we have a choice. We’ve got to trust her.”

Which was exactly why I didn’t.

Together, we stepped through the wards. There were things in these woods a lot scarier than Poppy, I tried to tell myself. Things I’d fought against before.

The wards fell over us with a strange heaviness and I closed my eyes. Focused on my breathing for a beat. Noren brushed past me but it took much longer for me to find the strength to move my legs forward.

“This is really weird,” Mike whispered. “This sensation?—”

“Try not to freak out,” Bronwen warned, fingers twitching against mine. “It’s wild magic.”

Wild magic I’d felt before, hadn’t I, like the glide of ribbons on my skin.

We pushed through the wall of magic, and coolness trickled through my nervous system like the first brush of rain on a hot summer night. My raw, frayed nerves soothed instantly as my body remembered something my mind couldn’t.

Mike helped me navigate the steps up to the porch, his fingers to the small of my back, but his touch stayed hesitant, almost like he loathed having any physical contact between us anymore.

Noren was the first through the door Poppy held open. She smiled appreciatively at him, but she shoved her hands into her pockets when we passed, as if resisting the urge to strangle us.

She didn’t want us here any more than we wanted to be here.

The glow of lamps on the inside of the cabin were a beacon against the fast-approaching night. I’d never been scared of the dark, but for some reason I hustled forward as quickly as my body allowed, eager to get into the safety of those lights.

I took the first step over the threshold, feeling unwelcome despite Poppy’s offer to help. The door swung closed behind us without anyone touching it.

She turned sharply and strode toward the back of the cabin, past an impressively curved staircase on the left.

Bookshelves bordered the cozy living room, covered by an assortment of glass jars of herbs and books old enough to be considered relics even now.

The ornate design carved on the wooden back of the sofa looked like vines and flowers, the cushions tasseled and soft.

Poppy snapped her fingers and a belch of smoke erupted in the fireplace. Within seconds, a fire lit, consuming the stacked white wood in the hearth.

“Mike and Bronwen, feel free to use the kitchen and bathroom to clean up. Help yourselves to some food, and whatever the wolf wants, he can have,” she called. “Tavi? I need you back here with me.”

She loomed in the doorway, her shadow reaching me where I stood near the front door. Her green eyes seemed to bore holes straight through my soul, leaving me wide open. Clutching my wrist to my chest, I trudged as though through cement to get to her.

Everything was in its place in her kitchen in a type of organized chaos I recognized from other visits to fae homes.

Trinkets littered every available surface but the trail across the rough wooden floors was clear of any debris.

The kitchen had a large stove with four open burners and a space beneath for a magic fire.

It crackled merrily in preparation for whatever Poppy might make for dinner.

“What did you do with the man, Lezar?” I rocked back on my heels.

I wanted the comfort of my friends and my wolf. I wanted to not feel so isolated and alone as Poppy led me into a separate space off the kitchen.

She watched me without expression. “It’s none of your business.”

Once inside, the door swung shut silently behind me and latched with a soft click. At once, the familiar scents of dried herbs and brewing potions settled a bit of the scattered sensation in my chest.

A large iron cauldron hung at the center of the room above a circle painted on the floor. Runes decorated the edge of the circle and the familiar five points of a star spread through the middle. The shelves were full of supplies.

Poppy snapped her fingers and a third fire burst to life beneath the swelled belly of the cauldron.

It was a massive piece. I’d only seen one other cauldron of that size before.

This one was the same general shape but about the size of a bathtub, forged from black iron with four minuscule legs hanging uselessly from its underside.

“Sit.” Poppy pointed and a velvet-cushioned stool swung up beneath me, nudging the back of my legs.

I dropped down with an immediate swimmy-headed sensation spiraling up to the top of my skull. “I’d have been fine on my own,” I insisted automatically.

She barely spared me a second glance as she drew a few jars of salve from the nearest shelf and began to mix them. “You’re used to saying it, aren’t you? You say it often.”

My attention flickered from the fire back to her, tracing her movements. Poppy deftly poured some herbs together in a mortar and threw in a few yellow blossoms and pine needles to the mix.

I swallowed hard when she ground the pestle down to crush the needles. “I say it because it’s true,” I muttered. “I’m always fine.”

Even if it takes me a long time.

“It may be true but you are still injured and I am still the one who’s going to heal you.”

“You sound angry about it.”

Her jaw was rigid. “I’m not happy about it, that’s true.”

Once she finished the salve, a flick of her finger drew the stool, and me perched on top like a jockey, toward her. Poppy knelt in front of me with three fingers covered in salve and I automatically held out my wrist for her.

Her magic untied the red handkerchief and she swiped a clean cloth over the tear in my skin to clean the wound first.

“What are you and your friends really doing here? It wasn’t an easy journey, I’m sure. You want more than what you’ve let on.”

She spoke in an undertone as she worked, and focusing on her voice helped me blot out the pain.

I clenched my jaw, squeezing my eyes shut again. “We told you. We’re looking for Oxana the Sightless.”

“Why her?” Poppy pressed. “Why not any other witch or seer?”

Did she want to know why we weren’t asking her for help? “Because she’s the one who made the Faerie Prophecy.”

Poppy paused for a long moment and then scoffed. “ Faerie Prophecy. It was the Shifter Prophecy before the royals got their hands on it.”

There was so much I wanted to know, and her tone of voice indicated that Poppy might have the answers.

“Seems to me you know a little bit about shifters yourself. Got yourself a nasty scar there.” She remarked on the raw, red line across my throat from Kendrick’s mating ritual.

I told her the partial truth. “I happened to be on the wrong end of a silver knife and a psycho.”

I’d rather Poppy not know about my mate. Not when I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust her, after all.

“So, why? Why are you looking for a famous witch? And if you give me any cock and bull story, I’ll see right through it. This is about more than a prophecy.”

She smoothed the salve over the long tear in my skin and heat blossomed from the area, followed by a wave of cool. The area tingled as the magic seeped deeper to knit me back together.

“We need a witch. Some people…” Now or never, right? “Some people think I’m the one prophesied about. But my powers are blocked. I need someone to help unblock them. Someone who could help us accomplish two things at once.”

Poppy adjusted her crouch in front of me and grabbed another handful of salve. “Is that a fact.”

I couldn’t tell if she was laughing at me or not.

“I’m also under a zombie blood curse, back in my time. I need help breaking that, too, that’s why we’re looking for the morsana flower. We happened to know exactly when Oxana the Sightless would be, along with the plant I need for the curse. We just don’t know where she is.”

Poppy bobbed her head, satisfied with my wrist, before glopping her salve across my neck as well. The movement took me by surprise and I gasped.

“Yes, you do,” she said gruffly. Her brows knitted together. “You do know where she is.”

“We knew the general area where we thought we’d find her, but that’s why we went into Grove. To ask around.” My scar tingled hotly. “No luck, though.”

Poppy straightened, her neck cracking as she reached overhead to stretch her arms. “You’re really not very observant, girl, are you?”

My gaze narrowed. “Why?”

“Because I’m the witch who made the Shifter Prophecy.” Poppy bit out the words. She lowered her arms to her sides. “And I don’t believe that you’re the one.”

My face went white and flames tickled my insides. “Wait. You…? No. You’re the one who made the prophecy?”

The smoke must be getting to me. It was the only explanation.