Page 52 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)
Shari however, did not flee. The quiet crafter was trembling with some emotion I couldn’t name, but her hand was steady as she produced a purple-tinged vial from her sleeve.
“I will not be made a victim by you or anyone else ever again,” she whispered vehemently.
“What did you do to them?” Ler screamed.
“Pokeweed juice. Not just for wedding cakes.” Shari hurled the vial at Ler, spun, and made a mad dash for the rest of us.
“Now?” Sawyer demanded.
“Wait for it.”
The high fae batted the vial away like a fly and summoned a crescent of water from the air. In the next heartbeat, it sharpened into an icy scythe that he arched back to hurl at the woman who had poisoned his men.
But Shari merely raised a clawed hand, red glittering liquid boiling between her fingers.
My grin was equal parts savage and proud. There she is.
Shari’s hellfire was the same shade of ruby as her blood.
She threw it up into the air and ducked.
Liquid fire engulfed Ler’s scythe with an explosion of steam.
Icy shards cut through the air like shrapnel, but my magic discarded them like chaff.
The quiet crafter sagged into Daphne’s arms when she reached the Crafting Circle ladies.
Ler screamed as my vines exploded from the ground at his feet and lifted him into the air. Shari had had her moment—they all had—and now it was time to end this.
The vines coiled and twisted and cinched and flipped him upside down so the blood drained to his face and turned it an unflattering shade of boysenberry.
More vines snatched the other Erusians, who got to enjoy the experience of soiling themselves from the pokeweed juice upside down and feeling it ooze everywhere it didn’t belong.
Leaning in close to the struggling fae, I whispered to Ler, “Where’s your goddess now?”
His blue eyes widened.
“Go on,” I urged softly, dangerously. He had shredded every last bit of my patience. “Call for her. Surely your cause is just.”
From the way he tensed, I knew he was trying to tap into Elfame’s power. From my own connection to this land, I knew his call went not just unanswered, but unheard.
With a panicked cry, he tried to free himself. Unbothered, the vines simply tightened.
“Guess not,” I said. “Now give me one good reason why I shouldn’t turn you into sausage meat.”
The blood draining to his head made thought and speech rather difficult. From the way drool leaked from the corners of his mouth and his blue eyes rolled in his head, he was on the verge of passing out. With a disgusted sound, I released him. All of them.
“You can’t,” I answered for him.
The Blades panted like terrified mice after a cat, having become bored, stalked away to find more exciting prey.
They hadn’t escaped anything by their own merit, and they knew it.
Raspy inhales, fingers grasping through the flowers, they fought for air and magic from Eru.
The air wielder was the first to recover and vanished in a flash of green light. The twins abandoned Ler next.
Coughing, Ler glared up at me. There was more than spite there. A crazed glint that hadn’t been there before. “What’s in your pack, witch? It calls to me. My father said… Is that the Samildánach?”
Thistle thorns, Shannon had warned me about this. How every male in the Sailchis line was susceptible to the call of the Samildánach. I’d gotten too close and now the mirror was driving him to madness. So soon.
I stepped away from him, my voice colder than winter. “By every law in this land, your life belongs to me. It is forfeit. And if I were the weapon the Stag Man wanted me to be, the true prodigy of my grandmother, I would take it. And not quickly.”
My Hawthorne blood demanded I eliminate the threat, but my life in Redbud had changed me into the witch I’d always wanted to become.
One who used her strength to bolster and encourage, not dominate.
The witch who loved . It’s why I’d stolen the grimoire and run away to lift its curse—out of love for my family, however flawed they’d turned out to be.
My voice lost its vicious edge but remained firm. “I am not that woman. Look at me .”
The power there demanded obedience. When his gaze wrenched away from my pack, there was venom in those blue depths.
“Run, Ler. Learn from your mistakes. For I will tell your sister what happened here. All of it. You have disgraced her and her husband and your family name, so it will be their mercy you’ll have to beg.
