Page 55 of The Moorwitch

She nods, her brow furrowing as she picks at some mud on her skirt. I wait quietly, twisting my threads, for her to say whatever is weighing on her.

When she does speak, her voice is fragile. “Do you think he will hate me if he finds out?”

My heart tugs in sympathy. “Oh, Sylvie. No, he couldn’t hate you. He loves you very much. I think that sometimes, love can make us feel afraid. We want to protect the people we care about so badly, that that love and fear become a little bit like a cage.”

“How do you break free, then, without hurting anyone?”

I lower my hands to my lap, not knowing how to answer her. The cage my aunt built around me was not one of love, but of grief and misguided hatred. And I had to sell my heart to break free of it.

“I don’t know,” I say at last. “But I promise you that for as long as I am able, I will help you find a way.”

She meets my eyes, then suddenly wraps her arms around me. I gasp a little, startled, as the spellknot I’d been Weaving falls apart.

“I’m glad you came,” she whispers. “I’m glad you’re my friend.”

After returning her embrace, I begin packing up my threadkit, shaking the wet ashes from the pegboard and reassembling the box. “Well, we’d better head back, before Mrs. MacDougal wakes up.”

As I snap the threadkit closed, I exchange one last look with the faerie queen on the stone. She has been carved with an eternal smirk, slyness in her eyes.

Before we go, Sylvie and I both tie ribbons around the bough of the tree and leave them fluttering in the wind.

Chapter Seventeen

Two nights later, when I step through the tapestry in my room, I find Lachlan’s castle camp lit by candlelight and song. On the damp stones, with the sky gray velvet above, I wait and watch, trying to understand what I’m seeing.

The fae are moving through the ruins in twisting lines, their heads bowed and hooded, their hands carrying slender black candles. They all sing, their voices strangely fragile and sweet, like the voices of children. If it is words they sing, I do not understand them; I hear only sighing notes which rise and fall like the chants of the priestesses in the chapels back home. It’s beautiful.

Then, splintering the solemn mood of the scene, one of the faeries suddenly lunges at me, his hood falling and his pointed teeth bared. He grabs me by the throat and slams me against the ancient stone wall of the castle. I gasp but cannot speak for the fingers locked around my throat.

“You,” he hisses, his eyes glowing with rage. “You filthy, usurping mortals, poisoning all that was once good and pure in this land!Youdid this!”

I beat at him in vain with my fists. He squeezes tighter, until spots dance in my eyes and I strain for breath that does not come. None of theother fae come to my aid, though some stop and watch with luminous beetle eyes.

Panicking, I feel my head swimming into darkness, my lungs squeezing for lack of air. Then my hand closes on the iron snuffer I tied under my skirt, and I wrench it out. I smash it into the faerie’s face, and he screams and jerks back, releasing my throat.

Gasping and coughing, I drop to my knees, but when he starts toward me again, I raise the snuffer.

“Clugh!” snaps a voice.

The furious faerie snarls, his hands raised to grab me again.

But then a hand seizes him by the neck and hurls him backward. Clugh soars twenty paces before smashing into a stone wall and collapsing to the grass, his expression glassy. I gape at Lachlan, who stands over me like a snarling wolf. For a moment, past and present pull together like fabric gathered in the Fates’ hands, and I am a child again, quivering as Lachlan punishes my aunt. My heart pounds with a bewildering combination of terror and relief. With gratitude to my monstrous savior ... and horror at his searing cruelty.

Clugh coughs and feebly clutches at the grass. His wheezing, pained breaths dispel the ghosts of my past, and I shudder.

“Away, Clugh.” The calm civility in Lachlan’s voice is jarringly at odds with the violence he just enacted, and it sends a chill down my spine. “Leave the girl alone.”

The faerie grovels and slinks away, dragging an injured leg. The others retreat at the dangerous light in Lachlan’s sweeping gaze, but a few spare me some final venomous glances.

Baffled and furious, I ignore Lachlan’s proffered hand and push myself to my feet. His eyes fall onto the snuffer I’m still clutching. His lips thin.

“Cast that away,” he says.

I squeeze it tighter, my voice a harsh rasp. “I think I’ll keep it.”

He looks at me, weariness dragging at the corners of his eyes. “Then keep ithidden, at least. They are all on edge tonight, and if a group decided to lynch you, there would be little I could do to stop them.”

“What’s going on?”