Page 5 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

When I didn’t die immediately, I took another tiny sip. The attendants were all voicing their thoughts on my outrageous claim in a flurry of whispers that sounded like the rush of starlings taking flight, but Shannon was quiet. Watchful. She’d called me Violet herself, after all.

“Nothing’s happening,” I told Sawyer after my third sip.

“You don’t feel that?” came his incredulous reply.

“Feel what?” I should’ve sounded far more alarmed, but my inner voice was… relaxed. Carefree. Effervescent, actually, like I’d dissolved into a bunch of bubbles and was floating up into the sky. I giggled. “Oh my Green Mother. I think I’m drunk. Or something.”

“Then stop drinking it!”

“But it tastes so yummy. It’s sweet like elderflowers and jasmine and is that huckleberry?

” I went in for a big swallow, rolling it around in my mouth like choice wine.

“Yep. Could be blackberry, but I’m pretty sure it’s huckleberry.

” I clung to my final shred of uninebriated thought.

“Sawyer, before I forget, please remind me to figure out a way to build up my defenses against ingested magical potions?”

“Witch,” came Shannon’s voice. It had the same soothing effect as stepping into a sun-warmed river. I wanted to lean back and float in that voice. And sip more of this fantastic cocktail.

“Tell me your name,” she said.

“ Oh no you don’t, fairy lady! ” Sawyer hissed.

A lance of heat radiated up my leg like I’d just been stabbed with a cattle brand. Did my cat just bite me? Rude.

And yet a spark of clarity cut through the effervescent giggles.

“Misty Fields.” The alias rolled off my tongue easily. I took another gulp of daffodil juice. “And this is delightful . What is it?”

“Raw fairy wine.”

I gave the high lady a sloppy wink. “Naughty.”

“And this is the witch who anchored the Banished One’s portal?” Laoise scoffed. “Unbelievable.”

“I think Misty and I can continue our conversation without your commentary,” Shannon said in a mild voice. “You three are free to enjoy the gardens.”

“That means shoo ,” I told her attendants after another big gulp of wine. I flicked my fingers at them in case they were hard of hearing and needed a visual cue. “Byeeee.”

Laoise didn’t budge. “I can keep my mouth shut, Shannon,” she entreated in a whisper, suddenly contrite and submissive.

Apparently that fairy wine had glossed over the threat in Shannon’s mild voice. I swiveled my head from high lady to attendant like I was watching a tennis match. Over the daffodil rim of this delicious wine, of course.

“I swear,” Laoise promised. “Please let me stay.”

“And I’ve never seen a mortal before, Mistress,” Agnes of the Vernal Pool said. “Please, let me stay. She is… intriguing.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to go back to the party and flirt with a certain someone?” Orla teased.

Agnes flushed.

“What’s this?” Shannon asked, distracted.

“Our little sister has been seeing someone in the court guard,” Orla snickered.

“Apparently he’s on duty but none of us have been able to determine exactly who it is.” Laoise’s eyes narrowed. “My bet is on Aidan, Ler’s old bunk mate.”

Agnes found the sky suddenly very fascinating, avoiding eye contact.

“Aidan?” Shannon beamed. “The one with the— We’ll pry it from you later.” The high lady gave a flick of her fingers, returning to the business at hand.

“They act all high and superior but they’re really just a pack of middle school girls, aren’t they?” I mused at Sawyer.

“Stop. Drinking,” the cat shouted at me.

“And you?” Shannon asked Orla, once again the paragon of controlled refinement. “Are you staying or seeking your own trysts amongst the guard?”

The brindle female shook her head, smiling brightly as her ringlets bounced. “Marshes keep secrets better than anyone. And the witch is full of them.” She licked her lips as if preparing to indulge in an afternoon tea full of delicacies. “I’m definitely staying, Mistress.”

“Then you three will be as quiet as the sources of your courts,” the high lady said firmly.

Her three attendants sobered immediately.

She turned back to me, holding out a hand of slender fingers.

There were two calluses there, on the inside of her index and middle fingers.

Odd, for fae were rumored to have incredible self-healing abilities.

“I think you’ve had enough of that wine now. ”

I clutched the flower cup to my chest. “Nuh-uh. No take-backsies.”

Some way, somehow, Sawyer sent the equivalent of a bitch slap up through our bond.

“I think I’ve had plenty, yes,” I agreed, setting the daffodil on the bench between us.

Now that I was amply lubricated, Shannon got straight to the point. “What are you doing in the Court of Beasts?”

Hadn’t we discussed this already? “I’m here to help my brother.”

“How?”

It was a simple question, but the will behind it was not. It pulled at me like a tide, dragging an answer from my lips. With Sawyer’s help, I kept my head above the proverbial water.

“Um, I don’t like that question. Can you ask another?”

A smile flickered across the high lady’s lips. “No. How are you going to help your brother?”

The answer burst out of me like the juice of an overripe watermelon. “By retrieving an artifact.”

Please, please don’t ask ? —

“What artifact?”

“ Riddle me with fleas! ” Sawyer swore. “ Keep your mouth shut, Meadow.”

“ I can’t! ”

“ Then stall! Use a synonym or something. ”

“It’s, uh, an artifact Arcadis wants,” I told her.

“Who’s Arcadis?”