And from what I know of you high fae, your disgrace will not be tolerated.
With the Green Mother as my witness, as well as a respected scholar of the Solstice Court, they will believe my testimony. ”
“A cut-rate junior scholar with a varmint for a Raven instead of an actual bird,” Ler snarled.
Confidence straightened Kian’s spine, pride his shoulders.
Disdain filled his beautiful eyes, and Fiachna fluffed out his white fur.
“I might not have my master’s robes yet and Fiachna might be an unorthodox choice for a Raven, but we cannot be insulted so easily by fae who have no honor.
Or ones sniveling in the grass getting their hands all dirty.
Honestly, it’s like you have no sense of hygiene whatsoever. ”
“You’ll do as she says,” Thistle growled, “or you will feel the claws of a true faelene.”
That shut the fae up. When he made to rise, I shook my head.
“No, you stay down there like the worm you are until we leave,” I told him. “Mare?”
“Enbarra, darling!” Daphne hailed, leaping quite literally into action. “We’re ready to go now!”
I turned to my other friends. Flora perched on Shari’s shoulder, hugging her friend around the neck, and Kian—very awkwardly—was trying to extract himself from Lori’s bear hug for the sake of his books. Or his personal space.
“Lovely to have you back, Quills, Lori. Everyone to the carriage,” I ordered. “ Now .”
Even Flora knew to hustle instead of making a snarky remark.
At my silent urging, Sawyer followed after our friends.
I wanted all my loved ones safe before I took my eyes off that wretch heaped at my feet.
Thistle padded alongside him in that cute little trot of hers, pausing now and then to look over her shoulder and hiss.
When they were safely inside the carriage, the high lady of the Green Court approached and touched my elbow. “You have done well. Come now.”
I turned away and immediately regretted it.
Ler shot to his feet with a roar, drawing the twin daggers from his belt. Black poison dripped off their tips. “I will have what is mine, witch!”
The high lady of the Green Court struck.
Myriad roots like skeletal hands broke from the trefoil and brought him to the ground. They climbed over him, knitting, ensnaring, and no matter how he slashed and screamed, he could not break free.
The Green Mother held up a hand to stay me as battle magic burst from my cuffs, shredding the fabric binding them.
“My offense is not with you, High Lady,” Ler shouted. “It is with that mortal thief. Release me! Eru demands I pour her blood out upon the ground, return what she has stolen! The Samildánach?—”
“Your offense is with me, whelp,” the Green Mother replied icily. “You just attacked my niece, unprovoked, while her back was turned after she relieved your life debt. My niece, blood of my blood and my heir. You have just declared war upon the Green Court.”
“Your niece?” he squawked. “ Heir? ” His movements became frantic, desperately trying to free himself from the roots intent on dragging him into an early tomb beneath the meadow.
“Can’t you see the family resemblance?”
His gaze flicked between our defining characteristics and he shuddered.
“Go retrieve your sword, Niece.”
I quickly obeyed, strapping it tight across my back.
“Rhydian,” she called in a sing-song voice.
There was a thunderous crack, a whoosh of air that flattened the yellow flowers, and the Manann mares screamed in terror.
No wonder they hadn’t rushed forward to help us against the Blades as they had against Fionn—a foreign scent and an ancient fear had kept them at bay.
From the carriage window, Kian screamed even louder as a massive creature shed its camouflage as it lifted into the sky from the adjacent hill.
The red draig splintered the evening quiet with a bone-shattering roar.
A stench of urine lifted from the whimpering fae woven into the ground.
If I wasn’t so angry, mine probably would’ve joined his.
“Come, Niece.” Careful of my iron cuff, the Green Mother slipped my hand into the crook of her elbow and led me in the direction of the carriage, which was being bounced over the hills of the meadow at a breakneck pace by the terrified horses.
Over her shoulder, she asked Ler, “You’re a water wielder, right?
Wonder how that’ll hold up against draig fire. Not well, I suspect.”