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CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

In the morning, the Stag Man was gone.

Shane, however, most decidedly was not. His faelight stare tracked my every movement as I rose and meandered over to the wardrobe, whose door was slightly ajar. My clothes hung next to Ossian’s, and one of his spare buckskin trousers was missing.

He’s gone off to the elm tree again .

“Get dressed,” Shane ordered. “No delays.”

I yanked a sage-colored gown from its hanger and slipped into the adjoining bathroom.

“Stay where I can see you,” the Brother told me in his flat, monotone voice.

He’d said the same thing last night, though only after I’d managed to wipe the vial clean of honey badger saliva and hide it in a fresh bra. It was the leftover blue glitter, whatever she and Sawyer hadn’t used to open the drainage grate. While I appreciated its return, the effort had been too risky. Maybe Flora thought it would be too risky to leave it behind.

I had a fresh dress on before the Brother got impatient and hurried out into the corridor, Sawyer at my heels. Once there, the tomcat became a blur of stripes as he bolted off to avoid Ossian for the rest of the day. The Stag Man himself was waiting by the side door of the great hall, looking very fresh from his morning rendezvous with the elm tree, and dismissed Shane with a wave of his hand.

“My friends,” I began.

“Worry about yourself, Meadow,” the Stag Man snapped, rounding on me. His large hands had me pinned against the cold hard stone of the wall, the rough-cut blocks digging into my spine. “I will not tolerate any more of your little defiances. You have one job and a deadline that wheels perilously closer.”

He grabbed my hand and shoved it against his abdomen. Warm bronze skin and taut muscle beneath pressed back against my palm. Just yesterday, it had been covered by coarse copper hair. “You have seen firsthand what happens to those who break the terms of a fae bargain. My punishment for hurting that cat is only a fraction of what awaits you if you fail to open that portal. And let’s not forget the fate of your coven and your pathetic excuse of a brother hang in the balance too.”

I knew what was at stake, all of it. And perhaps I should’ve been more single-minded in my purpose—charge the key, open the portal, find the Samildánach, free my brother, make the Circle of Nine whole once more. Simple. In that, there was no justice for all the witches who had come before me, nor this town, or my family and friends. I could not forget Redbud.

Slowly, deliberately, I looked up into his face, watching a green glow come to my eyes in the reflection of his. “You’ve underestimated Violet in the past. Do not mistake my temperance for meekness. That is the last time you manhandle me, Stag Man.”

Whether or not Ossian believed my words, he released me. If anything, he seemed a little unsettled that I hadn’t addressed the warnings he’d given me.

“Let’s go,” he barked .

He led me to a part of the castle I hadn’t explored before—the widow’s walk. Or, I supposed, the clock tower of the courthouse if I was viewing it without his illusion.

When he shouldered open the door, a violent gust of wind roared down the spiral staircase. I grabbed the railing for support even as green magic rooted me to the stair. The tepid warmth of the castle fled, and goose flesh pimpled my skin. The heart of the magic oak tree ignited red and flooded me with heat. Grim-faced, the Stag Man forced himself outside, leading with his antlers as if to saw apart the air itself.

Gritting my teeth, I followed and pushed the door shut behind me. Another gust tried to twirl me like an overenthusiastic dance partner; I snatched hold of the metal railing and caught my balance. Overhead, the sky was grayer than it had been yesterday. The first snow of the impending winter was coming.

Below us, the town of Redbud rolled along gentle hills. The square seemed like children’s building blocks, the red barns of the hamlets farther away like miniature jars of strawberry jam. There were brown forests with splotches of green, the beige fields of cropped corn stalks, swaths of yellowing pasture, a whole spiderweb network of glistening creeks.

Caught up in the strange beauty of it all, I asked Ossian, “Is this anything like Elfame?”

The Stag Man was quiet, his jaw set. Then, bitterly: “If it were anything like my home, I would not be so impatient to leave.”

He turned towards me, his broad body blocking the worst of the wind. It played madly in his curls, tossing them up against his antlers.

“Your final element, Meadow Ní Violet,” the Stag Man said. “Can you guess its true nature?”

“Before or after I get tossed over the side?” I snarked .

He grinned, looking so handsome it pained me he was so vicious and cruel. Unfair was the word that came to mind.

“You’re not far off.” He lifted a muscled arm, drawing my attention to how the wind buffeted it even as he held himself taut. “Wind is pure, unadulterated potential. Gentle enough to scatter seeds, strong enough to conjure hurricanes. It controls the weather, shapes climates, redefines landscapes.”

The Stag Man lowered his arm. “It is the spirit of wild horses running free. It is that swell inside you when you look over the edge of a cliff and wonder if you can fly. It is the sensation of a lifelong dream finally coming true.”

“How,” I asked with steel in my voice, “am I to master that ? I had a hard enough time grasping the magnitude of water. But this?”

I’d thrown my arm out to gesture to the wide expanse only to have the wind wrench it behind my back.

“Thistle thorns,” I cursed even as relief set in after the oak tree healed the sprain.

