Page 21

CHAPTER TWENTY

A snap and a spark punctuated the silent dungeon and then an Illuminate match came to life in my hand. The flare of sulfur-yellow light reduced to a simple tongue of flame, but no matter how I directed its light, not one ward illuminated.

Not one glimmer of white or yellow threads that should’ve created a spiderweb-like design across the door. Crouching down, I examined the keyhole myself. Even that tiny tunnel of metal was free of wards.

“I don’t see anything,” I said, confused. And no simple lock was enough to contain my grandmother.

Frowning, I used the rest of the match to inspect the doorframe and even the stones of the threshold. Nothing. I cast a glance over my shoulder.

Brandi immediately held up her hands, as if surrendering. “I don’t know a thing about that. Sometimes I think I hear music coming from the other side, but I’ve always dismissed it as a hallucination.” She chuckled once, and ruefully too. “Whenever he’s gone in there, I’m always back in my cell, over there.” The hedge witch pointed to the other end of the dungeon by the tunnel door. “At that point, I’m too exhausted to even think about trying to sneak a peek inside.”

Huffing a frustrated sigh, I dug my hand into my heavy foraging bag and extracted the little vial of filched Caer powder. As Sawyer paced bath and forth, growling, I blew the fine white powder over the door. It never hurt to be too careful.

Then, depressing the latch of the handle, I shoved open the door and stepped inside.

Iris Hawthorne was indeed reading The Hobbit with a pot of tea and a plate of Mrs. Bilberry’s biscuits—sliced and stuffed with thick pieces of ham—on the end table next to her velvet armchair. A wool blanket covered her legs and lap, a scarf nestled against her throat, and fingerless gloves kept her hands warm as she flipped the pages.

The door handle slipped from my stunned fingers as my grandmother lifted a condescending expression from the depths of her book. She’d clearly been expecting someone else, and she tore out her chair the moment she recognized me. Instead of rushing to embrace me, she flung the book at my head like it was a throwing star.

“Don’t let the door close!” she shrieked.

The book caught between the edge of the heavy door and its frame, creating a half-inch gap.

While there hadn’t been any wards preventing anyone from entering the room, there were plenty to keep anyone from leaving. Even without the aid of an Illuminate match, they glittered red and copper and crisscrossed the back of the door to such a dizzying effect I felt my stomach churn.

“Don’t look at them directly,” Grandmother told me, hustling over to the single shelf embedded into the wall. She yanked free a hardback copy of Pillars of the Earth , so thick she couldn’t grip it with one hand, and returned to the door, shooing me out of the way. She replaced The Hobbit with the tome, setting it on the floor like a doorstop. “Sorry, Ken,” she murmured. “Needs must and all that.”

With a sigh that revealed how much the simple act had worn her out, she trudged back to her chair. It was then, with the blanket no longer covering her legs, that I saw the magical binding that shackled her ankle to the chair, which was welded to the ground. It disappeared from view as she sat and resituated her blanket on top of her lap.

Her hair, which had been as steely as her character, was shot through with white. She’d lost some weight, too, her neck stringy like that of a chicken’s. Her fingernails were brittle and chipped in places, and the tan, olive-toned skin that ran in our family had turned sallow. I’d never seen her so thoroughly bundled indoors before, either.

Iris Hawthorne, matriarch of the most powerful coven on the East Coast, looked . . . frail.

“Tea?” she offered blithely.

Quicker than lightning, a blur sprang over the bookish doorstop, streaked across the area rug that suppressed the bulk of the cold radiating from the stone floor, and leapt up onto the end table. Sawyer sank his teeth down into the biggest ham biscuit on the plate and bolted out of the room, leaving nary a crumb in his wake. The whole chicken he’d started devouring last night and again this morning clearly hadn’t made much of a dent in his hunger.

“Horrid beasts, cats,” Grandmother muttered.

I sank onto my knees in front of her. “Grandmother.”

Her ivy-green eyes flickered over my face, taking in every nuance. “You’re yourself again, aren’t you, child? Thank the Green Mother for that.”

