Page 88 of The Moorwitch

Conrad gives me a wry glance. “I suppose I have spent more time looking at the horizon. Dreaming of what lay beyond it.”

Oh. Of course. I think of the torn maps, bits of continents and shredded dreams scattered across the floor. Casting him a sidelong look, I wonder how I might get him to stop taking notes and open up about Elfhame. I am not here to learn more about the North estate’s agricultural practices, after all.

“You must have been a child when you learned your fate,” I say. “A boy destined to serve a queen ... it’s like something out of a story.”

“Aye.”

His pencil scratches away at his notebook, except for when he pauses to think, and he taps it against his lower lip. The simple gesture reminds me of how that lip had tasted against mine down in Elfhame ...

Oh, no. I will not go back to that moment. For one thing, thinking about it will make my face turn red as an apple. For another ... ever since Lachlan revealed his twisted plan to me, that kiss has stuck in my memory like a stone in a shoe, painful and wrong. That kiss was notours. It was a sham, performed for Morgaine’s benefit and Lachlan’s scheming.

Granted, it had been a very convincing sham.

One that had nearly persuadedmethat there might be more between us, some hidden, tenuous thread woven not by faerie fingers, but by my own heart’s dangerous curiosity.

Wasany of it real? What if we had met by chance, and not by Lachlan’s machinations? Would Conrad have noticed me if we’d passed as strangers on a London street? Would the accidental brush of his hand against mine have made me catch my breath?

What would it be like to kiss him with no eyes upon us?

The question startles me so that I cough. I tear my treacherous eyes from the laird’s lip and try to recall what it was I wanted to ask him.

“You can’t leave, can you?” Yes, that was the question. “Is that why you tore up those maps? You learned your duty to the queen would confine you to the estate.”

His eyes flicker to mine, wary. He places the pencil in the spine of his notebook and shuts it. “Very well, then. If I satisfy your curiosity, will you go home to London?”

“I might.”

He sighs and rakes his hand through his hair. “What do you want to know?”

“How did your parents meet?” I ask. “Considering her background, and his being confined to this place and the fae queen’s service, I find it odd their paths ever crossed.”

His gaze drifts to the moors. “My mother’s folk often camped on the estate. In most places, Travellers are not often welcomed. But my father always gave them safe passage on his lands.”

“Do they still visit?”

He shakes his head. “Not after she died. There was mistrust between us, thanks to some wholly false rumors that my father had ... been involved. Nonsense, of course. Her horse threw her. ’Twas an accident.”

“That must have been hard for you. Her people were your people, after all.”

His eyes lift to the distant hills, the worry seam between his eyebrows deepening as he frowns.

“Aye ... foolish lad that I was, I dreamed of joining my mother’s people and traveling the world with them. I would sit on the roof of Ravensgate and watch their caravan pass over the moors, chafing at my father’s refusal to let me even visit their fires.” He gives a short laugh, heavy with bitterness. At last, he shuts the notebook and tucks the pencil behind his ear. “When my father finally told me such dreams were never to be, I did not take it well. It was the first time I realized my fate was never my own to decide.”

“You thought you were free, only to find a leash fixed round your ... throat,” I murmur. Fates, I’d been about to sayheart.

“Aye ... exactly.” He gives me a sidelong look. “’Tis strange, confiding in someone about Morgaine. The MacDougals prefer not to discuss it, and of course I cannot confide in Sylvie yet. Since my father died, there was no one else who knew.”

I give him a tight smile, feeling ten ways a traitor, wishing he’d used any word butconfide. It is too close totrust, and if only he knew how unworthy of that trust I am. “Earlier, in the cottage, you asked me about a certain person. A ... Briar King?”

He goes very still, a dangerous glint in his eye. “Aye.”

I have to force the words through my dry throat. “Who is he?”

“He is Morgaine’s enemy,” Conrad replies tensely. “There is a great ward around Ravensgate, Blackswire, and the surrounding land. It keeps the Briar King out, but every few decades he tests us. When I was a boy, he sent a Weaver to try and force my da to open the gate to Elfhame.Fiona.She put a knife to my throat, but my father would not give her what she asked for.” His eyes pinch, as if the memory leaves a sour taste on his tongue. “My da killed her instead, to save my life. And that was the day I learned faerie tales were real, and that they were nightmarish.”

The contempt in Conrad’s tone when he said Fiona’s name turns my stomach.

Iam his Fiona. I am the knife sent to be put to his throat, and when he discovers that ...