“He’s the one holding my brother hostage.” I felt very smug, having thought up that answer all by myself. And it hadn’t revealed that Arcadis was Unseelie, which I was sure would be a whole new can of worms.

The high lady’s mouth flattened into a frustrated line.

Laoise spun and pinched Agnes. “She’s showing resistance to the fairy wine. Are you sure those vincera flowers were in full bloom?”

Agnes rubbed the sting from her arm. “Yes! And quit picking on me. Why aren’t you asking Orla if the midnight jonquil had purple stamens?”

“Because of course it did,” Orla said, unoffended.

Shannon briskly brushed her hands against her lap, smoothing out wrinkles only she could see. Her ladies quieted. “Let’s try another subject, shall we? Perhaps something you won’t mind talking about.”

Her gaze traveled from my face to my heart and back again.

Her frustration melted away like snow in the face of the springtime sun.

“You have an acushla of your own. In Faerish, its literal translation is ‘the pulse of my heart.’ In application, it is a”—she fought for the right words—“a bonded mate.”

There must’ve been a stunned look on my face, for she flashed a mischievous smile and answered my unspoken question.

“Those with fated mates can sometimes sense the bonds in others, females especially. It… sings. Yes, I think that’s the right word in English.

” She nodded, pleased with her understanding of a foreign language, then turned serious once more.

“You have an acushla yet you entered a marriage ceremony with the Banished One?”

The fairy wine amplified everything.

Suddenly I was a volcano on the verge of exploding—of screaming my pain and cursing Ossian’s name in every language I knew. I even wanted to hurt myself: drag my fingernails down my arms until bloody tributaries flowed into rivers that pumped my shame into the mulch at my feet.

Arcadis could blame whoever he liked, but everyone knew, including me, that I was the real reason for all the calamity that had befallen my family and one small town in the middle of the Midwest heartland. It had been prophesied long ago, and I’d been helpless to stop it.

“My lady,” Laoise hissed. “Get back!”

At the high lady’s feet, the fairy hounds whined in distress.

Warmth bloomed in my chest from the oak tree.

From the cat embedded in its heart. Blinking through the despair, I found my dark, pointed fingernails stabbing through the white satin of my gown and into my knees.

Dark green vines with thorns as long as my fingers snaked up my arms, writhing with impatience to be released.

The runes on my Hawthorne cuffs blazed and whizzed with sparks of light.

But beyond those vicious vines and fearsome fingernails were the trusting amber eyes of a young tabby tomcat. He gave me one of those slow blinks that told me he loved me with all this heart.

“My witch has courage,” Sawyer said. “My witch won’t let a stupid Buck Boy take what’s hers without a fight. He was only winning so far because he tied your hands behind your back. Guess who’s free now?”

I smiled down at that striped face, and my battle magic dissipated. “Damn right I am.”

As frightening as that loss of control had been, there had been an upside. It had burned through the effects of the fairy wine.

“All it did was speed up my metabolism,” I told Sawyer excitedly. “Like a fever burning through infection!”

“Well keep playing dumb!” was his panicked rebuke. “She doesn’t know that and she’s still expecting an answer!”

Schooling my expression, I chose my next words very carefully, remembering the legends Roland had revealed to me in the castle kitchen. “He stole me.”

The high lady’s attendants forgot their promise of silence again and gasped. Shannon herself looked like she’d been slapped, the color draining from her face. Only her eyes retained their pigment, darkening with remembered rage.

After a long pause, she murmured, “And you say the Banished One will suffer if we help you.”

“Terminally.”

Into that one word, I poured all the vengeance that had been locked away within me since the portal had restored my memories.

The high lady gifted me a smile sharper than all of Sawyer’s claws combined.

I tensed as she became a blur and the distance between us vanished.

The fae now stood much too close, looming over me from her greater height.

Sawyer’s ears plastered against his head, eyes wide.

A soft, warning yowl rose from his throat, but neither of us seemed to hear him.

All the details I hadn’t noticed about her before stood out in sharp relief: the tiny diamonds studding her long mane of brown hair, the brushstrokes of the silver paint that created the mask around her eyes, the lean muscles under her flawless skin that could snap a neck just as easily as pulling a ripe apple from a tree.

Her ethereal beauty and fine clothes, not to mention her aura and her smell—that freshwater scent of a pure mountain river—threatened to overwhelm me with wonder.

Like the glittering green scales of an emerald tree boa before the serpent struck.

My oak tree brightened in our defense as she suddenly moved again, but she only bent to take my hands and help me to my feet. Then she leaned down to kiss me on each cheek. The press of her red lips was softer than the errant bat of a butterfly’s wings.

“I daresay that makes you a treasured friend, witch, and not a guest at all,” she told me, straightening. “I am Shannon Ní Sailchis, born of the River Court and high lady of the Court of Beasts.”

She held out her hand to her attendants, and with no other cue, Laoise knew to put the silver dipper of water in her hand.

Shannon swirled the tip of her index finger over the water, her magic causing it to sparkle and spin, then held it out for me.

I drank what I was sure was the antidote to the raw fairy wine, not that I needed it anymore.

The high lady returned the silver dipper to her attendant and slipped my hand into the crook of her elbow. “Now, dear friend, let us scheme the Banished One’s demise.”