“Should I get your cat?” he asked. “Throw him over the side to give you the proper motivation? Worked wonders last time.”

“You can’t hurt him,” I ground out.

“But a Brother could.”

His lips twitched into a smirk in response to my glower. Then I ignored him, holding on to the railing with both hands and leaning out to feel the full force of the storm winds. Closing my eyes, I sifted through every memory I had of my father performing magic.

Tod Hawthorne. I actually didn’t even know his birth name. He’d adopted a new name upon marrying my mother to show his allegiance. Tod, after the fox, which had more to do with his personality than his magic. He had air magic mixed in with his green, but he’d never taught us about it. Hawthornes were green and hearth witches, that was it. Those were the traits that Grandmother cultivated; everything else was weeded out, no matter how useful. It was why Uncle Stag with his weather magic never taught any classes or performed any magic in public unless it was necessary. He and my father were essential to keep the bloodline healthy, but their proficiencies with different magics were not.

The times I’d seen my father release his air magic were few. But there was something in his eyes every time he called upon it—a twinkle. Like mischief. Like a clever secret. Like triumph. I wondered if it was because he was able to control such a fickle thing as wind magic, or if it was purely the sensation he enjoyed.

He wasn’t here to counsel me or train me, so I reflected on Ossian’s words. Potential . He’d proven in the past that he only grasped one aspect of the element I was trying to master. His perception of the element was flawed, but it had always given me a starting point.

Well, potential was far too abstract a concept to truly understand. Opening my eyes, I sought inspiration in the landscape. These four elements were interconnected—it was why I could harness them as a primal witch. Perhaps it was that relationship that would reveal the true nature of air to me.

It swept rain from the oceans to the land—water.

It literally fed fire.

It strengthened trees and spread their seeds, weathered mountains to bring nutrients to the lowlands, plowed the soil to make room for new growth—earth.

It really was potential.

With a frustrated growl, I released a loud exhale and stopped short as realization swept over me.

If earth built a body, water gave it life, and fire fueled it, then air was its spirit .

Its freedom.

Lifting my hand, I focused on the sensation of the wind pushing and dragging through the narrow channels made from my outstretched fingers. It was not one-directional like a river. It was nonsensical and whimsical and as free-spirited as a bird.

I wondered what it would be like to sprout wings and feel this puckish thing ruffling my feathers and pushing me up to soar wherever I wanted to go.

“Meadow, I can sense your concentration wavering,” the Stag Man chided.

“Have you mastered the true nature of air? No. Then shush.”

He quieted, relaxing into that stoic meditation thing he did on the rare occasion he chose to be patient.

Maybe I was on to something with the wing thing. Scanning the sky, I searched for any sign of birds. They, of course, were doing the sensible thing and hunkering down in the face of the inclement weather. The storm winds were having a fun time with the leaves, but it wasn’t the same. The leaves could not direct their flight or manipulate the wind like birds could.

“What are you doing?” The Stag Man snapped out of his trance the moment my boot scraped against the bottom rung of the railing. He surged forwards, hands outstretched to keep me from hurling myself over the railing.

I swatted him away. “Getting inspired.”

Vines fused my feet and legs to the railing, tethering me in place as I leaned into the wind with my arms outstretched like wings. The vines remained supple, allowing the wind to push me a degree or two so I didn’t feel fully tied down. More like a kite whose string was caught in a tree. Still flying, but unable to go anywhere.

Closing my eyes, I released my preconceptions and extended my magical perception in an attempt to connect with the freedom in the wind.

A lightness filled my chest, a sense of buoyancy without water. I concentrated on the tug and pull on my hair and dress as the storm winds played with my braid and clothes. It felt like a hyper-extroverted friend trying to grab my hand and haul me after them to go skydiving or something equally adrenaline-filled and ludicrous.

And yet the cursed element eluded me. Marten had mastered his talent with air magic and I was twice the witch he was. Why couldn’t I grasp it? What was I missing?

After some time, the Stag Man said, “The sun has set, Meadow. And you’ve run out of time.”

The deadline was midnight tomorrow.

“I can do this,” I growled.

“I know you can. But in another way.”

Without further explanation, he led the way back to the great hall, and I discovered the reasons for Alec’s disappearance and Ossian’s leniency via the moonstone collar. Ossian had needed the special birdcage for something else.

Inside the birdcage were three large slim-bodied, silver-green pixies.

Alec had gone pixie hunting at the farmhouse. Dart, Flit, and Zip darted, flitted, and zipped about the tiny confines of the silver cage, their flute-like chirps shrill with outrage and panic.

A shudder rippled through me as Ossian placed his hands on my shoulders, gripping so I could neither recoil nor lunge forward to free them.

“Another word for potential is spirit,” the Stag Man murmured against my ear, confirming my earlier revelation. “And you will master air by taking theirs. More so than any other living creature, when a pixie dies, it releases a tangible spirit with its last breath. If you can master air, you’ll be able to seize that spirit before it departs from this world. And look, three pixies. Three tries to get it right. Am I not generous?”