Page 59 of Twisting Twilight (Homesteader Hearth Witch #9)

“ Lawdy ,” Emmett drawled, making a show of fanning himself with his handkerchief.

“Stop that! She don’t need any more feminine wiles,” Cody barked. “Just look what that sundress and those sweet manners did to my boy. Absolutely ruined his work ethic. Daydreamin’, whistlin’, using his muscles to flex instead of hauling logs?—”

The girlish giggles from the Crafting Circle ladies and Emmett’s belly laugh were silenced as the Green Mother demanded, “How did you get them?”

Sobering, I sat up straighter in my seat.

The cabin turned attentive once more, and I began my tale.

I told them everything. The destruction of the castle and how cold and lifeless it was there, the treasure trove of the sea dragon, the truth of the shadows, Muriel’s visions and the resulting butterflies, the hidden power of the iron rapier, and growing the larch seed—I held nothing back, except what Thistle had told me about the faelene.

That was their secret to keep or share as they willed.

I said nothing of the cradle and the strange shadow within, finding the memory too fresh and painful.

The more I spoke, the rounder Kian’s eyes became until they resembled twin solar eclipses—golden irises with wide black pupils.

He scribbled madly in his notebook what the bargain allowed him to record, dunking his quill into the inkwell Fiachna held so vigorously that soon the white opossum resembled a Dalmatian.

The Green Mother, however, quietly absorbed every word like water to the roots of a parched tomato plant.

I was answering the questions that had plagued the courts for centuries, including how they might rid themselves of this terror once and for all.

Only the parting of her lips to silently gasp revealed how intently she was listening.

When I finished conveying everything I’d discovered, and everyone had asked their questions (especially Kian), the sun was beginning to set.

I slumped back against the bench and the junior scholar stoppered his nearly dry inkwell.

Fiachna seemed glad to be rid of it and immediately began cleaning himself of his spots.

With a wave of my hand, I lifted the ink from his fur and funneled it out the nearest window. The Raven grunted his thanks.

“I’m not sure how much of this the masters will accept,” Kian said, tucking his notebook safely within his overcoat, “since it is the word of a human and not evidence gleaned from fae sources, but I think it’ll be enough to earn me my robes.

” He nodded to himself. “It will be. But after that, what’s next? ”

I took a page from Rhydian’s How To Be Elusive book. “I’ll be in touch. After?—”

“You save your brother.” He smiled, ticking the list off on his fingers. “And your family. And your village. And this one you call Snack. Busy girl.”

“Busy ladies ,” Flora piped up. “She’s not doing this alone, ya know.”

“Speaking of,” Daphne said, “we should come up with a plan for what we’re going to do when we get back to Redbud. We left everything in quite the uproar.”

And the mayhem had only continued in our absence. In a strained voice, I told them what Gwyn had revealed to me in the Twilight Court—that my nightmares had been glimpses of the goings-on back home.

The bench creaked as Cody sagged back, shoulders slumping in despair. Emmett gripped his hand. “None of that,” he said brusquely, though his own eyes had gone misty. “Miss would know if something had happened to him. Let’s just focus on figuring out our next move.”

“But what about what Lori said?” Shari asked. “She made it sound like getting back wasn’t going to be that easy.”

“What’s this now?” Emmett demanded.

We all turned to the high lady, and the Green Mother shrugged.

“Portals are rare even here, and they all exact a toll. Sometimes it’s a hard currency like a sprig of fresh rowan berries or the wings of pixie.

Sometimes it’s the color of your eyes or a year off your life.

It’s impossible to know what kind this one will require, but it is safe to assume the price will be high.

Especially for a mortal. There’s a reason why human changelings never leave Elfame. They can’t survive it.”

The Redbudians swung their gaze to me, and I met their panicked expressions with resolute determination. “It will not be a problem. We. Are. Going. Home.”

Not even Cody argued with me. They had followed me this far, and I had made good on every promise. I would make good on this too. Someway, somehow.

