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CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

A roiling mass of green flames and writhing vines shot Alec into the air. His fingernails clawed against my throat, but the wounds sealed themselves almost as quickly as they were made.

His blood-curdling scream was silenced as a crackling bolt of copper magic shot him out of the air.

Still pinned to the ground by his dagger, I craned my head back to see the magic hunter crash into the ground. Clothes tore and flesh bruised as he slid across the turf until the old fallen log from where I’d collected the witch’s butter finally stopped him.

Gripping the ribbed hilt of the dagger, I yanked it out and scrambled to my feet. Ossian stood at the edge of the clearing, the trees and castle and Shane looming behind him like a pack of bodyguards. The copper light winked out at his hands and the gemstones at his throat dimmed as he stalked forward with great angry strides.

His buckskin trousers were stained to the knee, and the laces of his linen shirt had come undone. The bronze skin it revealed was tacky with the same sweat that dampened his curls .

His emerald glare flicked from me to Alec, who was just now rising with a groan. “What is this?” the Stag Man seethed. “Why did green flares in the sky call me off my hunt? And what were you doing on my betrothed, Alec?”

“I was meting out the punishment she deserved, Cernunnos,” Alec said venomously. “No one is above your law, not even her. She attacked two Brothers!”

Ossian’s attention snapped to me, his hand subtly lifting to the pouch with the Caer powder.

“Allegedly,” I fired back. “I told you Carissa hit her head. And I’ll throw you into another tree if you go after my friends again, Alec. And this time, it won’t be the tree that breaks. It’ll be your bones!”

Ossian flung up a hand to warn me off lunging for the magic hunter, then checked over his shoulder. The ragged stump of the sycamore tree rose from the ruined mass of branches and bark like a gravestone.

“You were told not to instigate anything,” he hissed at Alec.

“My lord, it’s not what you think.”

“Tell that to the white Celtic knot on your chest,” I snapped.

Ossian stiffened. His jewel-bright eyes glowed green, and, just for an instant, his control on his glamour dropped. He gained a foot or two in height, his crown of antlers spreading wide across his head.

When he spoke, his voice was barely above a whisper. “She wouldn’t know its color if you hadn’t used it on her.”

Faster than a striking arrow, the Stag Man snatched Alec up by his throat and hefted him into the air. This wasn’t the first time he’d done that, nor, I would think, his last. Almost instantly, the magic hunter’s face turned purple.

“You stole magic from the one woman who can get me home?” he thundered.

A small part of me wanted to gloat, to say that he’d tried , but I kept my mouth shut. Let Ossian think Alec had been successful. Let him turn on his biggest supporter even more so than ordering the (true) capture of the hobgoblin.

Alec pawed at the hand caging his neck, feet swingingly uselessly.

“Ossian.” I stepped forward and reached for his free hand. He preferred physical acts of supplication—groveling and bowing and the like—and taking hold of his hand in a pleading manner was such to stroke his ego. His large hand was dry and tight with tension. The tendons in his arm strained against his taut skin like steel cables. “He tried to steal my magic. Think about that for a second.”

“Get to the point, Meadow.” While his voice was crisp, he didn’t shake me off.

“If he tried to steal mine, whose magic has he actually succeeded in stealing? What if”–I squeezed his hand in both of mine—“what if he’s in league with Wystan? What if the whole Brotherhood is?”

Ossian’s jewel-bright eyes slid from Alec’s purple face to mine.

“You’re hunting down the hobgoblin, but what if your own second-in-command has been hiding him all along? You’re fae, Ossian, the King of Beasts, the Master of the Hunt. You should’ve caught his scent or picked up his trail and had him back at the castle before lunch. Could this be why the hobgoblin has always evaded you? Because he’s had help?”

“Lies,” Alec croaked.

Maybe once, when they’d all been cooperating, but not anymore. Ossian’s ego wasn’t so massively inflated that it rendered him completely deaf to the grumbling and mutterings of those he viewed beneath him.

“Something to consider,” the Stag Man mused. His voice hardened as he regarded the Brother, whose eyes had rolled back into his head. “I gave you and your Brotherhood these Faerish scripts to facilitate your work on my behalf, not for your own selfish gain. You serve at my pleasure, Alec, don’t forget.”

With a resigned sigh, he surprised us all by lowering the magic hunter to the ground. “Your jealousy and greed will be your undoing, Alec.”

The Brother wheezed, sucking in a deep lungful of air and coughing.

“You’re just going to let him go?” I sputtered, backing away.

“He’s of more use to me alive,” the fae king answered. “For now.”

Leaning forward, he took my hand and lifted it. Rubbed his thumb over the smooth skin of my palm. “Seems you’ve healed from the Unseelie heart. You’ll master water tomorrow.”

Snorting in disbelief, I shucked his hand and turned on my heel. With my cat quite literally out of the bag and beyond the effects of the obscurity rune, I couldn’t return to Shari’s hut and lead the Stag Man there. If I was going to storm off in a huff anywhere, it had to be towards the castle.

“Ball-less.” The words slipped out of my mouth before my brain had even finished thinking them.

Ossian seized my arm and wrenched me around. “What did you call me?”

Thistle thorns.

“Oh, so that’s what gets under your skin?” I blustered, recovering quickly. “A little muttered insult? Not someone assaulting your future wife?” I rammed my hand into his elbow, buckling the joint, and tore free of him. “Let me go.”

“Love,” he said, visibly controlling his temper, “I said I needed him alive. That doesn’t mean he won’t go unpunished.”

“Words. You said you gave him those markings?” I crossed my arms over my chest and looked up at him with cold ivy-green eyes. “Take them back. Right. Now. ”

“My lord,” Alec protested weakly. The magic hunter still hadn’t recovered enough to stand. Shane, the faelight Brother who stood as unmoving as a monolith, did not aid him.

“I’m not living in that castle knowing there’s a magic-sucking predator roaming its halls! How am I supposed to master water or any other element when that one-armed skulker could sabotage me at any moment?”

The golden glamour of Ossian’s skin intensified, the rubies warming at my throat and ears and finger. There was that pull on my heart, that bond he had no right to tug.

The glamour and rubies were nothing, but that bond . . . I had to work to overcome its effects. He hadn’t just tugged on it, he’d released a deluge of sensation that turned my mind to feel-good porridge. I shook my head as if casting aside an invisible noose. “ No . That knot—”

The Stag Man sighed again, inconvenienced. Then he shoved his hand into the big pouch on his belt, withdrew a palmful of Caer powder, and blew it into my eyes.