Page 33 of The Crimson Throne (Spy and Guardian #1)

Samson

The wisp shimmies in flares of brilliant light from plant to spindly plant, and I follow it with my head tipped, unable to staunch my wonder.

It’s a pretty little fairy light, dancing happily through the bog, and we’re just trotting after it, hoping for—

Alyth’s fingers dig into my shoulder. “You div! The wisp almost took you into the peat. Don’t you see?”

I stagger, only losing my balance in her grip, but my sudden rocking—or maybe Alyth’s calling out the game—makes the will-o’-the-wisp let loose a tinkling bell noise, maybe a giggle.

My knees hit the ground, and a hair in front of me, so close that the earth gives under my legs, I see now why the grass is flattened. This area’s different, peat, like Alyth said. If I’d walked across it, I’d have dropped into the muddy trap, easy.

I look up at the wisp, where it hovers a few paces ahead, and give a bemused grin. Tricky girl.

I regain my feet and turn to Alyth. “Aw, you do care.”

She scowls. “Just don’t want your death on my conscience.”

“I thought the wisp was meant to show us to the witch, not lead us to our doom.”

“Why can’t it do both? If it can trick you on its mission, it will.” Alyth steps around me, taking the lead in following the wisp now, which we should’ve done at the start, only I was so besotted by the little fairy light I couldn’t help myself.

“Are most fae creatures bloodthirsty?” The connection settles uneasily in my gut. “Are most of ’em like Red Caps, then?”

Alyth whips a horrified look back at me. “The will-o’-the-wisp is not a Red Cap,” she says in disgust, but she stops with a heavy sigh and scrubs her hands over her face.

“I’m sorry,” I try. “I didn’t mean to offend.”

She shakes her head once. “Don’t apologize.

You don’t know, and it’s hard for me to wrap my head around—that you’re part of this world but know nothing of it.

Magic is not bound by human time and logic.

Even creatures like the will-o’-the-wisp.

It isn’t trying to get us to go into the bog out of malice. ”

We walk on. The wisp bounces ahead but comes to stop over a small creek.

“Alyth—”

“It was more…playing a game,” she continues, trailing the wisp without pause, and I follow, my eyes pinging from the creek to the wisp to Alyth.

“The way a puppy might get carried away and nip at you. It’s not doing it to hurt, and a fae creature like this doesn’t have a concept of intentionally harming you.

They just don’t always remember that humans are mortal—”

“Alyth.”

She looks back at me again but keeps walking, making to step over the narrow creek with her focus twisted to me.

“The wisp stopped moving,” I point out, brow furrowing.

Something’s…off. About the creek, about the wisp being stationary. There’s no sign of more peat in this area, but that doesn’t mean something isn’t wrong.

Not wrong. Nothing feels wrong.

Just different.

Alyth leans forward, continuing the path into the bog—

Only in a flash, a push and then pull of ether rippling, she’s gone.

I pride myself on thinking, then reacting. On planning, then doing.

But in that moment, I’m all reaction, and her warnings of the wisps and bloodthirsty fae go right out of my head. I lurch forward, panic burning hot in my veins, hands extended, throat scraping on her shouted name: “Alyth—”

A gust of wind billows around me, tugging at my clothes like crooked fingers.

All that passes is a blink. A single snatched moment, and the world changes.

The bog’s gone. The chilly winter air, the desolate, wild landscape. It’s gone.

Alyth’s in front of me again, but she’s standing in a…market?

I’m so relieved to see her that it gushes up through me, but it goes to a static pause as I see again where she’s standing. Where we’re standing.

My brain’s scrambling so hard to catch up that I only gawk, hands splayed in the motion of reaching for Alyth, all my body gone to rigid iron save for my eyes, which dart back and forth, up and down, seeing, not believing.

Stalls line a dirt path that twists ahead, and part of me might think I landed somewhere in London if not for that off feeling that permeates the air here.

The stalls, the road, hell, even the sky above all have a slight twist of different to them, that same itching sensation as before, that something’s just a little too tilted to be right.

The fabrics of the stalls are all vibrant shades that make my eyes ache to look at, magenta and gold and night-sky onyx, with wares that seem ordinary at first. Pots and vases, jewelry and clothes, but—they glow. They glow the way those Red Cap weapons do, and that’s what’s so off with this place:

Everything’s glowing.

The stalls, the road. The sky’s a vivid, stunning blend of blue and purple and pink, locked in a swirling sunset smeared across the heavens. The wares, the people—

Not all people.

