Page 37

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

After I charged the water diamond of the filigree key, I spent the next miserable hours of the afternoon forced to sit across the Stag Man’s lap as he sprawled on his throne. And endured the stroking of his hand up and down my thigh. Now that all our pretenses had dropped, he didn’t bother with his glamour.

Or clothes.

The stag hair of his legs pricked me in the backs of mine, and I could smell the musk emanating from his skin. Pointy ears poked out of his copper curls and even pointier antlers—two tines chipped—protruded another two feet into the air. Everything about him was bigger from his sheer size to the threat he posed.

And he didn’t want me to forget it, either. He wouldn’t tolerate me holding on to the stag bust of the headrest to maintain my balance—I had to use his shoulder. With my sleeve pulled down to cover my iron cuff to protect his skin, of course.

To further my humiliation, he forced me to sit facing the grizzly so the bear could have an unencumbered view of his enemy caressing and nuzzling his true mate. After only a few minutes, the bear had stopped growling and dropped his head onto his paws to look out the windows instead. Faebane twitched with the movement, eliciting a pained grunt. I watched until the rapier stopped trembling, then did the same, jaw clenched and back ramrod straight.

Ossian simply chuckled and played with the stolen fated mate bond, tangling my emotions. My head and heart told me I was Arthur’s, that only he could fix that hollow hole in my heart, but my body . . . I focused on my bond with Sawyer instead.

It felt like a second heart, except instead of beating, it radiated. It was a cozy, contented sensation, like the feel of slipping into a bed with sheets still warm from the dryer. I could sense his emotions, hear his thoughts when he projected them, and, more than anything else, experience the confident peace of having my best and truest friend standing with me through thick and thin.

The tabby tomcat, now protected under the fae bargain, was by no means allowed to roam free. He was confined to a converted bird cage whose wires had been coated in silver leaf and imbued with so many wards it was visibly vibrating with magic.

“This sucks,” my familiar said without preamble. He sat at attention, tail swept around his body and hiding his (now normal-sized) paws. “It’s so cramped in here I can’t even lay down.”

While the wards didn’t hurt him, they were supremely uncomfortable to get near from their sheer quantity. It nauseated the stomach and inflicted a terrible case of the heebie-jeebies, or so he told me.

“At least you don’t have Alec fondling your lingerie,” I groused, though this really wasn’t a competition.

The Brotherhood was emptying out my room in the east wing and moving it all into Ossian’s bedchamber. They paraded every item I owned through the great hall from my silk underwear to the dresses Shari had sewn for me. Alec and Carissa seemed to be taking particular delight in manhandling my possessions.

“Pervert,” I called out to them.

Ossian chuckled and waved for Alec and the others to continue. This was his culture, after all, taking delight in humiliating and degrading his enemies. While the exhibition of this more private part of my life did embarrass me, especially when they started jeering at the size of my clothes, I wasn’t a thin-skinned bimbo. I took the opportunity given me by sitting on the Stag Man’s lap to do two things: confirm my previous suspicions that the big blue jewel on Ossian’s necklace was indeed a cloch and scheme with my familiar.

“How did he find you?” I asked Sawyer, my eyes lowered and my bottom lip pinched between my teeth—the very appearance of embarrassment.

“It was actually Flora who set the wards off, not me,” he answered, a proud note in his voice that was quickly sobered when I started to panic. “No, no! She’s fine. You were right about my catness being an asset. We used the glitter you made and got in through the drainage tunnel. I think it was dumb luck she hadn’t tripped anything until we got halfway down the other tunnel. But she was right. It leads to that hanging shed. We could smell it.”

“But she escaped?”

Sawyer was careful not to nod, and I took a moment to flush and turn my head away when a female Brother exclaimed over the girth of my spare leather corset. Body shaming. How thoroughly unoriginal.

“I caused a distraction so she could escape,” Sawyer continued. “It’s one thing to find me snooping. It’d be something else entirely if we were both caught.”

“You’re kind of awesome, little cat.”

The tabby tomcat enjoyed the praise only for a moment before he deflated. “Not awesome enough to break through these wards, though. Maybe if I’d finished at Grimalkin University, I’d be a better familiar.”

“You’d only be more educated. Your best comes from your heart, and yours is the size of a lion’s.”

Sawyer didn’t reply with words, but a wave of gratitude radiated through me.

“Found this hidden in her room,” Alec sneered, shattering our moment of respite from both our prisons.

