Page 3 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

CHAPTER TWO

A short walk traded the outdoor patio for a rotunda of seamless white stone.

It was luminous, either capturing the light of the moon and stars above and amplifying it or somehow lit from within.

Hardly the “inner grove” Callan had spoken of, but at the opposite end was a large archway that led to a garden full of night-blooming flowers.

There were many archways here that revealed glimpses of the court, not that I was afforded the opportunity to look. Much.

Ler stepped pointedly in front of me, blocking an archway and the steaming hot spring beyond from view.

I met his glare with a scowl. A scowl that deepened as the guard made a slow circle around me, his eyes trained on the white stone floor beneath my feet and his spearhead within easy impaling range.

“I appreciate your concern, Brother,” Shannon drawled when he had completed his first circuit and began his second (just to be an ass, no doubt), “but my lord would not have allowed her into my company if she was an Unseelie in disguise.”

“It never hurts to double-check,” he replied without looking at her, sizing me up again for what had to be the umpteenth time.

“And even if she isn’t Unseelie, she’s a witch.

A magic thief. And a greedy one at that.

Four affinities? And all bound in one so young?

It’s a miracle they haven’t torn her apart. ”

Did this inflated peacock of a fae male just equate me with a magic hunter?

“I’ve stolen nothing,” I snapped. “I was born with my power.”

“Perhaps,” he sneered, “but your ancestors weren’t.

Why do you think there are no portals to the mortal realms anymore?

” He lunged forward with that incredible fae speed of his, pinching my cheeks in one hand as he leveled his spearhead at my throat.

“Because you humans came here and stole what was not yours. This land weeps for what it has lost, and I’ll quench its grief with your blood. ”

Sawyer launched himself at the male a heinous yowl.

There was a flurry of claws and teeth and fur, and a second later Ler was screaming.

The high fae dropped his spear and ripped twin daggers from their sheaths at his belt.

The striped tomcat evaded capture and a stabbing by kicking off Ler’s face and leaping for the safety of my arms.

I staggered back a step from his momentum and dropped him to the ground, readying myself for Ler’s inevitable retaliation.

Battle magic sprang from my cuffs without external activation and thorny vines writhed up my arms to my shoulders.

In an instant, my fingernails darkened and lengthened into points and my eyes flooded with dark green light.

Veins of the same dark green light appeared on my olive-toned skin until I resembled something akin to a vengeful forest nymph.

Or the Death aspect of Nature.

Inside, the opalescent light of the oak tree turned the same dark ivy-green of my eyes. The Tree of Life’s branching canopy remained the same, but its wide-sweeping roots wove together into a fearsome point. A blade.

Bonding with my magic core had changed me, but I had become something else after activating all elements of my primal magic.

I’d felt this intensity before, first in my sparring match again the grizzly and again during Sawyer’s rescue from the mallaithe in the river, but this new power felt…

intoxicating. Righteous. Like long-awaited vengeance on the verge of being seized.

Startled, the high fae male smeared the blood out of his eyes and readjusted his grip on his daggers, preparing to attack. Black venom dripped from their tips.

A pathetic gesture. What was he compared to Violet’s Heir, the witch with the Tree of Life for a core and the power over both aspects of Nature itself? I need only reach out and touch him?—

“V-Violet?” Shannon whispered.

Something buried deep within the dark oak tree wanted to answer her.

“Meadow,” Sawyer pleaded. “You are Meadow. My Meadow.”

I blinked at his words.

I was always Meadow first. It’s what I had promised myself when I’d fled Hawthorne Manor with the family grimoire. I hadn’t wanted to use battle magic then—under the assumption that it had been the cause for the grimoire’s curse—and I didn’t want to rely on it now.

It was too dangerous, and I wasn’t ready to wield this newfound power yet. Maybe not ever.

Clearly I had inherited more than Violet’s magic; I had inherited her visceral, unchecked need for vengeance. And back in its home world, Elfame, that power was growing.

Oh my Green Mother.

Repulsed, I flung my arms down at my sides, dispelling the thorny vines. The oak tree’s sword-shaped roots unfurled, the opalescent light of the Tree of Life returning. I had not fought this hard to exchange Grandmother’s iron rule for the reign of an ancestor long dead.

Sawyer and I shared a shaky look, and I swallowed past the veritable boulder that had lodged in my throat. “Thanks, little cat.”

“You see?” Ler shrieked. “She can’t be trusted!”