“Right you are, cider witch.” She braced her fists on her hips. “No portal can defy this awesomeness. Now how about we eat our sausages and plan the butt-whoopin’ of the century?”

As we soon discovered, it was hard to strategize with limited information, even with the addition of everything I’d witnessed in my dreams. So in classic Misty Fields fashion, we made Plans A, B, C, and D.

It was pointless to speculate further, so all we had left to do was wait out the remaining hours to the Court of Beasts.

It was during this quiet time, when folks were snoozing or gazing out the windows or reflecting inwardly, that the Green Mother left her bench for mine.

Kian immediately vacated the space beside me with a hasty bow, and Sawyer shifted into an alert stance in my lap.

Thistle made him scooch over so she could fit, and with me being a curvy Hawthorne, there was plenty of space.

Both cats knew the Green Mother had been reluctant to swear her silence and wouldn’t leave me to face her alone should she try to coerce her release.

Thistle had even quietly offered to eat the bullfinch if a show of force was necessary.

High Lady Briony Ní Dara sat down nearby with a fluid pooling of her shimmering green gown, the hemline rippling over her bare feet. “You hold the fate of us all in a mortal hand, Niece. Do you honestly think you can learn all this, tell us all these secrets, and leave Elfame?”

As one, Thistle and Sawyer hissed.

I put a hand on each of their heads, ready to scruff if necessary.

“Yes,” I told her simply. “Though I thought I made it very clear that this is not a ‘forever’ situation.”

“If you return to this Redbud and die, we are not released from our bargain,” she stressed. “The magic doesn’t work that way. You would be hamstringing all future generations of fae to infertility and famine?—”

“Then help me live. Ossian will be merciless. Tell me everything you know about him so I can defeat him.” Then I asked the question that had been simmering away like a stock pot on the back burner of the stove—not a priority, but certainly not forgotten.

“How could you do it? How could you arrange a marriage between your own sister and that monster?”

The high lady winced and looked away, out the window. I followed her gaze to the red leaves of the Fire Grove and the Summerland Prairies beyond. The Court of Beasts’ forest was a dark smudge on the horizon.

“He wasn’t always like that,” she said quietly.

“Charismatic, brave, focused, exceptionally handsome—even for a fae. He was alluring. Ambitious. I’d met him only once, but when you live as long as we do, once is oftentimes enough.

Your character is formed after a hundred years, and rarely does an éan sídhe change its feathers.

“He was the perfect match for Violet. She was wild as a storm, gentle as a fawn. She was full of laughter and life, yet deadly as nightshade when she chose to be. She lived life wholly on either side of Life and Death’s scales, never in the middle.

She felt always, could never find quiet.

Which is why I thought a marriage to Ossian would suit her. Not to tame her, but to balance her.”

The Green Mother looked down at her hands. “I… didn’t know what he was becoming. How the Blight was poisoning his mind even before it came to these shores. Insulated as we are in the Green Court, we did not have firsthand knowledge of how this doom was changing the rest of the world.”

“Doesn’t sound like she was willing to risk finding out, either,” Sawyer told me privately, sourly.

“When he visited for the final preparations,” she continued, eyes downcast at her hands folded in her lap, “it was clear he was not the same fae. There was something crazed in his eyes, fanatic. I kept up the appearance that the Green Court was going to proceed with the wedding, but it was only until I could find out more. I fooled them all, even my own sister.”

I could see how. High Lady Briony was a master of her emotions with rarely any tells to betray what she was thinking. Even now, she was relaying what had to be a heartbreaking tale with hardly any inflection. She’d be unstoppable at the card tables in Las Vegas.

“Violet didn’t know I’d already called for Rhydian to fly me to the coast to verify Ossian’s claims about the Blight. To check the wellbeing of the real Court of Beasts, not those simpering sycophants he brought with him as attendants.”