I paled, thinking he’d found my secret spot in the chimney, but he held out the moonstone collar. The jewel caught the blue light of the fireplace and twinkled with a pearlescent luster.

“It was wedged under her mattress.”

“Bring it here,” Ossian said.

Smirking at me, Alec climbed the dais to deposit the collar into Ossian’s outstretched hand. He inspected the gold-and-moonstone collar as if it were a fine bracelet. With a jerk, he ripped the moonstone free.

“Up you get,” he told me, squeezing my backside.

I complied so quickly, he snapped, “Don’t go anywhere.”

So I stood beside the armrest and tried to glare a hole through his beautiful copper hair and into his skull. Ignoring me, Ossian extracted a coil of silver wire and a small pair of needle-nose pliers from one of his pouches and got to work. He murmured in Faerish as he deftly cut wire to length and wove it into a simple open-stranded braid. After connecting it to the moonstone, he held it out to me.

“Put this on your cat.”

While gold was inert to magic, silver most definitely was not. And you did not mutter while working with metal unless it was on purpose, lest you accidentally imbue it with something you did not intend.

My hands remained at my sides. “No. ”

“You’ll put this on your cat,” he said calmly, “or that blade tastes another inch of the bear’s flesh.”

Scowling, I snatched the collar. “What did you do to it?”

“Think of it as a mobile cage. He’ll be able to move around, but he’ll be restricted to the castle. And of course, no magic.”

Sawyer hunched into a small ball as I approached, giving his head a fearful shake.

I paused halfway to the cage on its pedestal and threw a look over my shoulder. “What’s the catch?”

“No catch.”

The bald tip of Sawyer’s tail flicked. “Sure, and I’m an orange tabby cat. What else are we going to lie about today?”

“Why are you being . . . nice? Ish,” I asked the Stag Man.

He cocked his head to the side as if amused. “I told you: our relationship goes smoother if there’s no animosity between us.”

I thrust my finger at Faebane. “No animosity? You were saying?”

Ossian shrugged. “Baby steps, then.”

When he didn’t elaborate, I approached the cage. The wards were already adjusting to let me open the latch.

“This is a trap!” Sawyer insisted.

“Of course it is,” I replied, taking my time with the latch. “He wants to catch us breaking the rules. But we still have a better chance of us getting out of this thing in one piece if you’re not locked in a cage.”

“But my magic.”

The cage door clicked against the pedestal as I opened it all the way. “This is your choice, Sawyer. It’s easy for me to say the pros outweigh the cons, but you have to decide for yourself.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, his front paws mincing in place while he considered. With a half-hearted growl, he lowered his head .

Swiftly so as not to prolong this ordeal, I slipped the collar over his neck.

And shuddered as that second heart within me went dark. It was like we’d never bonded.

Sawyer felt it too, shouting my name, but no sound came from his mouth. He touched his lips with a paw and tried again, panicking.

“Ordinary cats don’t speak, remember?” Ossian supplied.

The tabby cat thumped down on his backside and dug both front paws into the silver weave of the collar, preparing to shuck it.

“I wouldn’t do that,” the Stag Man cautioned. “If anyone other than myself removes that collar, Faebane sheaths itself into the bear all the way up to its hilt.”

Green flames burst from my clenched fists. “You bast—”

“That’s enough.” He patted his knee. Summoned me like a dog.

With stiff steps, I climbed the dais and sat back down upon his lap. Sawyer, seeking comfort, hopped out of the cage and slunk over to the grizzly bear. The man inside the beast wasn’t so far gone that he didn’t recognize the cat, and the grizzly allowed Sawyer to snuggle in the crook of his arm.

When Ossian opened his mouth to order them apart, my hand shot out. My fingers firm but gentle against his cheek, I turned his gaze away from them. Towards me.

The soft touch had startled him, but he recovered quickly, jewel-bright eyes searching for the deception in my own.

“Give them this,” I whispered. “Please. If only for today.”

His hand moved to cup my own, fingers curling down, and he pulled my hand away. Down to my lap, but he didn’t let go. “For the hour,” he conceded.

This, too, was a trap. It had to be. But, on the frailest of hopes, perhaps not .

Swallowing, I plucked up the nerve to finally ask the question that had been burning in the back of my brain. “What becomes of us?”

He cocked an eyebrow, encouraging me to elaborate.

“Once the portal is open, our fae bargain is fulfilled. Yet we’ll still be bound together in a marriage neither of us will find joy in. You’ll claim your court and I’ll free my brother. What then?”