Some are human—enough. But others are short little things that scurry around, shouting out words I don’t understand, looking mostly like animals, only they walk on two legs, like Kitty.

And they’re dressed in clothes, carrying bags and tools; one throws its head back in a boisterous laugh.

They’re all shapes and sizes and colors, and soft glows of magic emanate out of some, palest orange and faint eggshell blue.

The air smells of the best baked goods, sweetness and flour and cream, and I stand here in the mix of it all, my jaw dropped.

Did I die?

This is the afterlife somehow. The wisp led me into peat, and I suffocated, and now—

Alyth puts her hands on my face, making me look at her.

I snatch her arms and pat all down her sides, looking for wounds, looking for—I don’t even know. She’s here and she’s solid, and I don’t know what in the blazes is happening.

“You’re all right?” I ask. “The wisp didn’t hurt you?”

She smiles. It settles me, because if she’s smiling, things really are all right.

“I’m fine,” she says. Her brows pinch together, but her smile stays, giving her a look of cautious wonder. “Are you?”

“Am I—” My mind races. We’re all right. Alyth’s all right. The wisp was leading us—

“The witch?” I look around again, but I don’t see anyone who looks much like a witch. There are just sellers and buyers. The stall nearest us is hawking bottles of what looks like wine, pouring out a stream of deep maroon liquid for a customer.

The liquid sparks , pops, and fizzes like lightning, and I gape again.

“No,” Alyth says, and it takes me a beat to remember what I even asked.

I blink at her. “The wisp didn’t lead us to the witch?”

She shakes her head. “Not yet, it would appear. I assumed that was who it was leading us to, but now—” Her wonder slips away, always so short-lived, and I hate that I didn’t revel in it. Didn’t do my best to extend it and instead just brought her right back to this massive weight she carries.

“Where are we, then?” I ask.

Alyth says, as though it should be obvious, “The goblin market.”

“Ah.” I blink. “Of course. How did I not recognize it?”

She gives me a sardonic look. “The fae realm. Not the Seelie Court, but a place within its rule. I’m not sure why the wisp led us here, but it would have had good reason to. Someone sent it to find us.”

We’re still standing awful close. I dropped my touch from her, which was a dumb move on my part; why would I ever stop holding her if she lets me? I take her hand now, needing that contact still.

“Why would someone here want to find us?”

Alyth shrugs, her grip tightening on my fingers. I wonder if she knows she’s doing it. I wonder if it helps her. “Probably one of my father’s servants wanting to deliver a message.”

My brows flick up. “Your father’s in this realm?”

Her eyes jump to mine. She hesitates, then says in a small, soft voice, “He’s a member of the Seelie Court.”

There’s hesitation in her words, like she’s waiting for my reaction to blow up. What’s she thinking? That I—

Oh. If her father’s a member of the Seelie Court, then she’s likely got some nobility too. I think back on all she’s said about her duty in Scotland and her position over the other Leths, and I realize that she’s likely got rank in the fae realm.

Just when I think I’ve got her figured out, just when I think I have a handle on bracing myself to absorb her impact, a new facet of Alyth Graham reveals itself, and I’m knocked even more off-kilter.

Everything I find out about her keeps putting her so far above me, and here I thought we were starting to be similar.

But we are. We can be, because she’s not expecting me to bow and scrape and hold her up on a pedestal. In fact, she looks damn terrified of that result, like she’s waiting for me to realize our distance and let it wedge between us.

So I smile, cockeyed and easy. “You know my father’s the same in England. So when yours neglected you, it was for a fancy court too? We really are cut from the same cloth, Alyth.”

I’m so far below her, so desperately unworthy of her.

And yet.

Her eyes shift over my face for a long beat. It makes heat pool low in my belly, makes me want to kiss that grin right off her face, and I twist our hands together where she’s still letting me hold her, threading our fingers alongside each other.

“Yours is still worse,” she says, eyes sparking.

“Ah, I know, being English and all.”

“Well, I meant trading in Red Cap weapons, but yes, that too.”

My grin is so wide, it hurts. I want her to keep teasing me, because if she’s teasing me, then she’s not thinking about any of the stresses in her life.

But she sighs and rubs a hand over her face, settling in with focus.

“My father’s messenger is here somewhere.

He usually frequents a booth across the square.

Follow me, and do not eat anything. You could get trapped here for just eating a berry.

And don’t speak to anyone—you’re far too eager to swear your life away. ”

She’s serious again, all business, but I can’t help it. “Pretty sure you liked me swearing my life to you.”