“You weren’t going to go through with it,” I breathed.

Her chin lifted, power flashing in her brown eyes.

“Marry my own sister to a male who would use her power for his own gain? Absolutely not. I understood the logic of his words—how a marriage between two powerful high fae would amplify the magic enough to turn back the Blight—but I would not condemn her to the life that would come after that. Save thousands only to raise a tyrant who would subsume us all? Better to lose a lesser court or two instead of the entire continent.”

I thought Lady Muriel and the entirety of the Court of Shoals would disagree, but I didn’t say anything.

I couldn’t say I would’ve done anything differently had I been put in that position, except not keep my head hidden in the sand as much as Briony had.

I had the hindsight now to know just how damning ignorance could be, willful or otherwise.

“But my beautiful, volatile, and impulse sister acted before I could. She spurned Ossian, very publicly, denounced me as an uncaring coward to chain her own sister in marriage to a ‘chauvinistic, egotistical lunatic’—”

“We call him the Antlered Arsehole at home,” Flora interjected.

It was then we noticed the entire carriage was silent, every ear intent on hearing every detail about the Stag Man.

Briony’s eyebrows arched in delight. “Do you? It’s crass, but I rather like it.”

The garden gnome beamed.

“And she fled,” the Green Mother finished. “I have no idea how she found, or opened, a portal into your realm, but I never saw her again. Her history is lost to me, a remnant found in you, Niece.”

“I don’t know much about her myself,” I admitted, “just that she was rumored to be the sister of Mother Nature, and that she founded Annesley Valley, my family’s home. From the visions I’ve had of her, I know she was an unstoppable force. Committed to the one law that governs Nature itself.”

A faint ghost of a smile flickered across the high lady’s lips. “Growth.”

I nodded.

“In all its subtle or violent ways,” she mused.

The Tree of Life. Death’s Sword. The high fae was more right than I wanted to admit. I felt like Death’s Sword and I had come to some kind of understanding after the Blight’s infestation, but uneasiness still churned in my stomach that it could rise on instinct without my consent.

‘This place will change you, Misty Fields. For good or for ill, there is no escaping its effects.’

A quiet moment passed, then Shari asked, “How do we beat him? You’ve heard our plans; you know our enemy. Can we really win?” There was no mousy tentativeness in her voice; she was confident and a champion of her own life. And she had someone she wanted to—could—protect now. Charlie.

The high lady contemplated for a long time, thumb and forefinger gently ruffling the black feathers of Bonny’s head. The oppressive silence was punctuated by the occasional creak of the carriage between Rhydian’s claws and the heavy beat of his leathery wings.

“High fae, especially of the sovereign lines, are virtually indestructible,” she said at last, “unless pitted against their own kind or slain by iron. And you say he has access to a magic cache to rejuvenate him at will. You must separate him from it, wear him down. He’ll use everything he can—his glamour, his strength, his illusions, whatever magic he has at his disposal.

But he is so arrogant…” She shook her head.

“If you are victorious, it will come at great personal cost.”

Many shoulders slumped, and mine threatened to.

But they didn’t. And it wasn’t because Sawyer had flooded the bond with confidence.

Even now, we were being underestimated. I was a primal witch, something the world hadn’t seen in an age, and inheritor of Violet Ní Dara’s magic.

And my friends had proven time and time again that they were more than what they seemed.

That we, as a group, were capable of far more than anyone ever gave us credit for.

“I like our chances,” I said boldly, and my friends brightened. “We’re not the same people who entered the portal. And there’s a power granted to those who fight in defense of their homes and families. Ossian had to drug us to rule us before. Now, we’re wide awake.”

“Hear, hear!” Emmett crowed.

“I second that!” Flora attacked Shari’s pack and withdrew the bottle of hard cider. “Cheers all around!”

We drank and readied ourselves for the last hurdle before returning to Redbud: convincing the high lord of the Court of Beasts to let us go home and not to throw us in prison.