Page 1 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

CHAPTER ONE

The high lord’s command pierced my heart like an ash arrow: Kill them .

Apparently Callan’s reputation for being fair was hearsay. He hadn’t even given me a chance to explain!

While I wore Ossian’s cloak, I was definitely not married to the Banished One. By the Green Mother, the fruit I had offered him as part of the wedding ceremony wasn’t even a fruit, but a cloch na wight in disguise!

And this hard-hearted, imperious high lord of the Court of Beasts was damning me and my friends over some preconceived notion that whoever came through that portal was his exiled brother’s ally no ifs, ands, or buts.

Condemning me was one thing—I had many a mistake to rectify. Lumping my innocent friends into the kill order out of convenience?

Absolutely not.

The echo of his words still lingered on the cool midnight air when my oak tree exploded with opalescent light. The radiant spears of the high lord’s portal guard hadn’t even lunged forward in their death strikes before I flung Ossian’s cloak aside, releasing my familiar.

The striped tomcat landed with his back arched and ears flattened against his skull. Tiny bolts of white lightning crackled along Sawyer’s fur like a living net of electricity as he prepared his fragor magnus spell.

Glittering green vines exploded from my body and seized each one of my blindfolded friends, yanking them into a cluster behind me.

Another vine yanked Faebane out of Fionn’s stunned hand for good measure.

In the same breath, a ring of cutting wind lifted from the terrace stones.

It snatched the fire from the nearby torches and encased us in a sphere of snapping flames and streaking wind.

The fae partygoers screamed and retreated for the far end of the patio in a flurry of celestial-colored silks and satins and stampeding boots.

“Faelene!” someone screamed.

“… more than one gift!”

“She melted the sconces!”

“… not possible?—”

Those blessed with magic and the courage to use it against the power of my display were few and far between, but they still rushed forward, faces stony and determined behind their gilded masks.

Including the high lady of the Court of Beasts.

“ Sguir dheth ,” Shannon cried, flinging out her hands. Stop!

At the sound of those Faerish words, Shari tore at her blindfold.

The high lady summoned the water of her home court from the fountains and the crystal pitchers that littered the buffet table. But not to attack. She threw herself in front of her husband and flung up a shield of rippling liquid to protect him.

In the heartbeat that followed, Callan’s expression twisted from outrage to fear. I realized then his eyes weren’t emerald like Ossian’s, but green as the forests of his court. They were so wide, so panicked that I would hurt his wife.

My only interest was keeping us alive. And to find the Samildánach so I could ransom my brother and begin to heal the wounds my assumptions all those months ago had caused.

I didn’t want to hurt anyone if I didn’t have to.

Before Shannon had used her water magic, I’d been desperately trying to figure out what to do next after throwing up my own shield.

I was reacting purely on instinct, something my father would’ve berated me for had we been at one of the morning training sessions back at Hawthorne Manor.

Prey reacted on instinct. Hunters made calculated decisions.

In only a second, dozens of thoughts flitted through my mind.

If I had more control over air, maybe I could fly us all out of there in a tornado?

Earth magic was my strongest element—could I create a sinkhole and a tunnel for a hasty escape?

There was always the bleached tourmaline sewn into the hidden pockets in my bodice.

I could do the unthinkable and detonate one.

My heart thundered in my ears like my father’s roar during desensitization practice. Focus! Make a decision! But all of my ideas left us fugitives in a foreign realm and no closer to completing the one task I had committed myself to.

I needed allies. Or at least a truce. And I couldn’t get either of those if Shannon decided to take her water magic on the offensive and try to drown us.

She had been born with that magic, had trained with it her entire life.

Even with my raw talent and power, she might know all the wily techniques to overcome me.

There was only one thing to do. I had to gain the upper hand, prove I had the superior power here, and then do what no Hawthorne ever did. I had to give it back. Submit. Humble myself… and pray my mercy was met in kind.

The decision made, my oak tree simply reacted, determined to fulfill its purpose to protect . My magic tore the water Shannon had summoned from her grasp, adding it the multi-elemental shield I had created around my friends.

The high fae stumbled forward with a surprised yelp at the sudden theft, crashing down onto her knees and bringing her perilously close to the iron rapier I held in my hand. Just one nick of this blade would kill any fae, high lady or lowborn fairy alike.