“Enough,” Shannon hissed. “Put your weapons away.”

“Her faelene attacked me,” Ler shouted, his eyes never leaving my face. He jabbed at the air between us with one of his daggers. “I demand compensation!”

“Fe-line,” Sawyer corrected, doing his best impersonation of Shari but with a lot more snark.

“I’ll send for a healer,” the high lady said.

“What good will they be? You know faelene wounds don’t heal right. I’ll be scarred for life!”

Not necessarily. And I was here to play nice, even if he wasn’t.

Ler, who now had a healthy level of fear in his eyes, lurched away as I extended my hand.

Emerald green vines, these void of thorns, snatched him around both wrists before he could speed away.

And kept those vicious daggers well away from me.

His screech of protest hit a new pitch of panic as I reeled him close and placed a hand on his cheek.

Shannon cried out in alarm, but only a soft opalescent glow punctuated by tiny golden sparks emanated from my palm.

Pure primal magic. Ler’s eyes nearly bulged out his head, the wretched male determined to play the victim.

When he squirmed, his uniform shifted and revealed a mark on his chest. A tattoo: five upright blades gathered into a pointy parody of a bushel encircled by a crown.

Anyone who inked themselves with weapons was nothing but trouble with a capital T.

Thankfully the healing magic needed to seal feline wounds was hardly anything at all, and I released him soon enough.

With my hands raised in a placating manner, I backed away a few steps. Happy to get as much distance between me and that wretched male as possible. “Right as rain.”

“You got off light,” Sawyer hissed, taking up position between my ankles.

The high lady and her ladies clustered around Ler. “There’s not even a scar,” the blonde attendant murmured, tracing a finger down Ler’s cheek.

“It seems you are unharmed, Brother,” Shannon observed, her tone unamused, “and once again fit for guard duty.” The diamonds on her fingernails twinkled as she gave an irritable yet graceful flick of her hand. “To your post, Ler.”

“But, Sister?—”

She cut him off with a sharp, “Quiver! Arrow!”

“This seems a little extreme,” I told Sawyer, expecting a servant to arrive any second with the high lady’s weapons.

“Does it?” His striped tail flicked. “I frankly don’t understand why she’s waited this long to discipline him, littermate or not.

Ame would’ve popped me in the head a least a dozen times by now.

” His ears and whiskers pricked, his pupils dilating with excitement.

“I hope she makes him run before she shoots him.”

Instead of her attendants scurrying off for her weapons or another fae appearing with them, two tall sighthounds answered her summons.

They moved like the wind itself, bounding into the rotunda from the night-flower garden with effortlessly agile strides.

Their hair, for it was so silky in appearance it would be an insult to call it fur , shone like quicksilver and molten gold in the strange luminescence of the stone.

The fairy hounds passed by Shannon’s attendants without even a glance, taking up positions on either side of their mistress. Pink tongues lolled to the side of their muzzles as liquid brown eyes stared intently at the high lady’s visitors.

Us.

They seemed particularly interested in Sawyer, their twitching noses recognizing he was different from a faelene, no matter what Ler would have everybody believe.

Anger roiled off the guard like steam from pavement after a summer storm. “You would rather your dogs protect you than your own brother?”

“Unlike you,” Shannon answered crisply, “they don’t instigate fights and only need to be commanded once before obeying.

I allowed Father to send you to this court so you might learn a temperance and obedience befitting your brilliance and magical prowess, Brother .

After three decades, I have yet to be impressed. Go. To. Your. Post.”

Gritting his teeth, Ler sent me a scathing look as if his reprimand was all my fault, then stomped to the patio’s archway without so much as a thank-you for healing his face. He took up position there and satisfied himself by attempting to drill holes into the back of my head.

With the relative privacy we were granted, Shannon contented herself just to look at me. Her assessing gaze caused me to fidget.

“He attacks you and you heal him,” she said. “How is it you hold the power of Death in one hand and the power of Life in the other?”

“I’m complicated.”

Her sculpted eyebrow arched, setting the diamond between her brow twinkling. “Clearly. And at the end of your patience too, it seems. Not that I blame you. Ler can be… tiresome.”

Ler released an indignant gasp from where he stood sentry, but at least he obeyed his sister and didn’t leave his post. For once.

“I believe you are who you say you are, witch. Not my enemy. But if you are to remain a guest of this court still remains to be seen.” She gestured to the archway that revealed the night-blooming flower garden. “Come. One last test awaits.”