“Are you asking for a divorce? And on the eve of our wedding? How crude, Meadow.”

There is no such thing as divorce in Elfame , came Roland’s voice. To divorce, to cleave apart that which has been made one, would kill the weaker spouse, if not both of them.

But Ossian was high fae, an heir of the Court of Beasts. Maybe he knew of a magic that a hob did not.

“I suppose we can come to an arrangement,” the Stag Man mused. “In Elfame, we’ll let bygones be bygones, simple as that. And then I’ll free you of our marriage to go about your life as you wish.”

Roland was right. The Stag Man would free me of our marriage via Shane’s spear. I should’ve known—his hatred for Violet and what his brother had done to him was too deep. I would never be free of him unless I fought for it.

“Thank you,” I said, forcing polite sincerity into my tone and eyes in the face of his lie.

“ If you can behave until then,” he warned.

“We’re done with the move, my lord,” Alec announced then, clearing his throat.

Ossian beckoned him to continue. The Brotherhood brought forth the citizens who had been arrested at Patty’s Pub. An elderly egret pecked at the hand that pushed her forward, the black-footed ferret slunk along with a scowl, and the hog tripped over his trotters trying to avoid Alec’s riding crop. Axel and Bensen cast me a beseeching look, but Ms. Harris had nothing for me but prim contempt. The hussy on her beau du jour’s lap like a wanton strumpet.

“You’re free to go,” Ossian told them. His tone told them in no uncertain terms that they would hear no apology from him nor would he tolerate anything but their swift removal from his presence.

The Stag Man turned a mild expression at me when a little gasp of disbelief slipped past my lips. “What? Afraid I wouldn’t keep my word? These peasants are nothing and you were right about the town.”

“Thank you,” I murmured again.

He gave me a piercing side-eyed look but didn’t comment. No doubt he thought my gratitude was a scheme, just like his lies about divorce were. With the tumultuous emotions of the day, it made sense. In truth, I was finding a measure of relief of just being able to be me again, and that meant minding my p’s and q’s. When applicable, of course. I was still madder at him than a farmer with dull shears on sheep-shearing day.

“Alec, your assistance,” the fae king ordered, indicating the Brother should approach the throne. Then he turned to me. “Give him your bag.”

My foraging bag.

I had it wedged in my lap this whole time, so much a part of me I barely remembered it was there sometimes. Ossian had not.

My hand tightened on the strap.

“Did you think I’d forgotten?” He chuckled, stroking my cheek with the backs of his knuckles. I jerked away. Ossian seized my cheeks, yanking my face closer to his. “Give him your bag willingly , or I might become displeased. You are to behave, Meadow, remember? Or no divorce.”

In the distance framed by his antlers, I saw the copper smoke ring surrounding Faebane’s hilt condense against the handle .

Gritting my teeth, I made to remove the strap. Ossian released me, sensation flooding back into my face, and I handed the bag off to Alec. The Brother yanked it away and spared no time dumping its contents all over the trestle table. With no reverence for my possessions, he rooted and sorted and tossed everything into one pile or another.

“Where is it?” he shouted when everything was organized.

“Where’s what?” Ossian asked irritably.

“The black tourmaline!”

I threw the Brother a smug look. “After it plastered your sorry hide against the wall, it cracked. Why, did you want to go a second round? Are you so insecure, Alec, that you have to test your skills against a piece of rock?”

The magic hunter’s icy blue eyes grew cold, the Faerish script dancing along his skin as he channeled his power.

“Enough,” the Stag Man told us both, giving me a vicious pinch for good measure. “What is there, Alec?”

“A fair share of potion supplies, my lord,” he growled.

“Well you obviously can’t keep those,” the fae king said, back to rubbing his hand along my thigh. “Redistribute,” he told Alec.

From the crook in the grizzly bear’s arm, Sawyer raised his head. His amber eyes widened, and I gave him a look to zip it . Not that he could say anything, but he couldn’t let on that there was something suspicious about those potion ingredients. Namely that I’d stolen them from Ossian’s own stores. And that Brandi had helped me. I shuddered to think what more he’d do to her.

Alec brought up a handful of witchy bits and bobs to show the fae king. Ossian glided his other hand where it lazed against the small of my back up to my ribs in a clear warning that he would break them if I interfered.

“Here, my lord,” Alec said, throwing a sneer my way .