Callan roared, surging forward with fists wreathed in copper magic just as I yanked Faebane away from his wife’s chin.

Thistle thorns! That’d been a close one.

“Don’t,” Shari cried, grabbing my shoulder. She mistook my act of mercy as one of preparation, a chambering of my arm for a thrusting strike. “I know that voice. She’s the one in white. The one who rescued me!”

“He’s not backing off!” Sawyer snarled. Fur bristled along his spine, the white electricity cackling. “ Fragor ? — ”

“STOP,” I screamed.

The oak tree’s light winked out. The shield it had created vanished with a mighty whoosh of steam, guttering the candle flames on the banquet tables and sending the masked fae scattering like autumn leaves.

Sawyer squeaked, the lightning of his spell fizzling out and leaving his fur standing on end.

The high lord of the Court of Beasts stood mere feet away from me, crouched in a fighting stance in front of his wife.

His chest heaved with each panting breath, his white teeth bared like those of wolf defending his wounded mate.

But the copper magic dancing in his hands stayed put.

He glared at me, his forest-green eyes a mixture of wariness and challenge.

“I could do it,” I whispered. What it was, I let them imagine. Even I didn’t know what it was—attack them and win? Stab his wife? Unleash the full power of my primal power on the citizens of his court? “But I won’t.”

With slow, cautious movements, I lowered the rapier to the ground.

A flourish of my fingers summoned a root from below the pavers at my feet.

It wound up my leg and then around my waist in mimicry of a belt.

Nodding to reassure them of my intent, I slipped Faebane into the belt.

This was an offering of peace, not full disarmament.

“I am not your brother’s wife. I’m not his ally and I’m certainly not his friend,” I told them. “If anything, I should be holding you responsible for unleashing him upon my realm.”

“If you won’t, I certainly will,” Flora piped up, rolling up her sleeves. She’d wasted no time yanking down her blindfold, the better to see whose face she was going to rearrange first with her tiny fists. A violent sneeze belied her threat.

Callan’s eyes narrowed at the garden gnome’s irreverent disregard towards his position as court sovereign, but he didn’t act on his irritation other than clench his jaw.

“I’m here for—” I cut myself off, remembering my mother’s warnings about the fae. The less details I gave them about myself and my desires, the less they could use against me. “I’m here to help my brother, that’s all. In peace , as my friend previously iterated.”

“Not that you listened,” Daphne sniffed, using her blindfold as a ribbon to tie off the end of her macramé braid. When she was finished, she crossed her arms over her chest and sent an imperious look at Ler, then Fionn. “And I thought this culture had respect for its elders.”

“Apparently not if they made us climb all those stairs.” Cody stretched out his back and released a volley of muted pops reminiscent of faraway gunshots. “Talk about insult and injury.”

“You are not my elder,” Ler fired back. The petulant portal guard’s boldness had only increased in the presence of his regal sister.

Fionn sent Ler a look that demanded he shut his mouth or have it shut for him.

Callan didn’t seem as amenable to a truce as I hoped he would be after dispelling my magic, sheathing Faebane, and reiterating my “not married to your brother” status. So I looked to his wife, who was back on her feet and brushing the debris from her skirts.

“And helping me means Ossian suffers,” I told her.

That certainly brought a glimmer to her eye.

“Please,” I whispered.

That one word was saturated with all my heartache and desperation.

My dread for my brother, my own shame for causing his imprisonment, my anger at being deceived all these years by my own family.

Fear for the kindest man I’d ever known cursed to live out the rest of his days as a bear because I’d been na?ve in the ways of love.

Misery that I would still be linked to my greatest enemy through a stolen fated mate bond.

My heart thumped painfully against my ribs as all those emotions threatened to tear me apart once again.

Sawyer mewed pitifully, twining himself between my ankles.

I pressed a hand over my chest, forcing my heart to beat at a more sensible rate instead of galloping off the ledge of despair.

When I raised my eyes, I found Shannon’s bright blue gaze riveted on my chest.

“Please,” I entreated again. “One woman to another?—”

“You do not speak to her,” Callan snarled.