Page 34 of Magic Claimed

“A little like fish, and a little like rocks after a rain.” She shrugged. “I don’t make the rules.”

None of it sounded too worrying, so we made our way up the drive into the empty parking lot. The moon was full and bright enough to show that there was no immediate sign of our contact, which only seemed to confirm my suspicions.

“Did the message say where to go? Or just to show up at this park? Please tell me we aren’t meeting her in some mysterious cottage in these dark and creepy woods.”

“Nah, we’re looking for the open field just west of here. We’re supposed to wait there and she’ll find us.”

Yep, this was sounding more and more like a trap to me. Just as a precaution, I gauged the distance to the pond and flexed my elemental magic. I was pretty sure it was close enough that I could grab the water and use it as a weapon if I needed to, but the thought didn’t make me feel much better.

Why had I agreed to this again? Oh right, because Kira was persuasive, and I wanted to see Callum. Not very good reasons now that I thought about it a little harder…

My heart rate sped up, and every sense came alive as we stepped out of the parking lot and into the field mentioned in the directions. There was enough moonlight—combined with the lights from the city—to show us major obstacles, but not to illuminate our footing, so I stumbled a little as we crossed the uneven surface.

When we reached the center of the field, Kirastopped and consulted her phone. “This should be it. I guess we just wait for a bit and see whether…”

She froze in place. Every muscle went still, and her eyes lit with an amber glow. “Do you smell that?”

I sniffed the air, but since I was technically a human, my shapeshifter sense of smell was limited to my shifted form—a tiny white fox that would be useless in a fight.

“Nope. But I’m guessing it’s not a pixie.”

“Fae,” she whispered, as the corner of her mouth curled up with what I could have sworn was satisfaction. “Well, what do you know? Looks like it turned out to be a trap after all.”

NINE

I sawthem before I smelled them.

Four… no, five… make thateightunglamoured fae silently emerged from the grass to surround us. Each was outlined in a faint blue glow that, as I watched, began to extend in creeping filaments from one to the next. The moment those filaments touched, they flowed into one another, spreading out to form an unbroken barrier of blue light that continued to rise until it connected in a dome over our heads.

It looked a bit like an energy shield from a sci-fi movie, but I couldn’t tell whether it was intended to keep usin, or everything elseout.

“Have you seen this before?” I murmured to Kira as we set our backs to each other.

“Rath’s brother made one to keep us from escaping,” she replied, sounding utterly unperturbed. “Right before we dropped a castle on his head.”

“Who’swe?”

“Me, Draven, Faris, Rath, and a fire elemental named Wynter. Morghaine too, eventually.”

Six of them. Two of us. No castles in sight. And I had no idea whether my elemental magic could pull water through the glow of the fae barrier.

“Okay then,” I muttered. “You’re the one who was hoping to be ambushed. Do you have a battle plan?”

“Hit them until they stop moving?”

“That’s not a plan!”

“So we improvise.” She shot me a brilliant grin and shifted—swift as blinking—into her tiny bronze dragon. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this. Gotta make them pay for ruining my favorite shirt!”

She bounded towards the closest fae and didn’t even flinch when the gray-skinned woman shot a flurry of glowing blue darts at her face. The darts bounced off her scales and ricocheted into the grass, and when the woman turned to run, Kira gave chase with a wicked-sounding chuckle.

Great, that was one of eight accounted for. Praying Kira was right about being able to handle herself, I turned to frantically considering my own capabilities.

First, I reached for my elemental magic. The water was distant enough that it was a strain, and as I pulled it towards me, two of our attackers headed my way, wielding amorphous magical missiles that glowed with clearly malevolent intent.

I knew I could block them temporarily with ice—I’d done it before, even if largely by accident—but I wasn’t sure I could get the water here in time. So just as I’d done a week ago when I faced a mercenary team without backup, I split my concentration and reached for my fae power at the same time.

It answered willingly, so I shaped it into a simple shield, shaking a little with apprehension as I eyed the glow in my attackers’ hands.