In his hands were my birch-bound journal and a few uncharged crystals and—

“That’s it ?” Ossian sputtered. He straightened to peer over my head at the collection of crocheted gifts I’d amassed from Shari and the heap of vials with all my raw ingredients. Then he gave me an incredulous look.

“Yes?” I prompted calmly.

“You fought me tooth and nail to protect this ?” He seized the journal, the binding cracking in his fist. “Observations a fae child could make? And these.” The fae king pinched a lump of tiger’s-eye and held it up to squint at. “Poor quality at best.”

I disagreed, but I also kept my mouth shut.

“Where is the rainbow tourmaline?” he growled.

At least he wasn’t asking about the monocle of selenite and tiger’s-eye the Crafting Circle ladies and I had made. The Hunting Spell would be too easily abused in his power.

“Well, um, it’s right there,” I said, pointing to a thumbnail-sized lump in Alec’s palm.

“The bleached tourmaline, Meadow. The spent stones of your parasite jewelry.”

I shot a foul look at Alec. Spiteful snoop. He’d found out a lot about me in the time he and his fellow magic hunters had spent skulking around Redbud, but clearly not everything.

I snorted. “I threw them out. They weren’t absorbing anymore, and the magic inside them is denatured, so—”

“You stupid girl.” The fae king’s hand tightened on my ribs, bruising them. “It’s not denatured. It’s stored just like any other crystal!”

“That’s not what I was taught.” I elbowed his arm to lessen his punishing grip.

He made an impatient sound. “Rainbow tourmaline is like a cloch, Meadow. Capable of storing many times more than what another crystal can because of its structure. And when it’s full, it locks because the stored potential is exponentially greater. One piece like this”—he plucked the gem from Alec’s hand—“when fully saturated holds the magic of your amazonite pendant if it was the size of a watermelon! And you just threw them away?”

“I didn’t know about clochs until I met you,” I said sullenly, looking away.

“Damn your grandmother.”

“Why do you care, anyway?” But of course I already knew the general answer. He was obsessed with having more .

“Because, love, properly unlock a full rainbow tourmaline crystal and you have enough magic to grow an entire year’s worth of crops for a fae village. Crush it, and the results are far more . . . explosive.”

I shuddered, imaging what death and destruction he’d planned to bring to the Court of Beasts with my bleached tourmaline crystals.

“Well, I suppose it’s not a total loss.” He stood without telling me, dumping me out of his lap.

Glowing green vines caught me before I could tumble down the steps, righting me at the foot of the dais.

“I’m off to the elm tree,” he announced, tossing the singular rainbow tourmaline crystal into the air and catching it in his palm. To Alec: “See to it that she and that cat are confined to my bedchamber with Shane—”

“I’m not leaving this hall until I’ve had something to eat and have finished the wedding plans with Mrs. Bilberry.”

They were my last hope to salvage my crumbling plans.

The Stag Man snapped back around, jewel-bright eyes glittering.

I crossed my arms over my chest and lifted my chin. “What? You have your wedding customs and we witches have ours. You’ll get none of my protective influence if the proper rituals aren’t performed.” I ticked them off on my fingers: “Eight witnesses, dress, feast, seeded loaf.”

“I might’ve entertained this absurdity before when I’d been forced to woo you, but no more games, love. After you charge that key, I will wed you, bed you, and we’ll be off to Elfame within the hour.”

“And that portal will knock you right back on your ass.” I lifted an eyebrow, daring him to contradict me. “A witch is not truly married unless by the light of a spring sun or the zenith of the moon with a seeded loaf shared between them. Since it most certainly is not springtime, I guess we’ll have to wait on the moon, and that ceremony requires eight human witnesses, one for each phase of the moon.”

“So the moon ritual needs witnesses but the sun one doesn’t?” he scoffed.

“The sun is constant while the moon has phases,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “The witnesses ensure the moon, for lack of a better word, behaves . Doesn’t get wishy-washy, like someone crossing their fingers behind their back.”

He opened his mouth to scoff again, and I flung up my hand. “Unless I’m wedded properly, that won’t be a marriage we’re consummating.”

“The magic will know,” he growled.

“Whose magic? Yours or mine?”

He bared his teeth at me with an exasperated sigh.

“I thought we were trying to limit the animosity between us?” You know, before you stab me in the back?

With an exasperated huff, the fae king resumed his stride to the double doors. “As she says,” he barked at the Brotherhood, and the doors slammed shut behind him.