“What are you doing here?”

The Hawthorne matriarch sniffed. “What’s it look like?” She gestured to the prison cell, which was far more cozier than it had any right to be.

The twin bed wedged in the corner had a thick mattress and thicker quilt; there was that shelf of books; an actual vinyl record player with a fluted horn; a wicker basket of needlework under the end table; the stuffed velvet armchair; a brazier of magical coals that flickered with blue flame; even a little door crammed into the adjacent wall that—from the potpourri dish positioned nearby—was her own private privy.

“I’ve sacrificed myself for the family,” she answered. Her bony shoulder slumped with a resigned sigh. “So long as I stay here willingly, they will not be taken and drained.”

“But the bargain—”

“He is the master of illusion, Meadow, he’s got other wiles and trickery at his disposal.” She brushed her fingertips over her mouth, as if remembering something. Or a sensation.

Back at the farmhouse, when our lives had just started going sideways, Ossian had used his glamourous lust on both of us. He could take as much magic from her without suffering any consequences of the fae bargain so long as she was consenting.

“Cursed fairy loopholes,” she muttered.

“And that shackle on your ankle. Is that a Mabian binding?”

“My own creation,” she admitted reluctantly. “So I don’t succumb to my baser instincts in a moment of weakness.” She jerked her chin at the dizzying wards on the back of the door. “Far more effective than all that bluster.”

“Could they . . . trap him ? Dad said they’re some of the toughest restraints at a witch’s disposal.”

“Perhaps. But they’re a weaving, Meadow. Magic you know nothing about.”

I fished out the Hunting Spell monocle from my foraging bag and handed it to her. My friends and I had woven a handful of spells together to create that monocle almost out of pure grit alone. Worldly, sagacious, blasé Iris Hawthorne’s mouth actually dropped.

Before she could inspect the crystal further, I plucked it from her stunned hands and secreted it back into the bag.

“What are you planning, Meadow?”

“Can they trap him, Grandmother?” I repeated. A plan was forming to imprison the Stag Man and I needed to know if it was worth pursuing. Right now.

She wet her lips. “Yes,” she whispered. “If you use enough of them.”

Leaning forward, she told me quickly all about Mabian bindings and how a witch inexperienced with them could bypass the actual weaving for layering, something I did know about. And the best part was I’d already filched everything I needed from Brandi’s worktable. Well, all but one ingredient, but I knew where to find that in spades.

When the lesson concluded, my grandmother looked worn out and slumped back in her velvet armchair.

Shifting forward, I placed my hand on her knee. Her knobby, atrophied knee. “I’ve already sent help to our family. Sawyer placed a ward-dissolving potion around the farmhouse. They have the embers; they’ll be able to free themselves. And I’m close to Elfame. I’ll make it in time. I will get Marten back.”

Hope rekindled in my grandmother’s eyes. She lurched forward, grabbing my shoulder in that familiar talon-like grip. “I don’t . . . I don’t know what strength is left in me. If I fall, you must take my place—”

I stood abruptly, cutting her off. Take her place in the Circle of Nine? Take her place as matriarch? I was certainly strong enough for it, stronger than any Hawthorne since Violet. But that would mean returning to the manor, giving up everything I’d gained in Redbud. When I’d fled Annesley Valley with the cursed grimoire, that had always been the plan .

Before Sawyer. Before my life in this little town. Before Arthur. Before the truth.

“Meadow,” she began tersely.

“I promise to do what is right, Grandmother. I will not abandon our family.”

That wasn’t the answer she’d been looking for, but didn’t have the power to bend me to her will. So she said nothing at all.

After one last glance around the room, I asked quietly, “Do you need anything?”

A healing boost would only raise Ossian’s suspicions, and Grandmother knew that too. “No,” she answered, flipping through the pages of her book to find where she’d left off.

No farewells, no well-wishes, no endearments uttered past her lips. Perhaps she was afraid of what it would mean if she did. Perhaps she was just being stubborn because, yet again, I would not conform to the exact letter of her law.

“I love you, Grandmother,” I whispered as I opened the door. A nudge from my foot dislodged The Pillars of the Earth , and I pulled the door shut after me.

Finding a lump lodged in my throat, I swallowed thickly. “C’mon, Sawyer.”

The tomcat checked his whiskers for any crumbs of ham biscuit before climbing into the bag. As I’d feared, there was no way to zip it shut with all the extra supplies taking up space. I chewed on my bottom lip, wondering what I could stuff into my dress pockets.

“Thistle thorns,” I ended up muttering, just flopping my arm over the cat and the opening of the bag. The thick fur of the fox coat would hide most of the bag from view anyway. And a Rabbit Step Spell could scurry me from one end of the castle to the other in less than half a minute.

“Thank you,” I told Brandi. Then I spared a glance for all the other inmates, most of them who I remembered from before. There were some new faces and a few that were missing. “Whatever you do, don’t draw any attention to that sand Sawyer sprinkled. You won’t be forgotten,” I promised them.

“No rush or anything,” Brandi snarked as I stepped into the stairwell. When I glanced over my shoulder, she had a sassy grin on her face. “I’m gonna have sculpted calves from working all day in heels and killer quads from all these weeks of squatting over that bucket. See if you can hold on to your man Arthur then.”

Arthur.

Without another word, I rushed up the steps.

Just that one little word set my heart hammering for a way out like a miner caught in a landslide. Would the wight keep its word and bring me to him? Could I even risk it when I had roused Ossian’s wrath? Should I even be thinking about Arthur when I had a brother to save and a town to liberate?

“ Lass ,” a voice hissed, startling me. From the way the words were enunciated, this wasn’t the first time I’d been hailed.

It was full nighttime now, the glass dome crowning the atrium black as obsidian. To my right, in the wall that separated the great hall from the atrium, a stone was missing. Filling the gap was the chubby face of a woodchuck.

“Roland?”

“Shhh! Cernunnos is back, lass, and in a state and no mistake. He’s been searching for you.”

Oh my Green Mother, if he found Sawyer—

“You know how I mentioned unconventional methods for finding Ricky?”

The woodchuck blinked, surprised by the abrupt change in subject. “Yes, but—”

“This is that method.” I yanked Sawyer out of the foraging bag and shoved him at the woodchuck. Or rather, into the woodchuck-sized entrance into the servant passageway .

The tomcat wasted no time squirming past the flabbergasted rodent into the safety beyond.

“Lass!” the woodchuck exclaimed when he recovered himself. “I agreed to alternative methods, not felonious ones. That’s a cat!”

We all jumped as the unmistakable sound of furious hooves clomped down the hallway, originating from the foyer. The king of the castle had returned. There was no time to shove the overstuffed foraging bag into the gap, and, quite honestly, I really doubted it would fit.

“And he’ll help find Ricky,” I explained quickly, backing away. “Won’t you, S—”

“Find a way back into the dungeon through the servant passageways, probably by removing a brick or two like I did with your chimney, and use the Lugus Spell to camouflage myself as I explore the tunnel,” the tomcat rattled off. “Yes, I know. Another side quest.”

“Cernunnos’s Horns,” the woodchuck muttered. “Good luck, lass.”

With that, he replaced the stone, and the hallway wall became seemingly seamless once more. I yanked on the zipper to close the foraging bag (just barely) and held it tight against my stomach as I sprang over on light feet to the settee in the atrium and sat. Folding my hands in my lap, I adopted what I hoped was an unaffected and unbothered posture.

The stomping hooves grew louder and suddenly, the fae king stepped into a slant of moonlight.

Mud splattered his calves and bits of leaf clung as high as mid-thigh. Sweat darkened his curls and flattened them against his forehead and neck. His breath misted into twin jets of blue-tinged frost as he snorted an exhale. In the shadows of his face, his jewel-bright eyes blazed green with power.

“ There you are,” he growled.